Look to the West Volume VII: The Eye Against the Prism

Thande

Donor
Well done for keeping this thread on the front page a week after I last posted, lads, always makes me happy to see active discussion!

(edit: predictably, this has made it go to a new page :p - so see bottom of the previous one for Part #259 which I've just posted)
 
Much interestingness.

So, Russia is a republic by the present day, by the sound of it. Unless the "Empty Throne" is a reference to a powerless Tsar, rather than an absentee one?

I assume Novgorod is the Russian capital, because Moscow was nuked. Or is it the capital of the Russian Confederation, whilst Moscow is the capital of the Russian Nation?
 
Much interestingness.

So, Russia is a republic by the present day, by the sound of it. Unless the "Empty Throne" is a reference to a powerless Tsar, rather than an absentee one?

I assume Novgorod is the Russian capital, because Moscow was nuked. Or is it the capital of the Russian Confederation, whilst Moscow is the capital of the Russian Nation?
There is a mention to a "tragedy of 1990" that insinuates a big nuclear war, probably the "Last War of Supremacy" We can speculate that Moscow and Zone1Urby1 got nuked in the same war
 
There is a mention to a "tragedy of 1990" that insinuates a big nuclear war, probably the "Last War of Supremacy" We can speculate that Moscow and Zone1Urby1 got nuked in the same war

However, the post mentions that the Russian Confederation was formed as a result of the Sunrise War, which happened during the mid-20th century. Therefore, I believe that Moscow had been nuked at that point. Or, at the very least, something caused the Russian government to have to leave the city, and subsequently not return to it.

Of course, it might have been nuked again during the Last War of Supremacy.
 
However, the post mentions that the Russian Confederation was formed as a result of the Sunrise War, which happened during the mid-20th century. Therefore, I believe that Moscow had been nuked at that point. Or, at the very least, something caused the Russian government to have to leave the city, and subsequently not return to it.

Of course, it might have been nuked again during the Last War of Supremacy.
However, is implied that the Russians got the bomb first. So, the Combine probably had nukes on the next war. In a world that was horrified by a conventional chemical attack from WW1, is very likely that the bomb wasn't a war-winner for the Russians
 
all this talk of nukes and it's plausible in-universe

No wonder Nuttall considers Timeline L, well, insane....
You can get more insane if you really think about it. Since the story insinuates that the Combine eventually retreats from a lot of territories, what the hell the ASN did with the old Combine territories? Since they basically are indistinguishable from other Combine territories, they literally have to rebuild those countries from zero. Not as much as the institutions, but literally the entire culture of those countries has to be created from scratch in order to achieve a Diversitarian nation. If ENA has already problems in what to do with Mexico, imagine winning a territory that is basically an extention of the enemy nation. What do you even do with something like that? How you can rebuild how the old nation was with all this constant historic revisionism on the way? Knowing the Diversitarians, they probably sent a lot inmigrants from different parts of the world in order to create something that is reminiscent of diversity (it was mentioned that this was the case of England) or they simply made up a resemblence of that culture based in dispersed pieces of history. Or both, probably
 
Societism may have started with good intentions, but it is slowly becoming just like the old system it claims to fight, if not worse. Another proof that new doesn't always means good or better.
 
“This House believes that to spare the rod is to spoil the child”
The Debate Union comes to PRESTON, LANCS in next week’s episode.
Tickets available from page MT21B
You can never be too sure what with all these white-rose sporting bandits loitering around!
 
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German Interrex Ludwig Steinburg

"Interrex"? So, is Germany a nominal monarchy with a "regency" in power for a near-century? Or, has "Interrex" been kept under a republican constitution for Germany for whatever reason? I have thought that if Canada were to ever become a republic its head of state would still be a Governor-General as "President" is too closely connected to the US - might something like that be involved? Or did republican Germany begin as a "regency" which became permanent over time?
 
I was under the impression that Interrex is the ASN equivalent of the UN Secretary General - perhaps based on a rotating system between heads of state or ambassadors?
 
I was under the impression that Interrex is the ASN equivalent of the UN Secretary General - perhaps based on a rotating system between heads of state or ambassadors?
Makes sense, of course a Diversitarian organization would make a point of including the country of origin for its leader in the official title.
 
Do we know that the "Soviet regime" was the Russian Confederation?
I'd say no. It looks to me like the Soviets governed Russia on behalf of the Empty Throne from the Sunrise War to around 1980, when a new government (presumably the Confederation) took over and established much friendlier relations with the rest of the Diverse World.
 
For the first half of the twentieth century, Societism (usually synonymous with the Combine) had gone from strength to strength, advancing repeatedly in three huge waves and never in retreat.

The Pandoric Revolution, the Black Twenties, the Second Black Scare (1940s?)?

Your teachers, on the other hand, may well be of a generation whose formative years were in the 1980s or 1970s. Many of them may not be able to separate the earlier history of the Combine from the ideas that they gained when they were your age. To them, the Combine will always signify a decaying, ineffective entity, unable to come to terms with the fact that it no longer represents the radical cutting edge of ideological boldness. Apparently, superficially, it seemed harmless or even comical. Yet behind the blank face it presented to the world, deep within, suppressed anger was slowly building towards the tragedy of 1990.

More recently, Ertegun (2017) even suggested that these assumptions on the part of the European, Chinese and American Diversitarian theorists of the 1960s and 70s could be recognised in a parallel attitude towards the Soviets themselves. Russia had traced an almost unambiguously ascendant trajectory throughout the same first half of the twentieth century, and indeed before that. It mattered not that the Sunrise War had ended that ascent by breaking the old Russian Empire; Ertegun argues that men like Lebrun and Wenediger were still subconsciously viewing Soviet Russia as a threat to their nations almost as great as that of Societism itself. It is an interesting lens through which to view the struggles between Novgorod’s Empty Throne and the other ASN nations with, but a view many on both sides would reject.

Men and women across the nations held to this attitude as a central pillar of their existence, and found it very hard to adapt to a world in which it might no longer be true. Indeed, it can be argued that when the nations did begin to accept this, in part due to generational change, it mirrored a similar epiphany on the part of the Combine, its rulers suspecting their glory days were over—and so the descent to 1990 began.

The bar-brawl of the late-50s Sunrise War seems to end with Russia badly concussed but the Combine leaking some blood onto the carpet as well; one evidently recovered much faster than the other. It's quite possible this war is seen as a dangerous near-miss (something the Soviets probably encourage to legitimize their authority) until the Combine's 60s-80s weakness becomes more apparent.

Also, "Empty Throne" is a delicious metonym for a political regime. Please tell me they literally build a giant throne in Novgorod's main square. Although come to think of it Novgorod is an odd location for a replacement capital, if we're going with the theory that Moscow was nuked. Even Kazan is arguably closer to the Russian heartland. Although if the Soviets TTL are drawing from the racialist-leftism that inspired the Meridian Colorados and the French Noirs (fairly likely, given their skepticism of "national friendship") then the Tatar city of Kazan would be vastly inferior to Novgorod, the city of Alexander Nevsky's pride. But I'd like to think we're not reprising Jacobinism again, and going for something fresher.

Ertegun is a very Turkish-sounding name-- does the Eternal State or its successor rejoin the world community faster than the Combine successors?

Caraibas’ ‘revolutionary violence is a form of warfare’ quote was repeatedly reused and expanded by other Societist writers. Later this often took the logical form of ‘X is war, war is wrong, X is wrong’. Of course, in the Combine’s years of decline ‘X’ was often anything that a Zonal Rej had decided was undesirable. This is an example of how people of your teachers’ generation may be unable to take this seriously (or understand how people of the 1890s and 1900s did), because they only know it in this farcical context. Indeed, the phrase was arguably finally buried by Yan Mathews’ cutting remark summarising the Combine’s actions in the crisis of 1990: “Peace is war, war is wrong, peace is wrong.”

A Zonal Rej? Just one is all it takes? Does the Combine's end come about by decentralization, as each Rej becomes an absolutist Rex... but because you need to preserve the illusion of unity the bad decisions of one get blamed on all? Might be possible that this is how the weird events hinted at in Japan come about-- the Combine wins it in the Sunrise War but in the ensuing malaise can barely govern it; the suddenly-very-autonomous Rej pursues some... strange ideas.

It’s because of how the Combine ended that it may be difficult now to appreciate that Societism was once considered a form of Pacifism; indeed, that that was its defining characteristic. Caraibas might have coined the Doctrine of the Last Throw, but fundamentally before the rise of Alfarus and the Celatores, the dominant manner of Societist thinking was nonetheless that violence was never justified, and that the world could never be united by force. It is this early, naïve, paleo-Societist view that we need to bear in mind when considering how the people of the 1900s viewed Societism as an ideology.

Maybe the Combine ends in a civil war, egged on by the Diversitarians? Did we ever hear of any Diversitarian cities destroyed in the Last War of Supremacy (I believe they were the ones launching the nukes, possibly to seize the chance offered by the internal chaos of the hated enemy)?

But no, if the Combine's ending is considered such a perfect reversal of the Pacifist impulse... maybe it was a pre-emptive strike by August-Coup-style hardliners on the world that rejected them. A repeat of Monterroso's mistake. Those poor bastards.

You have been born into a world without the Combine (at least in a form anyone would recognise)

I guess the question of "how did they build Diversitarian nations out of the Combine?" is answered by... they didn't? I suppose South America can keep its diverse populations as a token of apology for the whole "shattered cities en' wailin' bairns" business. The sense of commonality based on common residence regardless of exact origin will gel into something "national" soon enough, even without active steps taken to resurrect the culture and politics of the UPSA at its prime. After all, the Combine era is now an epoch of Platinea's national experience, and 'tis a great crime to murder a nation :^))))))
 
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Does the Combine's end come about by decentralization, as each Rej becomes an absolutist Rex... but because you need to preserve the illusion of unity the bad decisions of one get blamed on all? Might be possible that this is how the weird events hinted at in Japan come about-- the Combine wins it in the Sunrise War but in the ensuing malaise can barely govern it; the suddenly-very-autonomous Rej pursues some... strange ideas.
That would be an ironically fitting demise, wouldn't it? Or to repurpose a quote from an obscure corner of the internet and removing it's original humor: "Defeated by division? in the Combine? Oh what irony."
 
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