Games

I don't understand how anyone could think the Fallout series is conservative though. The whole series makes fun of US cold war paranoia.

Well, from a certain point of view, you could say it has a pretty dismal outlook on humanity constantly reverting to wars for land and resources even after being blasted to the stone age. No wasteland polity could be considered even remotely socialist or thinking about moving beyond the value form, aside from the Vaults ironically in a roundabout way, or the Followers who never really grow beyond being a wandering group of idealists (I've seen people claim the Minutemen are, but IMO it's a bit of a stretch). That said, I think even the newer games have more depth beyond that, and there is something optimistic that Humanity will band together and cling to life no matter what, often times rejecting the seemingly "easy" path of individual opportunism for a greater good.

If you consider Word of God important, Chris Avellone clarified from the start that he never intended for Fallout or its takeaway "War Never Changes" to be anti-capitalist but rather some generic doomer muh human nature spiel, and tried to insinuate the perfidious Chicoms were just as much to blame for the nuclear apocalypse as the literal fascist American empire, as if that makes it a critique about communism too. Funnily enough, people give Bethesda and Toddy shit for trying to tear down the "rebuilding civilization" aspect of Fallout in favor of a generic Mad Max kind of setting, but Avellone originally intended for another catastrophe to reset the West Coast's progress to 0. That's what Lonesome Road was supposed to be about in theory (which is laughable given that the Wasteland has gone through far worse than fucking Tunnelers).

Of course, he's become unhinged on social media over the years and sucks off so you can dismiss anything he has to say. Death of the Author and all that.