WI not racist president Pelley?

[Gukpard]

So, aparentely William Dudley Pelley, the leader of the american silvershirts OTL did had some public support on the state of Washington with some few thousands attending his speeches, a negligible amount of people if comparated to the whole US population.

Now, what if Pelley wasn't a fascist supporter and instead went for a mainstream democrat politics, what kind of presidency we could expect of him? I wanted to ask this because Brazil is known for having some unusual political figures, the most explicit of them being former president Jânio Quadros, and Pelley was a occultist and had some insane christian theological views, and so if he somehow can be put on the white house without being a fascist sympatizer we could have a very weird, and funny government,

 

[zhropkick]

Pelley was a basket case so his presidency would either be a disaster or an extremely milquetoast one in which an incompetent Pelley is at the mercy of his administration.

 

[AndrewH]

This is like asking if “Mosley wasn’t a fascist, how fun would he be as PM?”

Pelley is inextricably tied to racism and fascism - you can’t separate him from those two things, because that’s what his entire worldview was founded upon.

 

[Gukpard]

Pelley was a basket case so his presidency would either be a disaster or an extremely milquetoast one in which an incompetent Pelley is at the mercy of his administration.

Jânio QUadros presidency was a desaster, to the point that when he resigned the people fired fireworks comemorating. So the question is: How would a desastrous Pelley presidency look like? Would he try to meet occultist groups in the white house?

 

[zhropkick]

This is like asking if “Mosley wasn’t a fascist, how fun would he be as PM?”

Pelley is inextricably tied to racism and fascism - you can’t separate him from those two things, because that’s what his entire worldview was founded upon.

Mosley is actually an extremely poor comparison to make here, he began his political career as a very respectable politician who met Ghandi, supported Irish unity and was a member of both the conservative and labour parties. After he became a fascist he said that he "was a man of the left, but became a man of the centre". When he was in labour he supported an economic programme that was only a little more statist than FDR's. He was anti-war as well. Mosley could have been a very good guy if history had gone a little bit differently.

A better comparison would be Hitler, who grew up surrounded by German nationalist sentiment from his German-Austrian peers and was profoundly changed as a person after fighting for his ethnicity in WW1.

 

[AndrewH]

Mosley is actually an extremely poor comparison to make here, he began his political career as a very respectable politician who met Ghandi, supported Irish unity and was a member of both the conservative and labour parties. After he became a fascist he said that he "was a man of the left, but became a man of the centre". When he was in labour he supported an economic programme that was only a little more statist than FDR's. He was anti-war as well. Mosley could have been a very good guy if history had gone a little bit differently.

I know who Mosley was and his history, but I figured it would make sense to use a would-be fascist leader to make my point, not, y’know, Hitler.

 

[zhropkick]

I know who Mosley was and his history, but I figured it would make sense to use a would-be fascist leader to make my point, not, y’know, Hitler.

A very poor comparison from somebody who knows about Mosley and his history, but I digress.

 

[Arkenfolm]

I'd put quite a few politicians ahead of W.D. Pelley for "potential presidents". If he abandoned his "unique" religious views and his fascism yet still have entered politics, then almost nobody would have heard of him outside of the local area he would have derived his base.

 

[Gukpard]

I'd put quite a few politicians ahead of W.D. Pelley for "potential presidents". If he abandoned his "unique" religious views and his fascism yet still have entered politics, then almost nobody would have heard of him outside of the local area he would have derived his base.

Can't he win for being "unique"? By making this a "Pelley who" scenario were he can be altered to be the same person, but raised differently.

 

[markus meecham]

If not pelley, which politicians are/could be skilled/lucky enough to win the us presidency on naked populism, and unskilled enough to fail miserably as soon as they sit on the oval room chair?
No trump jokes.

 

[The Red]

Mosley could have been a very good guy if history had gone a little bit differently.

You made some excellent points but I’m not sure about this one. Mosley was an idealist and entirely confident in himself as the saviour of the U.K. based on these ideals, this made him an impatient control freak who, whilst able to build a following around him, would likely have been unable to build enough support to get him into No. 10. Granted the Labour Party was a state in 1930-31 and perhaps if he’d hung around he would have been able to take over as Labour leader and then eventually become PM but I’m not sure he’d be remembered fondly. Mosley could delegate but he hated consensus whenever it involved him making concessions. He’d likely go down in history as a PM known for cabinet infighting before eventually uniting his opponents against him to the extent he could be removed. That would be much better than his OTL legacy of course but I’d be sceptical about many seeing him as a “very good guy.”

 

[GorillaTheater]

If not pelley, which politicians are/could be skilled/lucky enough to win the us presidency on naked populism, and unskilled enough to fail miserably as soon as they sit on the oval room chair?

This is a trick question, right?

 

[markus meecham]

This is a trick question, right?

And worth half the test grade.

 

[Indicus]

It's like asking "What if Gandhi was a violent revolutionary?". Much like how Gandhi is irreversibly connected to pacifism and nonviolence, Pelley is irreversibly connected to racism.

 

[Alex1guy]

Wasnt he legitimately insane?

 

[Gukpard]

Wasnt he legitimately insane?

I really wouldn't be surprised if he was.

 

[KuboCaskett]

To be fair though, fascism doesn't have to be entirely close to racism like Nazism did but it's more of a matter of how much racism is used in regards to the former ideology (though given the views on race at the time before WWII in the US, I can see some fascists being content with some form of segregation and whatnot).

 

[The Red]

To be fair though, fascism doesn't have to be entirely close to racism like Nazism did

Fascism and racism are pretty much inseparable.

 

[Arkenfolm]

Fascism and racism are pretty much inseparable.

"Race! It is a feeling, not a reality: ninety-five percent, at least, is a feeling. Nothing will ever make me believe that biologically pure races can be shown to exist today. Amusingly enough, not one of those who have proclaimed the "nobility" of the Teutonic race was himself a Teuton." - Benito Mussolini

Fascist Italy wasn't much more racist than other European countries at the time were, and there's nothing about fascism which requires it to be racist.

 

[The Red]

"Race! It is a feeling, not a reality: ninety-five percent, at least, is a feeling. Nothing will ever make me believe that biologically pure races can be shown to exist today. Amusingly enough, not one of those who have proclaimed the "nobility" of the Teutonic race was himself a Teuton." - Benito Mussolini

Fascist Italy wasn't much more racist than other European countries at the time were, and there's nothing about fascism which requires it to be racist.

At the same time Mussolini fretted about the “numeric and geographic expansion of the yellow and black races” and how he feared that that would mean “the civilization of the white man is destined to perish.” He might have mocked the Nazi's racial views when it suited him to differentiate himself from Hitler but he was always a racist.