Any changes to Timeline-191/Southern Victory

[Hexcron]

Quite a few interesting points about military and international politics made so far in this thread, thought I'd add a couple of notes on more domestic matters:

1. One possibility is to, instead of having Benjamin Butler do entryism into the Democrats (which somehow turns them into an organizational clone of the OTL GOP), have him and other hardline right-wing Republicans form a new (Unionist?) Party, in order to avoid the damage of both the Democratic and Republican brands, as well as to make pre-GWI politics more dynamic.
2. Explore the complexities of the Socialist Party more deeply, as well as its organisational differences to the OTL major parties. Either have the party split over the war (as many of its Second International sister parties, most prominently the SPD, did) and see how a split Socialist movement effects things, or don't, and explore how people like Browder, Foster, and cannon operate in the halls of an institutionalised party. Either way, explore what a significant Communist presence in US politics looks like (especially one with a native, say, De Leonist, bent), rather than just trying to ape the British party dynamic.
3. Also, get rid of the absurd number of conservative OTL Democrats in the Socialist Party. Al Smith and Clarence Cannon should not be Socialists.
4. Have the Rad-Libs amount to more than a wet noodle and third-wheel. I actually quite like the CSA party dynamic, especially with Craigo's additions, but i think it would be made much better by the 1920s CSA actually having a Rad-Lib administration. Tom Watson should win in 1921, then maybe bring the Whigs back for a term, then have 1933 be a mainly Rad-Lib vs Freedom contest.
5. More white CS Socialists. They obviously shouldn't win anything, or even really be competitive, but they should be big enough to act as a notable spoiler for the Rad-Libs, and consistently have a small Congressional Caucus. Have Freedom constantly complain about them. I just think that'd be neat.
6. As said before, have the US Socialists actually accomplish things. They should hate the filibuster (and honestly the Senate if OTL is anything to go by) and have a binding party whip anyways, so either give them some substantial policy wins, or prevent them from forming Congressional majorities until after GWII. If the latter, have the Democrats/Unionists win the Presidency more often.
7. My preference would be for a Third International to emerge, and the repercussions of this to be explored. Be it in the same way as in OTL, or from a different source, there should be more attention on the global Socialist movement. Hell, I wouldn't mind a revolution in the US, even if it makes for even more parallelism, so long as its ideology isn't an expy of the USSR and is instead derived from domestic American theories and practices (I return to De Leonism as my case-in-point here).

 

[the Imperium of Canada]

Some more "out there" ideas of mine:

• -An earlier PoD of Karl Marx migrating over to the United States in the 1850s, getting involved in the American abolitionist and labor movements. Marx at some point ends up sparking up a correspondence with Frederick Douglass and later embittered ex-president Abraham Lincoln. While "Marxism" as we know it never really comes into much prominence in Europe, it becomes extremely important in the American labor and socialist movement.
• -CSA wins the war because more of the border slave states ended up seceding along with some Trent Affair type clusterfuck leading to British military intervention. Still the war drags on all the way into 1864/5 until a very bitter peace is made.
• -French intervention in the Austro-Prussian War leads to Prussia losing the war and ultimately failing to unite Germany in the 19th century, later aligning with the Russian Empire and the United States.

Also slavery is never abolished in the Confederacy until the end of the First Great War, inforced at the point of US rifles.

Also when we get to that i'd probably have a lot more emphasis on the horrific crash industrialization the Freedomit CSA goes through under Featherstone, which goes well when beyond even what the Soviet Union went through under Stalin in terms of sheer brutality and disregard for human life.

With it deliberately attempting to work as black population to death, the Confederacy's poor Mexican client state is essentially forced to send hundreds of thousands of "replacements" into the industrial hellscape that the country is rapidly becoming.

 

[the Imperium of Canada]

Hell, I wouldn't mind a revolution in the US, even if it makes for even more parallelism, so long as its ideology isn't an expy of the USSR and is instead derived from domestic American theories and practices (I return to De Leonism as my case-in-point here).

Hmm, maybe a genuinely radical socialist like Eugene Debs gets elected president at the end of the Great War, which is followed by an attempt by terrified conservative elements to declare the election fraudulent, and the entire situation spirals out of control?

 

[AK47Productions]

With it deliberately attempting to work as black population to death, the Confederacy's poor Mexican client state is essentially forced to send hundreds of thousands of "replacements" into the industrial hellscape that the country is rapidly becoming.

Would it be just the Mexicans sending forced laborers (republican POWs from the civil war and maybe actual criminals? Mainly because I'm not sure if the royalists had any "undesirables" they'd actually send)?

The Entente weren't as extermination driven like the Freedomites were (at least from what we see of the Entente during the novels), but maybe the Anglo-French would ship over their own "undesirables" (French Jews, socialist opposition, independence activists from the colonies, etc)? Especially if the CSA's industrialization was chewing up workers that swiftly or if the Freedomites were that adamant of Afro-Confederates dying in the camps end of discussion.

 

[Hexcron]

Hmm, maybe a genuinely radical socialist like Eugene Debs gets elected president at the end of the Great War, which is followed by an attempt by terrified conservative elements to declare the election fraudulent, and the entire situation spirals out of control?

Something like that could work, it's certainly not alien to the De Leonist conception of revolution by ballot box.

 

[the Imperium of Canada]

Would it be just the Mexicans sending forced laborers (republican POWs from the civil war and maybe actual criminals? Mainly because I'm not sure if the royalists had any "undesirables" they'd actually send)?

It probably starts out as "just" anti-regime dissidents and rebels but as the demands of the Confederacy continue to grow it moves on to full on depopulating unrestive regions and the entire situation just gets worse and worse from there.

 

[the Imperium of Canada]

1. Explore the complexities of the Socialist Party more deeply, as well as its organisational differences to the OTL major parties. Either have the party split over the war (as many of its Second International sister parties, most prominently the SPD, did) and see how a split Socialist movement effects things, or don't, and explore how people like Browder, Foster, and cannon operate in the halls of an institutionalised party. Either way, explore what a significant Communist presence in US politics looks like (especially one with a native, say, De Leonist, bent), rather than just trying to ape the British party dynamic.

...Thinking more on this, I actually think that the radicals would very begrudgingly and critically support the war, if only because destroying the oligarchic slaver state to the south is probably something American socialists really want to do. Especially if abolitionist societies and the like continue to exist and get intermingled with the growing labor movement.

 

[Hexcron]

...Thinking more on this, I actually think that the radicals would very begrudgingly and critically support the war, if only because destroying the oligarchic slaver state to the south is probably something American socialists really want to do. Especially if abolitionist societies and the like continue to exist and get intermingled with the growing labor movement.

1. There were German socialists who made the same argument against Russia, and the SPD still went through one of the biggest and most enduring splits of any Second International party.
2. Flora is a radical and she opposes the war on purely internationalist principles, and we know 14 of the 101 members of the Socialist party room in Congress agrees with her in principle. They, like the anti-war members of the SPD, including Liebknecht, accepted party discipline and voted for war credits in 1914. The difference seems to be that the Socialists are much quicker than the SPD in beginning to call for peace.
3. We have no indication that hawkishness against the CSA is a strong plank in the Socialist platform; their general opposition to militarism suggests the opposite.

 

[the Imperium of Canada]

1. There were German socialists who made the same argument against Russia, and the SPD still went through one of the biggest and most enduring splits of any Second International party.
2. Flora is a radical and she opposes the war on purely internationalist principles, and we know 14 of the 101 members of the Socialist party room in Congress agrees with her in principle. They, like the anti-war members of the SPD, including Liebknecht, accepted party discipline and voted for war credits in 1914. The difference seems to be that the Socialists are much quicker than the SPD in beginning to call for peace.
3. We have no indication that hawkishness against the CSA is a strong plank in the Socialist platform; their general opposition to militarism suggests the opposite.

That's all fair. But, well, we're in a thread about theoretical changes to the series and it just seemed likely to me that American socialists in a world where the Confederacy won the Civil War would probably by and large end up having a very hawkish view on the CSA specifically, with all it's literal slavery and I Can't Believe It's Not Slavery type shit.

Especially if the abolitionist movement in the United States continues to exist into the 20th century.

 

[Hexcron]

That's all fair. But, well, we're in a thread about theoretical changes to the series and it just seemed likely to me that American socialists in a world where the Confederacy won the Civil War would probably by and large end up having a very hawkish view on the CSA specifically, with all it's literal slavery and I Can't Believe It's Not Slavery type shit.

Especially if the abolitionist movement in the United States continues to exist into the 20th century.

There might be a section of the Socialists who believe that. There might also be an internationalist section which would not. It's far more interesting in my view for the latter view to be significant and powerful in the party; it makes US politics more dynamic by having an actual opposition to the Remembrance consensus, and it makes the Socialists more interesting as a group by having their position on the war be in part one which is to an extent disagreeable but ultimately understandable.