The Pale Horse: The Northwest Montana Insurgency and its Aftermath (1987-2002)

[XTrapnel]

Sending critical support to our brave allies in the Northwest Front against the godless SPATCO devils and their remnants.

As of now, this is the official soundtrack to The Pale Horse:

Edit: the other official soundtrack to The Pale Horse:

 

[Eparkhos]

Five Days in May (1994): Part I – The Darkling Plain

The disaster that was the 1993 Chairman election notwithstanding, the conservative faction of the Syndicalist Union Party was in a stronger position going into 1994 than its most pessimistic members would have admitted. The loss of the Chairmanship to a broadly reformist independent and the marked underperformance of Haig had been a blow, but not an entirely unanticipated one based on the series of gubernatorial elections held between 1989 and 1992. Indeed, in some CSRs, the vote for Haig had been higher than the vote for conservative candidates for the applicable Governorship (most notably, the Heartland CSR, where in 1992 orthodox SUP candidate Paul Wellstone had scraped out a victory over the self-described “Farmer-Labor” candidate George McGovern thanks in part to the late entrance into the gubernatorial race of the popular – if slightly senile by this point – regional TV personality “Dutch” Reagan as an “independent” spoiler candidate).

Looking beyond the position of Chairman, the conservative faction of the SUP was solidly entrenched at virtually all of the levers of power which mattered. Two thirds of the CSRs were still under the control of candidates anointed by the SUP’s solidly conservative leadership – even if, by this time, the reach of the Chicago government was only unchallengeable in those CSRs with solid additional networks of patronage controlled by the conservative faction (in particular, the Army of the CSA’s Southern Command in the Rio Grande CSR and the AFL-affiliated Sharecroppers’ Union in the New Afrika CSR). The Armed Forces of the CSA, if bitterly divided between pro-Haig and anti-Haig cliques, were generally regarded as safely aligned with the conservatives, if push came to shove. While the public defection of the Teamsters Union to the reformists was a source of concern, as was the gradual proliferation of reformist independent unions from the mid 1980s onwards, the AFL was still firmly in the hands of the conservative-aligned Lane Kirkland. Finally, and of most immediate importance to the brewing power struggle in Chicago, the staggering of elections for the Congressional Chamber and the Chairmanship meant that Traficant was faced by a Congress almost universally opposed to any reform whatsoever: of the six hundred Congressmen, at most ninety-five could be considered reformist to any extent.

This overall picture provided some comfort to the SUP’s conservatives in general; it gave almost none to Haig and his inner circle. Reduced overnight from the Chairman of the CSA to a figure on the margins of politics forced to fight for his position within the Armed Forces’ of the CSA’s high command, he became convinced in late 1993 that his only route back to the SUP’s inner circle was by monopolising any discontent with Traficant’s agenda and discrediting Traficant himself utterly. Christmas of 1993 was an unusually social period in the Haig household: in addition to family, friends and old allies (in particular Mark Felt, longtime head of the Bureau of Internal Security and potential target of any Traficant-launched investigation into some of its less creditable practices), the guest-list included public figures who were either known to be opposed to Traficant (Lane Kirkland, New Afrika Governor Edwin Taliaferro) or were prominent members of the SUP’s conservative faction (Secretary of the Interior Janet Reno). Within two weeks of Traficant’s 1 January inauguration as Chairman, a definable clique of about two dozen key figures had coalesced around Haig. While the extent of the involvement of some of the more semi-detached figures associated with the Haig clique remains unclear, a core membership, consisting of Haig, Kirkland, Felt and Reno, was in a position to exert an outsized influence on the actions of the SUP’s conservative clique as a whole by early February.

The plan that they had formulated was simple: they would use every legal avenue to block as much of the Traficant agenda as possible, using the (poorly-enumerated) veto powers granted to the Congressional Chamber to kill any remotely reformist proposal. The public would either turn on Traficant’s rudderless administration, or Traficant would be forced into taking plausibly impeachable actions just to get something done. This course of action, when put into practise, was hampered somewhat by the sheer fuzziness of the CSA’s governmental structure: as a system which had evolved to handle government more-or-less by consensus was repurposed into an adversarial one, both the reformists and the conservatives were forced to appeal more and more regularly to the Speaker of the Congressional Chamber, Walter Mondale, the unwilling referee to a contest between two groups of people he increasingly disliked and where no-one really knew the rules.

Beneath all the chaos was the undeniable fact that the Haig clique’s plan was working: even the relatively modest political and economic reforms Traficant had proposed (slightly reducing the Congressional Chamber in size, making the unionization process easier for unaffiliated unions, and increasing the employee limit for private enterprises from five to ten employees) were successfully blocked by the conservative faction, with Traficant having little to show for his Chairmanship by late April other than the termination of some particularly unpopular McNamara-era managerial initiatives and the final defunding of the CYBERSYN network.

What Haig hadn’t accounted for was that the stalling of Traficant’s legislative agenda seemed to have little impact on his public perception - by and large, blame was reserved for Congress. The most visible manifestation of his popularity was provided to Traficant and Haig on 4 May 1994: at that year’s Haymarket Day Parade in Chicago, Traficant (cheered enthusiastically by the public on his appearance) broke protocol by leaving his post beside Mondale and Haig (by now firmly re-established as Chief of the CSA’s Armed Forces) to mingle with the crowds, unaccompanied by any security. His rapturous reception over the next two hours spooked Haig as much as it pleased Traficant: at an emergency meeting with Reno, Kirkland and Felt, it was agreed that matters needed to be expedited, with articles of impeachment filed by a reliable Congressional ally as soon as possible.

In the event, Haig’s hand was forced far earlier than he’d anticipated: an anonymous leak from Traficant’s staff on 10 May suggested that Traficant, buoyed up by the recent show of public support, was considering dissolving Congress and mandating a full Congressional election conducted under similar rules to those used for the 1993 Chairman election. Although the chances of Traficant receiving approval from Mondale were slim, the mere possibility that this course of action was being contemplated provided, in Haig’s view, sufficient grounds to believe that the SUP was in imminent danger. Immediate action was necessary: absent any reason for impeachment, Haig would be forced to invoke the precedent set by the removal of James Burnham and issue an order for Traficant’s arrest via an extraordinary session of Congress.

At two in the morning of 11 May, Walter Mondale was woken by two members of the Chicago People’s Militia, who informed him that two thirds of the Congressional Chamber had called for an extraordinary session. Transported, still in his dressing gown, to the Albert Parsons Building, he was greeted by sheer confusion. About five hundred Congressmen were present, many in a similar of dress to himself. Only the most dependable hundred and twenty or so had been warned by the Haig Clique some hours prior: now, a calm and collected island in a sea of chaos, they had ensured that the front rows of Congressional seating were monopolised by Haig allies. As a team of Congressional pages attempted to reach those Congressmen not yet accounted for, Mondale noted a significant absence. He was able to get much of the story out of one of the Congressmen who had been dragged from his bed an hour before Mondale: all attempts at contacting the Chairman’s Residence had failed, while a detachment of People’s Militiamen had found the Residence entirely empty. For the time being, the Chairman was missing.

This is amazing. (The writing, I mean. It reminds me of the kind of coup you'd see in the Byzantine Empire in that Haig is far too overconfident and this whole thing is far too rushed.) There's no way in hell this turns out well for anybody, but with a bit of luck the actual fighting will be limited to Chicagoland and maybe a few other cities. If not, we can only hope most of the army strikes for Traficant and the pro-Haig forces are all underequipped.

 

[Mirza Khan]

@XTrapnel -was "New Afrika Governor Edwin Taliaferro" based on an OTL person? All the other people in that list are, of course, and "Taliaferro" is a Virginia last name: one of the original Virginia proprietors was an Italian man named Tagliaferro, and "Taliaferro" is how the English-speaking Virginia colonists garbled it. The name is still found here, and very rarely in other parts of the South that Virginians migrated to. (And some African-Americans have the name as well-the early Taliaferros were great landowners, and it was common for freed slaves to take their master's last name.)

Beyond that detail, that was very well-written update. I'm interested to see how the coup proceeds.

 

[Steve Brinson]

@XTrapnel -was "New Afrika Governor Edwin Taliaferro" based on an OTL person? All the other people in that list are, of course, and "Taliaferro" is a Virginia last name: one of the original Virginia proprietors was an Italian man named Tagliaferro, and "Taliaferro" is how the English-speaking Virginia colonists garbled it. The name is still found here, and very rarely in other parts of the South that Virginians migrated to. (And some African-Americans have the name as well-the early Taliaferros were great landowners, and it was common for freed slaves to take their master's last name.)

Beyond that detail, that was very well-written update. I'm interested to see how the coup proceeds/

I believe that's former Jackson mayor Chokwe Lumumba, born Edwin Finley Taliaferro. It's an excellent touch that both the named New Afrika leaders were either born in the North IOTL or had a father who was.

 

[Mirza Khan]

I believe that's former Jackson mayor Chokwe Lumumba, born Edwin Finley Taliaferro. It's an excellent touch that both the named New Afrika leaders were either born in the North IOTL or had a father who was.

I'm actually wondering what "New Afrika" will look like circa the late 1990's-on the one hand, I imagine the impetus for its founding was probably Garveyist members of the SUP who wanted a separate black homeland (it would be cool if the TL could work in an early leadership role for Marcus Garvey himself). On the other hand, it looks like, well, a Bantustan-its borders manage to encompass the (OTL) most impovershed regions of the South but otherwise seem to have no internal logic. In particular, the long eastern "tail" that goes into Georgia is well south of the Tennessee river and has no geographical features or transportation links defining it. If Syndicalism produced the same economic effects ITTL as OTL Communism, then by the 1990's I expect "New Afrika" to have truly third-world economic conditions and a corrupt political leadership, all insisting that the glorified reservation they live in is the highest pinnacle of black aspiration. It might be up there with Northwest Montana as a candidate for the most politically unstable part of the former CSA.

 

[XTrapnel]

I'm actually wondering what "New Afrika" will look like circa the late 1990's-on the one hand, I imagine the impetus for its founding was probably Garveyist members of the SUP who wanted a separate black homeland (it would be cool if the TL could work in an early leadership role for Marcus Garvey himself). On the other hand, it looks like, well, a Bantustan-its borders manage to encompass the (OTL) most impovershed regions of the South but otherwise seem to have no internal logic. In particular, the long eastern "tail" that goes into Georgia is well south of the Tennessee river and has no geographical features or transportation links defining it. If Syndicalism produced the same economic effects ITTL as OTL Communism, then by the 1990's I expect "New Afrika" to have truly third-world economic conditions and a corrupt political leadership, all insisting that the glorified reservation they live in is the highest pinnacle of black aspiration. It might be up there with Northwest Montana as a candidate for the most politically unstable part of the former CSA.

New Afrika's not quite at Bantustan level by the 90s, but it's not a fun place to live. In general, all of the explicitly "ethnic" CSRs have tested the concept of "drawing a line around a group of people and hoping for the best" to destruction: like the Sequoyah and Blair Mountain CSRs, its incoherence as an economic unit means that it's become an extremely expensive way for the CSA to show the world that its struggle for liberation applies to everyone (the Gullah CSR's managed to avoid this fate by owning Charleston and its port).

It's an excellent touch that both the named New Afrika leaders were either born in the North IOTL or had a father who was.

Very good catch. Very broadly, political thought in New Afrika can be divided into three camps:

• The SUP's official line: there's a coherent culture (generally referred to as "Negro"), forming an entity distinct from Gullahs, which the establishment of Syndicalism in America has allowed to flourish to its greatest extent by amalgamating black Southerners and black Northerners returning as a result of the partial reversal of the First Great Migration;
• Black Southerners are a distinct grouping by themselves, with black Northerners being a fundamentally alien element;
• Both Negro and Gullah Americans form part of a coherent pan-African whole.

The first viewpoint is very much the philosophy of New Afrika's ruling class (which is disproportionally comprised, even as late as the 90s, from people who were born in the Midwest), while the last two are actively supressed by the CSR's government (to the point where there are two separate New Afrikan "governments in exile", each unofficially hosted by a semi-detached member of the Fourth Internationale). The Nation of Islam does still exist, but it's brutally persecuted wherever the government can find it.

 

[XTrapnel]

I've just realised that I've now received excellent suggestions for naming all of the previously nameless CSRs: with that in mind, here's the final map of the CSA. Many thanks to everyone who was kind enough to lend assistance.

 

[Thoresby]

New Afrika's not quite at Bantustan level by the 90s, but it's not a fun place to live. In general, all of the explicitly "ethnic" CSRs have tested the concept of "drawing a line around a group of people and hoping for the best" to destruction: like the Sequoyah and Blair Mountain CSRs, its incoherence as an economic unit means that it's become an extremely expensive way for the CSA to show the world that its struggle for liberation applies to everyone (the Gullah CSR's managed to avoid this fate by owning Charleston and its port).

I'm guessing from this that Squoyah is basically a massive Indian Reservation complete with all the OTL problems of Indian reservations while Blair Mountain is hollowed out coal mining and industrial communities destroyed by the fact that with 1980's technology you simply don't need very many people to meet a developed economies requirement for coal and steel.

 

[Sam R.]

The Nation of Islam does still exist, but it's brutally persecuted wherever the government can find it.

Take all of your Irish police
Take all of your Polish police
Take all of your upstanding Baptists with an official human card

give them a gendarmarie
give them a political secret police

I’m crying in the middle of my workplace about what happened to Malcolm Little (he wouldn’t change his name he’d need the cover) being worse.

 

[Yankeewolf]

New Afrika's not quite at Bantustan level by the 90s, but it's not a fun place to live. In general, all of the explicitly "ethnic" CSRs have test

I've just realised that I've now received excellent suggestions for naming all of the previously nameless CSRs: with that in mind, here's the final map of the CSA. Many thanks to everyone who was kind enough to lend assistance.

View attachment 699907

I mean no disrespect to you, but those borders are abominable, and I probably would've joined the NWF purely out of spite for such horrors

The People's Militia are essentially a Syndicalist gendarmerie, with all that entails. There's a general (if unspoken) rule across urban areas in the Steel Belt/Midwest at this point that whichever ethnic group happens to run the local political machine ends up in control of staffing for the People's Militia and sanitation, with everything else being divided more-or-less equitably between the other ethnic groups according to population. Chicago's a special case: it's under the sway of an unwieldy but effective Irish-Polish-German-Ukrainian machine headed by Richard Daley. The state of the People's Militia reflects this, with Mondale's escort happening to be comprised of one Irishman and one Ukrainian.

On another note, I wonder how the Post-CSA transformation would impact the conception of American Ethnicity/"Americanness". Given the CSA's stagnation and how much of its structure of it was taken up by ethnic rackets, I could see how Reformist backlash especially post-CSA would lead towards pro-assimilationist arguments rising up in the mainstream. I don't think it'd get to the point where Dennis Kucinich is openly lambasting the "Ethnonarcissism" of the Daley Machine and Irish Americans regarding their stance on Northern Ireland. However, I do think the Reformists would settle on a stance that would echo that of Theodore Roosevelt on the issue even if they couch in a less pugilistic manner.

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all. This is just as true of the man who puts ‘native’ before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance. But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as anyone else.

The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic. The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country. The man who calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the land to which he feels his real heart allegiance, the better it will be for every good American. There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.

But ultimately, I think it would be interesting to see these Political Machines struggle to adapt in the 1990s as they're beset on all sides.

It may also be too late for the Borders of the Federation of American States to be rationalized or "brought back" to be the way it was pre revolution.

 

[LostInNewDelhi]

Swede Home Chicago (the world's second largest Swedish city elects a Swedish mayor)

It's often mistakenly said Chicago was the second largest Polish city in the world (actually third largest after Warsaw and Lodz). But in the early 20th century, it really was the world's second largest Swedish city after Stockholm; by 1900 Chicago had 145,000 first- and second-generation Swedes...

www.alternatehistory.com

 

[CalBear]

Swede Home Chicago (the world's second largest Swedish city elects a Swedish mayor)

It's often mistakenly said Chicago was the second largest Polish city in the world (actually third largest after Warsaw and Lodz). But in the early 20th century, it really was the world's second largest Swedish city after Stockholm; by 1900 Chicago had 145,000 first- and second-generation Swedes...

www.alternatehistory.com

THis seems to have been misposted.

 

[Steve Brinson]

THis seems to have been misposted.

I think it’s relevant. If we’re talking about how different local ethnic machines are going to adapt to and be affected by socialism, I think a post about OTL ethnic politics in Chicago is germane (no pun intended) to the topic.

On a related note, I wonder how the Hispanic population of Rio Grande ASR is doing. On the one hand, it would not surprise me if the area was majority-Hispanic; on the other hand, these circumstances seem pretty likely to maintain the existing Anglo dominance. I can see a couple of scenarios - Rio Grande as a de facto Hispanic New Afrika where a lot of other Hispanophones (possibly including Caribbean-diaspora folks in Florida, New York, etc.) get dumped with varying degrees of force, a “meet the new boss” scenario where the farmworkers, miners, and roughnecks have a very different ethnic makeup than their foremen and managers, an outright effort to deport Hispanic residents, citizen or not, to the other side of the border...

Similar question with the Cajun/Creole population of “Texarkana”, come to think of it.

 

[LostInNewDelhi]

THis seems to have been misposted.

It wasn't, it was meant to contribute to the Chicago discussion. Should have posted a line of explanation.

 

[CalBear]

It wasn't, it was meant to contribute to the Chicago discussion. Should have posted a line of explanation.

Probably would have helped.

 

[Boss Tweed]

I've been watching this timeline, and I just wanted to say—it's been a great read so far!

View attachment 699907

Those are some horrendous borders though. I mean, even if you wanted to make some sort of Appalachian ethnostate, why would you give it everything up to former DC, but not eastern Cumberland or western Tidewater? And if the CSRs are meant to become semi-independent after the collapse of the CSA, control over the mouth of the Mississippi is going to be hotly disputed.

 

[Thoresby]

On a related note, I wonder how the Hispanic population of Rio Grande ASR is doing. On the one hand, it would not surprise me if the area was majority-Hispanic; on the other hand, these circumstances seem pretty likely to maintain the existing Anglo dominance. I can see a couple of scenarios - Rio Grande as a de facto Hispanic New Afrika where a lot of other Hispanophones (possibly including Caribbean-diaspora folks in Florida, New York, etc.) get dumped with varying degrees of force, a “meet the new boss” scenario where the farmworkers, miners, and roughnecks have a very different ethnic makeup than their foremen and managers, an outright effort to deport Hispanic residents, citizen or not, to the other side of the border...

In the absence of the OTL post 1980 Latino migration that area is heavily white majority and the Latino element is mostly monolingual English speaking. The demographics of the region were very different in from their current ones at the PoD.

 

[Kolchak17]

Enjoying the timeline immensely and, as others have said, the idea of zooming in on just one area is genius .

The NWF, though, us going to have some fun once it tries to become an actual, you know, government.

 

[LostInNewDelhi]

Rio Grande as a de facto Hispanic New Afrika where a lot of other Hispanophones (possibly including Caribbean-diaspora folks in Florida, New York, etc.) get dumped with varying degrees of force, a “meet the new boss” scenario where the farmworkers, miners, and roughnecks have a very different ethnic makeup than their foremen and managers, an outright effort to deport Hispanic residents, citizen or not, to the other side of the border...

Yeah, nobody wants this. Like on New Afrika at least the Syndicalists are acting on someone's behalf. This kind of deportation would only happen in some Stalin-deporting-everyone-to-Kazakhstan situation, even then they would probably be deported to Grangeland since the local population is sparse and land is less scarce.

Not impossible that something like what you describe happens during a "Britain promised the Keys to Cuba if they serve as an invasion launchpad" war scare under a particularly unpleasant Chairman but it would quickly be reversed and would not lead to any significant change in how deported communities identify, because all they would want is to solidify their claim to the places they were taken from. (Although they could form "common grievance" fronts, they certainly wouldn't be a raza unida).

In the absence of the OTL post 1980 Latino migration that area is heavily white majority and the Latino element is mostly monolingual English speaking. The demographics of the region were very different in from their current ones at the PoD.

Were the Hispanos really not speaking Spanish at this point? "White" (which includes the Hispanos anyways, since the US doesn't have a "mestizo" category) majority I can agree with, but unless we're setting out to eliminate traditional Hispano, Pueblo, and Navajo culture New Mexico will remain a very unique place. Too unique, in fact, to easily assimilate even Spanish-speaking outsiders-- Hispano identity isn't "Mexican-American" as such, as far as they are concerned they have a separate story of origin. That of course also applies to the natives.

In fact the Pueblos probably have a very strange relationship with the local CSR. The Rio Grande government is bringing together a lot of groups that certainly interact but also have reason to keep each other at arm's length. At minimum there may be a sort of herder-farmer conflict where the herders now have the Texas cattle constituency on their side; but that also means Santa Fe has somewhere to push all these people away from the farmers (who are probably its favorite sons, as their social structures are easier to mold into an ideal form). Of these the Pueblo... well, pueblos are the most ideal of all-- the surviving fragment of the US's answer to Mesoamerica, a centuries-old civilizational complex with a legacy of irrigation, adobe-based architecture, and robust adaptability (taking in Spanish domesticates and passing them on to others). What's more, Rio Grande takes in more of their historical zone of interactions than New Mexico alone does-- it includes the historical lands of the Jumano traders, the Apache and Comanche, and more. So can the Rio Grande CSR get a lot of mileage out of its native inheritance? Absolutely-- and in the absence of large scale Mexican immigration that will be its local peculiarity, one that grows in visibility as Rio Grande's archaelogically-inclined (which may include more than a few administrators, or retired administrators) research these cultures and push for inclusion of their artistic motifs into the local state-architectural style. But even despite that, just because the CSR is nominally committed to the survival of the Pueblo lifestyle doesn't mean it won't force the Pueblo to endure costly experiments (that at worst will keep only the form of their institutions while changing everything about the function) or that it will consistently stand up for the embattled minorities (the Pueblos consist of several peoples with similar lifestyles and hypothesized common ancestral culture) against its far more numerous and historically higher-status rivals for scarce land and water.

Oh. And speaking of water. The Colorado River. Originating in the CSA, but turning definitively toward Arizona halfway down. Or perhaps there will be some harebrain scheme to divert the Colorado into the Rio Grande somehow, and deprive Southern California of the water that makes urban and rural life possible there? Stranger things have been done over a century of manhandling that river with all of this nation's strength.

 

[Wayside]

one that grows in visibility as Rio Grande's archaelogically-inclined (which may include more than a few administrators, or retired administrators) research these cultures and push for inclusion of their artistic motifs into the local state-architectural style. But even despite that, just because the CSR is nominally committed to the survival of the Pueblo lifestyle doesn't mean it won't force the Pueblo to endure costly experiments (that at worst will keep only the form of their institutions while changing everything about the function) or that it will consistently stand up for the embattled minorities (the Pueblos consist of several peoples with similar lifestyles and hypothesized common ancestral culture) against its far more numerous and historically higher-status rivals for scarce land and water.

Bolivia comes to mind.

Oh. And speaking of water. The Colorado River. Originating in the CSA, but turning definitively toward Arizona halfway down. Or perhaps there will be some harebrain scheme to divert the Colorado into the Rio Grande somehow, and deprive Southern California of the water that makes urban and rural life possible there? Stranger things have been done over a century of manhandling that river with all of this nation's strength.

It could also serve as a unique diplomatic opening, in the same way that a plane hijacking forced Taiwan and the PRC to actually talk.