I love the writing, the POVs, the fact that all of these people with radically different beliefs are all portrayed in a sensitive manner.
Thanks!
I feel on the whole the progress of anti-racism is a bit too optimistic. Especially that there isn't any of the big infighting it has today, not sure why it wouldn't have. I am really puzzled about how the whole Waishengren/Hoklo and Hakka/Indigenous cultural divide disappears or how all the Taiwan independence movement and the culture war on Chinese identity just completely vanishes. Seems also like just like real life, a whole lot of indigenous people throughout the world are going to be screwed over just as in real life. And that many environmentally terrible projects like the dams in Colorado are going to be done anyway, even though people would be better off just not trying to do mass-scale agriculture there in the first place.
Culture isn't something I've focused too much on, but the presence of the DPP in this big-tent Kuomintang coalition has allowed for more minority rights in China. There are prejudices, particularly when it comes to concepts seen as "Backwards," but the general idea is that if you want to learn codified Standard Mandarin, pay your taxes, and you aren't hurting anyone, the government isn't going to care.
Of course, there's always the issue of internal migration, and the Han Chinese are likely to displace the Mongolians and Manchus due to sheer weight of numbers. This might lead to a passive-Sinification of both Mongolia and Manchuria.
In the rest of the world, America had the Klan try to kill the President, so anti-black racism is on the decline, and the existence of a modern "civilized" non-White state agreeable to Western values has led to the concept of "Americanization," in the sense that anyone can be American if they integrate and embrace American values."
Russia's stop to Russification can be boiled down to "Dear God, this is a waste of resources, and Diterikhs is a lunatic." That, and the reliance of regional Ukrainian and Finnish coalition members has led to several concessions on languages.
France, for their part, is a bit weird. They genuinely believe in the brotherhood of all peoples as equals, but they're not above suppressing values they see as "Backwards" or "Counter-Revolutionary." Don't get me wrong, they'll go out of their way to incorporate socialism into local values (even if it's to spread their ideology), but they'll still take a sledgehammer to hierarchies and gender roles.
As for the indigenous peoples, it varies. China is undergoing a phase of "Two Languages, One Country," while Russia is easing itself off of Russification. Meanwhile, New Zealand is undergoing significant reforms with the Maori, while Australia is doing more outreach for the Aborigines.
America, on the other hand... is mostly just horrified at the Residential Schools, but there are still issues about Native American disenfranchisement that will need to be addressed. That, and just how
poor a lot of American Indians are.
Projects like the Hoover Dam will likely see more environmental protections, now that they have future knowledge, but it's not as if the US government at the time is
too focused on environmentalism.
In contrast, China's building of nuclear reactors all over the place has butterflied the Three Gorges Dam from being built. Sure, there's the environmental issues that make it unpalatable, but the big one is that they just produce so much energy they don't
need to build the dam in the first place.
Also feel like there should be some kind of outcry to the revelations of all the people that were killed by Germany and Russia because of what they did in another lifetime. Yes, even about Hitler.
Oh there was. People like Hitler were assassinated by the Kaiser's orders in Germany, while the Russian Junta tried to hunt down and kill basically everyone who was involved in the Russian Revolution. Granted, the latter were murdered because Diterikhs saw them as a threat to his Junta, so you ended up with things like the Okhrana killing a child Lavrentiy Beria.
Then there's the whole thing with the Saudis, where the Director of the MIB greenlit an op to murder the Saudi family with the Ottomans' blessing to prevent the spread of Wahhabism.
Yeah... one of our heroes gave the order to kill children, and part of his mind still feels guilty about it.
As an Israeli, I am very curious as to what happens with the Ottoman Empire. The real life democratisation movements there generally wanted democracy only in Anatolia and the capital. The uptime knowledge would make them want to focus on developing some other areas more, but I feel like there will still be a lot of neglect for places like the Berber villages in Libya or Palestine. Which brings me to another point: at this point in real life, the local Arab population is not really happy about the Ottoman government due to their neglect of the province combined with corruption, tax farming and absentee landlords.
The Liberal Union has been in a coalition with several Arab regional parties, and part of the deal was that a fixed percentage of oil revenues has to be reinvested into the Arab communities through business loans, infrastructure, education, and other public works.
Constantinople wants that oil revenue, while the Arabs want a higher quality-of-life. So long as they don't waste it on stupid ego projects, they should see both.
Antisemitism won't disappear because of uptime knowledge (and in fact a lot of uptimers themselves may hold left-wing antisemitic beliefs and spread them), and despite reforms of Wrangel and the Radical-Socialists, Jews in Europe will still likely be treated worse than their downtime American counterparts (in which the Gentleman's Agreement is still very much alive, as it is not technically against the law of the time and not violent). Regardless of what people on the this forum's beliefs on Israel are, the fact is that Zionism would still be seen as a necessity by many Jews of this period (mostly European ones, Zionism was initially unpopular among American Jews until Louis Brandeis came out in favour of it, and most likely he never becomes as influential in the first place after the POD).
As mentioned in a previous chapter, Europe being Europe and the Ottomans being... wary of Zionism, to say the least, has led to a larger migration of Jews to America and China, given the presence of diaspora communities on the East Coast and Manchuria, respectively.
You'll still see some European Jews immigrate to Palestine, but it'll be a reduced number for as long as the government is wary of Zionism.
The good news for the Ottoman Empire is that at this point what Zionism actually means is very much in flux. Independence might not be necessary to fulfill Zionist ambitions. And luckily for the lives of many Jews and Arabs, a younger Ben-Gurion can read up on what was the result of his other-self legacy and learn from OTL Israel's mistakes. I feel he would renounce the idea of the Jews setting up Jewish-only labour unions in Palestine and instead try to incorporate cooperation with Arabs on all levels of the movement and on all policies; he did not like anti-Arab racism in Israel in OTL even though he kind of was one himself without knowing it, and he was one of the first to see in OTL that Israel's policy in the West Bank could be the downfall of the country. In his younger, less stubborn and more tolerant of Arabs period he would do what he can to make sure that the Zionist movement would stay on the Progressive and Socialist side of history.
That's kind of where I am right now with how Zionism would play out. Since the Ottomans are opposed to Lost History Zionism (since they want to hold onto the Levant), people like Ben-Gurion would go back to the drawing board and see what they can do differently to achieve these goals.
It'd be a hard sell, but I think an approach that you described would be agreeable to the Liberal Union and the Arab parties. Cooperation with the latter would definitely smooth things over, but everyone would be wary first.
I had forgotten in the previous post about the Mizrahi and Ethiopian Jews. I feel most Ethiopian Jews would love to escape living the hate and persecution and legacy of peasantry in Ethiopia for the Aliyah. If they are thanks to uptime knowledge better known among Ashkenazi Jews, they'd make a lot more reliable converts to Zionism than the political mess that Eastern European Jewish politics was in OTL and would still be in ATL. Similar if they appeal to the Yemeni Jews. Throughout the Ottoman Empire as well, there are Jewish communities used to centuries of humiliating religious laws against them, laws that I would think Liberal Union cannot repeal due to being too dangerous political-capital wise - the Muslim majority would like to retain an enshrined superiority, and much of the legitimacy of the state is based on religious grounds. Perhaps the Ashkenazi dominance of Jewish politics in Israel/Palestine never emerges in the first place?
Oddly enough, they're probably the ones who are the most-receptive to the Aliyah, as while European Jews are more-likely to immigrate to America or China, I'm fairly certain that the Ottoman Empire is more-palatable for the Mizrahi and Ethiopian Jews despite the local prejudices, especially if Ben-Gurion can work out an agreement between the Arabs and Constantinople.
While Israel probably won't exist in this timeline, the Jewish community in the region
will, and they will likely be less-Ashkenazi.
On the other hand, in French Algeria, relations between Muslims and the local Jews were pretty positive back before Arab nationalism and Islamism and WW2 broadcasts against Jews by Nazi-sympathisers. They are after all, in it together in their suffering under French colonial law. With the Radical-Socialists bringing modernisation throughout Algeria and not just the Three Departments, perhaps many French Jews flee racism in Europe to settle in religiously tolerant Algeria? A delicious irony considering how it played the other way around in real life.
Yeah, I could see that. Algerian Kibbutzim would definitely be something, but it could work.
Actually, the French socialists might actually sponsor the projects due to the socialistic elements, so long as Ben-Gurion tells them he wants to build a bunch of communes in Algeria.
Oh and I forgot the most important issue of all: how are all of these uptimers have no communication problems with downtime Chinese who speak a myriad of mutually unintelligible dialects and aren't educated in "Standard Chinese" (not to mention that Nanjing Mandarin is very different in pronunciation from Beijing Mandarin or the Taiwanese koiné based of the former).
There's a push for a standard language (as in OTL) in addition to regional dialects, but the main way they go about this is translators.
Lots of translators.
As in, the United Kuomintang's approach was to recruit or utilize local leaders and members to smooth the transition to Republicanism, as the local leaders and members would be able to "sell" the ideas better. Those local leaders would basically be the go-between for the locals and Nanjing when it comes to ideas, administration, or communication. Quite literally when it comes to the latter.
