AH Challenge: Dictatoracy in the USA

Mako-Chan

AH Challenge: Dictatoracy in the USA


Your challenge if you choose to accept it is to create a US which combines elements of a Dictatorship and a Democracy in the following ways:

1. The president has canceled elections and has the military patrolling the streets of the cities.

2. The media is “free” from most or all censorship technically, but self-censorship and/or ownership of it by some of the government’s associates has rendered it completely devoid of dissent (a situation similar to Russia today, and to an extent most newspapers during WWII)

3. Some elections do take place on a local level. They may or may not be totally rigged, although they must ultimately either favor the current government or else be totally irrelevant.

4. The government has somehow managed to get companies back into the USA, and outsourcing has ended, giving way to a re-invigorated economy.

5. The overlords of this new American order include the president and any of the following: the military (de-facto Junta), the wealthy elites/corporations (oligarchy, plutocracy, kleptocracy, fascist corporatism or any combination of these into some unholy mixture), new-deal type left-wingers, and/or the ruling party.

6. The POD in question must allow this to occur by the 1930’s.

Bonus points: If you can get an American man on the moon by 1957.
 
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Grey Wolf

Grey Wolf

Donor
I am wondering what happens if Germany wins the war in 1918. For example if Foch is killed in a car crash and doesn't exist to prevent Haig and Petain (who probably has Foch's job) retiring in opposite directions in the face of the Kaiserschlacht offensive. Paris falls to the Germans, and despite the growing number of Americans in France, France surrenders, causing the collapse in short succession of the Salonika and North Italian fronts, and a negotiated peace between the USA and Great Britain on the one hand, and the Central Powers on the other

The United States will now have been committed massively to a war it did not win. It would completely discredit Wilson of course, but in addition the huge loans and credits give to the Allies have little chance of being repaid in the near future. Wilson may or may not be impeached, but if he has a breakdown as in OTL... I don't know - what IS the method for removing a president in the absence of the Twenty Fifth Amendment ?

1920 election - there is going to be a massive backlash. Perhaps Lodge is elected president (he was Wilson's fiercest critic) and he is probably going to face a financial crisis which may see him to an even earlier grave than in OTL (1924)

Basically, you could set up a situation where there is a deep economic recession in the early 1920s, a series of weak presidents (in so far as they have a habit of dying !), and an eventual Great Depression that is probably far worse for the ex-Allied & Associated Powers, whereas there is some kind of German giant in the East of Europe.

In the face of this, a strongman president could well come to power, backed by a subservient Republican Congress...

Grey Wolf
 

Leo Caesius

Banned
I think that Sax Rohmer, and - to a greater degree - Sinclair Lewis - had rather interesting ideas about the rise of a dictatorship in the US. Lewis' dictator, Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip was a Democratic politician from somewhere out in the middle of nowhere, who possessed just the right combination of snake-oil salesman and tent revival preacher to make it big on the American political scene. When I reviewed It Can't Happen Here, I wrote that Buzz struck me as an oafish yet strangely charismatic president, who, despite his natural charisma, was initially elected in a highly contested election, who talks like a "reformer" but is really in the pocket of big business, who claims to be a home-spun "humanist," while appealing to religious extremists, and who speaks of "liberating" women and minorities, as he gradually strips them of all their rights. One character, when describing him, says, "I can't tell if he's a crook or a religious fanatic."

Interestingly, the military does not have a role in the establishment of the dictatorship; instead, local civilian militias are formed, and these take to the streets in support of him. So much of American politics is local, and America is so ungovernable in many ways, that I think that the only military dicatorship would have to come from these self-appointed brownshirts. If a dictator were to arise today, he could probably rely upon large numbers of just this sort of person, if he were to assure them that he would safeguard their most important freedoms and fulfill their grudges for them. These people, whom Windrip was able to mobilize in massive numbers, formed the basis of his party apparatus on the local level, and were instrumental in his election.

After he becomes elected, he puts the media - at that time, radio and newspapers - under the supervision of the military and slowly begins buying up or closing down media outlets. William Randolph Hearst, the Rupert Murdoch of his times, directs his newspapers to heap unqualified praise upon the president and his policies, and gradually comes to develop a special relationship with the government - a relationship which is essential for both parties in the Information Age. The president, taking advantage of an economic crisis, strong-arms Congress into signing blank checks over to the military and passing stringent and possibly unconstitutional laws, e.g. punishing universities when they don't permit military recruiting or are not vociferous enough in their approval of his policies. Eventually, he takes advantage of the crisis to convene military tribunals for civilians, and denounce all of his detractors as unpatriotic and possibly treasonous.

The book, as dated as it is, has some surprising ideas - such as the use of a airplane in a suicide attempt to destroy the government. I highly recommend it if you're looking for reading on this topic, even if it doesn't stack up to Main Street or Babbitt.
 
Grey Wolf

Grey Wolf

Donor
POTUS P.Diffin said:
Clarification on requirement number one: Presidential elections must be cancelled.
Click to expand...

Well, if you look at what I was doing, I was giving you the background to the state of affairs you wanted coming into play. The different end to the war, the different 1920s would be the background, then your lovely dictatorship could come into being in a worse 1930s

Grey Wolf
 

Nekromans

From what I can tell, there was a coup of 1934. But it went down about as well as a barbeque in a monsoon. In other words, it started raining and everyone gave up.
 

NapoleonXIV

Banned
Leo Caesius said:
I think that Sax Rohmer, and - to a greater degree - Sinclair Lewis - had rather interesting ideas about the rise of a dictatorship in the US.
Click to expand...

Sax Rohmer wrote political novels? I can't find any mention of anything he did beyond Fu Manchu and the Sumuru series, except for some early works.
 
Redem

Redem

Actually he talk about the buisness plot, but we can't really put a date on it since it never happen, but it's essentially one of the creppiest conspiracy theory if you ask me (and that's why I tried to do a story on it)
 
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