It has been a long time since I last commented on the TNO thread, and thought that this will be a good time to do so.
As someone that has been accused by another member over on the political chat sub-forum of suffering from 'Anti-leftist anxiety', and me being a self-identifying as ideologically being on the center-right, I honestly do not see any issue with the way in which in first 100 days of Gus Hall's presidency is being portrayed at all. I can break things down into two parts:
Regardless of your views on United States government, the FBI, and the CIA.... What Gus Hall did was in absolutely no way whatsoever 'wholesome' or 'based'.
And I am not just talking about his actions of dismantling the American intelligence community in the middle of a Cold War against literal Nazis being a bad idea for the anti-fascist cause.... But instead, I am looking at his actions on how he went about this in and of itself:
Unless I am deeply mistaken, the chain of event went something like this:
(2) The FBI and CIA, along with the rest of the American political establishment, are fundamentally opposed to the very idea of a communists getting into power in their country. And have openly declared that they will do everything in their power to make sure that he will get removed from office ASAP, as well as preventing him and his allies from getting anything done in office at the mean time.
(3) Knowing this, Gus Hall, using his power as the POTUS, demand access to said classified files on the FBI and CIA's (Legitimate and not fabricated) misdeeds, with the intention of either holding it over their head to make them cooperate with his adminsitration, or expose them to the public in the name of his ideology.
(4) FBI and CIA refused to cooperate, and be as obstructive as possible. Giving him only a small part of what he had demanded access to, while 'misplacing'/outright destroying the rest.
(5) Gus Hall went on national television, exposing the small tidbits of genuine misdeeds that he had managed to uncover... As well as use this opportunity to flat out make sh*t up and appeal to the already widespread conspiracy theory that it was the Federal government that ordered the assassination of MLK and Malcolm X, doing so without any hard evidence on his side.
(6) Riots and civil unrest ensue, with the Hall administration uses to cripple the US intelligence community, so that they will not be able to get in their way as they go about reshaping America.
Now, did the FBI and CIA engaged in all manners of shady, morally objectionable, and outright illegal acts in the name of the US establishment?
Yes.
Did the FBI and CIA refused to hand over evidence of said shady, morally objectionable, and outright illegal misdeeds to the POTUS as they are required to do?
Yes
But this does not change the fact that Gus Hall used his platform as the POTUS to make the claim that MLK and Malcolm X was murdered by the Federal government, doing so without any evidence to support his claims. With the events implications being that Hall does not believe the conspiracy theory himself, but know that others would, and used this opportunity to cripple his political enemies.
I am not a lawyer, or even know much about the law beyond a layman's understanding. But if I am not mistaken, under US law, during a court case, if the defendant's side is caught tempering with of destroying evidence, the judge can order the jury to assume that whatever the accused claimed the now missing and unrecoverable evidence to contain as true.... Hence, it CAN be argued that Gus Hall was merely doing the same thing here, only on a national level.... The fact that we HAVE been playing as the Federal government before he came to power, and hence know for a FACT that the FBI did NOT in fact assassinate MLK and Malcolm X (Or at the very least, the previous POTUS never ordering said assassinations) not withstanding.
Which leads me to my second point:
From the limited information that we have seen so far, Gus Hall can be understood as, for the lack of a better term, 'Reverse American Yeltsin' (The one from the OTL, not TNO). In that just as Yeltsin played a key role is dismantling communism in the USSR, in order to establish capitalism in the new Russia... Gus Hall is trying to dismantle capitalism in the United States, in order to establish socialism in its place.
Continuing on from this metaphor, the 'crippling the US intelligence community for political purposes' by Hall can be understood in the lens of OTL's
1993 Russian constitutional crisis.
In that he was trying to enact radical reforms in a former superpower that for one reason or another, no longer function (It the US is still functional, you would not be getting Gus Hall anywhere even NEAR the White House in the first place).... With remnants of the previous administration doing everything in their power to be uncooperative and stand in his way. Hence, him taking morally question actions (To put things likely) in order to remove said obstructionists, cleaning the way for his administration to do what in their eyes, needs to be done.
Now, for OTL Yeltsin, was the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation filled to the brim with communists diehards, authoritarians, and far-right ultra-nationalists, who are going to sabotage and obstruct his administration no matter what he tries to do in order to, in his eyes, enact much needed free market economic reforms to get Russia functional again?
Yes..... The same way that from TNO Gus Hall's perspective, the American political establishment, with the CIA and FBI serving as their blood hounds, is filled to the brim with lackeys of the the forces of capital, Wall Street moneyman, millionaires, corrupt special interests groups, and racists, who are going to sabotage and obstruct his administration no matter what he tries to do in order to, in his eyes, enact much needed communists economic reforms and revolutionary civil rights legislation for the sake of the common American working class.
In fact, imagine if OTL is a TNO style HOI4 mod... With Yeltsin being the failstate of the USSR that you only get early preview content for. I am sure that you will have lots of right-wingers and anti-communists such as myself going
'OMG! Yeltsin has just issued a decree ordering both KGB and Communist Party archives to be made public! He is so based! How is this a bad ending! I am a Yeltsin-stan now!'... Without knowing the OTHER things that he will end up doing.
If I have to make a speculation, I will say that Gus Hall's path as POTUS, once fully implemented, will go something like this:
(1) The Hall presidency trying to pass legislation that while radical, is genuinely needed to get the US even somewhat functional again (Not that dissimilar to the situation that 1936 US was in over in Kaiserreich world).
(2) The establishment WILL NOT cooperate with a communist POTUS at all, period. While actively doing everything in their power to remove him from office.
(3) At this point, Hall will have two options:
- Continue to not be able to get anything done, not even basic governing functions, in the fact of a hostile political and economic establishment. Resulting in him getting removed from office
- Take steps to subvert American democracy and institution via any means possible, starting with the FBI and CIA as we have already seen. Centering power on the executive branch of government one step at a time. Until you finally get enough power over the country needed to enact your communist reforms... Which turns out to be disastrous anyway, for one reason or another. With the administration going, 'It must be the fault of the damn bourgeois!'.
(4) Even IF the Hall presidency managed to overcome EVER SINGLE opponent without getting removed from office, and finally be able to enact their desired communist reforms, they would need to dismantle so many institutions of American society t the point that they were not even 'breaking a few eggs to make an omelet' anymore. But instead, setting fire to the kitchen (The United States, or rather, what is left of it by this point), and burning the entire house down (OFN, and much of the anti-nazi bloc) as a consquence.
(5) All the while with the US burning their own country down, they were not doing so in a vacuum. With literal Nazis and Imperial Japan running around doing their thing, with their largest geopolitical opponent having shot itself in the head.