What's the most Cringeworthy Alternate History you've ever read?

[Simon_Jester]

Well yes, it does seem rather simple when you take a century and a half of ideological debate and sort it neatly into three boxes labeled 'the good one', 'the bad one', and 'the other bad one'.

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You misunderstand me.

It's not that there are three boxes, with one good and the other two bad. It's that there are three boxes, one that is virtually incapable of ever going bad (humanitarian socialism), one that is in general OK but can be taken to destructive extremes (technocratic socialism), and one that is an inevitable human consequence of the things that motivate socialism to exist but can lead people to go overboard even as it is also often the thing that provides enough motivation to get people to change things in the first place.

As it turns out these categories tend to often blend together, since exercising the levers of the state for the sake of, say, mass education can have technocratic implications...

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...Also, as I've said before and tried to say this time, while not ranting on indefinitely...

These are not separate schools of socialist thought and you cannot pigeonhole individual socialist movements into the three. They are motivations for socialism, and any given socialist movement can legitimately be motivated by a combination of all three.

But I can point to specific actions taken by socialists, and to certain arguments or ideas advocated by specific socialists, and say "this is humanitarian" or "this is iconoclastic."

And yes, sometimes those things blur together! As you are no doubt very familiar with, any categories that are useful for describing human motivations or cultures will tend to blur at the boundaries, because people are complicated.

Did you REALLY think I was saying "everything pigeonholes neatly into three totally separate categories that never mingle and have nothing to do with each other, Good, Bad, and Other Bad?"

Because I know I have 'something of a reputation,' but if my reputation is leading to you thinking I'm that fucking stupid, I'm sorry, but I just can't consistently live down to that level of hype.

I don't think this division is correct - after all, if you read Marx carefully, you will find that he has all three aspects. I, following him, also do not share these points - the current society is unhappy, unfair, and ineffective. I strive for socialism for the sake of happiness, fairness, and efficiency. In the end, these three points in my opinion are quite interconnected.

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See above. The incentives mingle, often very thoroughly.

But I think the distinction is useful, because there are often actions advocated in the name of socialism that are very much about iconoclasm, or very much about being humane, or very much about imposing technocratic efficiency. And less so about the others. Sometimes even actively hostile to the others.

For instance, I could easily dig up a hundred posts on this site within the past several months in which a socialist condemns technocratic efficiency on the grounds that it is inhumane. Or on the grounds that it permits the glorification of an undeserving elite.

Orwell beat you to it.

"The truth is that, to many people calling themselves Socialists, revolution does not mean a movement of the masses with which they hope to associate themselves; it means a set of reforms which 'we', the clever ones, are going to impose upon 'them', the Lower Orders. On the other hand, it would be a mistake to regard the book-trained Socialist as a bloodless creature entirely incapable of emotion. Though seldom giving much evidence of affection for the exploited, he is perfectly capable of displaying hatred—a sort of queer, theoretical, in vacuo hatred—against the exploiters."

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The problem with Orwell is that he was caught in a very unenviable position- being a socialist in the late 1940s who didn't want his home country to turn into a Stalinist dictatorship, when Stalin was nearing the height of his strategic power.

It was easy to be a socialist in those days if you didn't mind the idea of Stalinist dictatorship, because then the very active tankie faction of the various socialist movements around you wasn't a problem.

It is comparatively easy to be a socialist opposed to Stalinist dictatorship now, in this regard, because Stalin is dead and you can disown his example. You don't have to worry that the tankies will take over your socialist movement.

Orwell did not have either of these easy outs.

The course he took navigating that situation was perhaps not the most honorable, but then frankly I can't blame him for being more worried about Stalin-sympathizers there and then, compared to how worried we think he should have been seventy years after the fact.

...

As to your objection, Orwell's comment doesn't really parallel mine. He's talking about a subset of people I'm not talking about, at least not specifically.

Also see my remarks above to Cetashwayo.

 

[Avernus]

The idea that the (free) peasantry and the king are natural allies against the rapaciousness of the aristocracy is an interesting one, but it seems more like something a king would say to save his head than something which was the norm.

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"Allies" is too strong a term; but "occasionally are useful for leverage or just less dangerous" is more accurate. The King and the commoners are distant socially and usually physically to each other, and are therefore less likely to be harmful to each other than either are to the middleman of the aristocracy. Up until relatively recently it was the aristocracy that was the biggest domestic threat to kings, not the commoners. And the distance of the king often meant they did less direct harm to the common people; not because they were less rapacious, but because the aristocrats were right there and the king wasn't.

From the commoner side, that does open up the opportunity of playing one against the other. And if a politically powerful one exists the Church too. And from the royal side being distant from the commoners does give them more room for mystique building, and a restive population can be a useful tool for distracting ambitious nobles. Because while the king and commoners aren't natural allies, the king and aristocracy are pretty much natural enemies. Even today autocrats tend to be very paranoid about coup attempts and not just popular uprisings, with good reason.

 

[SBP]

...I, uh, must admit, I don't quite follow your objection

Because, well - doing cultural works, presiding over festivities, conducting ceremonies, even taking part in religious affairs, that is exactly what a "constitutional", i.e. ceremonial monarch is there for. That is what I would describe as "colours and decoration". The actually substantial question is who holds the political power.

So maybe not retaining the Nepalese monarchy as a ceremonial monarchy was indeed a mistake, but given its earlier political power the outright abolition seems at least understandable to me. Surely, the fear must have been that even in an officially ceremonial role the royal house would try to exert political power.

But, just to make it clear - I am not inherently opposed to ceremonial monarchies. It just seems to me that what you describe is a ceremonial monarchy.

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In some ways you are correct, how in many ways wrong as well.
Nepal's only real contemporary enough to be compared in the sense of monarchism is Bhutan, mainly because both Bhutan and Nepal are culturally extremely similar and the Wangchuck family has married into Nepalese royal families so much they could be half Nepalese by this point. Presiding over ceremonial.festivites etc would be a 'ceremonial' monarchy as well, however Nepalese culture is much more.comolicated than that. Our scripts and cultures call for the 'Monarch of the Himalayas' and 'King of Sagarmatha (Everest)' by name, not head of government, not head of state not no one else. The festival of repentance for example needs the king or queen to go to the streets near naked and take the anger of the people to the face and ask for repentance, having tomatoes and stuff thrown at them. Nowadays we just sit there and throw some tomatoes at each other and there end of festival. We cannot modify the texts either because we would then be engaging in cultural revisionism and the community would enter full rebellion.
Our country's identity is tied with the monarchical culture, because look at our surnames. All of our people's main clans have been kings of the nation at one point. Thapa? Panta(my own surname)? Shrestha? Malla? Madhesh? Raute? Dangol? Chetri? Limbu? Rai? Sherpa? Gorkha? Shah? Sen? These are all the main.clans of the country (over 95% of the population at least) and there have been dynasties for all of them. It represents to us that even the common man can become the highest man if he works hard for it.
Our very scripts and cultures demand the monarch of the Himalayas and without it, we are not allowed to conduct the festival. Either the old family.of the Shahs need to become the royal family again or someone has to be elevated to the kingship. Without it we just stand there before the festival's make some idle chat and call it day and bye!
Fun Fact: Nepal has a royal code wherein anyone can become king of.nepal if they can defeat the reigning monarch in the contest of wits, contest of strength, and contest of hearts. Anyone can challenge the king as long as the challenger is a citizen of Nepal. The last time this happen was in 1957 when one Jayasingh Thapa challenged King Mahendra for the throne. Mahendra lost the contest of strength but won the contest of wits and hearts retaining the kingship. It is traditions like these that formed our nation and to see over half of our culture just stripped away is like having a half of your body killed and paralyzed for life.

complaint is, essentially, that any humanitarian benefits that came from abolishing his country's monarchy were relatively minor, while the attitude that destruction of culture and ceremonies associated with the monarchy... may have been pleasing to iconoclasts and technocrats, but were a net loss for the society at large.

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Minor? Living standards have decreased and contracted, inequality has grown, our economy in tatters, political suppression the army calls for a coup openly, the RAW, CIA, MI6 and Chinese intelligence meddle in our country like never before. Openly we can hear many of our politicians being in their payroll and political assassinations happen like every week. Former disillusioned Maoist guerilla forces conduct guerilla raids every so often. Humanitarian my ass. The country under the Republic has become a massive unstable conundrum. Our humanitarian prospects have decreased, because even minor achievements would have been remarkable.
Our economy has also gone down the drain. Nepal was called Little China in 2006. You name it, we built it. Our agricultural exports were sent throughout all of Asia. Now the big production companies have left the country, over 90% of our industrial estates remain uninhabited like ghost towns rotting away and our agricultural system has collapsed so that from a net exporter we have become a net importer of agricultural.goods. our currency has been devalued by around 75%.
Our humanitarian standards have decreased and our economy has contracted. All for the sake of stripping half our culture away. It is not a viable exchange at all.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Minor? Living standards have decreased and contracted, inequality has grown, our economy in tatters, political suppression the army calls for a coup openly, the RAW, CIA, MI6 and Chinese intelligence meddle in our country like never before. Openly we can hear many of our politicians being in their payroll and political assassinations happen like every week. Former disillusioned Maoist guerilla forces conduct guerilla raids every so often. Humanitarian my ass. The country under the Republic has become a massive unstable conundrum. Our humanitarian prospects have decreased, because even minor achievements would have been remarkable.

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My lack of knowledge led me to make the wrong- unfairly charitable- influences. You have my apologies.

 

[Starblight]

Or at least, so claims the informant for Foreign Office.

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Forgive my ignorance, but what exactly are you talking about and what does this have to do with the point Orwell was making?

 

[Hakazin]

Forgive my ignorance, but what are you talking about and what does that have to do with the point Orwell was making?

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My point is that a man who gave the government a list of people he considered to be communist sympathizers with notes labeling them things such as "very anti-white" and "potentially homosexual" doesn't have much room to talk about authoritarianism.

 

[Indicus]

snip

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Putting aside the nationalistic rhetoric that makes up most of your argument, this is the sort of stuff that is entirely cultural. It could easily be satisfied by anointing a person as unofficial monarch much as what exists in, say, South Africa.

Conversely, the Nepali monarchy has a dark side. That King Mahendra guy you mentioned propped himself as dictator in the sixties, crushing opposition in a brutal manner - and bear in mind that this absolutism was only a decade or so after the deposing of the Rana dynasty and the monarchs' resumption of full position. It is this political position, not the cultural position, which is being discussed here.

 

[SBP]

Putting aside the nationalistic rhetoric that makes up most of your argument, this is the sort of stuff that is entirely cultural. It could easily be satisfied by anointing a person as unofficial monarch much as what exists in, say, South Africa.

Conversely, the Nepali monarchy has a dark side. That King Mahendra guy you mentioned propped himself as dictator in the sixties, crushing opposition in a brutal manner - and bear in mind that this absolutism was only a decade or so after the deposing of the Rana dynasty and the monarchs' resumption of full position. It is this political position, not the cultural position, which is being discussed here.

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If you call the Panchayat a brutal dictatorship I'd not think you understand nepali.political history at all. He was absoljte monarch for exactly 8 months in 1956. Wherein he reinstituted the Panchayat system with modern amendments. Political parties weren't allowed however independent politicians were elected to their constituency's council/committee and then the committee would hold a by election between themselves which would choose a candidate to be sent to parliament and in parliament another by election would take.place to elect prime minister. Political party affiliation was banned, yes and a detriment to that system, however it was not a brutal dictatorship. In 1980 protests erupted only for the addition of political parties to be added to the Panchayat system. Everything else was fine with the people. He didn't have absolute authority at all during his entire reign except for the brief months in 1956. He made zero foreign policy decisions made zero economic decisions and made zero social decisions. He was kept as the face of the government by the prime minister's. I lived through that era, and I know how it worked. Frankly speaking, calling it a dictatorship has only been true outside of Nepal. Nepalese will look at you with a funny look if you call the Mahendra years absolutism. Frankly, Nepalese history is so less known in outside world's that people either know only the brief sketch of it and the internet information is largely very wrong and exaggerated because nepali data and history books written by communists even don't call it as such.

 

[FailLord]

The talk on monarchy is intresting, bit how does it relate to cringy ass alternate histories?

 

[Sarthaka]

Political parties weren't allowed however independent politicians were elected to their constituency's council/committee and then the committee would hold a by election between themselves which would choose a candidate to be sent to parliament and in parliament another by election would take.place to elect prime minister.

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that sounds like a weird electoral college kinda indirect democracy system, just without political parties.
Cool though. Never thought i would see an alternative to the electoral college.

 

[Z-Cosmonaut]

The talk on monarchy is intresting, bit how does it relate to cringy ass alternate histories?

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I think this place is reaching a point in which all of the mostly agreed to be cringy AH has already been dissed. Like, there's only so many bad AH works worth discussing, with the rest being so low hanging fruit that they're not worth discussing.

 

[EBR]

Controversial opinion;

For most of human history access to education was restricted to a small segment of society- namely the wealthy upper class. The wealthier you were the more access to education you had, with the best educated people usually being the richest. As the wealthy upper class in most societies mapped almost exclusively to the royalty and nobility (and as commoners of unusual wealth/competence could often be inducted into the lowest rank of the nobility in small numbers), the royal and noble families in any given monarchy were also usually the most educated segment of society.

Consequently, for most of history monarchical/hereditary government functioned essentially as a crude form of technocracy, with the leadership recruited from the most highly educated members of the population.

It had some major flaws and tended to break down eventually, but it worked well enough to be the dominant form of government (in organized states at least, semi-democratic/kin-based systems prevailed outside of formal governments) for thousands of years until education became more broadly available and picking your leaders from an artificially limited pool of citizens turned into a losing proposition.

 

[ExNihilo]

Controversial opinion;

For most of human history access to education was restricted to a small segment of society- namely the wealthy upper class. The wealthier you were the more access to education you had, with the best educated people usually being the richest. As the wealthy upper class in most societies mapped almost exclusively to the royalty and nobility (and as commoners of unusual wealth/competence could often be inducted into the lowest rank of the nobility in small numbers), the royal and noble families in any given monarchy were also usually the most educated segment of society.

Consequently, for most of history monarchical/hereditary government functioned essentially as a crude form of technocracy, with the leadership recruited from the most highly educated members of the population.

It had some major flaws and tended to break down eventually, but it worked well enough to be the dominant form of government (in organized states at least, semi-democratic/kin-based systems prevailed outside of formal governments) for thousands of years until education became more broadly available and picking your leaders from an artificially limited pool of citizens turned into a losing proposition.

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Then, how do you account for monarchs who don't fit that pattern? While no doubt some monarchs were the best educated, there were enough usurper kingdoms and kingdoms where education wasn't really in the vogue. Like, you'll find hereditary chiefdoms that model monarchies pre-education, more or less, like in ancient Sumeria and what not, or among places where raiders take over.

While I'm sceptical of assigning universal origins to a major sociopolitical concept like "monarchy" my go-to explanation tends to be "military stability and continuence symbol."

 

[Miath]

The first kings were but fortunate soldiers.

 

[Cetashwayo]

Consequently, for most of history monarchical/hereditary government functioned essentially as a crude form of technocracy, with the leadership recruited from the most highly educated members of the population.

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In the period kings are most remembered for in western popular consciousness the most educated members of society were expressly not the aristocracy but the clergy.

 

[King Washington]

So how cringy is this compared to that other despised Second American Civil War Future TL?

https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/the-years-of-troubles-and-lead-the-american-second-civil-war.503181/

 

[Susano]

So how cringy is this compared to that other despised Second American Civil War Future TL?

https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/the-years-of-troubles-and-lead-the-american-second-civil-war.503181/

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I can't read it, because FH requires a login, but... I always detested those AH and FH threads that are about events that just happened. You can't yet draw meaningful scenarios from them, and what you will write will be obsolete in a matter of months. I strongly believe that you shouldn't do AH on anything later than 20, maybe even better 30 years ago, and likewise any FH should only have the first massive changes 20 years in the future. Otherwise, your writing will become obsolete faster than you can continue it.

Like, for example, now would be the time where we can maybe start to discuss a Gore victory in 2020

 

[Teen Spirit]

So how cringy is this compared to that other despised Second American Civil War Future TL?

https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/the-years-of-troubles-and-lead-the-american-second-civil-war.503181/

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I mean from what I've seen it's not good but it's not "The Turner Diaries pretending to be center-right concern trolling"

It's not written well.

 

[the atom]

Then, how do you account for monarchs who don't fit that pattern? While no doubt some monarchs were the best educated, there were enough usurper kingdoms and kingdoms where education wasn't really in the vogue. Like, you'll find hereditary chiefdoms that model monarchies pre-education, more or less, like in ancient Sumeria and what not, or among places where raiders take over.

While I'm sceptical of assigning universal origins to a major sociopolitical concept like "monarchy" my go-to explanation tends to be "military stability and continuence symbol."

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I'd say it was less of a rule and more of a pattern. Power gave you access to education but it was hardly a given.

 

[Sarthaka]

So how cringy is this compared to that other despised Second American Civil War Future TL?

https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/the-years-of-troubles-and-lead-the-american-second-civil-war.503181/

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the prequel was pretty good, however i was disappointed by the turn to a cliche civil war. The foundation laid down points to a more NI kind troubles rather than a civil war.

 

[Simon_Jester]

My point is that a man who gave the government a list of people he considered to be communist sympathizers with notes labeling them things such as "very anti-white" and "potentially homosexual" doesn't have much room to talk about authoritarianism.

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1) He gave the postwar Labour government not a list of "communist" sympathizers, but a list of those he thought to be specifically Stalinist sympathizers. Given that this was right around the time that the Iron Curtain was coming down in Eastern Europe, with it being rather uncertain the thousands of words he's written on the distinction... [shrug]

2) You are not wrong to point out that George Orwell, born in 1903 in Britain, shows signs of problematic homophobia.

3) You are not wrong to point out that a man born in 1903 in Britain has baggage about the subaltern-ized nonwhite populations of the British Empire and fear that same would (with excellent reason) have no particular sympathy for Britain as opposed to, say, Moscow.

...

On the other hand, this was also the guy who lived through the pro-Moscow suppression of the not-so-pro-Moscow anarcho-socialist factions fighting on the Republican side in Catalonia; I think this may have colored his outlook on 'brother socialists' willing to take cues from Stalin, and whether or not they presented a threat.

Even without the very violent fascist persecution, the mid-20th century was a bad time to be a socialist if you weren't a tankie. It was an unenviable vise to be in.

 

[Nyvis]

1) He gave the postwar Labour government not a list of "communist" sympathizers, but a list of those he thought to be specifically Stalinist sympathizers. Given that this was right around the time that the Iron Curtain was coming down in Eastern Europe, with it being rather uncertain the thousands of words he's written on the distinction... [shrug]

2) You are not wrong to point out that George Orwell, born in 1903 in Britain, shows signs of problematic homophobia.

3) You are not wrong to point out that a man born in 1903 in Britain has baggage about the subaltern-ized nonwhite populations of the British Empire and fear that same would (with excellent reason) have no particular sympathy for Britain as opposed to, say, Moscow.

...

On the other hand, this was also the guy who lived through the pro-Moscow suppression of the not-so-pro-Moscow anarcho-socialist factions fighting on the Republican side in Catalonia; I think this may have colored his outlook on 'brother socialists' willing to take cues from Stalin, and whether or not they presented a threat.

Even without the very violent fascist persecution, the mid-20th century was a bad time to be a socialist if you weren't a tankie. It was an unenviable vise to be in.

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I'm pretty sure there was no serious pressure on him to give those names up?

Also, he was advising people on who should be suitable writers for an anti communist propaganda unit, if you read the link. It's a bit more involved and ideological than just identifying a few real Stalinist threats.

 

[ToothMaker]

Controversial opinion;

For most of human history access to education was restricted to a small segment of society- namely the wealthy upper class. The wealthier you were the more access to education you had, with the best educated people usually being the richest. As the wealthy upper class in most societies mapped almost exclusively to the royalty and nobility (and as commoners of unusual wealth/competence could often be inducted into the lowest rank of the nobility in small numbers), the royal and noble families in any given monarchy were also usually the most educated segment of society.

Consequently, for most of history monarchical/hereditary government functioned essentially as a crude form of technocracy, with the leadership recruited from the most highly educated members of the population.

It had some major flaws and tended to break down eventually, but it worked well enough to be the dominant form of government (in organized states at least, semi-democratic/kin-based systems prevailed outside of formal governments) for thousands of years until education became more broadly available and picking your leaders from an artificially limited pool of citizens turned into a losing proposition.

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Two points -

First, while the wealthy might have had access to education I would argue that few took advantage of that access, learning the bare minimum and often deliberately seeking out misinformation.

Second, your argument seems to ignore the priesthood entirely.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Two points -

First, while the wealthy might have had access to education I would argue that few took advantage of that access, learning the bare minimum and often deliberately seeking out misinformation.

Second, your argument seems to ignore the priesthood entirely.

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Also, you can't have what @EBR characterizes as "a crude form of technocracy," not even a crude one, if you don't make a good faith effort to select for aptitude. If you're just arbitrarily training whoever happens to be the firstborn son of the current monarch in hopes that they will be a good monarch, you're missing the core meritocratic component.

I'm pretty sure there was no serious pressure on him to give those names up?

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He was not giving up names under external pressure from the government.

From Orwell's perspective, I suspect the situation looked like this:

"Churchill, whose sole qualification for office was a commendable willingness to punch Nazis, is gone. The Labour Party, which as of this time is the main vehicle for socialism in Britain, is now in power under the Atlee government. This is good for socialism, which I, Orwell, believe is the only hope human civilization has for a decent future. However, while socialism is humanity's only long term hope, the thing Moscow calls socialism is not hope, and is in fact just another form of rotten tyranny."

"However, some British socialists disagree with me, approve of Stalin, and in some cases were even pro-Hitler during the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact period when Hitler and Stalin were at peace. I regard this particular group of British socialists as a threat to British socialism's ability, and by extension Britain's ability, to remain free of Moscow-coordinated tyranny of the sort now being imposed in nations such as Hungary and Czechoslovakia. As such, I must warn my fellow socialist-sympathetic Labour friends in what I regard as a socialism-positive Labour government that these specific individuals should not be trusted to speak out against the actions of the Soviet Union now, in approximately 1947-48."

These beliefs are well supported and attested in Orwell's writings, including both articles and private correspondence.

Also, he was advising people on who should be suitable writers for an anti communist propaganda unit, if you read the link. It's a bit more involved and ideological than just identifying a few real Stalinist threats.

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I can't do a deep dive on that right now, but I will say that the propaganda unit's mission was complicated by the fact that the lines between "anti-communist," "anti-tankie," and "anti-Russian" were extremely blurry in 1947-48.

The unfortunate reality was that the Soviet Union, then seen as a victorious military juggernaut in the process of establishing imperial domination over all of Eastern Europe, was very much the elephant in the room in discussion of socialist politics.

It created conflicts of interests and loyalties, at least for those socialists who didn't see "take orders from Moscow for the aggrandizement of Josef Stalin's personal empire and personality cult" as an acceptable alternative.

 

[Nyvis]

I can't do a deep dive on that right now, but I will say that the propaganda unit's mission was complicated by the fact that the lines between "anti-communist," "anti-tankie," and "anti-Russian" were extremely blurry in 1947-48.

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This blur is exactly why Orwell shouldn't have assisted it. What may look like anti soviet usually ended up aimed at all communists.