Looking For Collaborators for 2nd American Civil War TL idea...

We could just use this as a thread to flesh out things more and then privately write the actual TL amongst ourselves. Would we do a scrapbook sort of thing where including the timeline itself we make a bunch of maps, show a lot of pictures and write some stories or are we going pure text and some pictures?
 
will def give a detailed post tomorrow.

But that sounds about right. And yes I like the idea of a scrapbook. Maps would generate a nice touch. But I don't have any photo or map editing software. If anyone could handle that?
 
Is MSPaint okay for you? Because I can do some of that on my free time if you only need political or electoral maps.
 
GIMP is a great free image editing program, and basically has about 95 percent of Photoshop's capabilities.

It's not bad, but the way it's ordered seems a bit clunky to me. Still, it looks useful for cropping photos... If I can get the layers right.

EDIT: I'm not liking it after trying as hard as possible to crop a single friggin head. It also distorts it to all get-out. I'll also mention that I can't easily access layers like Photoshop is. I was at least able to do things in the trial version. Plus the burn/dodge tool seems to not work as well as it should.

I'd prefer using MSPaint for the maps. I have a good amount of them from the late 19th century - early 20th century.
 
Last edited:
I'd love to help somehow I'm not too good of a writer but I could help find images and reasurch. Bounce some ideas around and such.
 
Well that's cool Magi do whatever you prefer. Ok so to exploring how to create this alternate world. I'm finally on a computer will be for a while writing a script for film school. But discussion... well as has been stated I see the idea of decreased anti-corporate laws definately strengthening the corporatist side. But on to the fascist side you guys don't seem to think it's plausible or something. But I see it coming around as a very nationalistic conservative right wing with militarist support. I'm quite sure that a stronger corporatist movement would need a militarist support. There could be a split between corporatists and more nationalist junta to create this. All this would allow for a stronger left but how to unite them. As I stated maybe it's possible that Albert Parsons survives and manages to continue his career leading to more united left. Any comments. I will be on for a while.
 
In terms of fascists I had an idea of a collection of Southern politicians when the whole country goes into a civil war they secede to stay out of the bloodbath up north. Some radical socialist blacks wish to join up with their northern brethren and perform some terrorist attacks and support riots. The actually actions taken by this group are small but it sends the white leadership into a panic. The white southerns create more of an apartheid state than the OTL south with some radical whites having proto-fascist ideologues.
 
Last edited:

Rogov

Banned
This is tricky, because the very interesting Christian Front movement has - by being corporatist nationalists in outlook - ties to the radical right and the left opposition in this time. Gerald L.K. Smith and Father Coughlin, big representatives of Christian Nationalism of the time, had ties to the left-associated Spread Our Wealth society of Huey Long. Spread Our Wealth, in turn, shared stages and media attention with Norman Thomas' Socialists and with activist former general Smedley Butler.

And the Christian Front are the most insidious cryptofascists of the time because they were using popular, populist causes to push antisemitism.

Anyway, a lot of the same right-left mixing of Spread our Wealth and the Progressive Party of the time would again occur in America First, the anti-war group which had both fascist sympathizers and left wing peaceniks.

Besides Christian Frontists, who were anti-semitic but not anti-Catholic, there were genuinely fascist and nazi groups like the German American Bund and the Silver Legion that were both, and the KKK (which existed all over, not just in the South) which were also both.

On the neither anti-semitic nor anti-catholic area you have the American Liberty League, implicated in the Business Plot against FDR, who had been channeling money into the American Legion to turn it into a "glorified strike-breaking outfit" as Butler put it; with the idea being that pro-corporate Democrat Al Smith (a Catholic conservative rejected by KKK-affiliated Southern conservative Dems back during his presidential run) would make a great new leader to preserve Wall Street's power and undo FDR's changes.

As for the Left, you have the Progressives and Farmer-Labor in the Midwest (and Progressives in California); Spread Our Wealth has a lot of supporters nation-wide; the radical Left is thriving if still small as well. Besides the class-collaborationist AFL you have left-wing radicalism in the unions being organized by the Communists' Trade Union Unity organization, the Trotskyists are embedded in the Congress of Industiral Organizations, and the Socialists have been working with unions and other groups for generations.

A big question about the Left would be whether Lovestone, the American exceptionalist, is running the Communists when the war breaks out or William Z. Foster the Stalinist.
 
Last edited:
Well I don't want to call them communists as I've stated I would prefer to see it as a cohesive union of the left to fight the right-wing. But I was particularly seeing the natinalist side as being a very KKKish inspired legion is that possible? I would think so with the increased pressure of the left. That's really what I'm looking for. How is it that we can get the scenario to create the increased pressure to fractionalize the US? Other than a more devastating WWI and depression?
 

Rogov

Banned
Well in Spain it was the formation of a Popular Front of everything from liberals to communists that forced the divisive rightist factions together - clericalists, conservatives, landholders, Alphonsines, Carlists, falangists.

In a non-parliamentary system like the U.S. that kind of electoral coalition is unlikely, though you could have a scenario where the two political parties become very large Right and Left tents - though that would be hard as both are still possessing large liberal and conservative wings simultaneously at this time in history.

But yeah, your two goals of a united left and forcing various competing types of far rightism together would, if history is our teacher, compliment each other. A POD that unites one will butterfly the other side into a similarly united state.

Have something unite Klansmen with corporate interests, or liberals with communists, and the other side will fall into place.
 
California would certainly be a violent place for much of the fighting. Consider that in OTL, some of the most violent labor strikes took place in San Francisco and the Port Chicago Mutiny took place, just outside of Alameda, Calfornia.

Southern California would be a great base of operations for crypto fascism. In OTL, several Neo-Nazi groups formed in Orange County, with branches of the German-American Bund forming in the San Fernando Valley. You had certain actors like Errol Flynn, and studio heads like Walt Disney, considered "friendly" with Nazi causes...
 
Top