Alternate History General Discussion

[Coiler]

What if tanks were called "war tractors" or (as they and APCs are often called anyway) "tracks"?

 

[Charles EP M.]

What if tanks were called "war tractors" or (as they and APCs are often called anyway) "tracks"?

Communists would be disparaging about trackies.

 

[Delta Force]

Someone actually made a tacticute waifu version of a soldier from Turtledove's TL-191.

Is there a reason why the United States is using the stahlhelm and Johnson rifle?

 

[monroe]

Is there a reason why the United States is using the stahlhelm and Johnson rifle?

In TL-191 the US sided with Germany in WW1and adopt the stahlhelm as part of that alliance (there's a lot of stupid stuff in that TL where the US fails to develop native designs and tech, and the failure to develop a native helmet is just a small one), while I believe the Johnson is meant to stand in for the AK as part of the broader stupid "whoa what if Eastern Front in North America" analogue

 

[Charles EP M.]

which I didn't realise is based on Vladimir the Great checking out the other religions before going for Orthodox Christianity (which has factors going for it that aren't there for Islam but "because this is a silly counterfactual, he somehow does it")

 

[History Learner]

which I didn't realise is based on Vladimir the Great checking out the other religions before going for Orthodox Christianity (which has factors going for it that aren't there for Islam but "because this is a silly counterfactual, he somehow does it")

One thing I like to do when it comes to different spread of religions is to try to do a 1:1 exchange in a sense. For example, if the Byzantines survive in their Pre-630s format, I'll have India go Muslim in response. If Byzantium survives in its Pre-1076 form, then Al-Andalus stays around, etc.

 

[Warthog]

which I didn't realise is based on Vladimir the Great checking out the other religions before going for Orthodox Christianity (which has factors going for it that aren't there for Islam but "because this is a silly counterfactual, he somehow does it")

I remember a short story on this topic and Bulgaria, from the POV of the Islamic delegate

 

[Ricardolindo]

which I didn't realise is based on Vladimir the Great checking out the other religions before going for Orthodox Christianity (which has factors going for it that aren't there for Islam but "because this is a silly counterfactual, he somehow does it")

Good video. It doesn't repeat the fable that Vladimir the Great rejected Islam because of alcohol and pork.
The alcohol taboo was widely disregarded in the pre-modern Islamic world. The pork taboo is more problematic but pork was the major protein source in pre-Islamic Indonesia and a study in 2021 showed Muslims in Sicily ate pork. (I read about it in this article https://jpost.com/archaeology/ham-fisted-haram-medieval-islamic-sicily-ate-pork-study-finds-672374 You need to pay to read the full study at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352409X21005113.)
The early Berbers are also believed to have disregarded the pork taboo.
As the video says, the actual problem is that the Rus had far more trade with the Byzantine Empire than with the Islamic world.

 

[Warthog]

"Islands in the Sea" by Turtledove

Thanks

The memorable exchange of
They will only allow you one wife, no concubines!
But they won't allow you to drink!

 

[lerk]

It would be interesting to see an Authoritarian America TL which just has it be run by authoritarian neoliberals. They still have things like free trade, immigration (though a bit more curbed), multiracial, maybe a few progressive areas have LGBT rights, etc. but overall it is run by a one-party state with military involvement who believe that whatever progress America is making will go down the drain in case of democracy. The far-right and far-left hate this state, and are the only ones engaging in violent action against it. And in the middle there are diaspora liberal democrats, who are calling for (most probably in vain) the establishment of a liberal democracy in the United States. A part of me thinks that the best way to achieve this with a still recognizable TL is with a Cold War POD - hardline anti-communist regime is formed which then moderates after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

 

[Warthog]

It would be interesting to see an Authoritarian America TL which just has it be run by authoritarian neoliberals. They still have things like free trade, immigration (though a bit more curbed), multiracial, maybe a few progressive areas have LGBT rights, etc. but overall it is run by a one-party state with military involvement who believe that whatever progress America is making will go down the drain in case of democracy. The far-right and far-left hate this state, and are the only ones engaging in violent action against it. And in the middle there are diaspora liberal democrats, who are calling for (most probably in vain) the establishment of a liberal democracy in the United States. A part of me thinks that the best way to achieve this with a still recognizable TL is with a Cold War POD - hardline anti-communist regime is formed which then moderates after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

J Edgar Hoover, either after the assassination of Kennedy or under Nixon.

There's also

Resurrection Day

In the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis, the U.S. …

www.goodreads.com

 

[Steve Brinson]

It would be interesting to see an Authoritarian America TL which just has it be run by authoritarian neoliberals. They still have things like free trade, immigration (though a bit more curbed), multiracial, maybe a few progressive areas have LGBT rights, etc. but overall it is run by a one-party state with military involvement who believe that whatever progress America is making will go down the drain in case of democracy. The far-right and far-left hate this state, and are the only ones engaging in violent action against it. And in the middle there are diaspora liberal democrats, who are calling for (most probably in vain) the establishment of a liberal democracy in the United States. A part of me thinks that the best way to achieve this with a still recognizable TL is with a Cold War POD - hardline anti-communist regime is formed which then moderates after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Could be interesting as the aftermath of a domestic fascist regime with broad public support (or the appearance thereof) that was either overthrown from without or by a corporate/military movement - “democracy led to atrocities we can’t repeat, and only the efforts of an enlightened tutelary government and market discipline can bring out the best and hold back the worst in Americans.”

Not a perfect analogy, but Singapore might be a useful analogy here: my understanding is that the PAP fairly explicitly uses the history of violent ethnic conflict in Singapore as justification for its own auth-centrist neoliberal paternalism.

 

[Coiler]

Silly sports WI: Super Bowl halftime shows never progress beyond the novelty acts and marching bands they started off with.

 

[RyanF]

Silly sports WI: Super Bowl halftime shows never progress beyond the novelty acts and marching bands they started off with.

Imagine Up with People delivering clean-cut, dated musical routines every year forever.

 

[Coiler]

I actually have a work in progress of alternate offbeat halftime shows that include Japanese idol groups and avant garde performers (not both at once, of course)

 

[JesterBL]

Oh, believe me, reading the things the British and other colonial empires did in places like India and Kenya shows they were just as brutal as them at times (the British Empire really still is underrated in how awful they were). Most countries did incredibly terrible things to other countries in the 19th and 20th century to get resources for industrialization and modernization. Some countries can do genuinely awful things despite not being pure autocracies, I think it's also healthy to think the concept of Empires as being killers too.

I'm not saying that autocracies don't have a tendency to do more terrible things because of lack of accountability, I think that a lot of people in both the outside world and occasionally on history forums seem to think that their country was less bad in terms of atrocities because that's an authoritarian German, Russian, Chinese, or Japanese problem, but often times they absolutely did have an incredibly brutal history. As much as we are tired of whataboutism by tankies and natcons and such, people in say, Sub-Saharan Africa are distrusting of Westerners and more trusting of non-western European nations (like Russia, China, or India) out of experience, like how many Eastern Europeans distrust Russians out of experience.

I also want to ask this: if I liked, say a candidate for advocating for more rights for workers, but had a chummy position of Ukraine or Palestine, would I also be guilty by association? A whole lot of people seem think this. Would I be apologizing for the crimes of the British and Soviet Empires if I complimented the British naval and industrial inventions, or the Soviet rail and housing plans?

Look man, I sympathize with your plight but I don't have the answers to everything on this topic, my point was that the Soviets were nasty fuckers and apologism should be met with scorn.

If it's any consolation, I do think the old empires of Europe (and my own country!) should be met with the same scorn as any dictatorship even if they weren't as openly autocratic/batshit insane. Their modus operandi in conquered regions has shocking similarities to the way those fuckers operated in their client states, so I have no issue with damning them to the same bin of shit as the Reds or even the Reich.

The thing I found consistent is that many have a fondness for an old empire because of the leaps and bounds in progress that was made during their heyday, despite coming at the sacrifice if many people's lives. A British worker would have absolutely been enamoured with new lifesaving inventions, a Soviet Russian citizen would have been enamoured with the big cities and electricity, and a Japanese family would have loved the prospect of getting ahead and going side-by-side with the world powers (or in the case if Russia, the 90s being dogshit for the former Soviet Bloc).

Unfortunately, nostalgia for these old times is often misplaced because it often comes with lack of acknowledgement of trampling other nations. In America, we can sort of see it with Boomer and Gen X nostalgia being used by Trumpists in an unsavory way.

I didn't want to derail the thread which is primarily about memes, chili ethics and dunking on Elon Musk but I think this is a very interesting exchange which shows us some of the value of alternate history in trying to make sense of actual history.

Like, in thinking of the Soviet Union and the British Empire, I would say there was no one Soviet Union, no one British Empire, but many, separated from one another by history and geography and so the degree of moral culpability for say, the Holodomor by say, Gorbachev (or any alternate Soviet leader of the same era) would be very different from the moral culpability of Stalin, and the instrument of state which perpetrated the Holodomor would be very different from any later development and therefore, the possibilities of another Holodomor would be (in this case) greatly minimized. The British Empire which perpetrated the Irish Famine was very different and very distant from the British Empire that perpetrated the Bengal Famine which was in turn much, much closer to the British Empire that detained the Mau-Maus in Kenya's Belsen was very different and distant from the ministry of Tony Blair. We could quibble as to how much time (if any amount will do) is enough (how much ink has been spilled on a similar question in Palestine?) to wash the stains of history away.

But if you were to propose a similar argument for a hypothetical surviving Nazi Germany, my skin would crawl and my first instinct would be to think you an apologist and a sympathizer for Nazi crimes, even though, as we've discussed in this very thread, part of the horror of a surviving Nazi Germany is that it would come to be seen as something normal. They would pave over their mass graves and people would politely agree not to talk about it too often (if they acknowledged or knew about it all).

It's a tough one, and I'm sure there's an essay somewhere in this for someone smarter than myself to pen.

 

[Hendryk]

It's a tough one, and I'm sure there's an essay somewhere in this for someone smarter than myself to pen.

Not an essay, but @SpanishSpy wrote a great (and chilling) vignette on that theme.

 

[Warthog]

I didn't want to derail the thread which is primarily about memes, chili ethics and dunking on Elon Musk but I think this is a very interesting exchange which shows us some of the value of alternate history in trying to make sense of actual history.

Like, in thinking of the Soviet Union and the British Empire, I would say there was no one Soviet Union, no one British Empire, but many, separated from one another by history and geography and so the degree of moral culpability for say, the Holodomor by say, Gorbachev (or any alternate Soviet leader of the same era) would be very different from the moral culpability of Stalin, and the instrument of state which perpetrated the Holodomor would be very different from any later development and therefore, the possibilities of another Holodomor would be (in this case) greatly minimized. The British Empire which perpetrated the Irish Famine was very different and very distant from the British Empire that perpetrated the Bengal Famine which was in turn much, much closer to the British Empire that detained the Mau-Maus in Kenya's Belsen was very different and distant from the ministry of Tony Blair. We could quibble as to how much time (if any amount will do) is enough (how much ink has been spilled on a similar question in Palestine?) to wash the stains of history away.

But if you were to propose a similar argument for a hypothetical surviving Nazi Germany, my skin would crawl and my first instinct would be to think you an apologist and a sympathizer for Nazi crimes, even though, as we've discussed in this very thread, part of the horror of a surviving Nazi Germany is that it would come to be seen as something normal. They would pave over their mass graves and people would politely agree not to talk about it too often (if they acknowledged or knew about it all).

It's a tough one, and I'm sure there's an essay somewhere in this for someone smarter than myself to pen.

Thanks for this thoughtful piece, and too @Stikfigur for yours also.

I think that comparisons between genocides is rarely helpful, as while for example Mozambiquans would doubtless agree that yes, the Nazis killed more people in the Holocaust than the Portuguese did at Wiriyamu, that doesn't really change anything for those who lost their families at Wiriyamu. Perhaps an exception to that is where a scholarly approach is taken to genocides by the same state, such as Prof Lushaba's analysis of the Herero genocide in Namibia and the holocaust?

I think the matter of history and geography is interesting, but there is still much to be said where the current nation is the same state that committed the genocide, or is legally the successor nation or sees itself as such. To me it is not only time, but the view the nation takes of the genocide event - denial, obfuscation, apology, denunciation, or something else. So to me Gorbachev is different from the moral culpability of Stalin, not only due to the passage of time but because of the denunciation of (some of) Stalin's actions in Khruschev's Secret Speech*. I think the nature of Putin's embrace of Stalin places him in a different position morally than Gorbachev was.

Similarly, I see a moral difference in the position of the UK with respect to Kenya since the 2013 apology and acceptance of guilt vs the position prior to that vs an alternative UK government that maintained that British atrocities during the counter-insurgency were the work of a few "bad apples", or one that argued it was justified by the nature of the war.

However where the only connection is ideology, I don't see a moral relationship between a modern-day Italian communist and Stalin's actions, just because the person is a communist - no more than I would expect a moral relationship between an Italian capitalist and the actions of Union Carbide at Bhopal, just because the person is a capitalist.

As for the Nazis, even without reference to historical uniqueness of the Holocaust, an alternate history of a surviving Nazi state would more or less cease to be a Nazi state if it denounced or apologised for the Holocaust. They simply wouldn't be Nazis - so a surviving Nazi state in alternate history would ipso facto be one that still supports / accepts / justifies the Holocaust.

*I am not sure this applies to the Holodomor, though?

 

[JesterBL]

*I am not sure this applies to the Holodomor, though?

I included the Bengal Famine and the Holodomor in part for this reason- neither the British Government nor the Soviet Union apologized or even recognized their complicity in either famine. In both cases, if anything, history hardened the debate about their involvement and moral culpability (a similar dynamic exists around the use of nuclear weapons on Japan in the US).

 

[Stikfigur]

Thanks for this thoughtful piece, and too @Stikfigur for yours also.

I think that comparisons between genocides is rarely helpful, as while for example Mozambiquans would doubtless agree that yes, the Nazis killed more people in the Holocaust than the Portuguese did at Wiriyamu, that doesn't really change anything for those who lost their families at Wiriyamu. Perhaps an exception to that is where a scholarly approach is taken to genocides by the same state, such as Prof Lushaba's analysis of the Herero genocide in Namibia and the holocaust?

I think the matter of history and geography is interesting, but there is still much to be said where the current nation is the same state that committed the genocide, or is legally the successor nation or sees itself as such. To me it is not only time, but the view the nation takes of the genocide event - denial, obfuscation, apology, denunciation, or something else. So to me Gorbachev is different from the moral culpability of Stalin, not only due to the passage of time but because of the denunciation of (some of) Stalin's actions in Khruschev's Secret Speech*. I think the nature of Putin's embrace of Stalin places him in a different position morally than Gorbachev was.

Similarly, I see a moral difference in the position of the UK with respect to Kenya since the 2013 apology and acceptance of guilt vs the position prior to that vs an alternative UK government that maintained that British atrocities during the counter-insurgency were the work of a few "bad apples", or one that argued it was justified by the nature of the war.

However where the only connection is ideology, I don't see a moral relationship between a modern-day Italian communist and Stalin's actions, just because the person is a communist - no more than I would expect a moral relationship between an Italian capitalist and the actions of Union Carbide at Bhopal, just because the person is a capitalist.

As for the Nazis, even without reference to historical uniqueness of the Holocaust, an alternate history of a surviving Nazi state would more or less cease to be a Nazi state if it denounced or apologised for the Holocaust. They simply wouldn't be Nazis - so a surviving Nazi state in alternate history would ipso facto be one that still supports / accepts / justifies the Holocaust.

*I am not sure this applies to the Holodomor, though?

I think that there is also a difficult line to tow about recognizing the crimes of Soviet Russia and the British Empire and whataboutism as people mentioned. In America, there is a whole entourage of Nazi and Nazi adjacent people dedicated to saying "The nazi's weren't that bad, look at the Soviets (and FDR!)" to apologize for the Holocaust or slavery (I have seen this in the other place which veers into outright apologia at times). It is important to recognize the wrongs of many countries, but it is a difficult line towing between that and whataboutism. I think it is a trap many fall into, when an argument is used try to tie their reasonable position (wanting more distribution towards the unfortunate) to some far flung Empire, people begin to internalize it to disastrous effects (I think this is sometime many on the left and the third world fall into in regards to NATO, but the same cab be said about some NATO folk and Palestine too). It's the reason why me and others have become antsy towards anticommunist sentiments, and I think it's similar with other topics too.

Of course none of that means we should not talk about Russia's imperial subjugation of surrounding nations or the British in India. But choosing to focus on a topic is really something to consider and is often difficult to manage.