Warning! Spoilers ahead for Fallout season 2, episode 3.
Robert House calls Cooper Howard a “pinko” in Fallout season 2, episode 3, and while it’s not really used anymore, there’s a lot of historical context behind that insult. For the most part, Fallout season 2 has been following Lucy and the Ghoul on the road to New Vegas, running into trouble with various hostile factions, like Caesar’s Legion, along the way.
But the season has also featured its fair share of flashbacks filling in the Ghoul’s backstory before he became the Ghoul. House has been introduced as the big bad of Fallout season 2 — the enigmatic ruler of New Vegas — and these flashbacks are going back to explore House’s history with Cooper. Most notably, in one of these flashbacks, House calls Cooper a “pinko.” What does that mean?
Justin Theroux’s Robert House Calls Cooper A “Pinko” – What That Means
House, the strange new villain played by Justin Theroux, calls Cooper a “pinko” in Fallout season 2’s latest episode. Historically, “pinko” was used as a derogatory term to refer to people who share communist views, but aren’t necessarily fully-fledged communists. They’re what you’d call communist sympathizers — or, if you want to be less flattering, they’re what you’d call a “pinko.”
Red is the color synonymous with communism, so the idea with “pinko” is that it’s a lighter shade of red, referring to a semi-communist or a diluted communist who isn’t fully red, but shares some of those ideologies. The term is often aimed at left-leaning liberals, who won’t go as far as joining the Communist Party, but don’t get on board the anti-communist hate train, either.
It’s a part of the show’s reimagining of 1950s Americana. The pre-Great War world of Fallout is a retrofuturistic version of ‘50s America; it has high-tech, but it also has picket fences and classic cars. By mixing in the sentiments surrounding communism, Fallout both captures that historical reference point and touches on our own contemporary political divisions.
Why Cooper Howard Would Be Called A Pinko – Is He A Communist?
Cooper’s political beliefs are complicated. He doesn’t consider himself a communist, but he’s not necessarily anti-communist, either. After his experiences in the Sino-American War, he considers himself to be anti-communist. However, after the wellbeing of the American people was sold off to a greedy corporation, Cooper became disillusioned with his own government and started to move closer to communist views.
After befriending a diehard communist, Cooper attended a handful of meetings for “radicals,” after which he was publicly labeled a communist. But Fallout season 2 has made it clear that Cooper’s views fall somewhere in the middle.
