I am not sure that there will be much of a country if the regime falls a part. They kinda feel like a regime that would never give up or surrender and would probably just mass release bio weapons just to spite everyone.
Separated at Birth: America and Drakia
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I am not sure that there will be much of a country if the regime falls a part. They kinda feel like a regime that would never give up or surrender and would probably just mass release bio weapons just to spite everyone.
Ephraim Ben Raphael
Banned
I have to wake up in less than six hours, but I have finished the first draft of the next interlude. I am immensely proud of it, and it is possibly the greatest part of this TL that I have written to date.
It also is definitely not a giant “take that” aimed at certain contemporary and historical figures.
Prepare meet Elvira Naldorssen and the book that catapulted her to fame.
It also is definitely not a giant “take that” aimed at certain contemporary and historical figures.
Prepare meet Elvira Naldorssen and the book that catapulted her to fame.
Yes please!I have to wake up in less than six hours, but I have finished the first draft of the next interlude. I am immensely proud of it, and it is possibly the greatest part of this TL that I have written to date.
It also is definitely not a giant “take that” aimed at certain contemporary and historical figures.
Prepare meet Elvira Naldorssen and the book that catapulted her to fame.
On a side note, is Britain going to end up as an American vassal?
Ephraim Ben Raphael
Banned
On second thought, sleep is for the weak, my lesson plans are all ready for tomorrow anyway, and I'm too buzzed to identify what is good writing and what isn't. Typo warning after a cursory read through- the iceman cometh!
Thank you to Thande, the people in that quest on SV, Jeff Sharlet, and the Academy.
Thank you to Thande, the people in that quest on SV, Jeff Sharlet, and the Academy.
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Interlude: The Final Society
Ephraim Ben Raphael
Banned
Interlude: The Final Society
Elvira Naldorssen was born to a lower middle-class Citizen family that had immigrated to Drakia from Kiel to escape the Schleswig War when she was a small child. Like many women of her generationin the Firstborn Dominion she received an education at a women’s college where she majored in a humanities subject, in her case; history. It was then that she was exposed to the writings of Plato- one of her greatest influences- as well as the Polish-German philosopher Andrzej Bialk (TTL’s version of Niezche), and Drakian thinkers including Samuel Bawden, Aaron Plantier, and Percival Foster. As someone who faced the stigma of being an immigrant (admittedly a mild stigma in Drakia where being a white Citizen was more important than any other factor) yet had spent her formative years growing up in Drakian culture, Naldorssen was loyal to her adopted homeland with the fanatical zeal of a convert. As international criticism mounted of the Bonded Labor System and Drakia’s euthanasia program she developed a sense of deep outrage at the foreigners that were attacking her homeland, its way of life, and by extension Naldorssen personally. She became politically involved- writing essays and opinion pieces in defense of her nation under siege.
Naldorssen’s well-crafted arguments in favor of Eugenics, Euthanasia, and Bonded Labor on philosophical, religious, and moral grounds brought her to the attention of the public and culminated in her first book I Grant You Dominion Over Them that saw some minor literary success and bought her entrance into the inner circle of the Drakian nationalist movement. I Grant You Dominion Over Them was an edited collection of previous published essays and articles by Naldorssen rebutting the claims of Adam Schonland in Black Lamb’s Blood in fiery (and occasionally ad hominem) fashion. Still it was a bit dry for most people, and like her second book When Adam Spake and Eve Span it failed to gain a mass following. She did gradually build up a reputation for herself, particularly among certain segments of the Honorary White Citizens who liked how her assertions of Drakian-supremacy included a view that certain types of Africans were superior to certain types of Europeans and that superiority had more to do with an ill-defined “strength” or “superiority” than skin color.
Not that Naldorssen didn’t think that Drakian Whites were superior to even members of the African Martial Races, but she argued that their superiority was because of things like the successful wars of conquest that had made them strong and culled their genetics rather than an incidental aesthetic like skin color. Extrapolating from that, she quite cheerfully considered the “pinnacle members of the African race” who made up the ranks of Honorary Whites superior to say, the Irish. Or the Poles. It’s also quite easy to acknowledge that eventually Eugenics will allow blacks to be equal to whites when you don’t expect that to ever happen during your lifetime.
It was on the advice of one of her early supporters that Elvira Naldorssen began working on an entirely different sort of book from her first two. Written during the World War and published shortly before the armistice, The Final Society was not a collection of essays or a long religious and political treatise, but a novel. Intended to appeal to a wider audience, it was an author tract with periodic filibusters set in the distant future and centered on a protagonist named Moses Cadden.
In the unspecified distant future of Naldorssen’s novel there are only two countries left; the “Atlas State” and the “Machine State”. Atlas is a strictly hierarchical society with a king “descended from all the great royal houses of Europe” ruled by a “Custodian Race” that while originally composed just of Europeans has over the centuries incorporated the “pinnacle members” of the Asian and African peoples who achieved equality through selective breeding (that incidentally whitened their skin till they became functionally identical to Europeans). Below them is an “Aspirant Race” of mostly African individuals still in the process of breeding their way to superiority, and below them is a “Servitor Race” who though quite superior physically and mentally to past generations (but still inferior to the modern Apirants and Custodians) are “suited by their nature” in a Platonic sense to be servants and followers. The Servitors are still noble in their own way we are told, for there is a nobility in work, and they happily occupy their natural place in society. Strict Eugenic policies have bred the Custodians to a pinnacle of strength and greatness, with members of that race not suited to lead “drifting downwards” to the Plebians while members of the Plebians who show promise rising via the Aspirants to become Custodians. “Anti-social” tendencies have been all but weeded out.
Naldorssen leads her reader to understand that Atlas is close to its final Eugenic victory- promising individuals have grown ever-rare among the Plebians and individuals unsuited for leadership even rarer among the Custodians. The Aspirant Race is shrinking, heralding the “closure of humanity”.
The hero Moses Cadden is presented as very nearly what Naldorssen considered to be an ideal man- strong, intelligent, unflinching at pain, protective to those below him, loyal to those above him, devoted to his race and prepared to bear the needs of the collective good upon himself. He is an unflinching patriot of the “Atlas State”, that by this point in history is one of the only two remaining nations on Earth. His sole flaw at the novel’s start is a streak of naiveite, which leads Cadden to agree to take part in a peace mission to the Machine State- Atlas’ ancient enemy.
The Machine State is a vast republic that has grown decadent and corrupt under a constantly changing political leadership divided by quarreling political parties, but remains dangerous. It rejects the Hobbesian social contract in favor of a an obsession with equality that results in it regarding its citizens as “interchangeable cogs within a social machine, equal in value regardless of their skills, abilities, or moral fiber”. It has historically won battles through superior numbers and basic but competent logistical skills, and its armies have famously been able to continue advancing even in the absence of surviving generals or high-ranking officers. Individual units will just keep grinding forward, following the same protocols they would have had their commanders still been alive. The Machine State has recently elected new leadership that is potentially sympathy to the philosophy of Atlas, and Cadden and the peace mission have hopes that they may be able to avert another war and guide the Machine down the same path that they have followed.
Cadden’s visit to the Machine State is used by Naldorssen to excoriate the social, political, and philosophical positions that she hated. The country across the sea with its “obsession with stolen and distorted Roman symbols” is shown to have fallen under the sway of “handicapping”- the use of “invented fake morals” by the weak to handicap the strong and keep them controlled by their lessers. Where Atlas devotes resources to highly celebrated scientific and artistic geniuses, the Machine State degrades such persons while insisting that anyone is equally capable of art and science (causing it to a possess neither). All of its children are educated in the same schools, resulting in substandard education for everyone. The insistence that all people are equally deserving of having children has led to a brown-skinned, mixed-race populace rife with physical disabilities and mental inferiorities. Because their ideology rejects the idea that people should obtain wealth or power on the basis of skill or hard work, the “human cogs” are randomly chosen on a periodic basis to receive awards of huge amounts of cash and fine houses (Atlas has abolished money of course) and most proceed to ruin themselves due to their inability to handle such a windfall. While all the people of Atlas are devout Christians and a reunified church is a state institution, the Machine’s belief in secularism has resulted in the extermination of religion. Most human cogs have no collective loyalty, frequently expressing sedition against their government and behaving in ways damaging to the national whole- despite this they continue to fulfill their roles in the social machine and reject the possibility of either changing things or defecting to Atlas.
The social machine is thus presented as simultaneously consisting of dangerously chaotic individualism, coupled with the suppression of individual accomplishment and ability by the unchecked masses.
Cadden encounters a man named James Cross (seriously Naldorssen)- one of the few superior individuals left in the Machine State, a man who, despite abilities that would qualify him to rule a nation, is forced to live as a simple carpenter (seriously Naldorssen) while secretly preaching a version of Christianity that would horrify most OTL Christians to a small underground congregation of twelve (seriously Naldorssen) naturally subordinate individuals on par with Atlas’ Servitors. Cross introduces the protagonist to the true rot within the social machine, causing him to realize that the Machine’s leadership is irrelevant. As all persons are equal and interchangeable cogs, its nominal leaders are powerless to actually do anything substantial to change the system, and in any case the President who seemed to have sympathy with Atlas’s ideology was only saying things to get elected (since democracy, according to Naldorssen, only rewards outwards displays of ideas and policy, unlike unelected leadership that doesn’t have to worry about its popularity and can actually focus on doing things). The peace mission was therefore doomed from the start. Cross further reveals to Cadden that because the Machine State is rapidly falling behind Atlas technologically due to its suppression of human inventive genius, it is preparing for a final and desperate assault on Atlas before it falls behind irrevocably, or more likely undergoes social collapse.
Who is driving these preparation in the absence of real leadership or a population that can’t resist constant sedition and selfish social parasitism is never explained.
Fortunately, the wise leaders of Atlas foresaw this, and in fact the peace mission has brought with it a lethal and fast-acting disease, deadly to those with inferior physicalities but harmless to the highly bred and physically superior. Cadden learns of this from one of the leaders of the mission- a beautiful woman named Elizabeth Nisbet (Naldorssen, please) with whom he has had a long-running romantic sublot- and is led to understand by Cross in one of his sermons that the only way to defeat the Machine State is to exterminate it utterly. The human cogs of the machine are too far gone from bad breeding and their poisonous ideology to even be considered people- most are now no more than “cattle that speak”. Now firmly determined to do “what must be done for the greatest good of humanity” Cadden agrees to participate in this extermination. In the end Cross guides the protagonist and Nisbet to a means to introduce the disease such that it will spread across the entire Machine State by way of a food distribution system that is the sole means for the human cogs to access their equal daily rations. The plague soon wipes out almost all of the inhabitants of the Machine State except for a few “hidden superior humans” like Cross and his flock, and even spreads to Atlas where the last remaining inferiors die painlessly. The unnamed and powerless President of the Machine State that Cadden and the peace mission originally came to meet with dies feebly, his incredulous last words; “You cannot break the Machine!”
With the Machine State gone Atlas is free to unify the world under the titular and biologically and morally perfect “Final Society” without war, strife, disease, or poverty. The remaining members of the Aspirant Race are either inducted into the Custodians or demoted to the Servitors, leaving humanity “closed” into what have become two separate species. Cadden and Nisbet are married by Cross and prepare to face their perfect future together.
The last chapter of the novel is a straight description of the utopian Final Society without the bother of putting Naldorssen’s words in the mouth of one of her characters.
The Final Society proved an immediate bestseller, turning Naldorssen from a minor public figure into Drakia’s bestselling author and an international celebrity (even if her book was generally panned, and even burned, in most places abroad). Its contents found fertile ground among Drakian Citizens disturbed by the results of the of the World War and American ascendance, and received rave reviews. Premier McRae described her as “one of the greatest men fighting for Drakia and its way of life”, which she considered an incredible compliment (to be referred to as a man). A new political movement began to coalesce around the Danish immigrant and her ideas, developing from the broader nationalist current in Drakia into something altogether different.
From the movement of her supporters would emerge a new ideology.
Naldorssen was not its sole founder any more than Marx was the sole founder of Communism IOTL, the ideology in question owed as much to her as to contemporary figures such as Paul Delacroix and Father Vern Schönberger, and in a real way had been evolving in Drakia since it was first founded as a colony. It drew from the old Loyalist ideology, from mediaeval French ideas of class structure and feudal responsibility, from the 19th century mission civilisatrice, from Drakia’s old Continental Imperative, and from modern Eugenics. Its followers claimed it was very old- a reflection of “the ancient biological hierarchy that had existed since creatures as primitive as the lobster first appeared”, but in their hearts they understood that it was a new thing, a new social order. Its concepts were not vestigial; what made it thrilling was that the new ideology made imperialism forceful again. It was not just a veneer for capitalism, nor simply a vehicle for power. It was a different way of wielding power. It shrugged off old moral inhibitions. It scoffed at liberal restraints and ignored traditional conservative reservations. It was Christian dada, surrealism for the colonial order. It was the Right of Conquest made fresh for the industrial age, vital and strong, muscular yet vulgar.
Its ultimate goal was the destruction of all that had come before it in favor of a Final Society, and from this goal it took its name.
Societism.
*thunder rolls*
It rolls a 19.
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So! Alt!Fascism makes its entrance. Societism sounds really familiar, like something Thande would have brought up in LTTW. Forgot about the finer points of that ideology, though.
Skallagrim
Banned
Man, I'm loving this. The bizarro anti-America gets its very own bizarro anti-Ayn Rand. Absurdly collectivist instead of absurdly anti-collectivist. Totally pro-totalitarian government instead of totally anti-government. Inspired by the legacy of Plato instead of the legacy of Aristotle. Co-opting religion instead of promoting atheism. Explicitly rooted in pre-modern social structures, instead of explicitly rejecting everything pre-modern.
And of course, because this is the open-air looney bin that is Drakia, it's a highly successful mass movement instead of a fringe phenomenon.
And of course, because this is the open-air looney bin that is Drakia, it's a highly successful mass movement instead of a fringe phenomenon.
Those references are gold
I feel like somewhere on the internet, a Turner Diaries fanboy hearing about this might make it into an uironic novel.
I feel like somewhere on the internet, a Turner Diaries fanboy hearing about this might make it into an uironic novel.
So I've been kicking around an idea for a symbol that could work for Societism. Given the Draka's interest in ancient Indian architecture in the original a vajra could be a useful symbol to represent both invulnerability and overwhelming force. A traditional vajra could work as a symbol of office (ironically like the original fasces) but for flags/posters/military emblems I think a simple diamond emblem where one side is a lightning bolt could neatly represent the concept. The idea that America uses an old school fasces and the draka distill their symbol into an abstract modernist emblem would be amusing.
One of the best AH essays I've read in ages. Thank you very much!
First of all what a wonderful cheery sort of completely, utterly, horrifying.
Second of all this was Actually Amazing to read as an introduction to the crazy and unique weirdness involved in Societism.
Third of all it was just good. Having examples of pop culture can be incredibly useful in figuring out how a TL works, and in this case, your rundown of The Final Society does that job admirably.
Second of all this was Actually Amazing to read as an introduction to the crazy and unique weirdness involved in Societism.
Third of all it was just good. Having examples of pop culture can be incredibly useful in figuring out how a TL works, and in this case, your rundown of The Final Society does that job admirably.
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Love how you lay out her biography here and use a Immigrant story of Love for their new home, which is often an American thing.
Do I even want to know what this was about...
Interesting... My predictions about their turn to the Racist against everyone not them turns out correct but with a twist.
This is of course disgusting evil bile...exactly the sort of thing to appeal to the Draka. Just noticed one thing though. It incorporates a element of Facism* in that it allows people to intergrate if you become exactly like us but only Racially instead of culturally.
Pretty standerd Draka herre..I do wonder now how is education handled in Drakia? Is it segragted even between Citizen Groups or is it just a Societist fantasy?
The main thing which strikes me of interest is the Reunified Church, of course it'll be a Racist shit show but I do wonder what sort of traditions it incorporates...mainly interested because this is the Ideology Draka is going to adopt whole sale, so it's likely to be state enforced
Jesus and the apostles are probably laughing their asses off while reading this... I'm guessing his Religous teachings are essentially Christian Identity nonsense.
Um...Hello Lottery?
Seriously though, I find it funny how Atlas just has to abolish money like is their a single utopia book where Money is still a thing?
Yay endorsing Diplomatic back stabbing and Genocide what a fun team.
So at heart she's just a really Racist Fanfic author
I'd Personnally love to see how a tour across the US would go...
As a Reader of Jordan Peterson, I got that refrence
While this is horrifying for everyone living in Africa, it actually has some possiblity for good things in that this Ideology can only be appealing to Former Dominos and no one would ally with them. This gives a good boost for the US in the Cold and Hot war to comeSocietism.
*thunder rolls*
It rolls a 19.
To be honest, The Anglo Draka war should not be a dice roll, it's really no contest at all. Britian is a nation which just had the crap kicked out of it and the resource differential between them and the Draka are so large it's almost impossible to count. Their is simply no way the Draka can lose this war.
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