Hasbro ‘blacklisted’ for anti-socialist Monopoly game: Twitter rant

Hasbro profits from “hate-filled” Red Scare tactics, according to a historian and author who is going viral after a heated Twitter rant.

The company’s Monopoly: Socialism board game, with the tag line “Winning is for capitalists,” actually was released in 2018 — before AOC started making headlines. And while it initially flew under the radar, it blew up online this week after Nick Kapur bought it and declared it “woefully ill-informed.”

“Maybe Hasbro actually knows its audience, and that audience is just hate-filled Boomers raised during the Cold War and triggered by whatever people under 40 do?,” is how the Rutgers University history professor, 39, concluded his 21-tweet takedown.

The first tweet alone has racked up more than 40,000 likes and nearly 15,000 shares.

The game features a Red take on the iconic Monopoly pieces. Players get old-timey tokens, which recall the McCarthy-era tech of the 1950s, and abundant, anachronistic references to current social issues. The game frequently mocks voting, environmentalism, health food and veganism, Kapur points out.

Cards reference a “no-tip vegan restaurant” and a “dairy-free coffee shop.”

When players pass go, they collect a “$50 living wage,” instead of most Monopoly games’ $200 payout.

The game’s structure satirizes socialism’s economic tenets — such as a “community fund” and high taxes — although Kapur says it does so inaccurately. The in-game economy is more similar to a “billionaire philanthropy model” than actual socialism, Kapur writes.

In November, Hasbro released a similarly mocking version of Monopoly making fun of millennials. Its reception was similarly tepid.