?: A Counterrevolutionary Discussion

Teleology

Banned
I posted this in "Red Dawn: Revolution and Rebirth", the continuation thread of Jello Biafra's "Reds!: A Revolutionary Timeline".

It'd be interesting to see a right-wing equivalent of this timeline take place. This is not a socialist-wank but the Workers (Communist) party and the UASR are a far cry from Stalin's totalitarian tactics, so it's equal but opposite measure would need to not be a libertarian-wank but not be about a fascist America either.

While I'm not sure about Croix de Feur in real history, the Crossfire timeline kind of portrays them as the social conservative version of this. The Crossfire regime is very right-wing, but compared to Action Francaise and the Nazis are a whole different animal.


If I wanted to do this idea as an American political TL, what period in American history would be ideal for a "counter-revolution", what changes in the history leading up to that moment could cause a build-up to revolutionary levels of tension, and what might these counter-revolutionaries or bourgeoisie revolutionaries be like? Free-market libertarians, big business interests, military law and order types, cultural traditionalists?

The idea is that theoretically one could portray an anti-socialist "revolution" of sorts in the same median between utopia and dystopia as the American socialist society that emerges in Reds!/Red Dawn. Somewhere in-between Probability Broach style libertarian wank and a fascist America timeline. The problem is that I'm not even sure what to call such a thing. Whites like the White Army? And what do you call their "revolution"? A counter-revolution?

This is the discussion thread for such a proposed timeline. I'm interested in the topic and if some discussion here sparks a specific concept for me I think I might take a shot at the TL. If someone else is also inspired and wanted to do their own take on it or to collaborate, that would be cool to.
 

Sachyriel

Banned
Well, I think any anti-socialist revolutionaries would call themselves the "Blues" to contrast with the "Reds". People taking niether side could be called "Whites"...
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
Well, I think any anti-socialist revolutionaries would call themselves the "Blues" to contrast with the "Reds". People taking niether side could be called "Whites"...
I dunno. They may prefer "Whites" to "Blues" in the South...;)
 

Teleology

Banned
I'd want to avoid stepping on the toes of the Reds timeline by using the Great Depression as the turning point, even though it is such a pivotal moment in US history.

If I were to do something focusing on on the Depression, it might involve events in the decades leading up to it being different enough to cause anti-union liberty commissions to get popular enough to form a national organization during the Depression. The idea of patriotic boosterism being used to distract people from crippling poverty and unite them against progressive reforms seems interesting. And by having a "pet the dog moment" like kicking chairman Lindbergh out of the national organization for siphoning funds to the German-American Bund you could modulate it a little bit (even if the cause was less "we don't like Hitler's Germany" and more "we don't trust Germans after the Great War", "we're nativists", "we like the Italian Fascist model better and they're at odds with the Germans" or something like that. The Nativist Wing, Veteran's Wing, and Pro-Fascist Wing distancing the National Liberty Committee from groups like the Bund...interesting thought).
 
If you want to branch off of Reds! that would not be a problem for me.

Either way though, the Great Depression is going to be the decisive turning point in the timeline, I agree.
 

Teleology

Banned
Yeah but it's almost like the Depression was tailor-made for either a socialist uprising or a fascist state, from an alternate history fan's perspective.

To avoid "the Depression as the time of the change" repetition, maybe something like the Depression leading to Huey Long's America which in turn leads to a capitalist revolution.

Or maybe the isolationists win out in WWI and the US suffers from a depression when Britain and France take huge economic hits. The same way the Reds don't revolt from fascists in that timeline, one doesn't need the (?)'s to counter-revolt from communists.

Maybe instead of authoritarian anti-laborists like my National Liberty Committee scenario, a Depression turns America into a looter state of sorts and a national taxpayer's union is the core of eventual coup (socialists get called revolutionaries regardless of the legitimacy, when it's right-wingers it's called a coup-de-tat regardless of the legitimacy). Such a group might have a Third Way corporatist style respect for specific unions though not for the Labor movement in general (seeing it as addressing the wrong issue and missing the real problem).

The choice between conservative authoritarians without being a dictatorship, Third Way corporatist anti-socialists without being Fascist, or libertarians without being anarchist (or a libertarian wank) is a difficult one.

Maybe just like the Russian White Army the counter-revolutionaries are a loose movement encompassing a wide range of contradictory ideas?
 
Yeah but it's almost like the Depression was tailor-made for either a socialist uprising or a fascist state, from an alternate history fan's perspective.

To avoid "the Depression as the time of the change" repetition, maybe something like the Depression leading to Huey Long's America which in turn leads to a capitalist revolution.

Why avoid it? AH should be at least somewhat plausible, and the Great Depression is the most plausible way to do this.

The way I'd spin this is to start with Jello's Reds! but have the Whites win. Possibly the Provisional Government rejects the Democrats attempt to join up, robbing it of the credibility and legitimacy it needs.
 

Teleology

Banned
Eh, spinning it off entirely would not work at all, in my opinion. And the Depression is an aesthetically pleasing time for either a socialist or a fascist uprising, due to the images of poverty and desperation; but socialism has been covered and I'm trying to avoid the WWII-oriented "Fascist America" cliche.

Anyways considering how much Jello had to change history to make the socialist revolution plausible by the time of the Depression, one could argue that looking for the most plausible point in existing history is meaningless. Either way it's going to take some big alterations so you might as well craft a new scenario in history from whole cloth.

So, with that in mind, any spot in history has potential as well, because the events leading up to it can be sufficiently altered.
 
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Prohibitionism going terribly wrong, with rampant Mafia which leads to a de facto police state, emerging out of traditionalist, nativist (against Italian and Irish "gangsters") and anti-statist (as national administration is seen as corrupt and inefficient) citizens' committees forming on the base of local protection against criminals ?
 
Eh, spinning it off entirely would not work at all, in my opinion. And the Depression is an aesthetically pleasing time for either a socialist or a fascist uprising, due to the images of poverty and desperation; but socialism has been covered and I'm trying to avoid the WWII-oriented "Fascist America" cliche.

Anyways considering how much Jello had to change history to make the socialist revolution plausible by the time of the Depression, one could argue that looking for the most plausible point in existing history is meaningless. Either way it's going to take some big alterations so you might as well craft a new scenario in history from whole cloth.

So, with that in mind, any spot in history has potential as well, because the events leading up to it can be sufficiently altered.
Hmm. Here's a thought.

A timeline where the US remains isolationist, and never gets involved in the First World War. The Progressive movement, labor unions and the Socialist movement merge into a sort of broad Labor Party, displacing and bumping off the Republican Party in the North and West

In this new timeline, the "Labor Party" remains a minority party. At the same time, the gulf between the two parties remains broad, with Democrats serving as a sort of analogue to the Japanese LDP. Politically pragmatic, but essentially conservative and right-wing in the political orientation, and through guile, the Red Scare and isolationist sentiment, keep power for most of the century.
 

Teleology

Banned
Shoot, Bryan has typically been what I thought of when I tried to think of how America could go socialist. If instead of Marxism spreading to those interesting Russian revolutionaries, if the Social Gospel had successfully merged labor (War of the Classes: A Gilded Age timeline style) with the grangers (who were the main fans of Bryan style inflationary policies, whether through Bimetalism or Green Back Party style stuff) and simultaneously bolstered that with a new Great Awakening in America...that would completely steal the socialist thunder from any other part of the world. Christian Socialism would be what people thought when they thought of socialism and revisionist historians would be writing about how Marx didn't actually hate religion.

Anyways, there's various opportunities throughout history if one just thinks for revolutions and counterrevolutions and coups and so on but I think I'm having trouble just pinning down what constitutes a counter-revolutionary. I basically want to do Reds! in reverse, not literally (having the White Army succeed) but as a thought experiment about making as objective and fairly represented a respectable if not perfect far-right as Reds! does for the far-left. Basically I want to get out of my own personal political comfort zone and depict a group that as reactionary as the Workers (Communists) are revolutionary, without making them out to be either fascists or just moderates.

The society in Reds! manages to seem very far-left without falling into all the same Soviet pit-falls, with most of that credit seeming to go to the US constitution. But if the US' enlightenment ideals in it's founding could do that for communism, could it's pioneer spirit have the same humanizing effect on far-right reactionism?

But that's the thing. Communism is communism, or at least socialism. It's not inherently a loaded gun, from a purely academic standpoint. Whereas there's no nice way to say Fascism and Anti-Communism is just negative. What do you call a counter-revolutionary revolution? What do you call reactionary (revolutionaries)?

And I suppose coming up with a decent name can only happen after you've defined them. Are they militarists? Big business? Ideological libertarians (as opposed to simply big business spouting the language for pragmatic reasons)? Social conservative traditionalists? Are they all of them united into a Counter-Revolutionary Front and if so I wonder how might those points of view might meld in the fires of adversity and than splinter apart after victory?

In short I guess I just need to give it serious thought, but I always like to try discussion threads. It's not that I want to outsource my thought process, it's just nice when there are those few rare moments where someone says something that happens to trigger a flash of inspiration.
 
The society in Reds! manages to seem very far-left without falling into all the same Soviet pit-falls, with most of that credit seeming to go to the US constitution. But if the US' enlightenment ideals in it's founding could do that for communism, could it's pioneer spirit have the same humanizing effect on far-right reactionism?


To be fair, it wasn't so much the US constitution that let America pull it off in Reds!, as it was the cultural tradition of Constitutionalism. Constitutionalism is essentially the idea that it is logically possible for The State to break the law, that the Government Itself can commit a crime, and should be held accountable if it does so. In this way, the UASR is restrained on a cultural level in a way that the USSR wasn't.

Such an idea goes fundamentally against the strictures of Fascism and other totalitarian systems. This gets into what exactly is meant by "Monopoly of Legitimate Force".
 
Start with Bryan, have his movement swerve populist-right with the moralistic overtones and religious base, add in some Hoover style Red Scare (though earlier than Hoover), and you've got yourself the basis for a hard-right government.
 

Teleology

Banned
I know I'm probably factually incorrect, but I'm not sure I could do that to Bryan. I've come to think of him as the one good populist, in that agrarian populism doesn't seem as dangerous as general populism.
 
I know I'm probably factually incorrect, but I'm not sure I could do that to Bryan. I've come to think of him as the one good populist, in that agrarian populism doesn't seem as dangerous as general populism.

I'm sure that he is. But movements can be hijacked by less scrupulous individuals.
 

Teleology

Banned
If I wanted to go meta-textual, Back In The USSA inspires me of the possibility of President Charles Foster Kane's legacy on America.
 
If I wanted to go meta-textual, Back In The USSA inspires me of the possibility of President Charles Foster Kane's legacy on America.

If you want to go that way. Or you could just pick up the inspiration for the character, and have President William Randolph Hearst.
 
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