Look to the West Volume VII: The Eye Against the Prism

Do we know that Yapon will end up Societist? Can't it be Jacobin?

It was inferred. There was an update that indicates that Corea had a threat to itself to the East.

There are only two countries that could reasonably be described as having land immediately east of Corea - Russia and Japan. Russia is fanatically diversitarian, so that leaves Japan.

Plus, there was a post that indicated that Societists would become a dominant faction, following the eradication of other anti-Russian/anti-foreigner factions.
 
So keeping up with the basis of the theory, does Diversitarianism just sort of spring up in various places and get welded together into a coherent ideology? I can't really picture it having a founder.
 

Thande

Donor
Again, thanks for the comments everyone.

Is the Labyrinth of Mystery like the Crystal Maze? Or more like Knightmare?
Hah, I was literally envisaging a cross between those two. (Well more Virtually Impossible, its spiritual successor, than Knightmare specifically).

I'm really excited with this update. I want to know how agressive is the revolutionary instance of the Societists that the rest of the world has to literally create a new ideology from zero. This is another interesting thing about the Cold War on this timeline: unlike OTL, where the ideological basis capitalism (free market, liberal "democracy") where already present even before communism, Diversitarianism seems to be an ideology that was created with the intent of fighting Societism. Unlike the Russian Civil War, where the Western Powers did everything they could to destroy the Soviet Union because they already knew about the "dangers" of socialism, people on this timeline seems to have pretty mixed opinions on Societists. The fear of communism was mostly because it was a radical change that was seen as a menace for democracy, individual freedoms and free market economy. Societists are seen here as "those guys that have weird ideas we don't know much about". Nobody can recognize was is the actual danger of Societism, besides economic reasons, because nobody knew what the hell Societists where going to do. Is not like Lenin and the Bolsheviks that already had some ideas on how to organize Russian society based on Marxist ideals: the Societists have literally no idea of what they have to do to achieve Final Society. If Marx was kind of vague about that, Sanchez was even more vague about his supposed ideal society. I can't wait to see what kind of insane shit the Combine does to get noticed.
Actually I see Diversitarianism as being quite comparable to "capitalism" in OTL; OTL certainly had capitalist societies before socialism and communism, but my reading of the Cold War is that a certain kind of extreme ideological capitalism (think Reagan and Thatcher) only sprang up because of the sense of being an equal and opposite counter to communist theory. It's hard to picture people in the 19th century nodding along to the idea that you need to privatise the post office out of ideological belief, and so on. Diversitarianism in TTL is built on the same model of 'if they think this and they're evil, we must build our society on striving for the opposite extreme!'
 
Actually I see Diversitarianism as being quite comparable to "capitalism" in OTL; OTL certainly had capitalist societies before socialism and communism, but my reading of the Cold War is that a certain kind of extreme ideological capitalism (think Reagan and Thatcher) only sprang up because of the sense of being an equal and opposite counter to communist theory. It's hard to picture people in the 19th century nodding along to the idea that you need to privatise the post office out of ideological belief, and so on. Diversitarianism in TTL is built on the same model of 'if they think this and they're evil, we must build our society on striving for the opposite extreme!'
I wonder if Diversitarianism will have its Adam Smith, or its Friedrich Von Hayek, or his Milton Friedman. Pretty curious about the people behind the creation of Diversitarianism
 
I wonder if Diversitarianism will have its Adam Smith, or its Friedrich Von Hayek, or his Milton Friedman. Pretty curious about the people behind the creation of Diversitarianism

One of them?

To quote the great Ivan Chernenko, ‘Look under even the most heroic of acts and it is easy to find the snakes of national-racial blending. No matter how justified or based on pragmatism they may have been, it is best not to leave such acts in the historical record to provide a bad example for the future’.
 
Do we know that Yapon will end up Societist? Can't it be Jacobin?
One of the passages in the war stories makes mention of a black flag group
Beyond France Societism is identified with black and the section ends all but saying that every other group will fail in removing the Russians so it’s a very safe bet it goes for the threefold eye
 
I mean, Garderista philosophy is considered an essential part of the fall of the Combine if I remember right, so I’d assume that the Combine was Garderista the Last War of Supremacy finally destroyed it.
It seems very heavily implied that the Familista side won the ideological struggle in the Combine (and probably in other Societist states), leading to an apparently very sexist form of Societism to dominate (even if, in principle, Sanchez's Society was orginally gender-blind, though probably more in the Platonic "society has uses for people of all genders" that in modern terms of "people shouldn't be treated like shit because of their gender").
 
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xsampa

Banned
It seems very heavily implied that the Familista side won the ideological struggle in the Combine (and probably in other Societist states), leading to an apparently very sexist form of Societism to dominate (even if, in principle, Sanchez's Society was orginally gender-blind, though probably more in the Platonic "society has uses for people of all genders" that in modern terms of "people shouldn't be treated like shit because of their gender").
Didn't the last update talk about Garderista experiments?
 
Didn't the last update talk about Garderista experiments?
Yeah, I'd assume that in the early years the conflict was undecided and the individual (ok, maybe not the right word) Societist groups carried out local experiments. It may also be that final Familist success is brought about by general revulsion after an early Garderist phase that backfires horribly*, with anti-feminist backlash attached.
*For all the sympathy I may have for the abstract notions underpinning Garderism, forcibly ripping off newborns from their mothers' is neither commendable or recommended, to say the least. I would expect said mothers to resist that vehemently, with huge support by the fathers of the children involved and just about everyone else.
 
So Germany looks as if it might align with France. The caption for Scandinavia on the postwar map implies that Scandinavia may do the same. I wonder how Russia will react. There might be an outbreak of paranoia about a Protocol attack. It has been implied that Russian rule in its satellite orbit is very harsh, so much of its population may be hoping for this to happen.

I will also note that unlike in OTL, Russia's most indepencence-minded minorities have their own countries instead of being part of Russia proper. This may help Russia avoid ethnic dilemmas such as the ones Danubia and the Ottomans are facing.
 
Actually, it seems that the most recent LttW part raised and torpedoed this possibility.
The ones in Germany who pushed alignment with France the most are going to lose.
Note Germany's absence in the Neptune-III project.

This doesn't mean that the new German government won't have similar ideas. They are unlikely to think that the reduced Germany and Danubia can face Russia on their own.
 
I'm wondering if Germany turns out to be part of a neutral bloc, or at least a less-aggressively "must crush Societism" faction within Diversitarianism.
 
This doesn't mean that the new German government won't have similar ideas.

Alignment with France would be associated with the failed IEF. It would be unpopular.

They are unlikely to think that the reduced Germany and Danubia can face Russia on their own.

Unless Germany wants to reclaim Bohemia, there is no significant conflict of interest between Germany and Russia that would justify such thinking.
 
Alignment with France would be associated with the failed IEF. It would be unpopular.

Unless Germany wants to reclaim Bohemia, there is no significant conflict of interest between Germany and Russia that would justify such thinking.

Germany may feel threatened by Russian demands for arms limitations or for not associating with the Protocol. A German rearmament programme intended to give at least some chance of fending off Russia may be interpreted as the first step towards a war of revenge. And what Russia did in Bohemia in Silesia will have definitely caused a lot of fear and resentment.
 
Germany may feel threatened by Russian demands for arms limitations or for not associating with the Protocol. A German rearmament programme intended to give at least some chance of fending off Russia may be interpreted as the first step towards a war of revenge. And what Russia did in Bohemia in Silesia will have definitely caused a lot of fear and resentment.

Germany is going to be lead by the High Radicals who were described as anti-war. Arms limitations and neutrality is something they would support.
German rearmament in the not-distant future is likely going to be focused against Belgium whose attack showed that the idea of a demilitarized Rhein-Ruhr area was not good for German interests.
 
Germany is going to be lead by the High Radicals who were described as anti-war. Arms limitations and neutrality is something they would support.

If the High Radicals make Germany underarmed and isolated, Russia may make unfair economic or political demands. And if it happens they will have trouble staying in office for long.
 
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