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History Strikes Back (TNO/TLM ISOT into OTL)

Would you all prefer a side story series on

  • UAR culture, subcultures and society in general

    Votes: 19 25.0%

  • UAR cities and locales

    Votes: 13 17.1%

  • Changes and events IOTL unrelated to the Cold War

    Votes: 44 57.9%
  • Total voters
    76
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Bring the CAR along please in this fic it would bring more chaos and I love it also I want everyone to be so scared by the Nazis they rather have the UAR around and allow communist to exist
 
I mean, CAR would just get a Russian and/or American invasion smack down as quickly as possible. Their location doesn't really leave them with many options that won't bring them into conflict with those two and the raw repugnance of them (and the lack of their own nukes to act as a deterrent) would piss off everyone OTL in short enough order that nobody will say boo about pre-emptive invasion.

So, CAR delende est.

Also, apropos of nothing, but I imagine TLM Gaddafi finding out that OTL Gaddafi was a ethnosocialist tinpot is doing his impostor syndrome no favors.
 
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Ghosts of Another World
  • Sidestory
    • Ghosts of Another World

    Thanks to @StarMaker764 for giving this the thumbs up and both @Traveller76 and my girlfriend for beta reading​

    August sat on the pier, legs dangling towards the placid waters, ignoring the beautiful Dubai skyline as he instead stared into his phone at the last remnants of a world that had vanished. He had grown up travelling the world when his mother Maude had gone on her quest to learn more about the Comintern she had escaped to, so when he grew up just carrying on travelling felt normal: he made friends in every city, was part of a polycule that stretched over 5 continents, picked up a thousand stories from the odd jobs he worked and little adventures he found, and when his travels wore him out he always had 3 mothers back in Germany who he knew loved him dearly.

    Almost all gone.

    His family had been reduced to his brother Oskar, his polycule down to just Fatima who he had been visiting in Dubai. Fatima had if anything been hit harder by the Wamda that he had: a descendant of east African and Indian "guest workers" who rebelled against the oil barons of the gulf, she had family in both Bharat and the African Socialist Union who she was close to; meaning that gentle August had become the one solid rock in Fatima's life and his shoulder was the one she'd cry on. Oskar meanwhile, had immediately rushed to visit August. August always felt a certain gap between the two of them, Oskar was old enough to remember his time in the Republic of Hamburg whereas August was just a toddler then and his earliest memories were in the glorious new world the Comintern was building, but in that moment the gap was gone. The brothers had held each other, crying into each other as they promised to be there for each other no matter what happened. Still, whilst he did check in over the phone everyday Oskar's job and the urgent state the UAR found itself in meant he had to leave.

    Which left August.

    It had been a week since the British and Italians had their invasion attempts crushed, but all this still didn't feel real to August. The Wamda, this new world, the sheer absence of the world he once knew, August knew intellectually that this was real, but the old instincts still remained: a part of him was still certain that his mothers awaited him back in Europe, that his lovers were just a phone call away, that this world was a nightmare to be banished by the morning light. Not that he dared to test it by trying one of the contacts that had been forever silenced. August knew how fragile illusions were, and in that moment he couldn't bear to break it.

    "August?"

    August's ears pricked up, recognising the voice as his resurgent caused his heart to skip a beat.

    "Auntie!?"

    August had rapidly turned around for his eyes to see what his ears had told him and confirmed that, yes, it was his 'auntie'. She wasn't really August's aunt: she was someone Maude knew back from her days in Hamburg's Women's Interest Party. They had been separated after Operation Cinder destroyed Hamburg, only to be reunited when the Comintern pushed capitalism out of mainland Europe. August mostly knew her as a family friend, someone a little strange and damaged from all they had suffered, who'd occasionally pop up into his life and shower him and Oskar with gifts whenever she did. Auntie had picked up a few more grays in her otherwise raven hair since August had last seen her, he could see that even with the large sun hat she was wearing, but she had entered her 40s with grace, her glacial beauty very much intact for all the wear and tear the years had inflicted upon her.

    "Auntie I- uh, what are you doing here?" August was genuinely surprised by his auntie being here and took a second too long to realise that he had put his foot in his mouth.

    "Another day and I wouldn't have been." Luckily, Auntie managed to laugh off August's clumsy question. "I was caught in the Wamda like you, contacted Oskar as I knew he worked in the UAR and he told me you were here too. I was in the area and I… I thought you could do with seeing a friendly face around now."

    August started to reply, but wasn't quite sure what to say. He wanted to say he was okay or at least will be okay, but he honestly wasn't sure.

    "How… Are you handling everything?" Auntie had noticed the silence began to stretch and, slowly walking forward with her hands moved behind her back, decided to gently nudge the issue.

    "I…" Too emotionally exhausted for any other option, August went with honesty. "I don't know?"

    Auntie's pensive face moved into definite pity with a sigh, but before she could reply August carried on:

    "It doesn't feel like this is happening." August didn't notice the distress leaking into his voice. "It feels like any minute I'm going to wake up, and that I'll see my mums right there waiting for me. And… I know it's not like and… And I'm scared what'll happen when that feeling hits…"

    August was brought out of his contemplative spiral by a firm, comforting hand on his shoulder.

    "You lost your world." Auntie's voice quivered as she spoke, a hint of vulnerability in the glacier.

    "What?"

    "You lost your world." Auntie repeated. "I lost mine once as well, as did two of your mothers."

    August didn't reply, instead looking up into his Auntie's eyes in thought. He knew his aunt was a touch damaged from having lived through a rough part of history, but he had never seen her look vulnerable like this.

    "I… it was back in Hamburg." Auntie carried on. "For me it started with my son Leo. He… He caught ICS from a dirty needle used in a CDN vaccination campaign, and from there he and his bright smile and kind eyes were… were sent to the gas chamber. And when we tried to fight back against all that the… the Americans came and butchered almost everyone I knew. Maude and I were separated for years, and the world we both knew and felt safe in was burnt to the ground."

    August was too stunned to reply. Maude never talked about her time in Hamburg, and Oskar and Lottie only really reminisced about it in each other's company, and with how horrible it had to have been to live like that… August couldn't really blame anyone for not wanting to discuss it.

    "It… It never really goes away August." Auntie was at an age where crying didn't come easily, buried as it was beneath pride and stubbornness, but August could still hear the tears in her voice. "You'll carry the weight of all those you've lost forever, just as I carried the weight of my son and now I carry the weight of my girls. But… from my experience August… that weight gets easier. You just have to get through it."

    August stared at his aunt, eyes full of thought, before closing the distance between them and pulling her into a hug. Auntie's body stiffened with surprise at first, before relaxing into the hug.

    "Thank you Elke. I'm… I'm sorry you went through that." August pulled back out of the hug. "Honestly? I think I was mostly scared of losing whatever was left off… Everyone. I don't think I could bear it if they just… Disappeared like it was nothing, but if carrying that weight means I'll keep something of everyone with me, I think I can carry that weight."

    Auntie Elke paused, before managing a gentle, wistful smile.

    "I always underestimate how strong you are August." Elke sighed, looking away briefly in thought. "For what it's worth, everyone we knew isn't dead. Just… Far away. Your Maude will be looking after Mia and Adele, after everything I have to believe that at least."

    "What will you do?" August had learned a while ago that his first reflex when something went wrong was to look after someone else, and he had a feeling that Elke was handling the Wamda worse than he was.

    "Same as I did last time I lost my world." Elke gave a grim chuckle. "Get to work on some organising. This new Europe has… Potential I believe. If my understanding is right, the Schaflyists have brought women into the work place whilst destroying the welfare state that let them still have children while doing so. Lots of cracks for a revolutionary women's interest movement to take root in. Actually shaping politics helped keep me sane in Denmark, it'll keep me sane here."

    August nodded. He knew that Elke ended up in the All Danish Social Republic after Operation Cinder, and he knew that she was part of some political group that threw its weight behind the Comintern occupation the second it arrived, but he couldn't say mode than that. Partially this was just a matter of not seeing Elke enough for it to come up, but it was also because August had an inkling of how bad life was in Denmark then and he didn't want to dredge up the damage he presumed Elke must have received there.

    "On that note, what will you do now August?"

    "Honestly Elke?" August smiled peacefully. "I don't know yet."

    August didn't mean it in a lost or bad way as he probably would have meant it before his encounter with Elke. He meant it more in the way common to Qitarat nomads like him in more peaceful times: where one is between countries to stay in, obligations made and pursuits being chased and are happily waiting for something to help make the decision of what to do next.

    "Hm. Try to find something." Elke shrugged, not remotely familiar enough with Qitarat culture to spot the subtext to August's reply. "Trust me, it'll help."

    August nodded all the same, letting the silence hang a moment.

    "Fancy something to eat Elke?" If nothing else, August figured that making sure his Auntie didn't neglect a meal was a good next obligation to keep. "I know a good breakfast place."

    "Breakfast? At this time?" Elke raised a confused eyebrow.

    "It's always breakfast time somewhere." August didn't exactly chuckle as he recited another Qitarat saying, but the humour was obvious in his voice.

    Elke moved as if to argue, paused partway through starting to speak, then sighed and let her face slip into a smile.

    "Alright, you've convinced me. Show me this breakfast in the afternoon place."

    With that, August confidently strode forward whilst Elke loped alongside. As much as it hurt August to have lost a world, he genuinely felt happy: pleased that he had one more friendly face with him in this new world, eager to show a family member the great place he had discovered… And tragically unaware of the She Wolf awakening from it's dormancy beside him.
     
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  • Sidestory
    • Raiho-kun said:
    Majles or Majlis is an Arabic/Persian term for "Sitting Room" and can roughly translate into "Council" or more generally "Legislature". It's in fact the name of Iranian parliament both before and after the 1979 Revolution.

    The idea is that it can replace "Arab" as an identifier the same way the USSR promoted an All-Union "Soviet" identity. Since while the word Arab has dropped its ethno-nationalist connotations in TLMTL upon the Pan-Arab state becoming the champion of socialist internationalism (for the most part), it hasn't OTL.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Interestingly in Malay it's used to mean council and so is a very common word in Malaysia on anything that would be 'council' e.g. town council and religious council buildings. Does explain why some restaurants here have it in their names.
     
    Demographic funnies 2
  • Sidestory
    • 1. The number of people who know Finnish in UAR borders is larger than the number of those who know it outside of the UAR.

    2. The UAR is now host to 99.9% of the world's satanists (mostly thanks to Sicily).

    3. Related to above, Italy is very normal abt the fact that Venetian, Roman, Etruscan and Samnite are now actual ethnic groups (sorta) again.

    4. The number of Yiddish speakers in the world has quadrupled over night

    5. TLM Hebrew is distinct enough that it is considered its own dialect and is now the most common one since most of OTL Hebrew speakers disappeared in the ISOT (Zionists are very normal about this).

    6. TLM Romanian is classified as a separate language due to its vocab and grammar being peppered with influences from around the world (Romanian nationalists are very normal abt this)

    7. The Libyan City of Derna now has the honor of being the only Buddhist majority city in Africa.
     
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  • Sidestory
    • PrognosticHannya said:
    How'd this end up happening?
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    In the OG TLM world, the city became home to the majority of the UAR's Korean diaspora thanks to a mix of Ghaddafi's interference and the growing city needing more labor than what its arab/Berber population could supply at the time (the Christianity's spread in TLM Korea was seen as a threat by the Japanese who moved quickly to halt or reverse this trend and encouraged Buddhism instead), when Korea was liberated, those inhabitants who came to the UAR naturally ended up in the city, pushing the city's now 300,000 pop into a rough parity only for the Wamda to add all the displaced Koreans and East Asians into the mix, pushing it towards a majority Buddhist city.

    Ofc as with many things, the Buddhist sects practiced are divergent and syncretic and whether they could be classified as such is hotly debated.
     
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    Abrahamic fun times 2 (2002-2006) New
  • Threadmarks
    • Pope Fight



    (Flag of the long march TL's Catholic Church by @Raiho-kun )

    "Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought."- Pope John Paul II

    History is always twisting and turning, patterns shifting and rhyming while nations and persons rise and fall only to be forgotten by the inevitable march of entropy, even as their actions and deeds reverberate across the worlds of future generations.

    Things of the utmost importance yesterday could very well be reduced to irrelevance today, only to regain their prominence tomorrow. And such was the case with the question of who was at the head of the Catholic Church.

    In the immediate Pre-Wamda world, the answer was simple, there was the pope who presided over the church from his seat in the microstate of the Vatican, chosen by conclave as had been for centuries by that point, and by the time of the Wamda said pope was one John Paul II, credited with playing an instrumental role in accelerating the collapse of communism only for the red specter to return more powerful than ever as if in act of spite by the very god his institution claimed to represent.

    Amid all the tribulations of the early 2000s, the Vatican at first was content to simply lay and wait for an opportunity to play a role in the new Cold War; they had dealt with godless Soviets before, and for all its flaws the Holy See was one of the few organizations at the time to remember that Arab Catholics existed, and these no doubt oppressed and tortured soul would surely secretly flock to a church uncorrupted by socialist satanism or headed by a puppet toady of a pope who was no longer there (the Church of the Long March World had chosen newly liberated Warsaw as its center for the coming seven years at the Wamda's Eve).

    This delusion would hold on for two years, as the socialist and capitalist worlds were too busy adjusting to the new material reality to focus on spiritual affairs; but once things settled down news would arrive from the Arab world that would reportedly give the Polish pope a stroke (that he survived); news of the Arab bishoprics not only refusing to acknowledge the authority of this Vatican but also announcing that a people's conclave will be held for the Republic's (and Comintern's) Catholics to elect their new pope.

    The very notion of the pope being elected as if he were no different than any other head of state was immediately blasted as heretical, blasphemous, heathenous and a multitude of other religiously charged terms by all manner of Catholic and even non-Catholic devotees across the world; the latter of whom seemed to oscillate between denouncing the papal elections as just another form of communism "vulgarizing and mocking" tradition and the whole election being just another farcical way of the republic to distract their citizens from the tyranny they lived under.

    Underneath the condemnations, however, was an element of fear in higher places; in the original Cold War the capitalist powers could always easily fall back on having the legitimacy of nominally backing traditional religious beliefs and institutions; a card that the staunchly atheistic USSR and its proxies could never play thus giving an edge to the Western powers in the struggle for humanity's future.

    Now however it was abundantly clear that the UAR and the various revolutionary theological projects that flourished under its aegis would be a much more difficult rival on that front; Cairo did not hesitate to encourage their spread outside its borders to gain influence and leverage in the Cold War; as events in the Catholic world were mirrored in the Oriental Orthodox one; as the Ethiopian and Armenian Churches now grappled with the question of whether to remain under the nominal authority of decidedly socialistic Baba* in Alexandria, their stances being equally determined by political expediency as much as it was by theological debate.

    As for the Catholic elections, which largely took place in the UAR, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam and would see one Mun Du-Ho elevated to the exalted position of Pope (or anti-pope depending on which side you were on) and taking the papal name of Sylvester, becoming fifth of that name and the first pope of East Asian descent (yet another point of attack for his detractors)

    The new pope would quickly prove to be a headache to his Vatican counterpart, and later his successor, beginning with his official inauguration ceremony in which the Korean-born Catholic would not only inadvertently cast light on the Catholic Church's deep ties with fascism in both timelines, but also the fact of the current pope's counterpart being a one time Nazi collaborator**.

    For now, however, Pope Sylvester's influence was much smaller in scope than his rival's, limited only to the Catholic population of the UAR, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam (and in the latter's case, not all bishoprics recognized his authority). However, later events would soon conspire…..

    | to expand his flock's size |








    Separated in a flash



    "All the great evils which men cause to each other because of certain intentions, desires, opinions, or religious principles, are likewise due to non-existence, because they originate in ignorance, which is absence of wisdom."--Maimonides


    Though its struggles were less dramatic in scope than the theological national fights of Islam and Christianity, the Jewish Community of the Murdered Trotsky Timeline was no less affected by the seemingly supernatural event in 2002, if anything it was arguably more affected than either by virtue of having one of its centers of gravity vanish overnight, taking almost half of this timeline's population with it and replacing them with people wholly divorced from the context of this world's Jewish society.

    It was quickly and abundantly clear that the new Arab Jewish communities and their coreligionists elsewhere, centered in the United States and Western Europe, were not going to get along, at least for now.

    For starters there was the issue of simple communication, even taking political barriers into account, the predominantly Hebrew, Yiddish, and English-speaking diaspora in the Western world were often befuddled by their counterparts' more varied linguistic palette which included all the aforementioned languages in addition to Ladino, Judeo-Arabic, Yevanic and other tongues that were on the brink of extinction in this world.

    And of course, there was the cultural divide between the largely American Ashkenazi diaspora and its new mostly Mizrahi/Shepardi counterpart (who themselves differed immensely from those who had lived in TTL's Israel for obvious reasons), and then there were the issues that arose from simple divergence of accepted doctrine and practices brought upon by living in two different worlds with contrasting histories; to the point where a common point of attack used by Neo-Israel would be to simply deny that the Jews of the UAR were Jewish at all, selectively using the heterodox practices of this or that sect to make its claim (and shield itself from any criticisms raised by those within the Jewish-Arab community).

    And that brings up the question that would solidify the silent divide between the two halves of the new diaspora: that of Zionism. It was never going to be a non-messy affair in the best of times; and the heightened Cold War atmosphere combined with the rise of neo-orientalism only ensured that the debates were brutal, nasty and fraught when they occurred at all; as was inevitable when one side had seen the ideology of Herzl become so entrenched in its fabric that it was as noticeable as air while the other had decisively, consciously and actively rejected it during the dancing 90s and beyond.

    The UAR diaspora would quickly come to see their American/European counterparts as either dangerously ignorant at best or gleefully uncaring active supporters of ethnic cleansing, genocide, and apartheid, a view that was only solidified by the open support of many US Zionist organizations for Arab/Islamic interment; while said counterparts saw their displaced kin (when they saw them as kin at all) as either brainwashed victims to be saved or hitlerite self-hating antisemites to a man, the latter stance only growing in popularity as it became clear that the promised Zionist revolt within the UAR was never gonna happen.

    There was no formal division of course, there were no formal centralized organizations on either side of the divide that could make it happen; but the Occidental and Oriental branches of Judaism as they came to be called would slowly, inexorably but inevitably continue to diverge and distant themselves from one another as the battle lines of the Cold War were drawn, even the so-called Occidentals began to face their own internal struggles with the Neo-Israeli state attempting to assert itself over the diaspora in increasingly intrusive ways.

    | A house divided |




    *The Oriental Orthodox equivalent of the pope basically

    **in TLM Karol Józef Wojtyła was a leader of the slave revolt much as in TNO, only to side with Brandt in purging the movement of left-wing radical elements on the imploring of the GO4, only for them to be predictably betrayed and destroyed in turn by the Nazis. As you can guess the historiography of TLM has not been kind to him.
     
    Last edited:
  • New
  • Threadmarks
    • StarMaker764 said:
    Pope Fight



    (Flag of the long march TL's Catholic Church by @Raiho-kun )

    "Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought."- Pope John Paul II

    History is always twisting and turning, patterns shifting and rhyming while nations and persons rise and fall only to be forgotten by the inevitable march of entropy, even as their actions and deeds reverberate across the worlds of future generations.

    Things of the utmost importance yesterday could very well be reduced to irrelevance today, only to regain their prominence tomorrow. And such was the case with the question of who was at the head of the Catholic Church.

    In the immediate Pre-Wamda world, the answer was simple, there was the pope who presided over the church from his seat in the microstate of the Vatican, chosen by conclave as had been for centuries by that point, and by the time of the Wamda said pope was one John Paul II, credited with playing an instrumental role in accelerating the collapse of communism only for the red specter to return more powerful than ever as if in act of spite by the very god his institution claimed to represent.

    Amid all the tribulations of the early 2000s, the Vatican at first was content to simply lay and wait for an opportunity to play a role in the new Cold War; they had dealt with godless Soviets before, and for all its flaws the Holy See was one of the few organizations at the time to remember that Arab Catholics existed, and these no doubt oppressed and tortured soul would surely secretly flock to a church uncorrupted by socialist satanism or headed by a puppet toady of a pope who was no longer there (the Church of the Long March World had chosen newly liberated Warsaw as its center for the coming seven years at the Wamda's Eve).

    This delusion would hold on for two years, as the socialist and capitalist worlds were too busy adjusting to the new material reality to focus on spiritual affairs; but once things settled down news would arrive from the Arab world that would reportedly give the Polish pope a stroke (that he survived); news of the Arab bishoprics not only refusing to acknowledge the authority of this Vatican but also announcing that a people's conclave will be held for the Republic's (and Comintern's) Catholics to elect their new pope.

    The very notion of the pope being elected as if he were no different than any other head of state was immediately blasted as heretical, blasphemous, heathenous and a multitude of other religiously charged terms by all manner of Catholic and even non-Catholic devotees across the world; the latter of whom seemed to oscillate between denouncing the papal elections as just another form of communism "vulgarizing and mocking" tradition and the whole election being just another farcical way of the republic to distract their citizens from the tyranny they lived under.

    Underneath the condemnations, however, was an element of fear in higher places; in the original Cold War the capitalist powers could always easily fall back on having the legitimacy of nominally backing traditional religious beliefs and institutions; a card that the staunchly atheistic USSR and its proxies could never play thus giving an edge to the Western powers in the struggle for humanity's future.

    Now however it was abundantly clear that the UAR and the various revolutionary theological projects that flourished under its aegis would be a much more difficult rival on that front; Cairo did not hesitate to encourage their spread outside its borders to gain influence and leverage in the Cold War; as events in the Catholic world were mirrored in the Oriental Orthodox one; as the Ethiopian and Armenian Churches now grappled with the question of whether to remain under the nominal authority of decidedly socialistic Baba* in Alexandria, their stances being equally determined by political expediency as much as it was by theological debate.

    As for the Catholic elections, which largely took place in the UAR, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam and would see one Mun Du-Ho elevated to the exalted position of Pope (or anti-pope depending on which side you were on) and taking the papal name of Sylvester, becoming fifth of that name and the first pope of East Asian descent (yet another point of attack for his detractors)

    The new pope would quickly prove to be a headache to his Vatican counterpart, and later his successor, beginning with his official inauguration ceremony in which the Korean-born Catholic would not only inadvertently cast light on the Catholic Church's deep ties with fascism in both timelines, but also the fact of the current pope's counterpart being a one time Nazi collaborator**.

    For now, however, Pope Sylvester's influence was much smaller in scope than his rival's, limited only to the Catholic population of the UAR, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam (and in the latter's case, not all bishoprics recognized his authority). However, later events would soon conspire…..

    | to expand his flock's size |
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Huh. The Bishoprics of Cuba and Indochina assent to the Arab Catholic norms? That's surprising. Particularly the apparent fact that Cuban priests have done so comprehensively -- I thought they were fairly conservative as a rule, even as late as like 2022 when they opposed the new family laws
     
    Huh, just realized. Hunter S Thompson, the gonzo journalist and writer, doesn't die until 2005 when he commits suicide. Be interesting to see some of his perspective.
     
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