Great stuff. Are the lack of Twitter and Reddit the only differences from OTL?
Alternate Ideologies
- Thread starter Višeslav
- Start date
Well, there was larger anti-pagan/neopagan Christian movement starting in the 2020s, a second Cold War with China, and America decaying into a dominant-party system as the main ones. I kept it purposefully vague.
I can't think of the name but..an ideology revolving around being noisy. Like, the louder you are, the more superior you come off - because you can afford to cause that level of disruption. (Totally NOT absolutely pissed at noisy neighbors.)
I can only think of Sonic the Hedgehog, but that is a good name
It's strange to think that 2020 and 2021 are now alternate history material
I sort of headcanon that this universe's 2019 never developed a pandemic, so "con culture"/renn faires/live theatre/etc only continued to grow.It's strange to think that 2020 and 2021 are now alternate history material
So yeah. Alternate history with a POD from three years ago, leading into the creation of a literal and influential "meme ideology".
Folk Chaos
An elaboration on an earlier post
Folk Chaos
The Folk Chaos movement strives to create a world of small societies with rapidly changing structures and traditions. To them, the world is over-engineered. While engineering is not the only source of evil, they see it as a problem because of how it amplifies evil intentions. Part of the problem, as they see it, is that people treat rules, institutions, and algorithms with far too much reverence. The goal of Folk Chaos is to elevate the spirit of life - or something like that - to the top position, and demote laws, numbers, abstractions, structures, and all that to the bottom.
The tactics of Folk Chaos range from writing manifestos, to running candidates, to engaging in demonstrations, and sometimes launching insurrections. Demonstrations often involve smashing machines and ripping up paper and professional clothing, as well as collaborative painting, sculpting, and music. Some Folk Chaos groups have ambitious short-term goals, seeking an immediate overthrow of all world governments in order to make room for Chaos to thrive. Other groups prefer to start small, by focusing on creating communes of a few dozen devoted Folk Chaoticists, leading by example.
Folk Chaoticists are not anarchists, because they do not oppose hierarchy. Many of their villages are quite dictatorial. Instead of aiming to dismantle power structures, they push for power to be wielded in emotive and personal ways, unfiltered by laws or institutions. While there is plenty of mutual hostility between Folk Chaos and left-wing movements, Folk Chaoticists tend to endorse candidates and parties on the left or center-left more often than they endorse those on the right, because they see the left as easier to coexist with.
Folk Chaos is in many ways a primitivist movement that draws heavy inspiration from pre-agriculture human societies, and mythologized versions of them. They are quite insistent that they do not seek to recreate any earlier time period simply as it was. Instead, they argue that the new society they seek to form should learn from various stages of agricultural and industrial change, and build something more sustainable and creative than any of them, including the pre-agricultural era.
One major rift within Folk Chaos is their views on warfare. Some go so far as to claim that authentic Chaos means a constant state of war between villages. Others denounce the veneration of war, but still leave room for wars between Chaoticists as occasionally necessary means of conflict resolution. Some claim to wage war only against the forces of civilization, to prepare the way for a universal peace once tbe world fully converts to Folk Chaos.
As good:
The empires have fallen, and the people are free! All over the world, people got tired of being ruled by entrenched elites and their bureaucracies, and they rose up, in an unorganized, non-violent manner, to reinvent society. The world is made up of millions of democratic villages who coexist peacefully and trade artwork with each other. Villages don't have much in the way of written laws, but they don't need them, because everyone knows each other well and respects each other's meeds, preferences, and quirks. Animals and plants once on the verge of extinction are now making a comeback, since the Folk Chaoticists have dismantled the highways and factory-farms that once laid waste to their habitats. There is much less pollution because people don't have to commute far, and they grow more things locally. There are billions of new styles of art and literature blossoming around the world. The wealth of the world has been redistributed far more equitably, so that people do not go hungry or die of neglect.
As bad:
The Folk Chaoticists abolished civilization only to find that Chaos can come with its own sort of brutality. Most villages are run as miniature fascist dictatorships, where leaders engage in whimsical, "creative" violence almost every day. Anyone who tries to argue for a change of policy, based on real evidence, is ridiculed as a nerdy wannabe-engineer who is out of touch with the human spirit. While at least there is no more mega-prison-industrial-complex, being the slave of the local strongman is not a pleasant experience either.
Folk Chaos
The Folk Chaos movement strives to create a world of small societies with rapidly changing structures and traditions. To them, the world is over-engineered. While engineering is not the only source of evil, they see it as a problem because of how it amplifies evil intentions. Part of the problem, as they see it, is that people treat rules, institutions, and algorithms with far too much reverence. The goal of Folk Chaos is to elevate the spirit of life - or something like that - to the top position, and demote laws, numbers, abstractions, structures, and all that to the bottom.
The tactics of Folk Chaos range from writing manifestos, to running candidates, to engaging in demonstrations, and sometimes launching insurrections. Demonstrations often involve smashing machines and ripping up paper and professional clothing, as well as collaborative painting, sculpting, and music. Some Folk Chaos groups have ambitious short-term goals, seeking an immediate overthrow of all world governments in order to make room for Chaos to thrive. Other groups prefer to start small, by focusing on creating communes of a few dozen devoted Folk Chaoticists, leading by example.
Folk Chaoticists are not anarchists, because they do not oppose hierarchy. Many of their villages are quite dictatorial. Instead of aiming to dismantle power structures, they push for power to be wielded in emotive and personal ways, unfiltered by laws or institutions. While there is plenty of mutual hostility between Folk Chaos and left-wing movements, Folk Chaoticists tend to endorse candidates and parties on the left or center-left more often than they endorse those on the right, because they see the left as easier to coexist with.
Folk Chaos is in many ways a primitivist movement that draws heavy inspiration from pre-agriculture human societies, and mythologized versions of them. They are quite insistent that they do not seek to recreate any earlier time period simply as it was. Instead, they argue that the new society they seek to form should learn from various stages of agricultural and industrial change, and build something more sustainable and creative than any of them, including the pre-agricultural era.
One major rift within Folk Chaos is their views on warfare. Some go so far as to claim that authentic Chaos means a constant state of war between villages. Others denounce the veneration of war, but still leave room for wars between Chaoticists as occasionally necessary means of conflict resolution. Some claim to wage war only against the forces of civilization, to prepare the way for a universal peace once tbe world fully converts to Folk Chaos.
As good:
The empires have fallen, and the people are free! All over the world, people got tired of being ruled by entrenched elites and their bureaucracies, and they rose up, in an unorganized, non-violent manner, to reinvent society. The world is made up of millions of democratic villages who coexist peacefully and trade artwork with each other. Villages don't have much in the way of written laws, but they don't need them, because everyone knows each other well and respects each other's meeds, preferences, and quirks. Animals and plants once on the verge of extinction are now making a comeback, since the Folk Chaoticists have dismantled the highways and factory-farms that once laid waste to their habitats. There is much less pollution because people don't have to commute far, and they grow more things locally. There are billions of new styles of art and literature blossoming around the world. The wealth of the world has been redistributed far more equitably, so that people do not go hungry or die of neglect.
As bad:
The Folk Chaoticists abolished civilization only to find that Chaos can come with its own sort of brutality. Most villages are run as miniature fascist dictatorships, where leaders engage in whimsical, "creative" violence almost every day. Anyone who tries to argue for a change of policy, based on real evidence, is ridiculed as a nerdy wannabe-engineer who is out of touch with the human spirit. While at least there is no more mega-prison-industrial-complex, being the slave of the local strongman is not a pleasant experience either.
DocBen
Banned
Now that I think of it, the state of True Russia is a kind of Folky-ism, deliberately imposed by the state. So the state only exists to protect the borders both physical and informational, keep the infrastructure up and running, control the cities to keep them from degenerating, and make sure that the people stay in line of the folksy ideal. It's similar to North Korea, but extremely traditional, if a bit superficially so. It's an ultranationalist state, which is too busy making sure that the cultural and ideological purity of the main nationality is kept in check, to worry about the other nationalities. It's a kind of extreme reactionary state against the Russia of previous regimes, as well as against the rest of the world. So it's main goal is wiping out communism, capitalism, cosmopolitanism, liberalism, transhumanism, or any other foreign isms out of the Russian population.
The time frame of the True Russian state is somewhere from the mid 21st century onwards. In this timeline, the rest of the world eventually became a Draka esque nightmarish cyberpunk dystopia, ruled by Google/Bill Gates/WEF types, total digital surveillance states, with social/carbon credit scores, where people have to get cybernetic implants in order to even participate in society. So the True Russians are against pretty much the rest of the world, as a neo medieval Hermit Empire, with loads of nuclear weapons and EMP weapons. They aren't trying to take over the world, so maybe TNO Hyperborea isn't an exact analogy, but they are just trying to survive and preserve their civilization. They do a fair amount of surveillance themselves, but this surveillance is strictly non-digital, with police brandishing halberds coming to your door to check up on you every so often, and that's only in the cities.
Rural areas are much freer, simply because the paranoid xenophobic government doesn't have all the time in the world, and the rural residents are deemed "traditional enough" by default, without the need to check up on them for the possible presence of "cosmopolitan transhumanist mentality" or lack thereof. They don't have the internet there anyways. It's a good place, if you want to live the government approved medieval like conservative homesteader lifestyle. This is why American preppers and Amish are regarded by the True Russian government as model immigrants. But someone who is caught playing Dungeons & Dragons on their virtual reality headset may be placed into a real dungeon for an indefinite amount of time, without any semblance of a trial.
The ideology and rhetoric of the True Russian state is a mixture of Eurasianism, ultra nationalism and traditionalism, organic ruralism, anti-globalism, and anti-technocracy. The power of the government is held mostly by paranoia of the outside world, of the globalists, transhumanists, cyborgs, 9G antennas, and what not. The entire Russian border is surrounded by walls, barbed wire fences, and other fortifications, which is actually a pretty impressive feat. Since nobody from within Russia has even gone outside of the border, they tend to believe what the government says, that it's literally the Borg from Star Trek out there, which while an exaggeration, is not entirely wrong. The entire country has a fortress-at-siege state mentality.
Ethnic and cultural diversity is allowed, as long as it's traditional and close enough to True Russian ideals. Fortunately, this includes the vast majority of the ethnic groups already living in Russia. Traditional religions other than the state endorsed Slavic Neo-Pagan faith, such as Orthodoxy Christianity, Amish Christianity, Buddhism, Caucasian Islam, Zoroastrianism, and other ones are tolerated as well, as long as they enforce traditional mentalities. Well religion is actually banned in the rest of the world, in favor of atheism/technocracy, so such tolerance isn't a particularly huge feat.
The government uses religion a lot in it's propaganda, claiming that the rest of the world is under the rule of the antichrist, that artificial intelligence is actually a demonic alien technology, and so on. They say that if True Russia will be able to maintain it's purity for long enough, then God will punish the rest of the world. In reality, if True Russia would be able to hold on for another half century or so, then the crazy experiments of the technocratic elites will most likely cause the global system to implode from it's own weight and egregiously inefficient mismanagement. Then the True Russians will attempt to cleanse the world of plastic, electronic gadgets, and the "non-human anymore cyborgs".
Believe it or not, this ideology is based on other ideologies and social movements already existing in OTL Russia.
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Lohanism aka Executive Body Swaps: Inspired by the 2003 movie Freak Friday, executive body swap supporters argue that most international conflict could be resolved if leaders had a chance to walk into each others' shoes. This is done by having the executive assume the powers and responsibilities of a foreign head of state or government.
Just posted the media update to Part IV of King in Yellow (A Bolt From the Blue: A Vengeance Weapon TLIAW) and Esoteric Fascism finally has control of a national government
They finally made it 🥲Just posted the media update to Part IV of King in Yellow (A Bolt From the Blue: A Vengeance Weapon TLIAW) and Esoteric Fascism finally has control of a national government
Rhodesia's a hell of a country (though they call it Vitalism and split hairs about the differences)
DocBen
Banned
The absolute genius of TNO is that is depicts the wide spectrum of weird Russian ideologies.
Although my made up scenario is a unique one. It's curious that just 5 years ago such a scenario would have been "ASB level craziness" and now it's "scarily plausible".
If anyone wants, feel free to develop it further. I wanted to create a worlda map of it, but I have no time.