I'm back on my horsehit again.
Equestrian Politics
Previous boxes
Triple Crown Party and Corona Party
Party to Uphold Hippocracy
Everfree Party
Nightmare Party
Next, the Equalist parties.
In a small village on the edge of Equestria, Starlight Glimmer proposed a theory. All the problems in Equestria are caused by one thing: cutie marks. The marks that appear on a pony's flank when they discover their special talent are normally are considered a celebration and a point of pride, but Starlight declared them a pox upon Equestria. Cutie marks, she said, bring nothing but misery to ponies as they make ponies think they're better than everyone else. The marks create competition between ponies for jobs, for relationships, and for everything, and only serve to sow division and conflict among ponies. While many dismissed the theory after Twilight visited her village and the ponies therein were freed from Starlight's magical grasp, and eventually Starlight herself was convinced of the error of her ways as overreacting to losing a foalhood friend and blaming it on the friend receiving his cutie mark, others examined the theory and found it to be sound.
The Equality Party of Equestria formed with the aim of continuing Starlight Glimmer's original ideology, that true harmony could only be brought to Equestria once everypony had the same cutie mark. The party was started by some from Starlight's village who even after the events that drove Starlight from the village felt her ideas were right, as her ideas and their discontent over their cutie marks and the strife it brought to their lives had been what brought them to the village in the first place. The center of the ideology consolidated in the village, named New Harmony after Starlight's departure, after several more ponies sought a new start free from the burden of their cutie marks, and Equalist thinking spread over the next few years. Initially, tensions between the Equalists and the villagers who opposed Starlight were high in New Harmony and caused some ponies to leave the village, but soon they found a way to coexist despite their difference of opinions. However, divisions soon grew not from outside but from within the Equality Party over whose way of thinking was the true and correct heir to Marksist and Glimmerist thought. Soon, the party splintered into several factions. The largest splinter, the Equalist Party (Marksists-Glimmerist), set up a party organization in Canterlot rather than New Harmony and began preparing to contest any upcoming elections. The party was always strongest in the village's home New Harmony-Hoovesier riding, but a Canterlot address made the party seem more legitimate and official, In the 1008 election following the Cozy Glow Crisis, the Triple Crown Party was weakened enough that despite the split among the Equalist parties, the Marksists-Glimmerists barely eked ahead and won the first parliamentary seat of any Equalist Party. The other major Marksist splinter, the Trotskyites, do not have much ideologically different from the Marksist-Glimmerists. The Trotskyite faction's major contention with the main party is that its leader, a pegasus named Trot Sky, is the true heir to Glimmerist thought and is the only one who can lead the party to any success.
Unlike the Marksist-Glimmerists and Trotskyites, the Equality Party (Blankist) does carry a large ideological distinction from the rest of the Equalist parties. The Blankists claim the idea of everypony with the same cutie mark and the same talents does not go far enough in overcoming the conflict between ponies. For the Blankists, true equality and harmony can only be achieved once ponies are completely free from their cutie marks, by eliminating them altogether and leaving ponies' flanks blank for all their lives, not just as foals. They believe that even the presence of a cutie mark upon one's flank destroys the freedom of a pony to discover and pursue other interests and locks a pony into a single path to their lives. While this seems extreme to Equestrian society, it has made the Blankist Equalist Party popular among some of the non-pony community in northeast Equestria. Other creatures like griffons, dragons, and yaks do not have cutie marks, and among some there is a feeling that the ubiquity of cutie marks in Equestria disadvantages other creatures in society as they claim the outward and obvious display of one's skills and talents creates an automatic leg up for ponies. Some, like Blankist deputy leader and griffon Glasnost, see a complete end to cutie marks as the only way to achieve real equal opportunity for all creatures in Equestria. The growing popularity of the Blankists among non-ponies has led to the Equalist Party (Blankist) making some inroads into local politics in heavily non-pony areas of Equestria, though they have yet to break through on a large scale yet.