If we are talking about "commemoration" via video game, I suppose the FBU will produce a few. Some will be in dead earnest by gamers--perhaps preceding the whole video game era with boxed board games a la Avalon Hill--hey that could be a good fanfiction thread discussion, the various games, pre-electronic and later, coming out in the era--there has been talk about the latter but no so much the former. Anyway your serious wargamer nerd who sees the world in hexagon grids and lives in the FBU could simply conceive the American Second Civil War as a technical challenge. To what degree is it a set piece combat of regular units, to what degree did revolutionary circumstances make it asymmetrical or even give it a twist right out of the war dimension completely? And--the important point here for your war nerd--how to translate that back into points to enable playability? Anyway the ideal "war nerd Avalon Hill game" will not so much strive as mindlessly be obtuse to political nuances; being cooked up by some FBU subject they will just assume a bunch of unflattering stuff about the nature and purpose of the revolutionaries and their actions, and swallow some whitewashing myths perpetuated by the exile regime in Cuba wholesale and uncritically, but would lack the intent of polemicizing it. They might even consider themselves more friendly to the UASR than usual and be very puzzled and hurt by the castigation they get in Yankee reviews. This might even inspire some Comintern Yanks to make their own versions, some of which are awful, some mediocre, some brilliant in some dimension or other. Maybe a community of gamers in America even arises that comes to understand that the political polemics embedded in the (I am going to go with British) game were not put there with hostile intent, and start handling it with humor and ironic rule revisions that either gently correct the more egregious biases or crank them up to eleven with hilarious results.
Meanwhile other gamers in the FBU might have consciously polemical intentions--mostly siding against the rebels, but I would imagine given my impressions of OTL British and French politics that at least a few left wing edge lords are going to be "more Catholic than the Pope" in defending the American rebels and denouncing their foes.
It could turn into a decades long flame war and might even be the definitive framework people of the ATL see pre-electronic war games in. All the boxed board games Avalon Hill and competitors (if any? Back in the day in the 70s and early 80s all the store displays and catalogs seemed to be all AH , all the time) could pretty much automatically come out in three or four versions of the same campaign--the Comintern-friendly version, the FBU weighted one with controversial and variable degrees of pro-Axis overtones in the case of the Great Crusade War era ones, and one or two purporting to neutralize the politics out and focus on making the game itself earnestly as true to life in its technical mechanics for "serious wargamers." But the very image of the "serious wargamer" is a spectrum--we have the Debs-DeLeonist (morphing into Leninist or Radical Republican forms for various campaigns with non-American focuses or First Civil War settings) firebrands on one side seeing every game as an opportunity to wage People's Liberation, glaring at the Colonel Blimps championing reaction at every turn (these would have sidekicks who assert they are liberal moderates championing just that side) and in between them a bunch of guys who either are trying to banish the politics from their minds completely by a painful effort or just genuinely don't get it and are all about the dice and the boards and the arcane rules.
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As for other modes of cultural recognition or even appreciation of the White side...I have argued in the past that the UASR post-Crusade War is going to turn into an artistic Valhalla; a substantial number of citizens might react somewhat against it with some sarcastic resentment (mocking the artiness will itself be a branch of artistic sensibility of course) but they'd never attempt to get the cultural authorities to actually repress it legally--some might attempt it but be laughed out of their soviets. Ballasted then by a certain acerbic culture of plain dumb rockhead unculturedness that prevails, sincerely (but never too sincerely; these people will all more or less know how to laugh at themselves) among oh, a third to 40 percent of the people, the majority go bananas with dozens of more or less cooperative and interactive, more or less rivals unto death, schools of artiness in everything--wall posters, dramatic presentations, comedies--it might often be too surreal to tell what genre some production is. Claymation popping up around the edges of serious reproductions of Shakespeare, that sort of thing. Just running wild and woolly in whatever direction the artists want to take it. The ones that catch a lot of public fancy, and by what means is utterly up in the air, get more resources to enable them to undertake more grandiose things, but a certain percentage of budget for high cost grand theater is always reserved for the less popular to give them a lottery chance at getting their message across.
In this context, I think quite a lot of humanizing the Whites will happen. The society will be secure enough in its foundations that it will forgive, if not lavish praise on, a presentation that doesn't bother to "balance" the portrayal by actively reminding the audience why the Reds are the good guys. If it doesn't indulge in portrayal of the Reds as having actually committed ahistorical atrocities (but does allow Whites to say how they perceived things) they won't cross lines into demanding censorship as obvious White propaganda. If in fact they do indulge in actual White propaganda, even disguised as "hey, we are just showing you what they thought" but is judged to actually intend to convey the White point of view as truer and superior, then I suppose they find resources tend to dry up, though never vanish completely (they can at least eat and have shelter, if not a lot of credit for film and equipment and so forth) and they get a lot of negative reviews denouncing them for their counterrevolutionary sympathies, and can expect the police to be keeping a close eye on them for decades to come. But very few UASR Yanks are going to want to do that and not a few accused of doing so are going to be able to defend their artistic license effectively in the court of public opinion. As I said, relative to Russians Americans have a bit of a Know Nothing streak in our attitude toward Culture, and I think in reaction to the tremendous riot of rich artiness all around them, that will get institutionalized as a distinct arty school, but by and large all Americans are going to be much more engaged in participating in and judging Culture, and much more educated and smart about it than we would be OTL--some of the most profound and judicious critics might be adherents more or less ironically to the American Artlessness school, until someone gives it a better name--Mencken's "Booboisie" probably is just a little too acerbic and inflammatory to cut it! They aren't really boobs any more, they are people who get a bit of a charge making fun of the gloriously insane riot of imagery.
In fact, I stepped away from the keyboard a moment and wondered if perhaps I was getting overheated myself. OTL, what sociologist C Wright Mills called "The Cultural Apparatus" has a huge role in maintaining the imbalances and repressive chaos of our social order--a more organically grass roots self-ordered society might find it has a bit less taste for high pressure entertainment 24/7 and seek a bit of peace and quiet in focusing on the real business of real life, lives individuals honestly can feel they are masters of themselves. So maybe the resources available to art for art's sake will not be so generous after all. But I do feel that artistic creativity will at any rate be freer and more pervasive at the grass roots level. Getting funded for movies and TV shows, or rather approved for allocation of limited resources--ultimately boiling down to, how much bandwidth of free attention are the American masses willing to give to these rival artistes--might be about as hard a grind as it is OTL, but any way the artists won't starve while striving for the lighting to strike them, and they have more open channels to try and work their way into being rewarded with public attention. Does that seem a bit less crazy then?
Meanwhile regarding portrayals of the Whites...I think the upshot of freedom for art will be a discerning public sense of judicious criticism, and the majority of artists and scholars are going to have a deep and sincere allegiance to postrevolutionary society, a gratitude for what they have gained. So they are going to indulge sincere seeking after truth, and give quite a lot of latitude toward humanization of their still bitter foes. The people will have confidence they are the right side of history, and so let the side of reaction speak their piece as they desire, and give themselves all the rope they want to spin to hang themselves with. Many a portrayal, especially later in the 50s and on into the 60s and 70s, will show how these Whites did believe themselves to be good people, naturally, but were objectively obstacles on the road of human progress and morally culpable, for being obstacles was no accident, but rather an allegiance--variously deluded, desperate, cynical, or sociopathic--to an inherently inhumane social compact that was stamped with corruption and betrayal of basic humanity all through it, so no one is simply innocent of the knowledge that they do cruel and selfish things, only somewhere on the spectrum of confused, scared, or vicious in sticking with it. A major theme in portrayal of Whites will be the moment of choice, the opportunity opening before them to join with the comrades and turn to fight for humanity instead of against it, and their various reasons for rejecting the opportunity and refusing to step through the door and thus consigning themselves to the losing side of history. In some portrayals this choice will open before some of them again and again; in others the point is to tell a tragic story of one avoidable mistake damning and blotting their lives irrevocably. In the course of all this, Americans will come to believe that they do understand the story of their history from both sides, honestly and fairly.
And there would either be no monuments to the deluded losers of history at all, or if any, monuments to their tragic and culpable error. It might be well to acknowledge their presence and number, but consensus would deny anything essential was lost in their defeat--and that the modern ability to look them in the eye and see them for the human beings they were is the reclaiming of what good they were and what irrevocable part of the spirit of the American (and world) peoples they had. American culture in the UASR will be able to claim everything good the American spirit ever stood for, while diagnosing and stepping away from the bad.
Meanwhile other gamers in the FBU might have consciously polemical intentions--mostly siding against the rebels, but I would imagine given my impressions of OTL British and French politics that at least a few left wing edge lords are going to be "more Catholic than the Pope" in defending the American rebels and denouncing their foes.
It could turn into a decades long flame war and might even be the definitive framework people of the ATL see pre-electronic war games in. All the boxed board games Avalon Hill and competitors (if any? Back in the day in the 70s and early 80s all the store displays and catalogs seemed to be all AH , all the time) could pretty much automatically come out in three or four versions of the same campaign--the Comintern-friendly version, the FBU weighted one with controversial and variable degrees of pro-Axis overtones in the case of the Great Crusade War era ones, and one or two purporting to neutralize the politics out and focus on making the game itself earnestly as true to life in its technical mechanics for "serious wargamers." But the very image of the "serious wargamer" is a spectrum--we have the Debs-DeLeonist (morphing into Leninist or Radical Republican forms for various campaigns with non-American focuses or First Civil War settings) firebrands on one side seeing every game as an opportunity to wage People's Liberation, glaring at the Colonel Blimps championing reaction at every turn (these would have sidekicks who assert they are liberal moderates championing just that side) and in between them a bunch of guys who either are trying to banish the politics from their minds completely by a painful effort or just genuinely don't get it and are all about the dice and the boards and the arcane rules.
-----
As for other modes of cultural recognition or even appreciation of the White side...I have argued in the past that the UASR post-Crusade War is going to turn into an artistic Valhalla; a substantial number of citizens might react somewhat against it with some sarcastic resentment (mocking the artiness will itself be a branch of artistic sensibility of course) but they'd never attempt to get the cultural authorities to actually repress it legally--some might attempt it but be laughed out of their soviets. Ballasted then by a certain acerbic culture of plain dumb rockhead unculturedness that prevails, sincerely (but never too sincerely; these people will all more or less know how to laugh at themselves) among oh, a third to 40 percent of the people, the majority go bananas with dozens of more or less cooperative and interactive, more or less rivals unto death, schools of artiness in everything--wall posters, dramatic presentations, comedies--it might often be too surreal to tell what genre some production is. Claymation popping up around the edges of serious reproductions of Shakespeare, that sort of thing. Just running wild and woolly in whatever direction the artists want to take it. The ones that catch a lot of public fancy, and by what means is utterly up in the air, get more resources to enable them to undertake more grandiose things, but a certain percentage of budget for high cost grand theater is always reserved for the less popular to give them a lottery chance at getting their message across.
In this context, I think quite a lot of humanizing the Whites will happen. The society will be secure enough in its foundations that it will forgive, if not lavish praise on, a presentation that doesn't bother to "balance" the portrayal by actively reminding the audience why the Reds are the good guys. If it doesn't indulge in portrayal of the Reds as having actually committed ahistorical atrocities (but does allow Whites to say how they perceived things) they won't cross lines into demanding censorship as obvious White propaganda. If in fact they do indulge in actual White propaganda, even disguised as "hey, we are just showing you what they thought" but is judged to actually intend to convey the White point of view as truer and superior, then I suppose they find resources tend to dry up, though never vanish completely (they can at least eat and have shelter, if not a lot of credit for film and equipment and so forth) and they get a lot of negative reviews denouncing them for their counterrevolutionary sympathies, and can expect the police to be keeping a close eye on them for decades to come. But very few UASR Yanks are going to want to do that and not a few accused of doing so are going to be able to defend their artistic license effectively in the court of public opinion. As I said, relative to Russians Americans have a bit of a Know Nothing streak in our attitude toward Culture, and I think in reaction to the tremendous riot of rich artiness all around them, that will get institutionalized as a distinct arty school, but by and large all Americans are going to be much more engaged in participating in and judging Culture, and much more educated and smart about it than we would be OTL--some of the most profound and judicious critics might be adherents more or less ironically to the American Artlessness school, until someone gives it a better name--Mencken's "Booboisie" probably is just a little too acerbic and inflammatory to cut it! They aren't really boobs any more, they are people who get a bit of a charge making fun of the gloriously insane riot of imagery.
In fact, I stepped away from the keyboard a moment and wondered if perhaps I was getting overheated myself. OTL, what sociologist C Wright Mills called "The Cultural Apparatus" has a huge role in maintaining the imbalances and repressive chaos of our social order--a more organically grass roots self-ordered society might find it has a bit less taste for high pressure entertainment 24/7 and seek a bit of peace and quiet in focusing on the real business of real life, lives individuals honestly can feel they are masters of themselves. So maybe the resources available to art for art's sake will not be so generous after all. But I do feel that artistic creativity will at any rate be freer and more pervasive at the grass roots level. Getting funded for movies and TV shows, or rather approved for allocation of limited resources--ultimately boiling down to, how much bandwidth of free attention are the American masses willing to give to these rival artistes--might be about as hard a grind as it is OTL, but any way the artists won't starve while striving for the lighting to strike them, and they have more open channels to try and work their way into being rewarded with public attention. Does that seem a bit less crazy then?
Meanwhile regarding portrayals of the Whites...I think the upshot of freedom for art will be a discerning public sense of judicious criticism, and the majority of artists and scholars are going to have a deep and sincere allegiance to postrevolutionary society, a gratitude for what they have gained. So they are going to indulge sincere seeking after truth, and give quite a lot of latitude toward humanization of their still bitter foes. The people will have confidence they are the right side of history, and so let the side of reaction speak their piece as they desire, and give themselves all the rope they want to spin to hang themselves with. Many a portrayal, especially later in the 50s and on into the 60s and 70s, will show how these Whites did believe themselves to be good people, naturally, but were objectively obstacles on the road of human progress and morally culpable, for being obstacles was no accident, but rather an allegiance--variously deluded, desperate, cynical, or sociopathic--to an inherently inhumane social compact that was stamped with corruption and betrayal of basic humanity all through it, so no one is simply innocent of the knowledge that they do cruel and selfish things, only somewhere on the spectrum of confused, scared, or vicious in sticking with it. A major theme in portrayal of Whites will be the moment of choice, the opportunity opening before them to join with the comrades and turn to fight for humanity instead of against it, and their various reasons for rejecting the opportunity and refusing to step through the door and thus consigning themselves to the losing side of history. In some portrayals this choice will open before some of them again and again; in others the point is to tell a tragic story of one avoidable mistake damning and blotting their lives irrevocably. In the course of all this, Americans will come to believe that they do understand the story of their history from both sides, honestly and fairly.
And there would either be no monuments to the deluded losers of history at all, or if any, monuments to their tragic and culpable error. It might be well to acknowledge their presence and number, but consensus would deny anything essential was lost in their defeat--and that the modern ability to look them in the eye and see them for the human beings they were is the reclaiming of what good they were and what irrevocable part of the spirit of the American (and world) peoples they had. American culture in the UASR will be able to claim everything good the American spirit ever stood for, while diagnosing and stepping away from the bad.
