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

[ElegyHydrangea]

While it is true that a socialist revolution in America would likely propel socially progressive ideas to the forefront of the national discourse, it is also simultaneously true that a socialist revolution would not simply just result in the people themselves being more progressive. Workers becoming radicalized to socialism does not necessarily mean that they would move over on other positions as well. It's likely that for every politician arguing that LGBT liberation and socialism were intrinsically linked, there'd be another that would argue that LGBT rights were "bourgeois decadence." That all being said, I think it'd be possible, likely even, for a socialist America to advance quicker and further into socially progressive ideas like LGBT rights and racial equality, though this would not be a certainty by any means.

Also,

I mean, the choice of words alone is... less than ideal.

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I mean, whenever the phrase gets used in respect to gay rights, a nasty part of me suspects the person doing knows what they're doing, even if they're probably just parroting back what they've heard other more malicious people say.

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"Bad faith" doesn't even begin to describe this mental stretch. I'm honestly more on board with the general consensus that "socialist america would be good for LGBT rights, actually," but it's funny to me that whenever someone even dares to opine something different from the norm here, they instantly get pelted with insanely ludicrous accusations and hysterical speculations on imagined bigotry.

 

[Enderminion]

Oh believe me I have. Only Ethereal Snake can take the premise of "Mickey Mouse the Vietnam Vet" and make a masterpiece out of it.

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You joke but Full Metal Jacket exists.

 

[Hakazin]

"Bad faith" doesn't even begin to describe this mental stretch. I'm honestly more on board with the general consensus that "socialist america would be good for LGBT rights, actually," but it's funny to me that whenever someone even dares to opine something different from the norm here, they instantly get pelted with insanely ludicrous accusations and hysterical speculations on imagined bigotry.

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It is perfectly reasonable for people to be skeptical of someone who bases their argument on the well-worn homophobic canard that the only reason why queer people are a politically visible issue is because of an implied cabal of "intellectuals" (or whatever your preferred conspiratorial mastermind happens to be, whether that's "coastal elites", "the liberal media", "lizard people from regulus seven", "cultural Marxists", "the deep state" or simply "the Jews") with a political agenda pushing to make them so.

Now, it may very well be that @VoidTemplar is merely repeating this trope out of sheer ignorance rather than active malice, but regardless of the motive, the trope is being repeated and that fact should be pointed out.

 

[Miss Teri]

Bad faith" doesn't even begin to describe this mental stretch. I'm honestly more on board with the general consensus that "socialist america would be good for LGBT rights, actually," but it's funny to me that whenever someone even dares to opine something different from the norm here, they instantly get pelted with insanely ludicrous accusations and hysterical speculations on imagined bigotry.

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When it's a very, very real dogwhistle regularly trotted out by actual conservatives and fascists, it very much isn't "hysterical".

 

[VoidTemplar]

When it's a very, very real dogwhistle regularly trotted out by actual conservatives and fascists, it very much isn't "hysterical".

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I promised to stay out of it, but don't EVER accuse me of being a fascist or a homophobe, or repeating those dogma or apologia. EVER. I rarely, if ever bring up my sexuality, or my political leanings because I find them largely irrelevant to the conversation, but I'd have to be seriously self-loathing to be what you're accusing me of

Oh, and Hakazin. I guess I owe it to you to put it that I have you on ignore. Don't reply to my messages, you're largely wasting your time

 

[Hakazin]

I promised to stay out of it, but don't EVER accuse me of being a fascist or a homophobe, or repeating those dogma or apologia. EVER.

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Stop repeating homophobic dogma and apologia thereof, and nobody will accuse you of doing so. Seems simple enough to me.

 

[Miss Teri]

promised to stay out of it, but don't EVER accuse me of being a fascist or a homophobe, or repeating those dogma or apologia. EVER.

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I said the talking point was itself reactionary, not you specifically.

Like @Hakazin said, we're not saying that you yourself are homophobic or fascist, but you are repeating certain talking points that are. It might not be malicious, but it is there

 

[The Laurent]

Anyways, the more important points* so far as the alternate history debate goes is that bigotry, including Anti-LGBTQ+, isn't some in-built historical unchanging truth that can only be overcome by specifically passing the 1970s.

Nor is a Whig narrative in which each generation gets better on the issue something that really stands up to scrutiny.

In a timeline where things diverged decades before the 1920s, it's actually pretty possible to imagine decriminalization of homosexuality in the 1920s or 1930s in America, and not simply through oppression and anti-democratic methods.

E: *The argument is getting pretty personal, but it's kinda been very personal this whole time, and so I really don't want to get involved in that part of it.

 

[Dab master]

I am done arguing this with you. I have already said I think you are arguing in bad faith.



There's to me at least a difference between backing a coup in Las Republicccas Della Bananas or Destabilized Military Junta #95 and "Literally backing Operation Clockwork Orange because Harold Wilson bad"

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When you're argument is "yeah but it's not like they would be mean to white people."

I promised to stay out of it, but don't EVER accuse me of being a fascist or a homophobe, or repeating those dogma or apologia. EVER. I rarely, if ever bring up my sexuality, or my political leanings because I find them largely irrelevant to the conversation, but I'd have to be seriously self-loathing to be what you're accusing me of

Oh, and Hakazin. I guess I owe it to you to put it that I have you on ignore. Don't reply to my messages, you're largely wasting your time

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The things you say have an undercurrent of homophobic rhetoric and perhaps that should be more concerning than the idea that you might be being slandered. To be clear I am not saying you are a homophobe. I am saying that the idea that you are floating that the working class is intrinsically opposed to LGBT people is a common canard used to suggest that LGBT people are all effete elites in opposition to the stalwart, socially conservative working class. It's an idea similar to Paleo-Con thought.
In general though I think you fail to realize that the point of divergence for the Reds! TL is in the 1890's and America participated in the First World War which weakened organized religion while the libertine attitudes of the 1920s were greatly exasperated by an earlier Kinsey Report equivalent.

 

[kokuenDG]

can we not do this?
At some point this stopped being about discussing cringeworthy alt-history and became more about dogpiling on a user for their questionable views, which then descended into other things that I'm sure everyone participating in the thread can see.

So yeah. The people who did a bad know who they are, but everyone else just needs to move on and get back on topic. Please thank you have a good day yes.

 

[EBR]

EDIT: Didn't see the staff post.

 

[Teen Spirit]

So I'm diving into alternate history based on Rome and I think I may have struck gold

The Germanicus trilogy is an alternate history trilogy of books written by Kirk Mitchell, consisting of Procurator (1984), New Barbarians (1986) and Cry Republic (1989). It is set in an alternate world in which Rome never fell, after Pontius Pilate pardons Joshua bar-Joseph (Christ), and the Romans win a decisive victory at Teutoburg Forest and Latinize Greater Germania.

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Like Roman surviving is one thing, Rome surviving with it's peak borders is much more implausible, Rome surviving after Literally holding all of Germania is on a whole new level of what.

Hannibal's Children is a 2002 alternate history novel by American writer John Maddox Roberts. It is concluded by its sequel, The Seven Hills.
The novel opens at the alternate close of the Second Punic War. Hannibal offers terms to the Romans: abandon their city and move north of the Alps, or be destroyed. The Romans, under the dictator Quintus Fabius Maximus, accept the offer and withdraw into Germania, vowing to return. The Carthaginians declare victory and go home.

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Like I want to read this novel because it sounds quite interesting but I can't imagine any situation where the Roman Republic at that time would willfully abandon Rome and all of Italy to go into exile.

 

[EBR]

Like I want to read this novel because it sounds quite interesting but I can't imagine any situation where the Roman Republic at that time would willfully abandon Rome and all of Italy to go into exile.

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I read it. It felt like it was just intended as a way to have Rome conquer Germany before establishing its empire and also remain a republic (and therefore the good guys, because forget about all of the problems of the Roman Republic).

 

[Madam Carstein]

I read it. It felt like it was just intended as a way to have Rome conquer Germany before establishing its empire and also remain a republic (and therefore the good guys, because forget about all of the problems of the Roman Republic).

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I think it's also rooted in a kind of simplistic understanding of Roman history.

In other words like... if you know how the Western Empire fell, you draw the conclusion that Germanic barbarians=bad, and thus the way to prevent this is to have Rome conquer and integrate Germania and like...

No consideration of the fact that the Roman system was deeply flawed (especially with the cyclical periods of civil war and bloody succession struggles) and overextended, and that even a Germania that had magically assimilated completely into Rome would have simply shifted Rome's porous and unstable border further eastward and that all of the same problems with controlling it would have still existed.

I don't think it's impossible for the extent of Roman power and influence to be further east than historically, but definitely not for an unaltered Roman Empire with its maximum territorial apex.

Plus like... lastly, even if we DID create some kind of Rome with a larger presence in Central Europe, I mean... that would probably have significant impacts on Rome as a power. After all, if most of your territory is northward and out of the traditional areas of Roman power and influence... that's a recipe to have the centres of power and trade steadily shift northward, if not collapse as Rome favours its traditional Mediterranean sphere over the comparatively remote north. And there's no shortage of things that could happen there: some ambitious general seizes power and crafts a mirror empire in the north, or a more loose arrangement involving, for example, a series of Roman-aligned client-kings in Germania.

 

[Teen Spirit]

I read it. It felt like it was just intended as a way to have Rome conquer Germany before establishing its empire and also remain a republic (and therefore the good guys, because forget about all of the problems of the Roman Republic).

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The "Republic Good, Empire bad" crowd do annoy me because sure, the Empire past the Principate was basically a military dictatorship in all but name. And the Principate itself probably sucked for anyone who wasn't an upper class Roman but people don't seem to get how much of a basketcase the Republic became once it actually expanded beyond Italy proper.

And the idea Rome would survive longer than it did if it grabbed more land is a strange one. Sure Western Rome fell quickly after the split because it lost highly important land in North Africa and other places. But Roman isn't going to magic away all the things that lead to the Western Empire's collapse.

 

[EBR]

I think it's also rooted in a kind of simplistic understanding of Roman history.

In other words like... if you know how the Western Empire fell, you draw the conclusion that Germanic barbarians=bad, and thus the way to prevent this is to have Rome conquer and integrate Germania and like...

No consideration of the fact that the Roman system was deeply flawed (especially with the cyclical periods of civil war and bloody succession struggles) and overextended, and that even a Germania that had magically assimilated completely into Rome would have simply shifted Rome's porous and unstable border further eastward and that all of the same problems with controlling it would have still existed.

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100%. It's not like things were great in Rome and then everything changed when the Germanic barbarians attacked. Rome descended into cycles of civil war for control of the empire that left it weakened and the Germans took advantage of that. And of course the Roman Empire was established because the exact same thing happened to the Roman Republic.

The "Republic Good, Empire bad" crowd do annoy me because sure, the Empire past the Principate was basically a military dictatorship in all but name. And the Principate itself probably sucked for anyone who wasn't an upper class Roman but people don't seem to get how much of a basketcase the Republic became once it actually expanded beyond Italy proper.

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Also this^

The book literally had the Romans re-establishing control over Italy... politely, without any fighting.

 

[Alane1]

The thing with the western roman empire is its critical economic and population centers were in the med especially in its North African provinces which got badly wreaked by some the worst natural disasters in recorded history in the third and forth century which had more than anything else in why the western roman empire was so fragile to begin with, butterflying the Germanic, Alani and Hunnic invasions away or even its civil wars wouldn't change that the planet itself pretty much left the empire pretty devastated and in a very fragile state by the fifth century.

 

[Madam Carstein]

100%. It's not like things were great in Rome and then everything changed when the Germanic barbarians attacked. Rome descended into cycles of civil war for control of the empire that left it weakened and the Germans took advantage of that. And of course the Roman Empire was established because the exact same thing happened to the Roman Republic.

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Tbh, a stronger Roman presence in Germania strikes me as something that would probably follow the route of the Romano-British. Even a solid presence of Roman culture and power in Germania wouldn't change the extreme strategic vulnerability of the region and the fact that it would naturally be one of the first parts of the empire to fall to invasion by any outside force. Not to mention its distance from Roman centres of power would make it extremely likely that Germania's governors would likely be able to form independent power bases.

Ultimately, it would probably end up as basically a particularly Roman-influenced Germanic kingdom. Since it's hard to imagine that the same degree of intense cultural and linguistic Romanisation would take hold in Germania without at least some persistence of pre-existing cultures and peoples.

 

[Terra Novan]

(and therefore the good guys, because forget about all of the problems of the Roman Republic).

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If anything, it can be argued that the mid-late Republic was much more imperialistic than the Empire, with greater expansionism and far less inclination toward assimilation.

 

[Teen Spirit]

There also seems to be this weird idea in alt history if you solve the problems Rome faced at one point in it's history that means the empire would endure forever. That's not how nations work, that's not how anything works

Like okay, suppose Pertinax survives, thus avoiding the Praetorian Guard selling off the imperial title, the year of the five emperors, the Severan dynasty, all that jazz. And let's suppose he is basically another Marcus Aurelius or something. That maybe gives Rome a few more good decades, but it's not going to magically ensure Rome has no problems for centuries to come.

 

[Madam Carstein]

There also seems to be this weird idea in alt history if you solve the problems Rome faced at one point in it's history that means the empire would endure forever. That's not how nations work, that's not how anything works

Like okay, suppose Pertinax survives, thus avoiding the Praetorian Guard selling off the imperial title, the year of the five emperors, the Severan dynasty, all that jazz. And let's suppose he is basically another Marcus Aurelius or something. That maybe gives Rome a few more good decades, but it's not going to magically ensure Rome has no problems for centuries to come.

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I would put this down to the general persistence of the "Great Man" theory of history and beyond that a more broad sense to overlook long-term systemic political, economic, agricultural, etc. problems in favour of personal factors (i.e. "if only X had been Emperor, Rome would have never fallen!").

Edit: Which, in an AH sense, admittedly makes sense. PoDs relating to certain rulers living longer, coming to power when they failed historically, etc. It's easier to tell a story about Julius Caesar living longer than it is to talk about the systemic flaws affecting the Roman system as a whole. This kind of thing can be very fun and interesting to write about but... it doesn't explain away longer-term issues in say, the Roman Empire.

 

[Alane1]

I can buy the western roman empire could have survived and recovered for a few more centuries if it held onto its African provinces the holding of which very much break or make the empire as it would allow for its economy and population had time to recover from the natural disasters of the third and forth centuries.

The problem though is that the empire instead would get hit down the road by possible Justinian plague or what ever they decide to call it, raids by the Vikings, Alvars and Magyars as well the Islamic conquests a few centuries down the line which would again threaten to collapse the empire though without vast chunks of the population getting killed by earthquakes and tsunamis which also swamp vast sections of coastal farmland with seawater before hand.

 

[Terra Novan]

I can buy the western roman empire could have survived and recovered for a few more centuries if it held onto its African provinces the holding of which very much break or make the empire as it would allow for its economy and population had time to recover from the natural disasters of the third and forth centuries/

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Speaking of this, am I the only one who wants to see the WRE timeline where their survival is not dependent on retaining/reconquering North Africa?

 

[Teen Spirit]

I would put this down to the general persistence of the "Great Man" theory of history and beyond that a more broad sense to overlook long-term systemic political, economic, agricultural, etc. problems in favour of personal factors (i.e. "if only X had been Emperor, Rome would have never fallen!").

Edit: Which, in an AH sense, admittedly makes sense. PoDs relating to certain rulers living longer, coming to power when they failed historically, etc. It's easier to tell a story about Julius Caesar living longer than it is to talk about the systemic flaws affecting the Roman system as a whole. This kind of thing can be very fun and interesting to write about but... it doesn't explain away longer-term issues in say, the Roman Empire.

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I do wonder if Great Man theory is part of why the Dominate period isn't covered so much by historians. I recall someone I know talking about how they did a class on the Dominate period and they were working a lot more with primary sources since so few historians really talk about the period.

 

[c.j.]

I do wonder if Great Man theory is part of why the Dominate period isn't covered so much by historians. I recall someone I know talking about how they did a class on the Dominate period and they were working a lot more with primary sources since so few historians really talk about the period.

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Well the main issue is that we don't have a lot of good primary sources for this era, not like we do for the civil war.