The North Star is Red: a Wallace Presidency, KMT Victory, Alternate Cold War TL
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Key word is former, these are genuine trotskyists which makes it all the more crazy and fun to read. We already have a maoist IRA, what unholy fusion will spawn next in this timeline?
Maybe Communism might be more acceptable in America if Democrats lose to Redpublicans. USA needs equal access to education and healthcare.
a mayonnaise and jelly sandwich
Peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwiches are actually a real food in the US South.
https://food52.com/blog/24180-peanut-butter-sandwich-with-mayonnaise
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There are parts of Virginia that haven't really been part of the South since the 1960s. So where in Virginia would make a considerable difference.
Well, the South is actually a pretty diverse region. PB&M seems to mostly be a delta South thing - Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, etc, and something disproportionately among the Great Depression generation.
I amusingly just read an article on that in the bathroom today. I can't vouch for the author's entire political worldview, but it's an interesting read regardless. https://newrepublic.com/article/155144/conscience-bret-stephens
FWIW, I think the actual neocons would be aligned with the ITL Kennedy administration, especially because so many of them started out as staffers to Scoop Jackson (who is Kennedy's pointman in the Senate).
BigBlueBox
Banned
You might be interested in this article:
https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/neoconservatism-where-trotsky-meets-stalin-and-hitler/
Chapter 104 - 1958 Elections: Saarland, Chile, and Italy
1958 Elections: Saarland, Chile, and Italy
One of the promises negotiated between France and the West German government was the outcome of the Saar. The two actually came to a reasonable compromise in the 1956 Saar statute, whereupon the Saar would be allowed to vote as to its future status. Many French nationalists wanted to outright annex the Saar, but De Gaulle recognized that this would jeopardize European Union and immediately rejected the idea, not allowing it to be considered in a referendum. Instead, the French proposed that the Saar be given the status of a European territory within the framework of the Western European Union - a parallel political structure to the European Coal and Steel Community. The territory would be presumably governed by the local assembly in a parliamentary system, put in a customs union with both France and Germany, and overseen by a European commissioner selected by both the French and German governments. The alternative, which everyone expected to triumph in the referendum, was to simply rejoin Germany. However, a perfect storm convulsed the Saar. When West Germany under the Social Democratic Party sat out the war against the USSR, many Saarlanders signed up for the French Army to help defense Yugoslavia, creating a stronger sense of camaraderie with the French. In addition, the Saarland quickly became flooded with anti-military refugees in the aftermath of the West German military coup, almost all who were very negatively predisposed to the West German government of Ernst Achenbach, who was (accurately) accused of being an ex-Nazi who participated in the roundup of French Jews in the Holocaust. On the morning after the referendum, the Saar shocked the world when they truly voted non to reunification with West Germany, 50.6-49.4. President De Gaulle declared the next day that the French would be recognizing the independent of the "Saar Republic." The West Germans responded in outrage at first, but quickly acquiesced to the situation. After all, German revanchism was not aimed west. It was aimed east, as it had always been.
The next crisis to confront the Western world was the 1958 presidential elections in Chile. The ideologically amorphous President Carlos Ibanez del Campo, in relatively poor health, did not decide to run for re-election, seemingly giving the presidency up to his conservative rival, Jorge Alessandri. However, one outcome of the American intervention in Venezuela was to devastate support for the center-left Chilean Radical Party, which refused to comment on the intervention. In contrast, the hard-left Socialist Party under Salvador Allende vociferously condemned the invasion. The result was to tilt several supporters of the Radicals towards Allende, which had a critical impact on the election. After election day, Alessandri declared victory with 31.9% of the popular vote, but Allende also declared victory with 33.8%. Under Chile's election law, if no candidate gets over 50% of the popular vote, the Congress was to choose between the top two vote getters. However, the precedent in Chilean society was for Congress to coronate the man who had gotten the most votes. Western intelligence agencies lobbied profusely for Alessandri, while Communist intelligence agencies lobbied profusely for Allende. In the end, the vote was narrow. The Congress voted 92 for Alessandri, 81 for Allende. Allende reacted in outrage, claiming to be the legitimate elected President and seeing American intelligence at play behind the denial of the presidency to him.
He was largely correct, and President Kennedy made sure the Chileans knew it. This was because Kennedy saw his crusade against Communism as a dual-pronged mission - to both crush Communism as well as what he saw as the "root causes" of Communism. Upon Alessandri's election, President Kennedy told him in very stark terms that he would have to include the Radical Party in his government and embark on land reform and other policies if he didn't want to see the power of the CIA directed against him as well. President Alessandri was actually a fairly moderate conservative who didn't strongly oppose those ideas, and he largely acquiesced, much to the outrage of many who even though liking such reforms, detested what appeared like top-down American imperialism. Regardless, land was purchased and distributed to peasants, public housing constructed in the big cities, taxation made more progressive, and public education expanded. Alessandri's government was progressive at home, but deeply American-aligned abroad, openly supporting America's war against Venezuelan democrats, currying favor with Peron's increasingly authoritarian Argentina, and reversing President Ibanez's move to re-legalize the Communist Party of Chile. The Communist Party was reillegalized again, further outraging the supporters of Allende and chasing most of the more left-wing supporters of the Radical Party into Allende's Popular Unity coalition. Regardless, the Americans were satisfied that they had headed off disaster in Chile.
The 1958 elections in Italy were widely expected to be a crushing victory for the right, especially as many conservative stalwarts in Christian Democracy (DC) bolted the party, outraged at La Pira's "betrayal" of Yugoslavia. Most of the DC bolters landed in either the Italian Liberal Party and the Italian Republican Party, though a few fell in with the neofascists. In addition, the Communist Party of Italy had been dealt a hideous blow by the war, especially in the aftermath of the thermonuclear attack on Stockholm. Like many European Communist parties, the PCI had hideously splintered over whether the attack was justified or not. Palmiro Togliatti declared that it was a justified retaliatory strike against bourgeosie social fascism. This horrified fellow Communist Giorgio Amendola, who left the party to create his own splinter, the Communist Party of Italy (or PCd'I, which opposed the Italian Communist Party). Unlike 1953, it was clear that no one party coalition would cross the 50% threshold and be distributed 2/3rds of the seats. The Liberals and Republicans both left the Christian Democracy-led coalition, leaving only the ethnic parties and the Democratic Socialists. The only multi-party coalition were the Liberals, Republicans, and Radicals, who were not going to get anywhere to 50%. Prime Minister La Pira was loathed by the right, especially after he announced that the government would prosecute both neofascist and communist thugs.
The results, all things considering, were quite predictable. DC lost many of its right-leaning voters to the Liberal-Republican coalition and Neofascists, while the Italian Communists gruesomely splintered, losing many of their supporters to the Socialists. The PCI under Togliatti remained the only party to defend the annihilation of Stockholm, which seriously hurt their reputation. American intelligence services, once supportive of Christian Democracy, turned against the large party, funneling all of their support to the Liberals, Republicans, and Neofascists, something that did not escape the notice of Prime Minister La Pira.
The old DC-led coalition ultimately had 359/600 members of the Chamber of Deputies, which portended an easy re-election for La Pira. However, when the Liberals and Republicans demanded Italian participation in NATO and a restoration of military relations with the United States, La Pira was presented with an alternative offer. Pietro Nenni, once supportive of working with the PCI, was desperate to evade Soviet ties in the wake of the Stockholm bombing. He reached out to his old foe, Giuseppe Saragat, as they now actually more or less agreed politically. The two parties combined again and with 130 seats, they became the second largest party in Italy. La Pira, eager to work with a relatively unified Socialist Party instead of a fractious group of right-wing politicians who loathed him, accepted the offer, creating a government of 310/600 deputies. The DC-PSI government of La Pira and Nenni would be inaugurated, horrifying most of NATO and the European Economic Community. Although La Pira had signed the Treaty of Brussels, the new DC-PSI government declined to actually ratify the agreement, leaving Italy outside of the new European Coal and Steel Community. This further poisoned relations with the United Kingdom (further poisoned by British claims on Malta), which would have grave repercussions in the Horn of Africa. However, the relatively independent foreign policy of Italy would be a huge boost for what would eventually be called the "Non-Aligned Movement", which would be famously established at the Rome Conference.Amusingly, a detente immediately broke out between the United States and the Italian Republic - as President John F. Kennedy immediately made a trip to Rome, apologizing to La Pira in secret for CIA involvement in the Italian elections. JFK largely gave them a free-hand, but they sometimes also went too far for him. In his view, La Pira for all of his ideological impurities was actually much more useful to have on his side than against. As a result, Italian-American partnership would actually only grow.
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Historical revanchism in the East? Well we know the West German regime is gunning for the DDR but the recent developments and this statement in particular begs the question: is the Government promising to reverse the Oder Neisse line too? I mean, there were millions of German expellees, most of them in West Germany, who were electorally significant for decades. The promise that they would get to go home one day, even if it wasn't always sincere, was a big political issue for this bloc of voters. IOTL Germany officially rejected the border for decades but knew it couldn't do much of anything. ITTL, though, it may be a louder and more important rallying cry to help sell hawkishness to a country otherwise fearful because of the carnage in Finland and Yugoslavia that was ready to spill over the Fulda gap and because of the possibility of Frankfurt, munch and Hamburg going the way of Stockholm. If that should be the case, then this would be a major propaganda win for the unpopular Polish government and a loss for the East German one, as it would strain their relations with the Warsaw pact as well.
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Well I am taking a breath of relief for Italy, at least Kennedy agreed to a detente. I don't deny self-reasserting and not aligned Italy is very interesting, social reforms will take place the same with an early center-left coalition rising, not staying in the CECA would have disvantages but also benefits. Less commercial opportunities in West Europe, but more out of Europe... And that input over the Horn of Africa is interesting. Means the Italians will reaffirm control of Somalia beyond the UN mandate terms (Not as colony of course but more a neo-colonialism influence)? Well maybe it may avoid TTL some bad events happened to OTL Somalia... but Ethiopia may be a thorn in those projects.
I kind of meant gunning for the DDR, but yes, the government probably isn't recognizing the Oder-Neisse line just because the German Expellees are more or less part of the ruling grand-right coalition. So the West German government is probably making lots of noise about it. That being said, they don't really have much of a capability to do anything about it. The West German army is fairly new and they're pretty tied at the hips with France. And if France doesn't want a war, there's no war.
tbqf, it's probably the opposite. Italy getting out way faster than uh, France or Britain would like them too.
True, the threats, both to reclaim lost land and, more urgently, to destroy East Germany, are always going to be largely noise but the change of tone, and volume, might still have real world consequences. For example, rather than vaguely promising to somehow negotiate the return of Eastern territories at some point, the Government might actually say much more provocative things like "when the time comes, we're taking Berlin and then we are crossing the Oder" and come off as rather serious about it. They can't unilaterally start a war and almost certainly do not want to but for those who believe that war is inevitable (it seems far more inevitable than IOTL because of the three years war), the promise to finish one should it start is pretty appealing. And once that becomes an objective, an army with offensive capabilities must naturally be a priority, thus, the military build up can gain momentum. If so, the more pacificist elements in society can be more easily sidelined and the new regime can consolidate its hold on West Germany.
Beria would of course be thrilled. A seemingly aggressive Germany (even though he knows full well that this is not genuinely the case) would give him a perfect scapegoat to sell to his Warsaw pact client states (suddenly Poland needs Soviet protection after all) and could help create yet more disunity within the West as well, specifically between France and Germany, two of the main pillars of NATO. In his mind, the USA can't afford to please one without risking alienating the other. It's like a potential Cyprus all over again and all this without lifting a finger! With the ROC's awful luck, the Western alliance is more volatile than the East!
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Nephi
Banned
No, no they're not. I live in the south no one would eat that. No one. That's vile and someone made up that page just to troll someone into trying that.
Granted I'm not originally from here, but still I've been here a while, I absolutely do not believe anyone I know would eat that or ever has.
Chapter 105 - The Non-Aligned Movement
The Non-Aligned Movement
La Pira, always fascinated in foreign policy, truly felt that there was a global necessity for nations who were not specifically aligned with either superpower bloc to organize. After the idea of an Afro-Asian Conference in some unspecified Asian city ultimately fell through due to the lack of uh, a host city and the Three Years War, La Pira immediately inserted himself into the conversation, planning a global meeting of "non-aligned" powers in Rome. The meeting was ultimately shifted to his home town of Florence, but the Florence Conference would be one of the tensest conferences of the Cold War. This was because many of the nations who attended were not quite non-aligned.
The only European nations to attend were Italy, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Ireland, and Nationalist Turkey. The European empires generally refused to allow their dominions to attend, so the only African nations to attend were Ethiopia, Libya, Ghana, Morocco, and Liberia. As expected, no Asian nation attended except for ironically, the Kingdom of Sarawak (which had a British-descent King who the British learned was actually rather independent), as well as the Kingdom of Cambodia under the maverick Sihanouk. In the Middle East, Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and North Yemen attended. The bulk of the nations attending were from Latin America, and it included the entire region excluding Venezuela (in a civil war), Cuba, Chile, the Dominican Republic, and Colombia. The most awkward arrival was Juan Peron's delegation, because he was widely viewed as an American-aligned authoritarian dictator, but unlike many other such leaders, at home, Peron portrayed himself a man of the "populist center", meaning the Florence Conference was the perfect place for him. Similarly, the participation of Nationalist Turkey was confusing to many, but reflective of the worldview of Nationalist Turkey, which was deeply anti-Communist, but not necessarily pro-American or pro-Western.
The greatest tension existed between clearly anti-Soviet nations, such as Yugoslavia, Hungary, and Turkey with clearly pro-Soviet delegations, such as Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and North Yemen. Regardless, the nations in questions were still able to largely agree on a set of principles, including national self-determination, opposition to European colonialism, total territorial sovereignty (a rejection of the notion of humanitarian intervention), and opposition to "Great Power alliances" or foreign military bases.
This was slightly awkward for Italy, the only colonial power and member of NATO at the Conference despite being literally the only one to host it. However, utilizing strong support for the buildup of the conference among the Italian media and intelligentsia, La Pira announced an immediate end to the Italian Empire. Of course, Italian Somaliland was the only colony left, and it was not an actual colony, but rather a 10 year UN trust territory. As such, La Pira's declaration of Somali independence was only a few years ahead of schedule. However, this was viewed as a diplomatic insult to the British government, which had not agreed to give British Somaliland total independence. The creation of the Somali Republic was chaotic because it was rushed to happen in time for the conference, but ultimately, Haji Bashir and the Somali Youth League took control of the fledgling state. Boosting Italy's international reputation (but hurting La Pira amongst most of the Italian right), La Pira personally apologized to Emperor Haile Sellasie II for Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia and agreed to limited compensation for Ethiopians affected by Italian chemical gas attacks. This actually gave Italy a great deal of diplomatic leverage to mediate between the Somalis and the Ethiopians (they disputed the Ogaden Region).
Interesting, due to the strength of Latin American members, the majority of the members of the Non-Aligned Movement would also be members of John F. Kennedy's Alliance for Progress. When asked for comment, President Kennedy said that nothing in the manifesto disturbed him and that he could even see the United States joining one day.
The biggest disappointment for La Pira was the failure of the Republic of China or the Republic of India in participating, the two giants of Asia. The ROC, still in political chaos over "defeat" in the Three Years War and the Great Chinese Famine, wasn't in a position to send anyone anywhere. In contrast, Rajaji feared that it would jeopardize economic relations with Britain and in turn, India's record of stellar economic growth. Indeed, under Rajaji, the "Indian Juggernaut" became one of the most rapidly growing economies in the world, growing at nearly 8% per year. When Rajaji took office in 1957, India and Pakistan were at about 7.5% of US GDP per capita and China at 6%. By 1962, China had declined to 5% of America and Pakistan still at 7.5%, but India had surged to 10% of American GDP per capita (admittedly, much of the Chinese number was still somewhat artificially depressed by the Great Chinese Famine and the rebound would not fully complete until 1963). Most rewardingly for Indians, Rajaji's India grew at a faster rate than the British colony of Ceylon, which stayed constantly at 12% of America. The "Hindu rate of growth" quickly became a term to describe rapid economic development.
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