AHC: Create an exotic party system

[Born in the USSA]

So the challenge, inspired by these two excellent examples (all credit to @Wolfram and @TheNixonator , respectively), is to create an alternate political party system for a country using obscure, defunct or marginal political parties or factions that existed in that country historically. Paramilitaries and secret societies pulling a Know-Nothing are allowed. There was some support for Social Credit in the US so I'm counting it as an example.

Consensus:

• The government should be willing to intervene in society.
  • The free market can be made to work, but is unsustainable on its own.
• The United States should avoid foreign entanglements unless there is an overwhelming reason not to.

Prohibitionist beliefs:

• The most important issues Americans face are threats to the social fabric.
• Rights are individual in nature, and relate strongly to individual virtue.
  • Women should have more rights as individuals and not be forced or guided into the household.
• Immigration should be controlled to maintain the present culture and the least economic competition for the native-born.
  • Immigrants should assimilate to the dominant culture to the greatest practical degree.
• The market should be subject to widespread intervention to increase equality and freedom.
  • However, the provision of zero-interest credit by the Federal Reserve, the prohibition on unregulated creation of credit through loans, the subsidizing of products to reduce their list price, and the National Dividend do not make economic sense and should be reformed or abolished.
  • Government social programs such as the provision of universal health insurance should be monopolies.
• Social engineering, whether to establish a common culture or to eliminate prejudices and unwelcome practices (for example, racism, homophobia, and smoking) is a legitimate use of government.
  • Robust systems to prevent discrimination (whether on the grounds of race, gender or gender identity, sexuality, or many other factors, but not cultural matters) should be in place.
  • The national government should have as close to a monopoly over education as possible, and should be very involved in curricula.
• Censorship of media and policing of consumer products to ensure public health and virtue are legitimate uses, and indeed duties, of government.
• The United States should avoid intervening in other countries' affairs unless there is an overwhelming humanitarian interest in intervention.

Creditist beliefs:

• The most important issues Americans face are pocketbook issues.
• Rights are collective in nature, and relate strongly to institutional systems.
  • Women should have more rights as members of the household and not be forced or guided into acting as individuals (e.g. by being part of the wider economy on their own, or acting as primary wage-earners).
• Immigration should be aimed at ensuring the most economic opportunity for both the native-born and the immigrants in question.
  • It is not the business of government to compel immigrants to assimilate to the dominant culture.
• Other than interventions in the finance system to boost purchasing power, the market should remain as free as possible.
  • The government should provide zero-interest credit through the Federal Reserve, prohibit the unregulated creation of credit through loans, subsidize products to reduce their list price, and provide each household the share of the national wealth diverted from them by corporate non-wage costs.
  • Government social programs such as the provision of universal health insurance should compete with private business as a "public option".
• Social engineering is outside the scope of government.
  • The government should not force private businesses to obey its own standards by imposing anti-discrimination ordinances.
  • Education should be provided by the government, but devolved and funded by state and local governments, with the federal government's only role being to resolve disputes and fund/operate schools and programs that could not otherwise be funded/operated.
• Censorship and overwhelming police power should be avoided where possible.
• The United States should avoid intervening militarily in other countries' affairs, but should foster trade so long as it does not exploit American workers.

What am I missing?

Anti-Masonic: Once freemasonry is destroyed, all problems will be solved. This is the main platform of the party. They are rather big-tent (a sort of united front against the freemason criminals), however, they lean more towards nationalistic views and can be considered right-wing populists on non-freemasonry issues. Many are Warhawks, and many supported the liberation/invasion (depends on who you're asking) of England to free them from their "freemason overlords". The Anti-Masons usually do well when the rate of acts by terrorists is high, or America is in need of military action. On social issues, they are strangely progressive, as they truly want to unite all races, religions, and creeds in the destruction of freemasonry. There is also a rather large Christian values faction, which mainly just siphon away voters from the Prohibition party.

Readjuster: Formed after the Great American War on the platform of "to break the power of wealth and established privilege", and they stuck to their promises (the fact every other party is anti-elitist as well helps when that's your goal). They are recognized as the left-wing populist party. As of the late 1980s, the Readjusters have grown increasingly popular among the farming community and in the midwest, which has originally been a Prohibition stronghold. On freemasonry, they cannot of course outright defend the freemasons, or they might receive a visit in the night by the Bureau, however, they are as progressive as you can get on the issue without being decried as an elitist-sympathizer, or even worse, an outright freemason. They are the most socially left-wing party, however, that's more a division in factions than an official stance of the entire party.

Prohibition: Some say the Prohibition Party was doomed from the start and that is it was a miracle it lasted so long, but that's not really accurate, what really doomed them was the Readjusters decision to focus on the south and the midwest (both formerly prohibition strongholds) and the strong Christian faction in the Anti-Masons, both parties stealing those who could be considering to vote for the Prohibitionists. However, the last Prohibitionist President Ike Skelton losing re-election was really in a way the nail in the coffin, however, the party officially dissolved in 2017. On the issue of freemasonry, members are usually either indifferent or actively support the suppression of any and all of those are even slightly support the society (or just the legalization of it).

As for the rules:

1. I'm being pretty loose in my definition of party/faction, but please limit it to historical groups that existed in the country you're writing about, or create a scenario where the that country expands if you want to bring in outside groups.
2. Alternate party mergers are acceptable as long as the names of the current major or third parties aren't used.
3. A heterodox blend of political planks makes it more interesting for all involved.

I think that about covers it, have at it and try to have a little fun!

 

[Born in the USSA]

I had a rather lengthy idea I've been toying around with for a party system for a work of fiction written in my Power Without Knowledge setting that I might write out today but on an unrelated note I've been mulling over the impact of a more successful Joseph Smith presidential run. I'm not suggesting that he win, or even that he not be assassinated, I'm just trying to puzzle out the consequences of his electoral platform surviving his death. Perhaps some sort of alliance with the Liberty Party?

Smith's platform included provisions shrinking the size of Congress and docking their pay, along with the elimination of courts martial and instituting the death penalty for public officials that didn't defend their constituents' constitutional rights, but what suggests at least some buy-in from the Liberty Party was a program of complete emancipation by 1850, with at least some degree of compensation financed by the sale of public land. Smith also argued for the annexation of Texas and Oregon.

I understand it's a gamble of long odds (especially regarding constitutional changes and territorial expansion) but perhaps a pragmatic move to adopt compensation as a way to attract votes in slave states that would otherwise dig in their heels at any mention of abolition? It would also almost certainly require butterflying away the LDS move to Utah, leaving them a powerful swing constituency in Illinois. The idea of an openly abolitionist party arising in and surviving the 19th century and explicitly focused on the rights of minority religious and ethnic groups has a lot of promise.

*EDIT- In keeping with my new Strange Bedfellows idea for an alternate American history in party systems here's my reinterpretation of the Second Party System:

• Federalist Party- The sole survivor of the First Party System and the Era of Good Feelings, the Federalist Party was able to claw its way back from the brink in the wake of the shattering of the National Republican Party following the much maligned 1824 election. Advocating a strong central government, Hamiltonian economics and infrastructure spending, the party was aided in its recovery by the influx of anti-Jacksonians leaving the disintegrating National Republicans.
• Nullifier Party- Intrinsically rooted in the fallout of the Era of Good Feelings, the Nullifier Party was shaped in it's early history by the rise of Andrew Jackson and the fallout of the Nullification Crisis of 1832. Considering himself cheated out of the presidency in 1824 Jackson had joined the Nullifiers out of a belief in populism and states' rights, though he would oppose the doctrine within the party known as "Hard Nullification" (the right of the states to cancel federal laws), instead advocating a policy of limiting government power at the federal level. While in office Jackson tended to side with Southern interests against abolitionism, opposed (but could not dismantle) the Bank of the United States and defied the Supreme Court in the lead up to the Trail of Tears.
• Liberty Party- As the 19th century went on, national expansion through the annexation of Texas and the Mexican-American War put the issue of slavery at the forefront of the nation's politics. The Federalists would side with northern industrial interests in opposition to the spread of the Peculiar Institution, while Nullifiers, viewing such attempts as federal overreach, became adamant defenders of it. Despite this focus on the issue it wouldn't be until the 1850's that the Liberty Party, the only explicitly abolitionist party in the Union, would gain traction beyond the local level. A party of minority rights and abolitionism, the Libertarians would lead a coalition of freedmen, Mormons and Owenite socialists of all stripes to political action, parlaying a pivotal influence in several midwestern states into a coalition with the Federalists in 1860.

 

[Born in the USSA]

Based on a conversation I had about bimetallism (of all things) it became clear that the simplest way to create alternate party systems was simply to maintain the pressure of hot button political issues that are no longer relevant, with existing issue-specific parties boosted accordingly. With that in mind here's an example:

Currency reform- From the end of the civil war through the beginning of the twentieth century, a huge political issue was the currency system, specifically what was backing it. For a brief overview: the US operated a joint gold-backed and fiat currency system during the Civil War and eventually switched back to gold monometallism, with the Populist movement arguing for bimetallism to boost the currency supply. How might it have gone with a de facto fiat system a century before Nixon?

• National Reform Party- A party created from the merger of the National Labor Reform Party and the Grange (two groups OTL that would produce the Greenback Party), the National Reform Party would be instrumental in pressuring President Chase to veto attempts to return the United States to the gold standard. With the Nullifiers out of power in the wake of the Civil War and the Federalist/Liberty coalition divided over the issue, the Libertarians would bolt the alliance, swelling the ranks of the National Reform Party and elevating them to major party status. Aside from fighting to entrench fiat currency at the Bank of the United States, the NRP also comes down on the side of labor (both industrial and agrarian) against the trusts and the planter class, and on the side of religious and ethnic minorities.
• Constitutional Unionists- The transition of the Civil War from a conflict about government power to a crusade against slavery had tipped the balance of the Coalition, with Lincoln's change in affiliation to the Liberty Party laying the Federalists low for the second time in less than a century. Seizing on language in the Constitution about the use of gold and silver as legal currency and backed by a mixture of Eastern financiers eager for a return to bullion and Southern elites dismayed to see the poor, both white and black, drawn to the Libertarian-influenced National Reform Party, the newly reorganized Constitutional Union Party would advocate a platform of bimetallism and of ending Reconstruction. They would be stymied on both counts by Salmon P. Chase, having become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court following his presidency, the first president to fill both roles.

*Edit- I came up with a fun little challenge for myself: I'm going to edit this post and my Liberty Party post in order to tie them together. Once that's done I'm going to expand the now unified timeline going forward through analogues of each OTL party system. There's going to be tons of parallelism but still some fun stuff thrown in.

 

[Born in the USSA]

Up to this point in my little exercise we've seen how the dominant issues of each party system have existed right on schedule, each ending differently than in our history. The fight over slavery in the Second Party System ends in a more successful Reconstruction instead of OTL's Redemption. Rather than a fight over gold or silver, the Third Party System sees the rise of fiat currency in the US. And so we move on to the Fourth Party system, dealing with the Trusts and isolationist tendencies in the Empire of Liberty.

With the new century came a decisive schism in the National Reform Party, one that would tear it in half between Owenite and moderate elements. The turn of the century had seen the so-called Cuban Liberation erupt over the long-term Spanish policy of sheltering Confederate loyalists on the island, with the decisive question coming down to the issue of Cuban Reconstruction. Although a firm party man, having risen to the Presidency after the death of Edward Bellamy, Theodore Roosevelt was nonetheless unwilling to actually occupy Cuba as the radicals demanded, content merely to topple the Redeemer-supported Cuban government and turn over control to the native population.

• Progressive Party- When the party split as a result, Roosevelt would refashion the moderate wing into the Progressive Party, pursuing his longstanding agenda of dismantling the trusts that had grown unchecked during periods of Constitutional Union governance. Maintaining a focus on a strong central government as a vehicle for reform, Roosevelt would use his two and a half terms to strengthen labor, conserve wild spaces, and secure the development of the Panama Canal.
• Socialist Party- Formed from the Owenite wing of the NRP, the Socialist Party was disorganized in its early years, with many in the party unwilling to risk throwing the election to the Constitutional Unionists by challenging Roosevelt. By 1908 however they were growing restless, and with the Bull Moose declining to pursue a third full term they saw their chance. Campaigning on a communalist platform blending syndicalism with libertarianism, the Socialists would as feared split the vote.
• American Party- Rebranding again, the Constitutional Unionists would christen themselves the American Party, casting themselves as the defenders of traditional American values in the face of the Socialist scourge. Although the party would stress isolationism with the outbreak of the Great War, the rise of Communal Republics in the UK and France would be used as a hammer to discredit and suppress the Socialist Party.

With the Third Party System reduced to what amounted to a duopoly between the Progressives and the Americans, the 1920s would see further moderate reforms under Progressive administrations, although wealth continued to accumulate to powerful corporate and elite interests whenever the American Party held the executive. Isolation was seen by many as the proper course, especially as the Communal Republics continued to crop up in the the newly federalized French and British empires and Germany became increasingly reactionary in the face of its new neighbors. The default on loans and reparations payments by the Communalist Entente would lead to the global Panic of 1921, though America's fiat currency would give the country a far more flexible ability to respond than most other nations. Despite this flexibility the Panic would see the growth of a radical new populism obsessed with assigning blame for the Panic squarely at the feet of the Americans.

 

[Born in the USSA]

In many ways the cause of libertarianism in America was a victim of its own success. Charting a course from the Liberty Party through the National Reformers to the ultimately doomed Socialist Party, the movement would have a far reaching influence, providing a successful example to the world of a political tradition that was at once spiritually rich, pluralistic, and focused foremost on the common good of all people. Certainly the Cuban Liberation would demonstrate that the true believers could be a bit bellicose in the cause of expanding the Empire of Liberty, but that would ultimately pale in the face of the Communal Republics.

Without American involvement in the Great War the conflict would ultimately drag on an extra year, leaving all parties exhausted but none moreso than the defeated Entente. With Russia swept up in Nihilist revolution, strange currents also began to bubble in England and France. Although outnumbered at the start of the conflict, the Owenites and libertarians in both countries had cast the conflict in terms of national self-determination in the vein of America's Cuban adventure. The end of the war and the ensuing national soul searching quickly elevated the newly organized Communalist parties to national prominence, driving both empires to federalize and devolve governance to former subjects. And this naturally caught the eye of Germany.

Germany, along with several other nations on both sides of the Great War (and a significant segment of the US population) had looked in alarm at the implications of Communalism and Nihilism both, particularly as the former swept through Africa and South Asia in a great green tide. The result in the more conservative nations would be the growth of Distributism, advocating social conservatism and economic intervention and redistribution, the better to undercut the allure of the party line in the Communalist Entente. In the United States the most apt pupil would be disaffected Progressive Huey Long.

Idolizing President Bellamy and wary of the cultural implications of the Socialist Party, Long would ultimately reshape the Progressives in his image. He would argue at length (ultimately successfully) that the Panic would have been far better dealt with if not for American Party mismanagement. Both political factions had changed drastically as the issues of the day shifted, it was true, but both also maintained traces of their roots. In the case of the American Party, this would prove their undoing, with a half-hearted attempt to transition to bullion currency at the onset of the crisis widely reviled as having made the situation worse. As the 1932 elections approached Long was in a good place to recapture the presidency, and it would be at the head of a party that shared his convictions.

• National Party- Renamed in honor of his hero, the National Party showed notable distributist tendencies, abandoning any claim to moral libertarianism (with the exception of bone deep antiracism), focusing primarily on an aggressive policy of nationalization and wealth redistribution through a policy known as the Share Our Wealth campaign, explicitly argued as a counter to the relatively tepid Progressive reforms, inhuman American Party policies, and radical Communalism simultaneously.

Winning in a landslide, Long would implement the SOW program over fierce American objections. Not that it would help, the Supreme Court having been the more radical branch on average since Chief Justice Chase. Ushering in a period of industry nationalization, wealth redistribution and public works, President Long and America as a whole would be forced out of isolationism with the onset of the Second Great War.

Although regarded with the same disdain as the Communalists by their mutual enemies, the Russian Nihilists were an altogether more rabid animal, advocating the complete destruction of the state, religion and all other exploitative social institutions before a truly libertarian society could be created. Needless to say they were regarded with some alarm. Nevertheless they had their fair share of fellow travelers, from the Poles and Ukrainians chafing under the German yoke to the many peoples suffocating under the degenerate Qing to the long suffering indigenous peoples of the conservative Republic of Canada. From the onset of the Panic the Nihilists had been planning. One great push to topple the world order. And so on new years day 1940 the signal was sent.

Facing Nihilist insurgencies on every continent the sane powers of the world were forced to turn to and rely on one another, forming an unlikely and short lived alliance between the Distributist Powers and the Communalist Entente for the first and only time, the newly interventionist United States forced to play peacemaker between them. The war would come to an official end after the use of the atomic bomb on several Russian cities, though Nihilist insurgencies would continue for many years.

Leading the nation through the crisis (and serving an unprecedented five terms in office), Huey Long would live to see the world divided between the waning Distributists and the surging Communalists, the Empire of Liberty standing confidently astride the New World and casting the decisive vote in the newly minted Congress of Nations, though the fragmentation of the party he had led to glory would only come after his death.

 

[Born in the USSA]

While the struggle against the stateless global Nihilist insurgency would demonstrate the necessity of a forum for international organization and coordination, the new Congress of Nations inaugurated in the wake of the Second Great War would, more than anything, demonstrate that the social and political divisions on the world stage weren't going anywhere. Unlike OTL, the first and second Great Wars had, if anything, actually entrenched the policy of colonialism, albeit with a friendly face.

On the one hand was the Communalist Entente, uniting the British, French, and later Portuguese Empires into a vast libertarian federation; also counting South China as a member, the result of a quietly simmering century of libertarian unrest under the Qing. In response to the growth of Communalism in the wake of the war, the Germans and their allies would reorganize into the so-called Axis Mundi, a league of Distributist states including the German sphere of influence in Europe, the Ottoman sphere in the near east, the realigned Russia, Spain, South Africa, North China and the Nusantara. More often aligned with the Axis than the Entente in those early days, the American-led New World Order was distinct enough to chart its own path, aided by Japan her subordinated Pacific Sphere, along with every Latin American nation save Axis-aligned Brazil and Entente Guyana. The so called Silent Struggle had begun even before the guns had fallen silent during the last war.

While the score-long Long Administration would see the American political scene devolve to a fairly stable two-party system between the National party of government and the American opposition, once the Great Man finally stepped aside in the early '50s cracks had begun to form in the party he had built in his own image. Though American George Patton would serve two terms from 1953 to 1961, it would be under Long's hand picked successor that things really hit the fan.

Though a popular president among the Longist Nationalists and the American Party defectors, Gerald Smith was seen as a disaster by the communalist strain that had survived in the party in the wake of the demise of the Socialists. Lashing out fiercely against what they perceived as Smith's backward attitude on race relations (meant, it was argued, as a bid to further siphon from the Americans), the more radical wing of the Nationalists would bolt the party in the wake of the Jamaican Missile Crisis and the Kongo Crisis that would follow.

The former, the opposition to the basing of atomic devices in a Jamaica that was increasingly adopting the Hudsonian policies gaining favor within the rest of the Entente, had struck the radicals as the needless opposition to a revolutionary regime simply to pander to the reactionary Axis. In the wake of the Kongo Crisis these denunciations would seem downright tepid. An unofficial protectorate of the Liberian States of Africa since the fall of the Free State, the Kongo had undergone a particularly intense Nihilist insurgency during the Second Great War, with the rebels taking a turn toward Communalism in the aftermath of the conflict. Viewing the expansion of the Entente into the Liberian sphere as an assault upon the prerogatives of the United States, President Smith became committed increasing numbers of US troops to stem the tide.

Many American soldiers would have their political awakening in the Kongo jungles, only to return home and discover that they were the unknowing heirs of a proud yet sadly suppressed American tradition of libertarianism. It was these disaffected veterans, along with dovish students and racial, religious and sexual minorities, that would form the core of the major ideological splinter of the Nationals in the disastrous 1968 election. Seeking a third term in the style of his mentor, Smith would be faced with a resurgent Socialist movement.

• New Alliance Party- A broad party born from the unification of diehard Socialists, dissident Nationalists, and the Black Panther veteran's organization (based in form if not in function on the black nationalism of the LSA), that would form the core of the the New Alliance Party. Standing strongly against the encroaching racialism of the Smithite Nationalist Party the RCP would argue for further action on nationalisation, the empowerment of local authorities over state and federal govrnrments, and greater protection for "dissenters of all stripes".

Though unable in the near term to oppose Smith's victory in 1968, the Alliance would keep up the pressure throughout his third term, growing in strength as they metastasized the hollowed out remnants of the American Party, those that still remembered the old Federalist stance against bigotry, and the old party's coalition with libertarianism against the forces of reaction. This expansion would put the Alliance into the top two of American politics with the election of RCP candidate Martin Luther King Jr. to his first term in 1972.

From the King administration to the present the American electoral landscape has shown a fairly consistent ideological sorting between the distributist Nationalists and the communalist Alliance. While the fall of the Axis at the turn of the century to bloodless revolutions was seen by many to herald the end of the ideological conflict, the new century has if anything seen ever growing rancor between traditionalists and radicals both at home and abroad. The so-called "Nihilist Relapse" that has consumed American attention on the world stage has led to increasing tension on the home front, and if we have seen nothing else it is that in the Empire of Liberty tensions frequently give way to dramatic shifts in the status quo.

 

[Born in the USSA]

To understand the dramatic shifts that characterized the start of the new century, I think it's best to start by looking backward to one of the most widely read novels of the last one. Of course I'm talking about Brave New World. Written in 1932 by C.S. Lewis (under his more famous pen name Elwin Ransom), the dystopian novel demonstrates eerie resonances with the rest of the twentieth century, a fact which has no doubt kept it in print. A dissident British distributist, Lewis wrote the novel as a political polemic, harshly critiquing communalism and the then ascendant force of Longism in equal measure.

Set in the then far-off year of 1999, the novel is set in the waning days of a period he calls the Triumvirate. Although there is no Second Great War, Nihilist Russia collapses and is reformed into an Axis-aligned Orthodox state. The three global power blocs, realizing that open war would not be in their interest, inaugurate the Triumvirate, a darker and more authoritarian mirror of the Congress of Nations that would form less than two decades after the publication of the novel. Locked into a pattern of covert proxy wars, the major powers each warp and change under the strain, creating the altered political landscape of the alternate 1999.

Having renamed themselves the Eurasian Axis, the distributist alliance is one on the decline. Although stretching from Mitteleuropa to the Middle Kingdom and have by the far the largest population and the greatest military strength, the "peace" that would characterize the Triumvirate put this resource to poor use and left the Axis disadvantaged against its communalist rival. Although a lifelong supporter of the Axis Mundi, Lewis was frequently critical of what he perceived to be the unwillingness of moderate elements to fight for what he viewed as the only noble cause in geopolitics, and it is this view that characterizes the entity in the novel. Even the change in the name represents the betrayal of the founding goal of the movement, and this general lack of will is decried by the protagonist. Having stopped pressing outward, the Axis has begun to stagnate and turn inward, a move only accelerated by the Amero-Axis split.

Although the first several decades would see Longist America allied to the Axis, Lewis had watched the future president's rise with alarm, viewing the libertarian roots of the (then) Progressive Party as a sign of possible communalist cracks in the foundation. In the novel Long is described as having been even more successful than he would turn out to be in reality, winning an improbable number of terms and in effect turning the United States (and its vast and now official American Empire) into a Progressive one party state in all but name. The problem, as Lewis's viewpoint character bemoans, is that Long truly was a closet communalist, introducing libertarian policies very gradually right under the nose of the gullible public. By the time he finally leaves office in the 1970s, honest, faithful conservatives are being herded into communalist reeducation camps and the nation has grown so decadent as to betray the Axis, shifting power in the Triumvirate decisively in favor of the Green Menace.

As would later develop in actual history, the founding members of the Entente would unify over the course of the twentieth century, though unlike the vast federalized Entente that persists well into the new millennium, the Angevin Community of the novel is an autocracy, government solely by the continental Metropole. It is for the Angevin society that Lewis reserves the most vitriol, viewing it as the apotheosis of communalist insanity and the nadir of civilization. Governed at every level by a hedonistic Catharite revival, the state dulls the population by saturating them in radical individualism, pervasive sexuality and material excess.

Told from the perspective of a closet conservative and secret Axis agent, Brave New World reads like an elegy for the human race, casting aside tradition and propriety for the pursuit of independence and self-gratification. The climax of the story centers on our unnamed protagonist attempting to bring his handlers evidence of a secret meeting between the leaders of the American Empire and the Angevin Community. In his naivete he argues that the Axis should attack the conference, decapitating the communalist world in one stroke. But it's too late, and to his horror the Axis falls to revolt as the masses clamor for the pleasures they have been rightly denied. Now a man without a cause, our hero can only sit in stunned silence and the world turns upside down and the World Community is declared. It is revealed on the last page that the authorities knew of his activities all along. He was a nonentity, and therefore beneath dealing with. It is 1999. Outside the most haunting novel of the age the Axis Mundi would collapse in 2000.

 

[Born in the USSA]

To get a feel for this alternate dystopia, think of the Axis as a theocratic Brazil, the Angevins as Brave New World classic if John the Savage wrote the whole book, and America as It Can't Happen Here with more orgies.

And there we go! I could take Strange Bedfellows into a Seventh Party System but I'd like to see how it shakes out so that's off the table. Still I enjoyed working through the tweaks on this little project, recycling American third parties and social movements and along the way seeing Owenite Socialism completely suppress Marxism and Distributism completely butterfly Fascism while Russia falls to Nihilism. And of course there's the fun asides of an expansionist Liberia where the Leopard Society (probably sans cannibalism) is the dominant secret society as opposed to the Freemasons and a South China that's essentially a Taiping Heavenly Republic.

Any thoughts or questions? I hope if nothing else this little exercise has inspired you all to have a bit of fun with alternate party systems. Every country has their weird currents and strange politics, and I for one think it's incredibly entertaining to follow these traces and see where they can lead.

 

[Born in the USSA]

*Because who says moral advancement is forced to follow OTL patterns? This idea popped into my head while I was watching a documentary about American eugenics. Just a heads up regarding a certain outdated term that retains its former favored place in the American lexicon, as well as a significantly divergent tone for an alternate modern day*

Originating at the turn of the last century, the political duopoly between the Progressives and the Populists has shaped the twentieth century and beyond.

• Progressive Party- Splintering off from the now defunct Unionist-Republican Party[1] under the helm of Theodore Roosevelt, the Progressive Party was purpose built to be the natural home of socially progressive impulses, from conservation to labor reform to eugenics, and was perfectly willing to fight both at home and abroad to better society. Forming close ties with the Race Betterment Foundation and the Negro Academy, ties that endure to the modern day, the Progressives have built a robust coalition with a strong colored contingent. On the world stage the Progressives stand firm against the backward radicalism of the Centrum[2] and are fully in support of the Aryan Bund[3].
• Populist Party- With the Democratic Party diminished by the flight of the party's progressive wing to Roosevelt's new political project, the surviving Democrats would morph into the latest iteration of the Populist Party, building on the legacy of former presidential contender William Jennings Bryan under candidate (and later president) Clarence Darrow. At its founding an isolationist Christian conservative party opposed to the inhumanity of eugenics and other Progressive policies, the party would grow and change as Catholics, Jews and other "un-assimilable" populations would join en masse seeking a vehicle to preserve and protect their rights to free speech and free exercise in the face of Progressive onslaught. The influx of lower class negroes into the party would provoke another shift in the party.

[1]To differentiate it from the earlier Democratic-Republicans.
[2]Because "International" is too tainted by "Marxist materialism". Basically a decentralized Franco-Russian alliance, armed for defensive warfare by choice but with a truly staggering soft power. Saying that all people deserve the chance to live virtuous and fulfilling lives makes you popular among the lower classes, who knew?
[3]Not Nazis by any means, but a high level of sterilized social undesirables nonetheless. All with a stiff upper lip, wot?