The Borders of Genre: The Glorification of Fascism Within Alternate History

[Ricardolindo]

I don't really know 19th century Brazilian history well, having read more Artigas than Brazilian writings, but given that Brazilian approach to the abolition of slavery roughly tracks with Prussia's* so am not inclined to see a much better situation..

* although not in the colonies, but would Brazil be better?

While Brazil only abolished slavery on 13 May 1888, in 1872, three fourths of blacks and mulattoes were already free because it was much easier and common to free a slave in Brazil than in the United States.

 

[Warthog]

While Brazil only abolished slavery on 13 May 1888, in 1872, three fourths of blacks and mulattoes were already free because it was much easier and common to free a slave in Brazil than in the United States.

Indeed. And Prussia had done more by then too. But I don't see something in Brazlian history suggesting they'd be somehow nicer in Namibia than Germany was by the turn of the century?

 

[Charles EP M.]

2. If we are inhabiting an environment made a happier place to live through the suffering and deaths of others, how would we know it?

We do know this in a number of countries that profited off past violence. It is a common theme in classes and stories for disruptive changes like the Industrial Revolution, "progress was good in general but these people suffered", and the general public here, America, Oz etc seem aware big empires & colonial origins come from violence. The sticking point seems more how much violence, what the motive was, and if you can say someone else was worse; specifics are uncomfortable.

 

[Nyvis]

Yeah, most of their capital was non-fungible, but there is also a lifestyle issue: industrialization means that the Southern gentry would have to play catch-up to the grubby Yankee upstarts, their kids would have to study finance and engineering instead of prancing around in fancy uniforms like true gentlemen, and they'd have to eventually renounce a social system in which one's worth in inherited rather than earned. I feel that as a class, they may well decide it's not worth the trouble. Brazil provides a good template of a creole society that eschewed industrial development well into the 20th century because its ruling class found it too plebeian.

I'm convinced on the lifestyle and social system but very much not on earned vs inherited. Industry barons aren't free from failsons. And it takes a lot less skill (and luck) to get big if you start with wealth already (or an unpaid workforce, in their case).

 

[SenatorChickpea]

Here is an idea: What if Brazil had colonized Namibia and settled it with Brazilians who being mostly mixed race themselves would probably not mind mixing with the Natives?

It would still be brutal racialised land theft, because that’s what colonialism is.

 

[Warthog]

It would still be brutal racialised land theft, because that’s what colonialism is.

Yep
Bluntly the fact that more Brazilian men might have taken local mistresses than Germanen doesn't change the outcome

 

[SenatorChickpea]

Yep
Bluntly the fact that more Brazilian men might have taken local mistresses than Germanen doesn't change the outcome

At the other place, someone was asking about how the Congo might have developed if it had been colonised by a humane country that was prepared to pay people good wages to harvest wild rubber… like the US.

Leaving aside that characterisation of the US, or indeed the ignorance about how wild rubber is harvested, the problem with ‘humane’ colonisation is that anyone who sees the subaltern as people wouldn’t fucking invade in the first place.

 

[SpanishSpy]

At the other place, someone was asking about how the Congo might have developed if it had been colonised by a humane country that was prepared to pay people good wages to harvest wild rubber… like the US.

Leaving aside that characterisation of the US, or indeed the ignorance about how wild rubber is harvested, the problem with ‘humane’ colonisation is that anyone who sees the subaltern as people wouldn’t fucking invade in the first place.

As a Filipino-American, I

[SCREAMS INTERNALLY]

 

[Warthog]

Leaving aside that characterisation of the US, or indeed the ignorance about how wild rubber is harvested, the problem with ‘humane’ colonisation is that anyone who sees the subaltern as people wouldn’t fucking invade in the first place.

As a Filipino-American, I

[SCREAMS INTERNALLY]

Asking this is basically asking what if someone who is basically like me* and decent like me** had all that absolute power Rommel / Paulus / Smith / Verwoerd had and exercised it honourably, what would happen?

No. The proponent is saying I want to be that fascist but don't judge me

*white male
*are you sure, given your fantasy?

 

[Strategos' Risk]

Why would Brazil colonize Namibia when Angola is right there

 

[Max Sinister]

While I haven't read all the pages of this thread, I'm not surprised it became that long.

Let me just point out one thing: 1984 is a book where the totalitarians win, even if that should be impossible - but Orwell managed to write it in a way that you don't have any sympathy for them. Hence, I'd say it's possible to do this, though it might be that you have to be an author on Orwell's level for it.

Back to the classics, folks!

 

[Max Sinister]

Another thing which Orwell did right in 1984 and not too many people dealing with nazis in fiction (whether AH or not) are doing: Their brazen, brash, unashamed lies. Certainly something like this should happen in any "Nazis win" TL. At the very least, if they meet foreigners. (Edit: "meet", not "mean"!)

This is probably why Fatherland only spent a few paragraphs explaining how the Nazis won. (And even that was pretty weak; the Nazis discover Enigma and starve the UK into surrender, conquer the Caucasus oil fields and threaten America with a conventional proto-ICBM exploded near Manhattan? Yikes.)

Because so many people are getting it wrong: They didn't "take the Caucasus oil fields" in 1943, cutting off the Red Army from its main oil supply was enough.

My first instinct on reading the article was: What if someone wrote a post-Nazi victory book where, instead of the "ruthless efficiency and engineering triumphs" meme, we saw a more realistic "economic chickens come home to roost while leadership continues with over-grandiose fantasies.

It'd be a good thing to have something like this to read, indeed.

Clean Kriegsmarine seems to be a relatively common thing as well, which is what I was getting at with Das Boot. So, effectively "the navy weren't *really* Nazis, you see".

Rommel is the other general who gets a lot of whitewashing. Hess and Canaris get it too.

Well, it was said in Nazi Germany that the Heer was conservative, the Kriegsmarine reactionary, and only the Luftwaffe really National Socialist.

And: Canaris fine, but Hess? If anything, his "advantage" was that he was sidelines by anyone else and didn't have much to say when he went to his flight. But otherwise he had no traces of a "good nazi". Hell, that guy loved his "Führer" so much he went to prison with him.

The definition of fascism and which dictatorships can be considered fascist is an incredibly hot debate but I wouldn't consider the Estado Novo fascist. Salazar was much more a Catholic conservative or reactionary than a fascist.
Salazar disliked the strong personality cult in fascism and
actually criticized Mussolini as too authoritarian.

Umberto Eco wrote something wise about this which I can't stop quoting, along the lines of: Nazism was like ABCD, Italy's fascism was like BCDE, Franco's caudilloism was like CDEF, Salazar's Estado Novo was like DEFG. Yes, there's an unbroken line going from the first to the last, and yet. In logic we call this a "paradoxon of the heap", students.

Somaliland is completely out of question because the extremely hot summers are incredibly unattractive for Europeans.

So I'd have thought too, but as it turns out, around 1940 ~50,000 Italians had settled there.

 

[Lemon flavoured]

And: Canaris fine, but Hess? If anything, his "advantage" was that he was sidelines by anyone else and didn't have much to say when he went to his flight. But otherwise he had no traces of a "good nazi". Hell, that guy loved his "Führer" so much he went to prison with him.

People whitewash Hess because "he wanted peace", essentially.