I mean it's technically not impossible, but at the same time, it's technically not impossible that Amelia Earhart died when the air around her plane spontaneously turned to gold. The issue people keep trying to get out there is that Amelia Earhart had zero provable links to fascists thinkers and would take dozens upon dozens of PODs to make it seem even slightly possible.I don't think it's impossible
Jesus, why the personal attacks? All I'm doing is asking a question.@Bullmoose713 as thread OP--
I've said why I think it is pretty gauche for you to do this. It is not unkosher, just a bad idea IMHO.
It was silly to say "there is no way to know her politics" as though historical biography is not in fact pretty much all about uncovering the character of people; knowing that in an American context of the 1920s and '30s we would very reasonably have an excellent guess as to her politics. That at any rate is what we expect of most normal public figures, and it seemed strange you'd take another position.
But of course you are not a public figure, I have no way of knowing your reasons for this strange proposal except those you might wish to disclose--which you've been pretty cagey about.
Piece of advice if you are bound and determined to push this apparently tasteless and ugly tack--
Don't make her conversion to a fascist cause a late life, late 1930s sort of spur of the moment thing. Do you think people in general shift easily like that? Or that she was a particularly weak character prone to being swayed this way or that more easily than most people?
If you want a right wing Amelia Earhart, lay the groundwork early in her life, in the 1920s. It might not even bar her from being active as a National Women's Party supporter; as noted, some suffragists and other women's rights activists were indeed reactionary in other ways--it would indeed push her to a certain wing of the movement to be sure.
So she probably would not be fast friends with Eleanor Roosevelt, though for all I know Roosevelt had some conservative friends (I doubt it, but maybe she did). She might spend more time with people like Ayn Rand perhaps, and with Southern segregationist feminists, and be closer to Lindbergh, maybe even push him over the edge into more unforgivable forms of fascism. She might move in circles with people like Henry Ford.
I think it is bloody tragic to try to push her ATL self that way, and I suspect that in fact her fundamental character would not go so far in that direction, but that is based of course on very superficial pop culture impressions plus a quick skim of a couple Wikipedia articles.
If what is motivating you to bring this particular hobbyhorse to this race is that you actually know something obscure and yet documented to show a side of her not generally known, perhaps it is well for you to bring it out, painful though it may be for some of us to contemplate. Just be sure, saying such a radical thing about a well liked personality of OTL, any claims along these lines purporting to be based in the OTL historic person should stand serious critical scrutiny--it is OK if they are obscure, as long as stuff someone just made up is not presented as fact.
And as I understand the rules, you can of course make up anything you like about an ATL person.
Jesus, why the personal attacks? All I'm doing is asking a question.
Long was more of a socialist.Okay, to answer your question, if AE completed her trip around the world, and if(and this one is a pretty big "if"), she got converted to fascism, yes, Americans might like her, but probably no moreso than they would like anyone else leading a fascist party. Whatever aversion Americans IOTL had to someone like Lindbergh leading the country, isn't going to disappear just because it's Earhart instead.
The most prominent fascist or quasi-fascist of the era in question was Huey Long, and he is not much remembered today, apart from history buffs and people who live in Lousiana. Earhart would likely suffer the same dive into obscurity, with only her aviation career keeping her memory, to whatever extent, alive.
Long was more of a socialist.
I think Earhart would've been even more famous had she completed her flight.Okay, then she'd be remembered about as much as Father Coughlin.
Laura Houghtaling Ingalls (December 14, 1893 – January 10, 1967) was an American pilot who won the Harmon Trophy. She was arrested in December 1941 and convicted of failing to register as a paid German agent.
Laura Houghtaling Ingalls was a distant cousin of Little House on the Prairie's Laura Ingalls Wilder, and became a friend of her daughter Rose Wilder Lane.
Aviation
Her best-known flights were made in 1934 and earned her a Harmon Trophy. Ingalls flew in a Lockheed Air Express [4] from Mexico to Chile, over the Andes Mountains to Rio de Janeiro, to Cubaand then to Floyd Bennett Field in New York, marking the first flight over the Andes by an American woman, the first solo flight around South America in a landplane, the first flight by a woman from North America to South America, and setting a woman's distance record of 17,000 miles.
Aviation records
Activities as a German agent[edit]
- Longest solo flight by a woman (17,000 miles)
- First solo flight by a woman from North to South America
- First solo flight around South America by man or woman
- First complete flight by a land plane around South America by a man or woman
- First American woman to fly the Andes solo
In late September 1939, Ingalls flew over Washington, D.C. in her Lockheed Orion monoplane, dropping anti-intervention pamphlets. She was arrested for violating White House airspace, but was released within hours.[5] Following the defeat of France in 1940, she approached Baron (Freiherr) Ulrich von Gienanth, the head of the Gestapo in the US, and, officially, second secretary of the German Embassy. She suggested that she make a solo flight to Europe, where she would continue her campaign to promote the Nazi cause. Von Gienanth told her to stay in America to work with the America First Committee.
Ingalls gave speeches for the Committee in which she derided America's "lousy democracy" and gave Nazi salutes. Von Gienanth praised her oratorical skills. She had made a careful study of Mein Kampf, on which she based many of her speeches, as well as pamphlets by Hitler such as My New Order and Germany and the Jewish Question, and Elizabeth Dilling's books The Roosevelt Red Record and The Octopus.[6][7][8] She expected Hitler to win the war; in April 1941, she wrote to a German official, "Some day I will shout my triumph to a great leader and a great people... Heil Hitler!" After the German declaration of war on December 11, 1941, she went straight to Washington to receive a list of contacts from von Gienanth, and was arrested a week later.
Ingalls was charged with failing to register with the government as a paid Nazi agent, in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938. She had been receiving approximately $300 a month from von Gienanth.[8] During the trial it came out that von Gienanth had encouraged Ingalls's participation in the America First Committee, a significant embarrassment for that organization.[9]
The FBI testified that they had kept her under surveillance for several months.[8][6] Ingalls was convicted, and sentenced to eight months to two years in prison on February 20, 1942.[10] She was transferred from the District of Columbia jail to the U.S. federal women's prison in Alderson, West Virginia, on July 14, 1943, after fighting with another inmate.[6] She was released on October 5, 1943 after serving 20 months.
Prison had not altered her views, however. A few months after her release, she stated her opinion of the Normandy landings:
After her probation ended, in July 1944 Ingalls was arrested at the Mexican border. Her suitcase contained seditious materials, including notes she had made of Japanese and German short-wave radio broadcasts. She was prevented from entering Mexico, but was not prosecuted.[6] Ingalls applied for a presidential pardon in 1950, but her application for clemency was rejected by two successive Pardon Attorneys. On the latter occasion, the reply stated that Ingalls had been of "special value of the Nazi propaganda machine".[11]This whole invasion is a power lust, blood drunk orgy in a war which is unholy and for which the U.S. will be called to terrible accounting... They [the Nazis] fight the common enemy. They fight for independence of Europe—independence from the Jews. Bravo![7]
She died on January 10, 1967, in Burbank, California, aged 73.
I think Earhart would've been even more famous had she completed her flight.
Have you ever read Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique?No. She's a woman. These are the 1930s.
This is the general nature of the culture wars, and I think you quite badly underestimate how much scope there was in liberal American society for a partial but significant feminism,
As I already mentioned in thread - Rotha Lintorn-Orman, founder of British Fascisti. Though, I admit it's only example I can remember, but still exists.So, were there OTL party leaders who were women? Especially extremely conservative right-wing parties? Led by women? In the 1920s-30s?
As I already mentioned in thread - Rotha Lintorn-Orman, founder of British Fascisti. Though, I admit it's only example I can remember, but still exists.
Rotha Lintorn-Orman - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
There were some in the U.S.:
If Earhart had fascist views, she hid them in plane sight.But Amelia Earhart has no recording of any fascist views unlike Charles Lindbergh who publicly advocated non-interventionism and his support of Nazi Germany.
😏😎👏If Earhart had fascist views, she hid them in plane sight.