The Footprint of Mussolini - TL
I remember seeing this TL a while ago and checking out the first chapter before leaving but I have to say I should of stuck with it then and there rather than waiting weeks to revisit it, this is a really good TL though I have to ask. With it being years since the last update, are there unthreadmarked chapters? I don't really want to crawl through 50+ pages of discussion and Q&A's since the last time I tried that in another TL it just made me annoyed with it since there wasn't any updates to revitalize my motivation to continue on.
I'm reading this TL right now, and uhhh... I think I know the OTL person you're referring to.
Then again, the singer of Plastic Love is a historian ITTL.
Yeah this TL is depressing to read. I can only imagine how hard Death of Russia was for the author.
So, I was playing Company of Heroes 3 and was wondering, how would it be different in this TL? I could picture the same Italy setting being kept with the Italians as part of the Allied side with Blackshirts as call ins
I expect people in this TL to be far more radicalized when OTL, seeing explicit fascism, racism, and genocide all over the place. This world will push people far more over the edge.
Or alternatively it happens to them like in the AAIBverse and they are so used to great powers perpetrating war crimes and in general the value of individual people's lives being rather low that they no longer care. Especially considering that radicals tend to get crushed in FOM unless they are American racists or non-Italian fascists.
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When the value of Nationalism is as bigger as the value of Socialism is in OTL, ethnic/national hatreds and grievances would be way higher than ours. Despite Sorairo's magnificent writting and lore-crafting, our World's view on FoM World would ideologically vary: Leftists would see it as dystopia whereas Rightists (particularly the diehard Anti-Communist or Zionist ones) would see it as utopia.
True, and many nationalities that were fucked over in the FoM (Slovenes, Greeks, Serbs, Armenians, Ethiopians, South African Blacks, Pakistanis, Bengalis and Indonesians) would flee to our or any other alternate World that have better life and/or perception of/for them, especially Arabs from every walks of ITTL life who'd flee faster than the speed of light to OTL if there had been a portal opened somewhere.
On the other side of the fence however, for example, ITTL Turkey would face mass influx of Syrian Turkmens fleeing for their lives as soon as OTL Syria finds out what Turkey has done, did and is doing to FoM Syria; not only would Syrian Turkmens get exterminated in a genocide, but OTL Syria would outright declare war on (OTL) Turkey.
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OTL Syria, the one that's been nothing more than a civil war torn weapons testing lab for over a decade by now?
To be blunt, get a grip.
NGL something this TL feels very too biased to letting everyone tread over the innocent. Eventually people are going to have enough.
Desire for equality and social justice could also still try to fight harder too in this horrific world. People can only tolerate it for so long. I felt frustrated that people just let things be the way they are. Even dominant groups like whites in the US during 2020 were willing to protest racism.
Different world, different mindsets. Those who "desire for equality and social justice" do exist in FoM in form of radical social democracies and libertarian socialist states like Sweden and Kurdistan, but they're really a minority in the ocean of a reactionary society. What makes this world so unique compared to ours (and why I see FoM as "utopia with dystopian characteristics) is that all major changes (social and political), whether good or bad, that have occurred here are permanent, lasting from the day of fruition to the present day.
The oppressed having enough doesn't amount to anything if the other side has overwhelming firepower on their side and is willing to use it.
We did see such things succeed a few times in ITL (Russia and Ethiopia come to mind) but in most cases uprisings are simply crushed. There is no universal law dictating that the innocents win. Historcially, horrible people have been able to get away with their shit. Think Stalin, who OTL never got punished for all the horrible shit her did, remaining at the top until his death.
TL;DR Ideals and grievances mean nothing in the face of overwhelming force.
I would like to believe that is the case, but my observation of human nature throughout history leads me to conclude that, unless they are personally and directly affected, 90% of people will be indifferent to blatant and openly perpetrated injustices. That is, if they only are indifferent, instead of blame the victim for "deserving" it in some way.
I understand why people love to jerk off to the idea that brutality will be replicated with an equal and opposite reaction. Just like the more brutal a regime is, the more desperate it is to cling to power and the greater the contestation and opposition will be... but that's just a fictional trope to be able to make optimistic movies that don't end in "the bad guy massacred the opposition and ruled forever".
The dominant philosophy seems to be that of the American "just world" (if bad things happen to you you surely did something to deserve it) rather than Newtonian morality/karmic retribution (an act of evil will be immediately countered by an opposite act of equal or higher value).
I agree that there comes a point where people would get fed up and decide that enough is enough, I'm just skeptical that it has reached that point in FOM society yet.
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To be fair, people ITTL have and do fight for social justice and equality. Racism in America was confronted violently - literally - and it’s stated that by the present day things are fairly OK in America in that regard, with a lot of the ultra-racists having left for Rhodesia or South Africa and with the black community doing better thanks to improved investment in their communities. And at the round-up at the end of the TL, it seems that by 2020 social democracy is the norm in many nations (even the US has universal healthcare) while many countries - even authoritarian ones like China - have LGBT rights and marriage equality. Yes, the world has some truly awful regimes and yes Fascism has been ‘normalised’ - and yes, both Germany and Japan haven’t had to confront their past as OTL - but it does seem pretty clear that people still care about, and successfully fight for, social justice and equality.
That and "Might makes right". This morality concept is a common Fascist belief where strength alone is righteous by default regardless if its motives or actions are evil and it is mainly displayed in First Arabian War and Third Italo-Ethiopian War: 1. Israel had the "right" to annex Jordan and expel 80% of Jordanian population because "her might proves that she has the moral high ground to do whatever her heart desires to a population of savage weaklings after the war. History is written and its laws codified by victors, not by loser babies with pathetic grievances!"; 2. "Although Ethiopian n****** were bold enough to resist the force of the Roman Titan up north, their commendable, mighty defiance after we hydro-nuked their capital showed their right to reclaim their land (whom we had burned to the ground) and sovereignity, but their victory was still limited and thus didn't gain all of our Horn of Africa.".
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Hard to believe that this thread started almost 5 years ago. Glad to see that new people are discovering the thread and join in with their thoughts even after the story ended.
Taking action on what an alternative group of people did when it didn't happen in your own world would totally be something that people would do. You'd also have people comb over the alternate timeline for "evidence" to support their beliefs.
The only thing worse would be if we could somehow cross between timelines.
This is why I think that we probably shouldn't have contact with Earth from an alternate timeline. This applies for the general public and governments.
Taking action on what an alternative group of people did when it didn't happen in your own world would totally be something that people would do. You'd also have people comb over the alternate timeline for "evidence" to support their beliefs.
The only thing worse would be if we could somehow cross between timelines.