DBWI: Reverse Cold War--Capitalist America Vs. Communist Russia?

manav95

Banned
In my opinion, the US would have had to avoid the long period of oligarchic domination by rich industrial tycoons. The Gilded Age they perpetuated led to a massive rise in inequality and hardship for industrial workers, who had crap job security and wages. President McKinley narrowly dodged a bullet in 1901, which allowed for their control to continue. Reformers like Theodore Roosevelt, William Jennings Bryan, and Woodrow Wilson remained shut out of power and the US became a one party state dominated by conservative Republicans. The Democrats became a fringe party confined to the South, with the West becoming dominated by the Progressives and the Midwest becoming a battleground. The 1912 election ended in a Progressive popular vote victory but the Republican candidate Nelson Aldrich won with the support of Southern Democrats leery of civil rights support in the Progressive Party. The US joined Japan, Britain and the Commonwealth in 1913 for the Great War, facing the Russians, Austrians, Germans, and later the Ottomans. The war went in favor of the Entente until 1916, when labor strikes in America and Britain, the entry of Italy and France into the Central Powers, and Franco-German tanks led to the tide turning against the Entente worldwide. The US quit the war in April 1917 after rigged elections against Eugene Debs, the Progressive candidate, led to a spontaneous uprising. The American uprising spread to Britain and Canada, causing the empire to fragment and collapse in the 1940s. To prevent this, the Great War would have to see the Entente win or the Americans to reform earlier without resorting to revolutionary socialism.
 
President McKinley narrowly dodged a bullet in 1901, which allowed for their control to continue.

Hasn't that narrative been long disporven, that it was only McKinley's survival that allowed the corporatists and ultra-capitalists to remain in power? What makes you so sure that nobody would, for example, have rigged an election instead?
 

manav95

Banned
Hasn't that narrative been long disporven, that it was only McKinley's survival that allowed the corporatists and ultra-capitalists to remain in power? What makes you so sure that nobody would, for example, have rigged an election instead?

Well bc then Theodore Roosevelt would have become President had McKinley died. He had a reputation as a strong progressive and energetic man. His 1908 campaign under the newly formed Progressive Party demonstrated that. He even was a threat to the socialist revolutionaries who he felt were too radical and uncompromising. It's a miracle he survived the attempts on his life by the Galleanists.
 
Reformers like Theodore Roosevelt, William Jennings Bryan, and Woodrow Wilson remained shut out of power and the US became a one party state dominated by conservative Republicans.

Wilson? Wasn't he far too racist and proposed some extremely harsh plan for the Middle East once? Which would have amounted to genocide of Turks or something like that? Why do you call him a "Reformer"?
 
Does the POD involve Russia somehow losing the Great War? There was popular discontent before the war, particularly in 1905, but of course either having Russia lose or avoiding the war altogether produces massive butterflies. And I suppose you could have this produce some effects on the international financial system so that the American federal reserve scheme actually works.

One thing that occurred to me is that if you do the communist revolution in Russia, then Trotsky becomes a leading figure in Russia (he was born there, after all) and never makes his way to the United States.
 
I think we'd need an earlier PoD.

The Civil War was what tilted the US towards Socialism. Following the secession of the Commonwealth of New England via Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and Michigan breaking away, the Democratic Party locked firm control over the union. Slavery and proliferation of the sharecropping system to poor whites made for a large population that was up and ready for revolution down the line.

Tsar Alexander III not aggressively pursuing liberal reform within Russia would also be necessary. Have Russia be the reactionary aristocratic state that's primed for revolution.
 
Does the POD involve Russia somehow losing the Great War? There was popular discontent before the war, particularly in 1905, but of course either having Russia lose or avoiding the war altogether produces massive butterflies.
It definitely does, since we may have seen the Austro-Hungarian Empire survive, instead of fragmenting into Hungary, Serbia-Bosnia and Austria after being carved like a turkey by Italy, Romania and Russia herself. Also, Poland may not even exist, since that would mean Germany Is never defeated and forced to lose that much territory.

I think we'd need an earlier PoD.

The Civil War was what tilted the US towards Socialism. Following the secession of the Commonwealth of New England via Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and Michigan breaking away, the Democratic Party locked firm control over the union. Slavery and proliferation of the sharecropping system to poor whites made for a large population that was up and ready for revolution down the line.
The problem is that "extending sharecropping to poor whites" was never quite percieved by the common man like the policy it was because it targeted mostly alleged criminals. It did cause the convicted population to be extremely favourable to the revolution, but it was merely one among many other grievances the people had against the then-current status quo.

Then again, with how complex the situation was, any guess on "the spark" Is as good as any.
 
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