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hey, all. one thing that i've thought of recently as part of my ASB ATL for a country that i have not yet devised much AH content for (Italy) ultimately stems from the idea of the Pazzi Conspiracy partly succeeds, to the point that Leorenzo de Medici is also successfully killed during the conspiracy along with his brother but the Pazzi fail to bring Florence under their control. this causes the Bonfire of the Vanities to happen earlier than IOTL (in 1483 rather than 1497) and gives rise to a kind of early religious socialism called "faloism" (from the Italian for "bonfire") that has more to do with destroying excesses and extravagances ("occasions of sin") which persists for a long while after.

what i'm really getting to is that, eventually, there's an uprising most similar to the Bolshevik Revolution in which more radical faloists (e.g., socialists/communists) take over the country. however, the driving force behind this and its leader are faloists in name only: Mussolini takes power, still instating a fascist government (though it's still called faloism/socialism/communism in much the same way that nazism is technically called socialism when it actually opposes that, or in the same way that Stalin was really more of a capitalist than a communist, if you will) (and in case you're wondering, this is because Stalin lived in great comfort and excess during his reign and he was even called the Red Tsar by his detractors; this isn't even touching on his purges and other authoritarian policies)

anyway, i just wanted to get some input as to what everyone thinks about the plausibility of this. i know, i know, with a POD in the Renaissance, Mussolini shouldn't even exist, so if it makes things easier for you to understand, think of it as an expy of Mussolini instead of the historical Il Duce. the concept is the same: Renaissance "socialism" comes up and becomes the foundation of a "communist" Italian state most similar in its structure to OTL's Soviet Union, though without as much international sway because of its smaller size
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