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Least favorite alt-history story?

JesterBL said:
Don't worry, the victorious Confederacy solves racism by the early 20th century.
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They couldn't even begin.

I was recently reading "the myth of the lost cause" - review below - and one thing it made clear was just how important slavery was to the Confederate states. It may not have been the sole cause of the war, and the sole motive for independence, but it was a very big issue as far as they were concerned. Slavery was very important, economicly speaking, and was no way the ruling classes could afford to give up their slaves without ruining themselves in the process. This was so important to them that they effectively sabotaged their own war effort, both by refusing to recruit black troops and alienating Britain and France by keeping slaves.

A secondary problem was that the slaves could not be expected to be happy about their treatment. Who would be? For the south, being the slaves carried the risk of the former slaves either migrating north (and thus depriving the south of their labour) or taking revenge for their treatment. The fear of slave revolt was very real - so, too, was the propaganda put forward to convince southerners that ending slavery would be utterly disastrous and that meddling outsiders didn't know what they were talking about.

It would be like expecting Saudi Arabia to stop exporting oil. It might be national suicide. It certainly would be for the ruling class.

I can see slavery becoming much less vital as the industrial age develops, although the south would be reluctant to embrace industrialisation as it would weaken the ruling class. But end racism? Not a hope in hell.

Chris

chrishanger.wordpress.com

Book Review – The Myth of the Lost Cause

The Myth of the Lost Cause – Edward H. Bonekemper “I’m saying very plainly that the Yankees are better equipped than we. They’ve got factories, shipyards, coalmines… and a f…
chrishanger.wordpress.com chrishanger.wordpress.com
 
Charles EP M. said:
"We've finally abolished telling whites to feel guilty"
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The good blacks stood by their masters and fought off the bad blacks who wanted to be free and were accepted by white society with the exception of a few extremists who were definitely marginalized.

It goes back to that no one wants to be a bully thing- there's a whole category of Confederate fans who don't want to admit that their racist fantasy is actually racist.
 
Sulemain said:
If the South was successful in its treason, it would slide into pariah status and economic collapse in short order.

The Union would evolve into basically normal western industrial democracy by the turn of the century before crushing the backwards confederacy in a WW1 analogue.
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Cinco de Mayo by KingSweden24 on the Other Place is pretty close to what you are imagining here.
Of course, there are some differences (on US-CSA stuff, in his TL, the world is almost unrecognizable from our world) but it is close to your interpretation.
 
Coiler said:
Stuff on wikis is usually long hanging fruit, but this feels like a Poe's Law "parody or legit" situation concerning pop culture AH. Even with a running time of nearly 3 hours, each of the many, many characters listed would get about a second of screentime.
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Suddenly I dont feel like I've wasted my day with my writing.

That list was like reading ready player one while on heavy duty medication
 
Warthog said:
So this and the other work by the same author that has a big following on the other place are published on Amazon, who told me this for some reason. When I followed the link out of morbid curiosity there was this
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Death of Russia always seemed like it was written with current politics in mind, by some really hawkish type who believes Russia must be balkanised. Like a lot of the terminology is very blatantly anachronistic (ie Dudayev using "rashist"). Also a lot of the figures used are just blatantly misplaced.
But besides that I also just feel like it misunderstand the 1993 crisis.
 
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Rooin Mahmood said:
Death of Russia always seemed like it was written with current politics in mind, by some really hawkish type who believes Russia must be balkanised. Like a lot of the terminology is very blatantly anachronistic (ie Dudayev using "rashist"). Also a lot of the figures used are just blatantly misplaced.
But besides that I also just feel like it misunderstand the 1993 crisis.
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You see that a lot, including many online leftists who treat it as a simple self-coup, and mourn the failure of the "popularly elected Duma" to stop the tyrannical Yeltsin while the West cheered. In reality it was an utter mess where both sides bent the rules until they broke, and while Western governments were glad to see that Yeltsin hadn't got shot, it also cast a pall over his leadership for most of them. Like... well, all of 90s era post-Soviet Russia, it's a complicated muddle that denies you simple lessons and people to cheer on.
 
Space Oddity said:
You see that a lot, including many online leftists who treat it as a simple self-coup, and mourn the failure of the "popularly elected Duma" to stop the tyrannical Yeltsin while the West cheered. In reality it was an utter mess where both sides bent the rules until they broke, and while Western governments were glad to see that Yeltsin hadn't got shot, it also cast a pall over his leadership for most of them. Like... well, all of 90s era post-Soviet Russia, it's a complicated muddle that denies you simple lessons and people to cheer on.
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True though the writer of this particular one seems to think of it as a conflict between a liberal democrat (Yeltsin) and red-brown fascists (the NSF) - when in reality it was a struggle between two sides of the same post-Soviet elite who each wished to create their own image of Russia.
 
Rooin Mahmood said:
True though the writer of this particular one seems to think of it as a conflict between a liberal democrat (Yeltsin) and red-brown fascists (the NSF) - when in reality it was a struggle between two sides of the same post-Soviet elite who each wished to create their own image of Russia.
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Obviously The Death Of Russia is dumb (it's from the guy who did the 'Mussolini is a gigachad' apologia TL) but comparing Yeltsin to red-brown fascists in terms of awfulness is... a take.

Yeltsin was a normal, corrupt sack of shit. Hardly an endangered species in the ex-Eastern Block at the time. All the NSF assclowns are believers in one of the an ideology concocted from the two worst political schools of thought in human history.
 
Rooin Mahmood said:
True though the writer of this particular one seems to think of it as a conflict between a liberal democrat (Yeltsin) and red-brown fascists (the NSF) - when in reality it was a struggle between two sides of the same post-Soviet elite who each wished to create their own image of Russia.
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theflyingmgoose said:
Obviously The Death Of Russia is dumb (it's from the guy who did the 'Mussolini is a gigachad' apologia TL) but comparing Yeltsin to red-brown fascists in terms of awfulness is... a take.

Yeltsin was a normal, corrupt sack of shit. Hardly an endangered species in the ex-Eastern Block at the time. All the NSF assclowns are believers in one of the an ideology concocted from the two worst political schools of thought in human history.
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A lot of really bad history surrounding eastern Europe has popped up in recent times, especially with some online pundits *cough*Kraut *cough* pushing the whole "Russian imperialism is because it is asian and mongol" which I don't know how something that blatantly racist gets past the censors.
I know I said this, but I really don't like the whole "free europe vs asian despots".
 
Warthog said:
For comparison Agent Lavender had a substantial amount of feedback on the other place, quite a few things altered or small fixes and typos during discussion. I'm sure a huge amount of work went into preparing it for publication, but at least some things were picked up by readers, who authors engaged with.
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Which completely ruined it!

It had the best ending before due to feedback @Meadow and @Lord Roem were forced to change it!

Bring back Agent Primrose!
 
Redshank Galloglass said:
Harrison's trilogy was an entire series of "What if England was entirely a nation of Blackadder family members, also Wales, Scotland, and parts of Ireland are Baldrick" and America was an entire nation of Calvinist Duke Nukems.


I can't help but love the damn thing in spite of how ridiculous it is.
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It least the cunning plan works for Ireland in this trilogy.
 
Redshank Galloglass said:
Harrison's trilogy was an entire series of "What if England was entirely a nation of Blackadder family members, also Wales, Scotland, and parts of Ireland are Baldrick" and America was an entire nation of Calvinist Duke Nukems.


I can't help but love the damn thing in spite of how ridiculous it is.
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Blackadder Season One, you mean. Utterly incompetent.
His entire trilogy left me deeply disappointed. I thought he was better than that pile of offal.
 
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