Building a Better World: The Aristopian Party
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In a world where a worse War of 1812 sees the decline of the Republicans, the death of Jackson and the first of the unequal treaties with Britain, the Velvet Revolution of 1912 is lauded for ending the tyranny of the Federalist Party and with it the American Century of Humiliation. An outgrowth of the dissident Readjuster Party, the Aristopians evolved over the decades through a mix of influences, particularly two influential novels published in the aftermath of the Mormon Wars*.
The first,
Looking Backward, had been published in 1888 by Edward Bellamy and revolved around an imagined future America governed as a socialist utopia, also advocating for a universal basic income. The second,
Aristopia, was the work that would ultimately lend its name to the entire movement. Published in 1895 by Castello Holford, the novel described an alternate present revolving around a utopian planned community where the nation's land was held in common and its trade managed by the state. Both were wildly popular, reflecting growing public outrage with the almost aristocratic generational power held by the nation's elite families.
With the Federalist Party outlawed and many of its luminaries living as a diaspora within the Imperial Federation in the wake of the Revolution, power in the reborn republican system is uneasily divided between the Aristopians and the Theodemocrats** even as the nation turns to aggressively expanding its influence abroad to better prepare for the final conflict with the British many from the great unwashed to the halls of power see as an inevitability.
The Aristopian Party and its particular strain of "Nationalist Socialism" is commonly represented by the Hammer and Wedge or a gold-purple-gold roundel, with the party's flag showing the Federalist roundel split by the power of the people.
*A more brutal 1812 creates a boom time for new religious movements, with the Mormons far more successful as proselytizing but equally prone to being driven west. Smith is still killed on the campaign trail but his political platform eventually evolves into the Theodemocrats, with majority-Mormon California, Oregon and Deseret sparking the Mormon Wars when the Federalist government refuses to grant the three territories statehood.
Again.
**The Socialist Party is waiting in the wings, with the covert support of the Roman Spartacist Republic. Suffice to say that the German and Italian unifications unfolded along drastically different lines TTL.