- Location
- Fort Worth, TX
The united kingdom
Redshift (OTL/The Long March worldmerge)
- Thread starter StarMaker764
- Start date
- Post-1900
Maybe it might be better to address the constituent nations (except England, which hasn't leagally existed in over 300 years) to show how little the UK matters. It ranks lower in Comintern's attentions than San Marino.
Also is the Luxemburg thing trolling by Pan-Europa or did they actually amend the name of Luxembourg to Luxemburg in Long March?
Also is the Luxemburg thing trolling by Pan-Europa or did they actually amend the name of Luxembourg to Luxemburg in Long March?
The China problem (2016)
New
- Location
- The observable universe
"The People's Republic of China is many things. Socialist is not one of them."—PUC CPC cadre
"When it comes to human rights issues, there is no such thing as a flawless utopia and countries do not need patronizing lecturers."—Xi Jinping
When the worldmerge happened, many who feared the rising power of China (whether they were seasoned politicians or online commentators with too much free time) were panicking, fearing that the People's Republic would naturally serve as a titanic beachhead for the new global international from which it could easily spread its tendrils into every corner of Asia; not to mention the stranglehold on the world economy that Iskandaria would have with Beijing in their corner, gaining the ability to shut down the world economy at will through influencing the world's factory.
In reality, they need not have worried all that much, as it quickly became clear that ideological and geopolitical factors made such a nightmare scenario for the capitalist world very unlikely at the time being.
For starters, there was the simple fact that while to casual observers both the Long March International and the PRC were fellow socialists, the former were utterly not amused by so-called "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" to the point where the Comintern did not officially consider the PRC a socialist state at all; citing the People's Republic utter lack of worker control over the economy, its horrendous record of labor abuse and workplace safety, its tolerance of bourgeoise class power way beyond what even the most ardent NEP enthusiasts or market socialists would consider acceptable, and of course there was the PRC's records of human rights abuses, ethnic discrimination and subjugation (of Tibetans and Uyghurs) and disregard for the environment.
Though many debated on whether to classify it as a "decayed worker's state", a Sejimaist welfare command state or just a very disciplined social democracy; almost all agreed that the PRC or any of its representatives would not be invited into the International or allowed to join it at all unless the DD Chinese were able to demonstrate measurable significant steps towards actually transitioning to communism, now that the supposed justifications for China's regression to liberal economics were no longer salient now that the International was here.
Meanwhile, on the PRC's side, the worldmerge was a veritable earthquake in the CPC's political edifice, but not one of significant enough strength to topple it.
The four years since Xi Jiping (who had shocked many in the long march world by how different he was than his martyred counterpart) had risen to power had seen China move away decisively from the anarchic lassize farriez model of the 1990s and 2000s that threatened to unravel the Chinese party state and Chinese society as a whole, instead transitioning to a status quo were the party was increasingly more centeralised, technocratic and disciplined in exerting control over the previously wayward forces of the nascent Chinese capitalism.
For now this emerging system is doing an adequate job of forcing the moneyed heads of China into serving the national and popular needs of the country, for the time, a level of control that was decried as communist tyranny in the pre-worldmerge neoliberal playground of Dewey Denied but simply seen as another form of capitalism by the long march worlders, one far more dangerous and threatening than free market capitalism by being able to put long term geopolitical considerations above short sighted profit.
Nevertheless, for all the control that the DD CPC exerted over capital they were still wedded tightly to it, a whole eco-system of public-private partnerships and cadre-business cooperation had sprung up in the years during and after Deng's Reform period that had not only seen China through the collapse of communism, but had seen it thrive and prosper despite all its many flaws; and more importantly there was now a whole generation of Chinese political elites who had grown comfortable there and whose entire power rested on its continued existence and were not keen on ending it just because some idealistic ultraleftists from another world showed up.
All this is to say that the PRC was not going to subordinate itself to the Iskandaria any more than it was going to subordinate itself to Washington, ostensible socialist solidarity or not, even as Bejing still sought standard diplomatic ties with the International and made a token effort of applying for membership (for appearance's sake more than anything, as the clear distance between the PRC and the International was obvious to Chinese citizens even with the usual state censorship).
But the Comintern's cold reactions to these gestures (near-unanimosuly rejecting the PRC's membership bid and refusin the PRC's request for Yangtzee river dolphins) and the very ideological threat that the PUC posed by just existing meant that both sides would quickly come to see each other as simply rivals in the new brewing cold war, something that would come as a source of comfort and delight to the NATO bloc, seeing the division as an opportunity to play the PRC and Comintern against one another as had happened after the Sino-Soviet split, with Taiwan especially being relieved at the prospect of not having to face its behemoth rival now backed by the resources of a whole Earth; a relief that was compounded by the Comintern and its nations' seeming ambivalence to the one China rule (and soured when the Comintern came to blows with the island nation anyways though over matters unrelated to the PRC).
Nevertheless, the level of hostilities between the Iskandaria bloc and the growing Beijing one was much more muted than the one between the former and the coming NATO-Delhi bloc, as Long Marchers were far more sympathetic and understanding to the PRC's history, triumphs and struggles than any DD Western audience, and were still fascinated by being able to study the strengths and limits of maoism in action.
Meanwhile, Chinese citizens and netizens were very much fascinated by and excited to see a universe with actually existing international communism, both bits they were allowed to see on the Chinese internet and the ones they could gaze upon through usual censorship bypasses, leading to burgeoning cross-pollination and dialogue between the two populations despite the PRC's best attempts to curtail or at least control it, not helped by the fact even the party's own arguments against the Comintern's model were restrained to asserting that it was incompatible with DD China's material conditions rather than non-functional.
While these interactions were relatively inconsequential in the early days of the post-merge world, they would prove pivotal and transformative as time and the weight of generational shift came to play.
The PRC did manage to score an unambiguous victory in the opening year of the worldmerge: becoming the first non-European nation to establish ties with the PDIS.
In contrast to America and Europe's reluctance, the PRC proved to be an eager partner for the Pacific state despite the latter's origins as a CPS remnant; the two states both needed new allies in this new, unprecedented situation, and the PDIS hoping to use its new Chinese allies as a springboard to establish economic ties with the rest of the DD world while the PRC was glad to have a powerful ally in the LM world and valued that its ally had an extremely powerful economy that would be of immense help in its Belt and Road initiative.
The two Pacific nations would only grow closer in the coming years...
| Especially after the 2016 US election |
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Dengists....
Here comes Trump! The international is really going to love Trump. He is as bad as Phyllis Schlafly from the long march timeline. Schlafly's actions in that timeline really helped The International. I wonder if they would be able to capitalise on Trump's actions.
- Location
- Midwest
OTL it's working out pretty well.
- Location
- Third planet from the star named Sol
- Pronouns
- He/They
Comparatively. It's still a consumptive and unjust capitalist system, it's just not caught in the late-stage death spiral. Because, you know, the forces controlling it aren't fucking insane pursuits of endless growth.
- Location
- Midwest
Can you tell me how the capitalists own the mean of production in china when historically any attempts by them to influence the political process have led to incarceration?
Endorfinator
Awkwardly Social
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Silly PDIS, they don't love you like we do.
Any chance we could get the OTL SEA Nations reactions to their counterparts and the individual OTL Europe reactions to TLM?
- Location
- Third planet from the star named Sol
- Pronouns
- He/They
The Chinese Communist Party is in control of the means of production - not the workers, not the people, the Party. They control the capital output. The only capitalists that can influence the system are those in charge of the Party itself. The system still demands growth and the generation wealth, but that framework is tied to China as a sovereign state instead of as just the place where capitalists do business.
- Location
- Midwest
Why do you think growth fundamentally means capitalism?
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I think that speaks less to the PRC being non-capitalist and more to it being more effective at curbing it's most self destructive impulses than capitalism as it exists in the anglosphere is capable of.
Broadly though, I don't think there's an argument that it's socialist in the sense of meaningfully being organised according to the principles argued for by Karl Marx (the sweatshops are a give away) and whilst there might be arguments that it isn't capitalist I suspect those same arguments could be applied just as well to Otto Von Bismark's Germany, Park Chung-hee's South Korea and for that matter Chiang Kai-Shek's ROC (much to the confusion of all three).
- Location
- Midwest
The sweatshop thing is like 20 years out of date. Chinese manufacturing has been climbing up the value chain for a while then and makes huge use of automation anyways.
Another thing, if china were capitalist it would not be striving to reduce unemployment and poverty to the extent it has thus far. What kind of capitalist entity willingly dissolves it's reserve army of labor?
Another thing, if china were capitalist it would not be striving to reduce unemployment and poverty to the extent it has thus far. What kind of capitalist entity willingly dissolves it's reserve army of labor?
Endorfinator
Awkwardly Social
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I suspect a lot of the Comintern is going to be split on whether Trump is some 5D-Chess genius or a complete moron.
RS trivia pt3
New
- Location
- The observable universe
1. Freedonians and other fascists from TLM find the existence of Holocaust denialism personally offensive.
2. One of CAR's founding fathers managed to escape to the US, only to get caught in the civil war by communist partisans, who after a mock trial threw him off Hoover Dam.
3. In addition to the Green Book, TLM Ghaddafi has also published a book containing and explaining all of his reallygoodideas, its 200 pages long and will be an OTL bestseller eventually.
4. A third of southern Italy's population are satanists of one sect or the other.
5. Abayala and Bharat have an unofficial Cold War over who makes the most colorful and interesting clothes.
6. Likewise Brazil and the ASU have a similar rivalry over arts and crafts.
7. One of Freedonia's founders ate some of Lincoln's bones, he credits the experience with inspiring him to help found the nation because of how disgusting they tasted.
8. Almost all Zapadoslav families have adopted at least one Aryan glass child, seeing as both the least they could do for those they failed
9. The Comintern has solved the problem of stray animals by building hundreds of free range shelters, adoption centers, collective pet centers and even island complexes across the world to house the millions of cats, dogs, rabbits, penguins and other abandoned animals and make sure they all have happy comfortable lives.
10. 2 in 5 of the people living in TLM's England (known as Albion) can speak Japanese or Korean.
2. One of CAR's founding fathers managed to escape to the US, only to get caught in the civil war by communist partisans, who after a mock trial threw him off Hoover Dam.
3. In addition to the Green Book, TLM Ghaddafi has also published a book containing and explaining all of his reallygoodideas, its 200 pages long and will be an OTL bestseller eventually.
4. A third of southern Italy's population are satanists of one sect or the other.
5. Abayala and Bharat have an unofficial Cold War over who makes the most colorful and interesting clothes.
6. Likewise Brazil and the ASU have a similar rivalry over arts and crafts.
7. One of Freedonia's founders ate some of Lincoln's bones, he credits the experience with inspiring him to help found the nation because of how disgusting they tasted.
8. Almost all Zapadoslav families have adopted at least one Aryan glass child, seeing as both the least they could do for those they failed
9. The Comintern has solved the problem of stray animals by building hundreds of free range shelters, adoption centers, collective pet centers and even island complexes across the world to house the millions of cats, dogs, rabbits, penguins and other abandoned animals and make sure they all have happy comfortable lives.
10. 2 in 5 of the people living in TLM's England (known as Albion) can speak Japanese or Korean.
- Location
- The observable universe
Oh they will.
when the time is right.
They will initially believe that Trump is some clever reactionary McMath type that knows how to play on the American psyche to achieve his goals and his seeming idiocy is an act, but will eventually realize that no he really is an idiot when he starts throwing shots at his own allies.
Yes.
Thank you for the funfacts and trivia hope to see more please!
- Pronouns
- She/Her
One that has an eye on internal stability, one whose leadership have some attachment to reality and/or less brainworms than the West, and in the PRC's case one who is trying to bring order to the patchwork brought about by the Deng Xiaoping era. Fundamentally, capitalism is a bigger tent than the "just one more austerity bro, just one more austerity, we're gonna unleash the power of the Free market" derangements that the anglosphere is unwilling to let go off, and the Redshift Comintern would by its own understandings consider the PRC to be capitalist.
Huh. The result of the GRI becoming a place of outsourced East Asian Federation economic activity or was there a japanophile cultural movement?
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- Location
- The observable universe
The former resulted in the latter
Well what do you expect when you eat 100 and a bit bones.
Election of our times (2016-2017)
New
- Location
- The observable universe
"Donald Trump is either extremely intelligent or utterly stupid. Both possibilities are terrifying to consider."—Chairwoman Jiya.
"I swear these Dewey Denied whiners need to stop calling everything they dislike fascist."—Zapadoslav IRB commander
"We, assembled here today, are issuing a new decree to be heard in every city, in every foreign capital, and in every hall of power. From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land. From this this day forward, it's going to be only America first. America first."—Donald Trump
The 2016 election was supposed to be a sure-fire victory for the Democratic Party.
Their chosen candidate was Hillary Clinton, a seasoned veteran of American politics and foreign policy. As the first female president, Clinton was to symbolize a new age in American liberalism and continue the end-of-history politics that her husband helped enshrine so long ago.
While some criticized her rhetoric's extreme rightward tilt to chase after swing Republican voters (a tactic that only intensified in the aftermath of the world merge) at the cost of historical democratic constituencies and her promises of an aggressive foreign policy, almost everyone believed that her victory was assured by demographics, the fact that she was coming off the heels of a popular president, and the seemingly dismal competition.
For on the GOP's side there was one Donald Trump, the businessman turned president wannabe that has taken everyone by surprise as he took the Republican Party by storm and successfully managed to secure the nomination to the presidency despite (or some would say because of) his openly boorish, arrogant and often outright racist rhetoric along with cowing a GOP that was feeling an existential crisis in the post-Bush era.
Meanwhile, the man's rhetoric seemingly could appeal to almost every part of the GOP's constituencies, paradoxically gathering libertarians, conservatives, small government enthusiasts, proto-fascists, and more by employing bombastic promises and contemptuous attacks on whatever group they deemed America's national problem of the week, a gathering that included everything from Muslims to Jews to liberals, gay people and most recently Bolsheviks and communists with the arrival of the Comintern on election year, which was already inspiring a new red scare that had seen figures like Bernie Sanders utterly annihilated in the public image and the barely existent American left decimated again for a time as both main parties raced to display their anti communist credentials.
The Democratic establishment was utterly unafraid of Trump in any case, even as they were happy to pump him up as a menacing threat to liberal values that must be defeated at all costs, viewing him as the last dying grasp for relevenace by a party that was out of touch with reality and soon to be made irrelevant by shifting values, populations and just the unstoppable march of progress.
A conviction was utterly shattered when the elections did finally come and the impossible was suddenly reality: Donald Trump had won the election through the electoral college against all expectations, becoming the 45th President of the United States of America and ushering in a new era in world politics.
To say that his defeat came as a shock to the liberal establishment was an understatement as everywhere pundits, columnists, commentators, politicans and more scrambled for explanations, justifications and, most importantly, someone or something to blame for this loss, with everything from the white working class, Bernie sanders, immigration, sexism, Russian manipulation or Communist International interference being blamed for Hilary's "stolen" victory (with multiple conspiracies arising of collusion between Iskandaria and Moscow).
To the GOP, Trump's victory would shake the very foundations of the party, as the old guard of the Bush era with its feigned civility and cultivated public images was now being challenged by new cadres of the so called alt-right who represented a new generation of conservatives and reactionaries who cared nothing for soft power or norms (even those that benefited them) and represented a new loud unapologetically discriminatory right that openly wore sexism, racism and queerphobia without shame.
On the other side of the Glide, the Long March world reacted to Trump's victory with a tone of utter indifference contrary to the expectations of many.
To those who lived within a world where the Axis triumphed for decades Trump was hardly the fascist threat that many within the Dewey Denied world claimed him to be, the communists if anything saw him as little more than a mildly racist liberal when compared to the likes of Wallace, Bush or McMath, though many were divided on wether Trump was a calculating demagogue or a lucky fool. Both slides were not at all impressed by his promises of a tougher anti communist stance on the world stage, even as he paradoxically promised to end America's foreign entanglements.
The Freedonians were likewise unimpressed by Trump, whom they saw as a degenerate spicemen of the white race and utterly insulted by the idea of him ever being at the helm of the global far right movement, let alone what they saw as the cradle of white civilization.
Nevertheless, the elites of the post-American Post-Capitalist nation saw him as a useful tool in their plans to spread their influence across the Dewey-denied world if they played their cards right.
For the Pacific state, however, Trump was the doom of their plans of integration into the western bloc, as the new president saw the Asianized nation as favoring Obama and thus a personal enemy of his, not to mention that he gained far more clout and support from attacking nation that was at once Chinese and communist to American sensibilities.
The door to any closer ties between San Fransokyo and Washington was thrown shut unless the Pacificans accepted much harsher terms and enforced shock therapy policies that would no doubt leave their economy and industry in shambles, and ignite the spark of revolution that its leaders have tried so hard to smother; even now Trump's election and the accompanying surge of racism and attacks against the nation were pushing many Pacificans into demanding closer ties with the international, who now seemed far more familiar than this new world and its hateful unusual ways while those who still held to anti communism believed that an alliance with Beijing held the keys to the Golden nation's future.
This turn against the PDIS would later be seen as a major diplomatic blunder by the Trump administration.
| The first of many to come |
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Is his dementia going to be hidden and/or brushed off as his 'quirkiness'?