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Reds! A Revolutionary Timeline

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The Laurent said:
There is the Leninistic emphasis on supporting National Liberation Movements. I think there's such a thing as Communist Parties that have a stronger or weaker current of nationalism within them. But that doesn't make them National-Communist, which implies something far more deliberate and intellectually constructed.
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"National Communism" just sounds like another variant of red painted Fascism like Strasserism or National Bolshevism. Like, best case it's China's state capitalism, right? Communism carries within it the inherent and explicit goal of erasing national borders and creating a truly equal society. Crafting a variant that's also nationalistic in outlook is ideologically incoherent.

Even if the term is meant in good faith, it's hard to avoid the Red/Brown comparison.
 
Anyway,can someone answer a few questions for me :

1.What will Eastern Europe be like post war? Especially Finland.
2.Did Luftwaffe aircraft use engines developed by FMW (Ford Motoren-Werke)?
3.Did Ford plan to establish FFW (Ford Flugzeug-Werke)?
 
Fourthspartan56 said:
It's a shame social patriotism is tainted by history or else it might fit :V
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That tend to be more nationalist Social Democrats than nationalist Socialists yeah.

Though the TCI has some Social Democrats in its "people's democracies", where local coalitions of the center left and left reached out to them. We've seen them in Latin America, not sure what'll happen when they decolonize the Japanese Empire though.

It's likely some sort of transitional National Liberation Social Democracy happen in the area. I think that would describe the TCI aligned KMT for example.
 
the atom said:
This is ironically an extremely christian protestant perspective. Most religions throughout history don't place paramount importance on following every word of their 'holy' texts and this often includes the followers of the Abrahamic faiths as well. The notion that religion is in any way fixed to the word of a single book has always only ever constituted a very, very niche tradition and that's including the faiths that even attempt to do so.

Ignoring the stuff about slavery and obeying the king is no more absurd than ignoring the stuff about wealth or mercy and yet lots of Christians have gotten away with the latter for centuries.
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Oh, I'm fully aware of that fact. Even the most diehard fundamentalist literalists pick and choose from their holy texts of choice. My favorite example of this is Islamic fundamentalists wanting to blow up the Sphinx/Pyramids even though the Rightly Guided Caliphs were all okay with them.

But this kinda gets deeper into my critique of monotheism. Can any Christian or Muslim be said to worship the same god as any other Christian or Muslim? If so, why are opinions so varied, even in relatively small ingroups? If not, can it truly be said to be monotheism? The grand irony of believing in an omniscient, omnipotent 100% moral being while also believing that multiple interpretations are possible at all without it being heresy just doesn't make sense to me. I worship imperfect images of imperfect gods, and so I am consistent. But even an imperfect image of a perfect god undermines the Abrahamic vision of the cosmos.
 
Fleurs de Merde said:
Fully agreed. Just gonna add that the whole point of the institutional church is that individual reason is insufficient for interpreting the word of god. Any such interpretation has to be anchored in a living tradition, a set of institutions, and a community of the faithful. Obviously the book takes on different roles - Catholics kinda see the Bible as a first text but not the only text, while a lot of Muslim interpretation is basically judicial - but the above poster is entirely right, pure textualism is a uniquely Evangelical take that even a lot of hardliner American Protestants don't go for. Even at the most basic level, there's still the need for common set of interpretations.

As for christsocs, it's something I've kinda been contemplating for a while. Haven't really gone for it yet, but if I do it'll be more an outgrowth of my politics. Grew up totally atheist in a secular household. Ultimately, though, I think you can be a Christian and a socialist, but attempting to synthesize some sort of vanished Christsoc tradition out of whole cloth is absolutely gonna come out as either Christian or Socialist, but not really convincingly either one. It might be the tension between the two separate things that makes the exercise worthwhile.
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Oh, I think you misunderstood- I'm not talking Sola Scriptura here, I'm talking the idea of there being One Absolute Truth that can be comprehended by mortals. This is the foundation of monotheist cosmology- god is always right, and he speaks the truth to mortals who listen. If you believe you have arrived at that Absolute Truth, or something close to it, if you don't adhere to it as best you're able you're a hypocrite. But nobody really believes that- which is why Catholics are happy to contradict the "infallible" Pope whenever it suits them.
 
You are, again, coming at this from a very Christian perspective. What you are saying has no comparison to Judaism, for example, and that is not just a monotheist religion but the original of the Abrahamic religions you are trying to critique in particular
 
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King Washington said:
From what I've heard apparently he bizarrely got away with blatantly defying Moscow a lot, when ironically actually sending in the tanks might have actually been the moral thing to do given his batshit crazy policies. How the hell did he get away with that?
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He never touched the red lines of "leave the Warsaw Pact" and "allow political opinions that argue for leaving the Warsaw pact". Hungary came too close to the former. Czechoslovakia might have done the latter if left alone with an uncharitable reading.
 
emberlily said:
You are, again, coming at this from a very Christian perspective. What you are saying has no comparison to Judaism, for example, and that is not just a monotheist religion but the original of the Abrahamic religions you are trying to critique in particular
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I hesitate to call Judaism truly monotheistic. In its early formative period it was polytheistic, and you see polytheist currents today as well. Mind, polytheist Jews are the exception rather than the norm, but the fact there's room for them to exist at all is kinda what I'm talking about here. The Jewish God isn't presented so much as all-caring, all-knowing and always right so much as he is a very powerful yet very unreliable friend you have and fight with regularly. It's really a very relatable perspective which is why I find myself subscribing to many of the same critiques of Christianity Jews have.
 
SaintSummerisle said:
Oh, I think you misunderstood- I'm not talking Sola Scriptura here, I'm talking the idea of there being One Absolute Truth that can be comprehended by mortals. This is the foundation of monotheist cosmology- god is always right, and he speaks the truth to mortals who listen. If you believe you have arrived at that Absolute Truth, or something close to it, if you don't adhere to it as best you're able you're a hypocrite. But nobody really believes that- which is why Catholics are happy to contradict the "infallible" Pope whenever it suits them.
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this basically just includes Christianity. In Judaism for example gd is very much dalliance
 
Nyvis said:
He never touched the red lines of "leave the Warsaw Pact" and "allow political opinions that argue for leaving the Warsaw pact". Hungary came too close to the former. Czechoslovakia might have done the latter if left alone with an uncharitable reading.
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"No leaving the Warsaw Pact"

"Except Albania, your not allowed anymore because you like Stalin too much"
 
Ex-Christians (and people who didn't grow up religiously but did grow up where Christianity is the hegemonic religion) really need to take a moment to try to see if issues they have with religion as a whole or swaths of religion ("monotheism" in your case) aren't just problems they have with Christianity they're projecting everywhere else. A lot of English terms used for broader religions at large (faith, sin, belief, god, prayer, even the concept of "religion" itself) are rooted deeply in Christianity to the point that it's kinda mostly misleading to use them at all in broader senses. And this isn't just an academic thing; Christianity's placement as the religion of global imperialism and capitalism puts it in a unique place for criticism that shouldn't be generalised.

I'm optimistically curious about the fate of the Jewish populations in the mid/late 20th century in this timeline. I imagine many more survive WW2, and from what I've read there's hints of a less colonialist fate for Palestine post-war
 
I think i remember someone saying that the toll on European Jewry is about the same as IOTL, though with different areas effected. There was some discussion, possibly on the old fanfic thread, about a campaign of reviving European Jewish culture several decades after the war to repair the damage done by the Shoah.
 
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Psycho (1960)
  • Media
    • Psycho (1960)
    Directed by Robert Altman
    Written by Robert Altman and Robert Towne
    Produced by Roger Corman
    Based on the novel by Robert Bloch

    Norman Bates (Robert Ridgely) operates a motel with his mother Norma in Fairvale, California. The mother, controlling and deeply puritanical, chastises the young Bates constantly for his desires, which are brought to a head when Mary Crane (Barboura Morris) arrives to stay.

    Crane, a clerk at the LA Shipping and Distribution Committee, had stolen $40000 from one of the council members to help solve her husband Sam Loomis' (Ted Knight) gambling debts, and fled to the desert to evade charges. She hopes to lay low for a bit.

    Norman, in spite of his mother's protests, invites Mary for dinner. While waiting, she overhears the two arguing, with the mother berating Norman for his "perversion." Norman then tells Mary that his mother won't be available for dinner. Mary tells Norman to have his mother brought for counseling and rehabilitation, which Norman declines.

    Mary resolves to return the money. However, as she showers, "Mother" Bates comes into her bathroom and beheads her. Norman (passed out drunk in his home) finds her corpse and panics, instinctively dumping her body into the swamp, along with her belongings and car. He tries to call the militia on his mother, but Norma intimidates him into hanging up.

    Back in LA, Loomis and Lila Crane (Jackie Joseph) are informed of Mary's crime by Public Safety agent Martin Arbogast (Dick Miller), sent to investigate and find Mary and the money. He heads out to retrace her steps, and eventually comes to the Bates Motel. Arbogast interviews Bates, and finds several holes in his story. When he asks to speak to Norman's mother, Norman hesitates, furthering Arbogast's suspicions. He calls Lila, stating he'll follow up on "Norma Bates". After hanging up, Norma proceeds to attack and kill him with a razor as he leaves the house.

    After not hearing from him, Lila and Sam go to the local Public Safety office near Fairvale, and learn from the clerk (Robert Towne) that Norma Bates died ten-years ago in a murder-suicide with her then-boyfriend. Norman had spent some time in a rehabilitation center, and had been deemed "fit for release" after a short period.

    The two then head to the Bates motel. While Sam distracts Norman, Lila heads up to the house. There, she finds a number of books on the occult and various books on sex and sexuality. Norman catches on, and knocks Sam unconscious, running back to the house.

    Lila eventually makes it to the fruit cellar, where she finds, to her horror, the corpse of Norma Bates, mummified. Behind her is Norman in a dress and wig (speaking in the same voice the "mother" had been using throughout the movie), who attempts to kill her. However, she manages to use the corpse of Norma to distract him long enough for Sam to come in and knock him out.

    At the militia station, Lila and Sam meet Dr. Richmond (Tom Laughlin), a psychiatrist sent to examine Norman. Richmond proceeds to explain Norman's psychosis: After his father deserted their family, Norman and his mother formed a toxic codependent relationship. Norman also became increasingly obsessed with occultism and the supernatural. When his mother got a new boyfriend, Norman, jealous and paranoid, killed both and staged it as a murder-suicide. Richmond then makes it clear that Norman "is neither a transvestite nor a transsexual,"[1] but had over the years began to adopt his mother's identity in a strange form of Dissociative Identity Disorder, and when Norman feels attraction towards another woman, the "Mother" personality would take over, and kill the woman, feeding into his codependent relationship.

    The swamp behind the Bates Motel is drained, revealing thousands of corpses dumped there by Norman. Deemed "unfit to stand trial", Norman is instead sent to a psychiatric isolation center to briefly separate him from the general populace while they attempt to rehabilitate him. While waiting to be processed, Norman hears his mothers voice taunt him, and the film ends with him smiling to the camera, implying the "Norma" personality has completely taken over.

    -------------------------

    Trivia:

    • One of the two Roger Corman-produced movies (the other the teenage delinquent movie Wild and Crazy), that are often viewed as the end of the post-Revolution film industry and the beginning of the so-called "American New Wave".
    • Director Robert Altman had hitherto been a small time director of industrial films out of his native Kansas City, as well as low-budget films and television shows for PBS. Corman had previously approached him for Wild and Crazy thanks to his film, The Delinquents[2] and his ability to work efficiently with low budgets. Altman declined at the time, but Corman was able to entice him to this film with the promise of complete creative freedom.
    • Was refused tax credits for its repeated violations of the Eisenstein Code, forcing Altman and Corman to go to alternative sources of funding (mainly the local arts councils and some funding from PBS as a gesture of gratitude towards Altman). Is often seen as one of the films to break with the Eisenstein Code, a factor in the rise of American New Wave.
    • Extremely controversial for its violent imagery and its focus on the isolated, "anti-social" Norman Bates as a somewhat sympathetic figure, as well as its repeated allusions to the then-recent case of Ed Gein. Still extremely popular, especially with younger audiences.
    • Regarded as one of the greatest horror films ever made, and a major influence on later films in the genre. Launched Altman and writer Robert Towne's careers in Hollywood.

    [1] A little period terminology there. This is essentially similar to the discussion of Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs OTL, which is still extremely problematic both OTL and TTL, but tamer in comparison to the OTL Psycho.
    [2] OTL, Altman's first movie
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    This is basically the Halloween update. Special thanks to AH.com user Timeslip for the idea of Altman as the director.
     
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