The Great Crusade (Reds! Part 3)
- Thread starter Aelita
- Start date
But the pope is going to condemn the communists no matter what, so why should MacArthur pay that much? Plus Coughlin has the potential to become a rival to MacArthur, which the General isn't going to want.
Lol at Stalin being forced by events to support permanent revolution in the States. I feel like he'll be getting his hand forced to do a lot of things he's not going to like so much the minute the reds consolidate power in DeLeon-Debs.
I personally think its this steady loss of control to the American communists that leads to Stalin signing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in an attempt to wrong foot the Americans. The pact doesn't really make much sense otherwise ITTL.
teg
I'm not saying that the reactionary religious groups are going to band together. I am saying that does not mean the protestant right are going to tolerate a Catholic anywhere near the presidency. The roots of anti-Catholicism are too deep among nativists. It isn't going to help that a lot of Catholic immigrants (even if they are no longer strictly Catholic) will convert to socialism with their urban neighbors.
teg
Even still, the atmosphere is that of a civil war. I can see the white protestant establishment making an exception due to Coughlin's heavy handed authoritarian nature and continued support of the reactionary regime. Besides, these are politicians that elected him, people that are willing to be more than pragmatic on occasion if its fits their cause and immediate goals. It's not like the mass of white-anglo protestant citizens voted him in.
I see this becoming more of an issue for the Post-civil war white regime, not one embroiled in the midst of its own civil war, with bigger issues to deal with.
E. Burke
Banned
Are the Trinitarians still cannon. Maybe their were some obvious breaks in the Church earlier making it obvious that the Pope isn't a communist. Also, when Coughlin is appointed the Civil War is really brutal so it might be more "I hate them Catholics but the Reds are shooting at me."
On being a potential rival, I think MacArthur is being portrayed as a true believer in his cause. He might think Coughlin can achieve their goals, and that more important to him than his own power. Maybe he thinks he can use Coughlin as a punching bag if things go south. Saying that Coughlin betrayed them, so that people don't blame him.
Good update, Jello!
Roosevelt and Taft feelings must be shared by many inside the Provisional Government.
I'd imagine that's what leads to the push to call for a constitutional convention to legitimize the process.
E. Burke
Banned
I wrote this
The Proletarian Economic Education Committees began out of the need to save the Catholic Universities after the revolution. As the Pope's hardline anti communism became more pronounced the Orders, especially those engaged in education, were charged with maintaining discipline on a restive flock. The Universities were the most blatant example, transformed from centers of learning to conveyer belts for conservative orthodoxy.(1) However, many liberal and even a few radical professors remained. Many out of a naive hope in reform, others out of loyalty to the history of these once great institutions. One Bastion of radical dissent was the Boston College economics center. It had produced some of the finest Marxist economists in the WCP.
When the Civil War broke out BC ordered all of it's students able enough to fight into the fascist army. This left the teachers without much to do. The Economists decided to begin offering classes in secret in working class areas. These produced some truly stunning debates, and writings. One worker who took part wrote later:
"We had taken classes at party events, and we had all read Marx. But this was different. The classes had been glorified lectures, designed to feed us party orthodoxy. Reading Marx on our own was like a bible reading group, we accepted whatever the party had told us. It was a reaffirmation of received wisdom.
This was different, sneaking out every night to one or another comrades house. Hiding our notes from fascist searches, this lent it all an air of adventure. And the teachers! Oh the teachers! They had been stifling under Catholic masters who forced them to hide their radicalism, to write in half truths and dog whistles. Always afraid they'd step out of line. You got the sense they were learning from us as much as we from them. We were all risking death, and danger is the great equalizer."
When Red forces liberated the city the classes stopped, everyone joined the war effort. After the war the Catholic colleges were all shuttered, and anyone who had taught at then was suspect.
It seemed like the Midnight Classes, as these lessons would be know were doomed to be forgotten. But one professor, Erik Kristin, had other ideas. He was 30 years old at wars end. He was young and hopeful. He also loved BC. So using the old channels he called for a lesson to be held in his old classroom. The topic:
Economics of the Proletarian State. Over 700 people arrived, purely by word of mouth. For two days the class went on, and it soon became a national story. Newspapers called it the Proletarian Economic Education Conference. At the end of the attendees elected a committee to organize more classes. It soon became weekly event in Boston, having to be moved to Weekends to make do with work. Many similar events were organized nationally, in a way that modern readers will easily compare to the "meme".
Local governments were quick to seize on these events as ways of engaging average citizens in economic planning. National leaders soon saw the advantage and encouraged a National Proletarian Education Conference with delegates from every local. This conference, intended as an ad hoc seizure of a groundswell decided to form a national PEEC.
Now every major community has a PEEC and they are recognized as a third force in economic planning. An expression grassroots proletarian power.
(1) Think OTL Bob Hope University.
The Proletarian Economic Education Committees began out of the need to save the Catholic Universities after the revolution. As the Pope's hardline anti communism became more pronounced the Orders, especially those engaged in education, were charged with maintaining discipline on a restive flock. The Universities were the most blatant example, transformed from centers of learning to conveyer belts for conservative orthodoxy.(1) However, many liberal and even a few radical professors remained. Many out of a naive hope in reform, others out of loyalty to the history of these once great institutions. One Bastion of radical dissent was the Boston College economics center. It had produced some of the finest Marxist economists in the WCP.
When the Civil War broke out BC ordered all of it's students able enough to fight into the fascist army. This left the teachers without much to do. The Economists decided to begin offering classes in secret in working class areas. These produced some truly stunning debates, and writings. One worker who took part wrote later:
"We had taken classes at party events, and we had all read Marx. But this was different. The classes had been glorified lectures, designed to feed us party orthodoxy. Reading Marx on our own was like a bible reading group, we accepted whatever the party had told us. It was a reaffirmation of received wisdom.
This was different, sneaking out every night to one or another comrades house. Hiding our notes from fascist searches, this lent it all an air of adventure. And the teachers! Oh the teachers! They had been stifling under Catholic masters who forced them to hide their radicalism, to write in half truths and dog whistles. Always afraid they'd step out of line. You got the sense they were learning from us as much as we from them. We were all risking death, and danger is the great equalizer."
When Red forces liberated the city the classes stopped, everyone joined the war effort. After the war the Catholic colleges were all shuttered, and anyone who had taught at then was suspect.
It seemed like the Midnight Classes, as these lessons would be know were doomed to be forgotten. But one professor, Erik Kristin, had other ideas. He was 30 years old at wars end. He was young and hopeful. He also loved BC. So using the old channels he called for a lesson to be held in his old classroom. The topic:
Economics of the Proletarian State. Over 700 people arrived, purely by word of mouth. For two days the class went on, and it soon became a national story. Newspapers called it the Proletarian Economic Education Conference. At the end of the attendees elected a committee to organize more classes. It soon became weekly event in Boston, having to be moved to Weekends to make do with work. Many similar events were organized nationally, in a way that modern readers will easily compare to the "meme".
Local governments were quick to seize on these events as ways of engaging average citizens in economic planning. National leaders soon saw the advantage and encouraged a National Proletarian Education Conference with delegates from every local. This conference, intended as an ad hoc seizure of a groundswell decided to form a national PEEC.
Now every major community has a PEEC and they are recognized as a third force in economic planning. An expression grassroots proletarian power.
(1) Think OTL Bob Hope University.
Great update, Jello!
A request--do you think you could make some maps showing troop movements during the Revolution? I think it would definitely help us understand the details better.
I forget--when does Mexico coalesce into a coherent socialist state? Is it after the 1934 American Revolution? I remember Mexico wass the first country to recognize the UASR, which implies it was a country with a definite government itself by that time, but in the update you mention Villa's and Zapata's forces still fighting.
A request--do you think you could make some maps showing troop movements during the Revolution? I think it would definitely help us understand the details better.
I forget--when does Mexico coalesce into a coherent socialist state? Is it after the 1934 American Revolution? I remember Mexico wass the first country to recognize the UASR, which implies it was a country with a definite government itself by that time, but in the update you mention Villa's and Zapata's forces still fighting.
Some stuff that IP and I hashed out for revisions. We felt it more plausible that Mexico would have its own fraternal revolution, rather than have a social democrat in power pulled left by the revolution.
The next revision will include a brief roadmap of Mexico's history in the early 20th century, but for now here's a quick summary: The Mexican Revolution begins as in OTL, and ends similarly. By 1920, major fighting is over, and revolutionary leaders such as Zapata and Villa "hang up their guns". Without American intervention, the revolutionary grassroots organizations come out in better shape, and during WWI a number of American leftists went into exile in Mexico, which bore fruit durign the 20s in the form of an enduring cooperation between American and Mexican leftists. Still, a new conservative establishment consolidates under the leadership of Calles and his Party of the National Revolution. When the Great Depression hits, and international commodity prices tank, the fragile consensus is shattered, and the notion of "completing the revolution" gains traction among the workers and peasants. A pact is formed between urban workers, led by Vicente Lombardo Toledano and the Confederation of Mexican Workers, dissident PNR "true believers" led by Lazaro Cardenas, and the old agrarian rebels of which Villa and Zapata were perhaps the most influential.
Their plans are somewhat pre-empted by the MacArthur putsch, and it is decided that seizing the initiative while their northern neighbor is occupied is most prudent. It is not initially an explicitly socialist revolution, but after a Red victory in America is fait accompli, the revolutionary leaders agree to push a socialist agenda as a "Fraternal revolution" to America's. A pact is formed between the Confederation of Mexican Workers, the PNR-Left, the underground Mexican Communist Party, the Mexican Liberal Party and the Laborist Party, which agree to merge as the Workers' Party of National Liberation.
Japhy
Banned
Great Update.
That said I was sort of surprised considering the nature of the Provisional Government that there wasn't at least some sort of vague sense of a rubber-stamping of the shift from restoration to revolution. I mean at the very least the could have just declared "We're going to have an Article Five Convention!".
At the very least I would have thought that such an framing of the event, no matter how rigged it may be would do wonders in keeping folks like the DFL, the Anarchists, and the (admittedly less than relevant) constitutional conservatives securely on their side.
That said though, it might be well beyond that point anyway, and its well written enough that I'm not bothered.
That said I was sort of surprised considering the nature of the Provisional Government that there wasn't at least some sort of vague sense of a rubber-stamping of the shift from restoration to revolution. I mean at the very least the could have just declared "We're going to have an Article Five Convention!".
At the very least I would have thought that such an framing of the event, no matter how rigged it may be would do wonders in keeping folks like the DFL, the Anarchists, and the (admittedly less than relevant) constitutional conservatives securely on their side.
That said though, it might be well beyond that point anyway, and its well written enough that I'm not bothered.
Well, correct me if I'm wrong but I still thought there would be a sense of legitimizing the social revolution through creation of state conventions granting powers of a constitutional convention and automatic ratification to what it will do to a Revolutionary Constitutional Convention body comprising the members of the Provisional US Congress and a constitutional committee within the All-American Convocation of Soviets. That's still the plan as far as I know. IP and Jello discussed the entire process at considerable length here a few pages back. Automatically, the Fundamental Principles of Soviet Congresses would replace the 1787 Constitution through that body, while to lure in the DFLP and the Left Republicans to the new regime, there would be the creation of the Basic Law of the UASR to define the governmental structure as well as the creation of a new Bill of Rights, which will be a separate document from the Basic Law. So this convention would basically replace the 1787 document with two or three new foundational documents. The Second Bill of Rights might come later on.
I think the Emma Goldman faction of cooperating anarchists within the Syndicalist Federation would be part of the entire shift to social revolution, with the new party establishment bringing this group along to the Provisional Government that would become the UASR government. The seat of government in a commune lead by an anarcho-communist is also significant enough. They wouldn't care much about the entire legalism surrounding the shift to the new regime, with no love to the previous institutions.
I think the Emma Goldman faction of cooperating anarchists within the Syndicalist Federation would be part of the entire shift to social revolution, with the new party establishment bringing this group along to the Provisional Government that would become the UASR government. The seat of government in a commune lead by an anarcho-communist is also significant enough. They wouldn't care much about the entire legalism surrounding the shift to the new regime, with no love to the previous institutions.