A Red Dawn: American Revolution and Rebirth

[Orville_third]

One minor question: Is Lenin'sBeard based in whole or in part on me? (I am from SC, and I do have an idea for a timeline where Wallace returns to agriculture after Truman fires him. (Resulting in a greater (agricultural) Green revolution, a different 1948 election, a change in Mormon political support, and a different EPCOT center.)

[Panzerfaust04]

Originally Posted by snerfuplz

It should mostly definitely be legal. Cannabis wasn't illegal till 1937, after the revolution in this TL. No doubt with the libertarian social values being implemented by the Communists cannabis would remain legal.

Correction: cannabis wasn't illegal federally until 1937. It was criminalized incrementally on the state level beginning in 1914, and demonized pretty heavily through the late 20s and 30s, with calls for federal criminalization being frequent and well-backed. I'm not sure if a revolution would eliminate the illegalization of marijuana, especially since drug control was seen as a rather progressive thing until the 1960s, when the radical left took to drugs like a fish to water. In any case, I doubt it'll take THAT long for pot to be legalized in this world, especially once its relative safety is more well-documented, but for the foreseeable future I imagine the situation will stay similar to OTL.

[snerfuplz]

Originally Posted by Panzerfaust04

Correction: cannabis wasn't illegal federally until 1937. It was criminalized incrementally on the state level beginning in 1914, and demonized pretty heavily through the late 20s and 30s, with calls for federal criminalization being frequent and well-backed.

Ah you would be correct. I stand corrected

[Jello_Biafra]

Originally Posted by Orville_third

One minor question: Is Lenin'sBeard based in whole or in part on me? (I am from SC, and I do have an idea for a timeline where Wallace returns to agriculture after Truman fires him. (Resulting in a greater (agricultural) Green revolution, a different 1948 election, a change in Mormon political support, and a different EPCOT center.)

Well, the parallels are striking, but I'd have to say they were unintentional, lol.

LeninsBeard is actually based, at least in part, on how I figure I might have turned out growing up in the UASR. His being from SC is a bit of foreshadowing, which will be expanded upon later. On the other hand, AdmiralSanders is my foil: an intelligent, erudite conservative who, while sharing similar communitarian values, has come to radically different conclusions about them. SeriousSam is based off a friend of mine.

However, it's flibbertygibbet who is as close to an author avatar as you'll get in this timeline. The rest are, at least at this stage, just abstractions for the different points of view in this TL's late 2000s.

[Aranfan]

A thought has occurred to me, will the Fallout game series exist in TTL? If so, what does Liberty Prime sound like.

[Cyclone]

So what is TTL's Timeline 191 like? A peaceful Communist transition in the 1932 United States Presidential Election paralleled by the ascension of the crypto-Nazi Jake Featherston? A communist revolution in the WW1/post-WW1 era in the South predating the USA's own socialist transition? Or something else entirely?

[Historico]

Hey Jb, After rereading this timelline yesterday it reawakened some questions about the path that the different Minority Groups will have in the UASR. In my research for my Term Paper on the LGBT Community's impact on in Urban Politics, I found that the Communist Party played a huge rule in intitating the spark for organizing Homosexuals.

Originally Posted by Austin Ross

Although the birth of the modern Gay Rights movement is usually placed by scholars as having started on July 28th, 1969 at the Stonewall Inn, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. In reality, it started with “Stalin’s directive in 1928 for the Communist Party USA to organize African Americans in the Black Belt(A theory which posits that Blacks constituted a nation with the US stretching as far as Delaware to eastern Texas) in order to learn how to organize a class movement in a multiracial society” (Valocchi 451-452). This plan, was thus taken up by Gay CP Member Harry Hay in his creation of the Mattachine Society in 1951, which was grounded in “the notion of gay people as a minority group in terms of both cultural difference and non-normativity- a notion that has animated the gay movement since its inception” (Valocchi 453). This notion of a Gay Collective Identity spread to more informal homosexual networks in Los Angeles and San Francisco, which would two decades later become one of the premier Gay Villages of the Seventies. As the movement shifted from the underground social networks of the fifties to the New Left aligned Gay Liberation movement post-Stonewall in the seventies; the modern identity of the LGBT community was created by the interactions of the two generations. What emerged was the modern view in which “homosexuals as an oppressed minority, critiqued social institutions for fostering this oppression, and offered a vision of a new society in which sexual and gender roles would no longer exist.” (Valocchi 458)

1. So much question for you is, with the the Worker's Communist Party passing legistlation that begins making those not of the standard Sexual Orientation more normative, will we still see and Indepenent LGBT Community? And although Gays will probably tend to be dispersed in the major Metropolotian areas in the United States, will they become a true political force in their own right much like the African National Congress?

2. Speaking of the African National Congress, I know you mentioned that the creation of the group largely had to do with a larger Black unhappiness with the gains made by the WCP and that more and more Blacks tend to identify themselves as African. Im interested in whether or not culturally, will we see Blacks in the 40's actually try to distingiush themselves from their white Opressors, and beging to wear their hair naturally(Locks, Braids, and Afro's) and more Afrocrentric clothinng like in the seventies? Or will we still be more in line with the New Negro of the 20's in Harlem, where Blacks continue to adopt Caucasian styles of dress, hairstyles, ettiquttes and etc? Also since it still retains so much of the African culture which has survivied through centuries, is their any chance that the Gullah area of lowland South Carolina and Georgia could become its own Autonomous Republic like the Lakota nation? And might the language be popularized enough that all Blacks come to accept it a their "native" tounge?


3. What about the Asian and Latino Communities in the UASR?

[Jello_Biafra]

Excerpts from Let Justice Be Done, Though the World Perish: A History of the Secretariat for Public Safety, by Ward Churchill (Toledo, OH: Labor Review Press, 1994)

“Liberty” so Lenin declared, “is so precious a commodity that it must be carefully rationed.” On face, it is rather unfortunate that such sentiments were once seriously entertained in the UASR. While it would be a gross oversimplification to foist the blame for the trend toward political authoritarianism and centralization under the First Cultural Revolution solely upon the shoulders of Marxism-Leninism, the importance of ideology in informing the bounds of political freedom and the actions of the state cannot be ignored. To be sure, the Union faced great perils at home and abroad in its formative years. The threat of terrorism from within the state, and of reactionary armies from without, were very real dangers that American workers faced on a daily basis. Twice during this period, first in 1934 and again in 1936, the UASR was on the brink of war with the major imperial capitalist powers of Europe.

But in understanding the complexities, we cannot go so far as the apologists for the American history of state terror suggest. To understand is not to condone. We must not have any illusions about what was at stake: the American state amassed many of the trappings of a totalitarian regime in short order. Only the existence of a functional democratic polity in the factory committees, ward councils and the regional soviets, which retained a faith in both democracy and the rule of law, staved off the complete suppression of democratic dissent and the UASR joining the sad list of degenerated worker's states.

The growth of an authoritarian state apparatus during the Cultural Revolution came swiftly. It was assisted by many of the enforcers of the old regime who proved more than willing to change masters once the outcome was certain. Chief among these labor skates was the inimitable J. Edgar Hoover, a hardline reactionary enforcer turned hardline revolutionary enforcer. Indeed, changing sides was the best career move any ambitious lawman could hope to make. Hoover would go from the head of an undermanned and underfunded federal investigation agency that routinely competed with the Marshals Service and the Secret Service (and state and local law enforcement as well) for jurisdiction, to the master of the one of the largest, most powerful unified national police forces in the entire world and a political leader in the new state.

In terms of resources at its disposal, and the power it commanded, the People's Secretariat for Public Safety during the 30s and 40s was perhaps second only to the dreaded Soviet NKVD. And after the resolution of the Civil War, the victors of what should have been a movement towards liberty and democracy effectively gave Public Safety carte blanche to eliminate all opponents to the new order. And to this day, the UASR remains the only democratic state with an unapologetic secret police force. While the USSR and other degenerated workers' states have since abandoned such tactics in the transition to full political and civil democracy, it remains troubling that in the UASR, the option remains on the table.

...J. Edgar Hoover's conversion to the enforcer of American national ideology came swiftly. As his private secretary noted, his habits of speech, his reading materials, even the company he kept, all changed within the span of mere year. Hoover embraced Marxism-Leninism so thoroughly, even the most trusting among his personal confidants have admitted to incredible cynicism about his apparent embrace of the hard ideological left. Regardless, what is important to remember is Hoover's conversion was a reflection of his function in the American revolutionary state.

Like all state security agencies, Public Safety primary role was not to enforce the laws of the state, but rather the ideology of the state. While Marxism-Sinclairism(1) had its share of discontents during the 1930s, it's status as the American national ideology became very clear in the 1938 general election campaign. Both opposition parties, the Left Democrats and the nascent Democratic-Republicans, had officially embraced Marxian socialism to varying degrees, and raced to the left to fight the utter hegemonic electoral strength of the Communists. Consider Robert Taft's famous “The Genius of Marx and the Foolishness of the Foster Government” address to the Congress, widely rebroadcast on the radio and film reels during the election campaign. In the speech, Taft spends an equal measure of time praising Marx and pointing out Foster's government's failure to keep:

“Consider now the great foresight Marx had. In 1853, Marx wrote, in one of his many columns for The New York Herald-Tribune, that the hangman's noose was an instrument of barbarous oppression fitting the barbarities of the capitalist economic system. In his own words, 'Capital punishment cannot be justified in any society that calls itself civilized.' So what has this supposedly Marxist government done, in the five years since the revolution? It has put to death more men for counterrevolutionary activities in these five years then fell to the hangman's noose in the barbarous age before! Comrade Foster, how in God's name can you call yourself a Marxist!?...The Central Committee's official security reports have endorsed the use of extralegal terror, summary execution and other heinous, fascist methods in the pursuit of justice. How many of these recommendations have been enacted? Comrade Foster, your only answer so far has been that this is classified information. You have asked us to endorse your Public Safety campaign, and this body has given you carte blanche, and surrendered the purse to the Executive without an accounting of how the Public Safety budget will be spent. Indeed, we can learn all we want about the number of paper clips Section 1's Marshal's Service uses, or the amount of paper procured by Section 3 for transportation security. Yet we have no way of knowing how much money the Counterintelligence service in Section 9 spends, let alone what it is spent on. Comrade, this is a travesty of socialist democracy, and unbecoming of any revolutionary state.

1. The use of this term separately from Marxism-Leninism is deliberate. While Sinclairism is derivative of Leninism, the term didn't come into use until after the Second World War, even though it refers in large part the American variant of Marxist philosophy codified during the First Cultural Revolution.

Originally Posted by Historico

1. So much question for you is, with the the Worker's Communist Party passing legistlation that begins making those not of the standard Sexual Orientation more normative, will we still see and Indepenent LGBT Community? And although Gays will probably tend to be dispersed in the major Metropolotian areas in the United States, will they become a true political force in their own right much like the African National Congress?

Yes, though quite obviously it will be a different LBGT community. The establishment of some level of formal legal equality will highlight, like it will in the racial case, the limitations of mere legal equality and the limitations of Marxism-Leninism's economic biases.

Originally Posted by Historico

2. Speaking of the African National Congress, I know you mentioned that the creation of the group largely had to do with a larger Black unhappiness with the gains made by the WCP and that more and more Blacks tend to identify themselves as African. Im interested in whether or not culturally, will we see Blacks in the 40's actually try to distingiush themselves from their white Opressors, and beging to wear their hair naturally(Locks, Braids, and Afro's) and more Afrocrentric clothinng like in the seventies? Or will we still be more in line with the New Negro of the 20's in Harlem, where Blacks continue to adopt Caucasian styles of dress, hairstyles, ettiquttes and etc? Also since it still retains so much of the African culture which has survivied through centuries, is their any chance that the Gullah area of lowland South Carolina and Georgia could become its own Autonomous Republic like the Lakota nation? And might the language be popularized enough that all Blacks come to accept it a their "native" tounge?

The real shift away from the "New Negro" sort of styles will begin to occur pretty much as soon as the Second World War ends, and it will have to do in part with so many blacks serving in the military, espescially those who would come to serve in the North African, Ethiopian and West African campaigns, coming home with a different understanding of self. They'll start wearing their hair more naturally, bring home a hodgepodge of African cultural clothing, cuisine and the like.

I don't know about the Gullah region, but it's certainly a candidate for having its own autonomous socialist republic in the future, and being a sort of Mecca for African culture within the UASR.

Originally Posted by Historico

3. What about the Asian and Latino Communities in the UASR?

That's coming too, though it will largely come on the heels of the African movement. Those movements will start coming into their own after the Second World War, following the vanguard of the ANC's extraordinary success.

[Orville_third]

An autonomous Gullah region could benefit from the possible absence of the wealthy landowners in the nearby area (including the landowners on Hilton Head and Jeckyll Island).

In regards to religion, here's an interesting side track. Henry Hay was a member of the Ordo Templi Orientalis. On the one hand, it was highly hostile to the established societal system, and (IOTL) Crowley had written to Trotsky volunteering his assistance in eliminating Christianity from Russia and even named a chapter in his "Book of Lies" after Anarchist Louis Lingg. However, Crowley IOTL was far from a socialist or even a traditional anarchist. He was willing to ally with the Germans in WWI. Further, Crowley's "Liber Oz" would be counter to the Socialist/Communist society almost as much as the established society IOTL.

Finally, I assume all Public Safety is one Law Enforcement Agency and not a group of separate agencies, correct?

[TheCrow__]

Jello you still have'nt answered my question on what's up with cannabis is this tl.

[TNF]

Speaking of developments in the African-American community after World War II, will Islam become a force within the community as it did during and after the Civil Rights movement IOTL?

[Jello_Biafra]

Originally Posted by Orville_third

Finally, I assume all Public Safety is one Law Enforcement Agency and not a group of separate agencies, correct?

Yes. One unified agency with many subbranches, ranging from simple and noncontroversial things like transportation security and border guards to a national law enforcement force, to even foreign espionage.

Originally Posted by TheCrow__

Jello you still have'nt answered my question on what's up with cannabis is this tl.

I'm getting there, don't worry. Just remember what I said earlier, about the government pushing for legalization of alcohol in "dry states" and eliminating excises to get rid of black market sources of funding for counter revolutionaries.

Originally Posted by The New Freedom

Speaking of developments in the African-American community after World War II, will Islam become a force within the community as it did during and after the Civil Rights movement IOTL?

Yes, but it's going to be more conventional Sunni Islam as opposed to some of the insanity that groups like NoI exhibited.

[Room 101]

Furthermore on Islam, does it have a larger following in the UASR than the USA?

[Jello_Biafra]

Originally Posted by Room 101

Furthermore on Islam, does it have a larger following in the UASR than the USA?

Yes, in part due to the renaissance of African culture in the post-war UASR, and in part due to a host of reasons I will not be explaining yet. You will know them when you see them.

[Cyclone]

Originally Posted by Jello_Biafra

“Liberty” so Lenin declared, “is so precious a commodity that it must be carefully rationed.”

Are you sure this is a real Lenin quote? I haven't been able to find its origin anywhere and searching for it just pops up sites listing Lenin quotes, not any texts, speeches, etc. It looks like it's just one of those made-up Lenin quotes that were so popular during the Cold War.

[Jello_Biafra]

Originally Posted by Cyclone

Are you sure this is a real Lenin quote? I haven't been able to find its origin anywhere and searching for it just pops up sites listing Lenin quotes, not any texts, speeches, etc. It looks like it's just one of those made-up Lenin quotes that were so popular during the Cold War.

Well I don't know for sure, the origin of the quote is in a book by Sidney and Beatrice Webb, called Soviet communism: A new civilization? The Webbs were pretty strongly pro-Leninist socialists, and they were (rightly) criticized for having such an uncritical appraisal of the Soviet Union. So I'm not inclined to give serious doubt to its veracity; while it may not have actually been said by Lenin, it's a sentiment that wouldn't be out of place given the context. The Webbs clearly considered this to be a positive sentiment, given their outlook on Lenin and the Soviet Union, so either way, I'm willing to think such a quote will popular ITTL as well, even if it may never have actually been said by Lenin.

[TheCrow__]

Originally Posted by Jello_Biafra

Yes. One unified agency with many subbranches, ranging from simple and noncontroversial things like transportation security and border guards to a national law enforcement force, to even foreign espionage.

I'm getting there, don't worry. Just remember what I said earlier, about the government pushing for legalization of alcohol in "dry states" and eliminating excises to get rid of black market sources of funding for counter revolutionaries.

Yes, but it's going to be more conventional Sunni Islam as opposed to some of the insanity that groups like NoI exhibited.

Ok, I'm waiting for that anxiously lol.

[Archangel]

I assume from the ATL forum members that the Franco-British Union didn't last. It's a pity, it had so much potential. But at least TTL Communist regimes democratized.
It would be interesting to cover the internal discussions in the D-R party (there will be many republicans - at least those of the Progressive mould - feeling very uncomfortable with someone so conservative as Thurmond, unless he moderates a lot).
Coalitions in PR system may be of several ways, either bipolar (with usually the same parties as leaders of the coalition, or with time, if there's a strong shift in votes, the dominant partner in the coalition may change), or multi polar (when there's usually three main parties (or ideologies), and coalitions result from agreements from two of those and other minor parties, depending on the circunstances).
Public Safety's lack of apologies and ending of its repressive traits will be used with great effectiveness for anti-American propaganda in this TL. It's ideological bent (and non-representativity of the only population like a non-ideological police force) will risk making it less effective in the field of criminal investigation and routine police work. This is always a risk in a unified agency.

[truth is life]

Originally Posted by Archangel

I assume from the ATL forum members that the Franco-British Union didn't last. It's a pity, it had so much potential. But at least TTL Communist regimes democratized.
It would be interesting to cover the internal discussions in the D-R party (there will be many republicans - at least those of the Progressive mould - feeling very uncomfortable with someone so conservative as Thurmond, unless he moderates a lot).

Really? I had got the impression that it had.

Jello, I just read the entire timeline from the beginning today, and I must say a masterful job at it! You really made it feel possible, and potentially even very pleasant once the initial difficulties of a Revolution are finished with. Actually, I would very much like to live in this USAR, at least in its 2010 incarnation.

I just have couple of comments and questions. First, I don't like the USAR flag. I know you replacing it is about as likely as Jared starting LoRaG over, but I think a US flag with the union defaced by some type of communist symbol (eg., a hammer and sickle) is a much better looking design, and much the more symbolic. Of course, it would be problematic in relation to the USA-in-exile.

Second, what about the Smithsonian? You can do lots of fun stuff with them, along the lines of the movies, comics, and books you've mentioned.

[Owain]

Arrgh! I had a great long post asking lots of questions and then the site wouldn't let me post it because the token had expired! I'll ask them this evening instead.
Can you please answer my post at the bottom of the previous page please Jello (if I may call you that?)?