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

[Charles EP M.]

I dunno, I do enjoy a protagonist who's a bad person in a bad environment who does horrible things but you still root for them. Just better the further back you go cause the closer it cuts to contexts like Nazis or US in Vietnam and such they're just toooooo evil and real to be charming.

Yeah, The Northman has our man be party to horrible things without caring but he's a Viking so we can accept it. If he was Hauptmann Von Bastard, not so much.

Most big budget shows will have some representation among the main cast and a slew of background characters. Low hanging fruit as it were. Same with women speaking to each other about things other than men.

Director Will Sharpe had an interview recently, mentioned getting frustrated with roles for a Brit of Japanese descent, his example after 'can you do martial arts' being how you'd get offered four lines sitting behind a computer telling the heroes to be careful of the alien spaceship.

 

[Death's Companion]

You could be right. In which case, it is an interesting example of the adult following the lead of the YA.

Honestly I imagine that if that is the case it's more down to the adults previously being children than anything else.

The country is a rather different place than it was a few generations ago and most of that change is focused on younger generations and media aimed at and produced by them is going to reflect that sooner than it is the bigger budget stuff aimed at an older and whiter audience.

Like I think we're bouncing off an industry and societal trend rather than a difference in genres. I don't think there is anything inherent to YA fiction as an area of writing that makes it cast more minority actors rather than the people that it sells to are probably more likely to be minorities or notice the lack of minorities.


Like there was multiple scandals in the last few years that some stupidly high percentage of children's characters were white and an intentional campaign to start diversifying and all these interviews with kids about how none of their toys or games or shows look or sound like them. At the same time BBC has been catching flack for colourblind casting since like the early 2000s.


I don't think it can be said that our media is nearly carved up into YA stuff that has nailed it and adult stuff that is playing catch up. Rather it's more society has more or less decided that representation is important and this is a very hit and miss process. More individual shows in one genre might be doing better but to me that is just an accident of how the cohorts shake out demographically and it's not universal

 

[Charles EP M.]

You could be right. In which case, it is an interesting example of the adult following the lead of the YA.

The BBC does 'blind casting' with a lot of roles now, IIRC, where there's no restrictions on who can read for a role.

 

[Warthog]

"The empires/America did appalling things" is a mainstream approach in historical fiction, isn't it?

As discussed, it does of course

But at the same time we get historical fiction - and actual histories since it's OTL - that sanitise the horrors of the Allies, or that celebrate empire while brushing away the horrors. The discussions in the fields of education and history that have been around for some time (see also statues), but are increasingly political due to Culture War TM, are in many ways a similar discussion to what we're discussing in this thread

 

[Nyvis]

In the context of this thread, Nazi or CSA victories are, of course, AH, and that's why we're discussing that many timelines celebrate them, which is a problem, where inadvertent or deliberate.

British, French or US imperial victories are OTL. And of course it's a major topic in history and education and culture how this oppression is presented.

Though there's also a very distressing amount of AH celebrating the various colonial empires.

 

[BBadolato]

Aren't the issues with any kind of bad guy wins victory, largely that you have to thread several needles that are difficult enough on their own. First and foremost what's the proper balance for said state of the bad guys to go look like. The thing with say the Confederacy or the Nazi's is that they are ticking time bomb states, even in the most ideal of worlds for them.

For the Confederates, they are a largely agriculture based nation, built on cash crops. Assuming you don't even get slave revolts or lower class discontent of a largely almost semi-feudal nation, what happens when nations find other cheaper suppliers for their crops, or if poor agricultural planning causes food shortages. While for the Nazi's assuming the knives do not come out once Hitler croaks, and they somehow 'win' Nazi Germany is still a state built on plunder and what happens if the Nazi's can't wage war, and unless you somehow collapse the Soviets the Nazi's are going to need an army in the East.

So how do you keep your bad guys fearsome when they are built on a house of sand? Do you make the implication that failed states and warlordism make the situation as terrible as if these states were as 'romantically' powerful as some people like to imagine? Which it can be because sure the institutional horrors of genocide and slavery could fall by the wayside, but all manner of nasty things could happen from famines to banditry that just creates another layer of suffering.

Second, What do you do horror wise, because good horror is hard to write from so many standpoints. From an antagonist standpoint Using Jabidah Racist Jackass III and SS Officer Arnold von Asshole would be quick and easy, but there's more to their evil then just horrible people doing horrible things, often times you had the rest of society complicit with the crimes of both regimes to some degree. But that comes with how do you then make a believable evil that's human enough to be frightening. Too 'sympathetic' and you get more 'good' insert bad guy faction character here, too horrible and all you do it make flesh and blood human beings into monsters that I would argue only serves to take away from the horribleness of authoritarian states as all too real things not distant shadowy nightmares one's mind.

I feel that for every cruel sadist and true believer, out of ten people, you probably had eight who were largely a mix of opportunists, people who went along with orders and what have you. Which you could make them much scarier because what they do is less a holy mission or for kicks and more a simple 9-5 duty, but then you might need multiple 'bad guys' in one story. Which okay that can be done, but you would need to make it work somehow.

Which I guess goes into issue what do you do with atrocities. I get not wanting to make light of things, but at the same time how do you write something horrific enough to make it feel real, but not overdo it into the point of misery porn as it where. There's a sweet spot of horrible that seems to easy to go miss, because you need the right amount of everything. Then again I hate 'bad guys' in my work at times precisely for some of these reasons. Also I had this floating about for a few days if it seems off conversation wise.

 

[Md139115]

Aren't the issues with any kind of bad guy wins victory, largely that you have to thread several needles that are difficult enough on their own. First and foremost what's the proper balance for said state of the bad guys to go look like. The thing with say the Confederacy or the Nazi's is that they are ticking time bomb states, even in the most ideal of worlds for them.

For the Confederates, they are a largely agriculture based nation, built on cash crops. Assuming you don't even get slave revolts or lower class discontent of a largely almost semi-feudal nation, what happens when nations find other cheaper suppliers for their crops, or if poor agricultural planning causes food shortages. While for the Nazi's assuming the knives do not come out once Hitler croaks, and they somehow 'win' Nazi Germany is still a state built on plunder and what happens if the Nazi's can't wage war, and unless you somehow collapse the Soviets the Nazi's are going to need an army in the East.

So how do you keep your bad guys fearsome when they are built on a house of sand? Do you make the implication that failed states and warlordism make the situation as terrible as if these states were as 'romantically' powerful as some people like to imagine? Which it can be because sure the institutional horrors of genocide and slavery could fall by the wayside, but all manner of nasty things could happen from famines to banditry that just creates another layer of suffering.

Got to be blunt - I rather disagree with this premise that evil isn’t pragmatic, or that either the CSA or Nazi Germany are inevitably going to collapse.

The South is the more straightforward one to address - during the war, Tredegar and other Southern factories experimented with slave labor and found it more cost-effective than free labor, once the upfront costs of purchasing the slaves was paid. It isn’t inconceivable that being deprived of cheaper manufactured goods from the US or Great Britain results in a South that industrializes off the backs of its slaves in even more hellish conditions than the plantation fields and stays afloat economically well into the 20th Century (at least provided that A. The slave population remains self-sustaining, which could be difficult if the U.S. freed too many slaves in Virginia and Tennessee before the war ended, and B. The CSA somehow survives as a political entity when it’s constituent states could constitutionally secede any time they wanted).

Germany on the other hand is both easier and harder: theoretically, if you properly distribute all the clothes and personal items you stole from the Holocaust victims, and gave people free land well-watered with the blood of its former owners, and expand your infrastructure properly on the backs of the corvee labor you enslaved half of Europe into, then, theoretically, the price of foodstuffs should go down (same/more supply, a lot less demand), the price of manufactured goods should go down (same supply/demand circumstances, plus most European raw materials being available tariff-free now), purchasing power should go up (stolen wealth) and so on. This requires the Nazis to not be as corrupt and incompetent as they were OTL, but as pretty much any Nazi Victory scenario has the base premise of “What if the Nazis were not as corrupt and incompetent as OTL” it might well be assumed that they could win the peace if they’re successful enough to win the war. Really it’s disturbingly easy to imagine a perfectly bucolic universe of pretty, blond German girls decked out in gold jewelry dancing unknowingly on the mass graves of millions, and I’m actually impressed that SpanishSpy captured that tonal horror so perfectly in his recent vignette. The only real long-term problem with this universe comes a few generations later as the free nations of the world rapidly technologically outpace an academia raised on fuhrerprincip.

But I think that focusing too heavily on the CSA and Nazi Germany distracts from the broader point, which is that ultimately, it is both intuitive and borne out by countless OTL examples that the best way to make your life/your people’s lives better, provided morality can be made a non-issue, is to kill someone else and steal their stuff. The logic of Raskolinov is the logic of Robespierre is the logic of Hitler is the logic of Caesar is the logic of Stalin is the logic of any robber/burglar/shoplifter you can think of. In a moral-less universe, it’s generally sound logic. Wanting the bad guys to look like a lousy place to live in order to easily differentiate them from the good guys just distracts from the reason why they’re bad to begin with.

 

[Hendryk]

Really it’s disturbingly easy to imagine a perfectly bucolic universe of pretty, blond German girls decked out in gold jewelry dancing unknowingly on the mass graves of millions, and I’m actually impressed that SpanishSpy captured that tonal horror so perfectly in his recent vignette.

Now I picture a victorious Nazi Germany romanticizing Generalplan Ost and churning out movies about "How the East was won" in the same way that the US turned the Western into a major cinematic genre.

 

[Nyvis]

Got to be blunt - I rather disagree with this premise that evil isn’t pragmatic, or that either the CSA or Nazi Germany are inevitably going to collapse.

The South is the more straightforward one to address - during the war, Tredegar and other Southern factories experimented with slave labor and found it more cost-effective than free labor, once the upfront costs of purchasing the slaves was paid. It isn’t inconceivable that being deprived of cheaper manufactured goods from the US or Great Britain results in a South that industrializes off the backs of its slaves in even more hellish conditions than the plantation fields and stays afloat economically well into the 20th Century (at least provided that A. The slave population remains self-sustaining, which could be difficult if the U.S. freed too many slaves in Virginia and Tennessee before the war ended, and B. The CSA somehow survives as a political entity when it’s constituent states could constitutionally secede any time they wanted).

Germany on the other hand is both easier and harder: theoretically, if you properly distribute all the clothes and personal items you stole from the Holocaust victims, and gave people free land well-watered with the blood of its former owners, and expand your infrastructure properly on the backs of the corvee labor you enslaved half of Europe into, then, theoretically, the price of foodstuffs should go down (same/more supply, a lot less demand), the price of manufactured goods should go down (same supply/demand circumstances, plus most European raw materials being available tariff-free now), purchasing power should go up (stolen wealth) and so on. This requires the Nazis to not be as corrupt and incompetent as they were OTL, but as pretty much any Nazi Victory scenario has the base premise of “What if the Nazis were not as corrupt and incompetent as OTL” it might well be assumed that they could win the peace if they’re successful enough to win the war. Really it’s disturbingly easy to imagine a perfectly bucolic universe of pretty, blond German girls decked out in gold jewelry dancing unknowingly on the mass graves of millions, and I’m actually impressed that SpanishSpy captured that tonal horror so perfectly in his recent vignette. The only real long-term problem with this universe comes a few generations later as the free nations of the world rapidly technologically outpace an academia raised on fuhrerprincip.

But I think that focusing too heavily on the CSA and Nazi Germany distracts from the broader point, which is that ultimately, it is both intuitive and borne out by countless OTL examples that the best way to make your life/your people’s lives better, provided morality can be made a non-issue, is to kill someone else and steal their stuff. The logic of Raskolinov is the logic of Robespierre is the logic of Hitler is the logic of Caesar is the logic of Stalin is the logic of any robber/burglar/shoplifter you can think of. In a moral-less universe, it’s generally sound logic. Wanting the bad guys to look like a lousy place to live in order to easily differentiate them from the good guys just distracts from the reason why they’re bad to begin with.

The USA and manifest destiny (or Canada, and countless other genocidal settler nations) does show you can succeed at building a nation on settling mass graves. So if the war can be won (which is in itself a dubious proposition), that's a model of how the peace could be.

Of course the comparison has large gaps (for all that it did inspire the nazi leadership). The third reich has no ready supply of immigrants to settle the frontier, even a temporarily defeated soviet union is unlikely to be the end of resistance on its eastern borders, it's already a pariah state abroad, having picked a fight with everyone, and as you say, its system is unlikely to keep up with change very well.

In that way, the TNO depiction isn't bad, if you accept the initial conceit of military victory.

Now I picture a victorious Nazi Germany romanticizing Generalplan Ost and churning out movies about "How the East was won" in the same way that the US turned the Western into a major cinematic genre.

Would that make it the Eastern then?

 

[ChrisNuttall]

Got to be blunt - I rather disagree with this premise that evil isn’t pragmatic, or that either the CSA or Nazi Germany are inevitably going to collapse.

The South is the more straightforward one to address - during the war, Tredegar and other Southern factories experimented with slave labor and found it more cost-effective than free labor, once the upfront costs of purchasing the slaves was paid. It isn’t inconceivable that being deprived of cheaper manufactured goods from the US or Great Britain results in a South that industrializes off the backs of its slaves in even more hellish conditions than the plantation fields and stays afloat economically well into the 20th Century (at least provided that A. The slave population remains self-sustaining, which could be difficult if the U.S. freed too many slaves in Virginia and Tennessee before the war ended, and B. The CSA somehow survives as a political entity when it’s constituent states could constitutionally secede any time they wanted).

I find it hard to believe the South could make the transit into an industrial society akin to WW1 England or France on the back of slave labour. Slaves would have plenty of opportunity to do subtle damage to machines - and even if they didn't, there'd be a serious lack of incentive to produce. The USSR had real problems as tech advanced - it simply couldn't keep up with the US or Europe.

Chris

 

[Md139115]

There’s two far larger questions that need asking here though, both for ethical world-building purposes and RTL:

1. If everyone has done it/is doing it, why is it wrong? and

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?

 

[Warthog]

There’s two far larger questions that need asking here though, both for ethical world-building purposes and RTL:

1. If everyone has done it/is doing it, why is it wrong? and

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?

1. Everyone writing such timelines or all victors have committed war crimes?

2. There's often hints, or traditions, or aspects of culture that with some self-reflection, or outside observation can be very revealing if someone actually does reflect. However it's very easy to depict such times without reflection, eg many Westerns or Run for Oklahoma tales that treat the land as terra nulius.

 

[Ricardolindo]

The issue is more you don't get there without genocide. The only really scarcely populated parts of Africa in the late 19th centuries, such as southwestern Namibia, Somaliland, Mauritania, were nonetheless not exactly terra nullius

That's an exception that proves his point, surely: an unpopulated part of Africa is unpopulated because it's horrible and nobody wants to live there, so why would Europeans settle on it? They want to live somewhere nice, and somewhere nice is going to have locals living in it

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?

 

[Death's Companion]

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?

Uh...

I think that is very optimistic on the latter point.

 

[Nyvis]

I find it hard to believe the South could make the transit into an industrial society akin to WW1 England or France on the back of slave labour. Slaves would have plenty of opportunity to do subtle damage to machines - and even if they didn't, there'd be a serious lack of incentive to produce. The USSR had real problems as tech advanced - it simply couldn't keep up with the US or Europe.

Chris

Most of the USSR's economy wasn't run on something equivalent to chattel slavery. You can make that argument for the worst of the purges and gulags but that wasn't the meat of it. I don't think it's a great comparison.

The south would probably do much worse.

 

[Francisco Cojuanco]

As discussed, it does of course

But at the same time we get historical fiction - and actual histories since it's OTL - that sanitise the horrors of the Allies, or that celebrate empire while brushing away the horrors. The discussions in the fields of education and history that have been around for some time (see also statues), but are increasingly political due to Culture War TM, are in many ways a similar discussion to what we're discussing in this thread

Again, the issue is no-one wants to see their beloved father or grandfather as an oppressor or other type of bastard. Especially if it is true.

And most non-academics are still wedded for better or worse to the messages brought up in patriotic education (which until extremely recently every modern country has promoted since the 19th century, and indeed was the entire point of civics and history classes - to create a generation of patriotic citizens).

 

[Hendryk]

The south would probably do much worse.

Indeed. And there would be another factor going against Southern industrialization, the fact that the ruling class was the plantation owners, who were essentially the New World equivalent of Europe's early modern landed aristocracy. Their class interests would be the preservation of the agrarian economy, not its disruption by newfangled industry. The economy of an independent CSA would look much like that of, say, Carlist Spain.

 

[Nyvis]

Indeed. And there would be another factor going against Southern industrialization, the fact that the ruling class was the plantation owners, who were essentially the New World equivalent of Europe's early modern landed aristocracy. Their class interests would be the preservation of the agrarian economy, not its disruption by newfangled industry. The economy of an independent CSA would look much like that of, say, Carlist Spain.

Unless they're the ones leveraging their existing capital and slaves into setting up the factories themselves, potentially. But a lot of their capital was locked into the plantations so that's not as easy to do as the much more fluid industrial capital of the north.

 

[Warthog]

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?

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?

 

[Hendryk]

Unless they're the ones leveraging their existing capital and slaves into setting up the factories themselves, potentially. But a lot of their capital was locked into the plantations so that's not as easy to do as the much more fluid industrial capital of the north.

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.