How do the dominant cultural narratives in art and mass media affect our politics?

There'd be no point in that though. Showing a futuristic utopia is fine, but explicitly stating that it's modeled on Communist ideals would be if not a form of apologia, than sailing pretty near the wind.

I've got no issue with saying that they've achieved a socialist future, but terms like "Communism", "Marxism" etc should probably be kept out of it.

Edited by AmbarSonofDeshar on Jul 16th 2018 at 1:45:09 AM

Welp. About the whole Cry for the Devil IRL, it actually happened in my country because our Left Wing party have a...honestly disturbing tendency to act like Cry for the terrorists.

They like to bring up probable crimes commited in the Peruvian War on Terror and while it's really true that our Right Wing goverment (and it's dictator) commited crimes, they also argued it in a way that was pretty much "feel sorry for the terrorist".

Which is a political suicide act because their base was made for rural people that suffered from those terrorists and who would be more than happy torturing them (like, literally torturing them).

...I have to admit that is kinda interesting growing in a country that was just getting itself out of a period of violence, I guess that it was the reason why I am fond of tropes as Sins of Our Fathers and the likes.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Jul 16th 2018 at 3:45:18 AM

Watch me destroying my country

I’d argue that it only becomes apologia if the communist world fo Star Trek is linked to communist regimes that exist in the real world, there’s room for “humanity wa finally able to achieve communism without it backsliding into an authoritarian dictatorship in the process” without apologia for existing communist regimes.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

With Star Trek:

The Federation is a highly secularized society (albeit with many elements of civil religion), but not an atheistic one per se. A major element of their ideology is respecting other cultures and beliefs, which goes against the antitheism of communism.

Star Trek is inconsistent about the economics of the Federation, but it has next to no poverty and is frequently stated to not use currency. Having said that, this is an Informed Attribute more often than not. Also, a zero-poverty post-scarcity society can be capitalist, though the Federation is more likely than not socialist.

In general, Trek seems quite cynical of capitalism, though Roddenberry himself was pretty hypocritical about this. Roddenberry was a rather shrewd businessman himself.

Edited by Protagonist506 on Jul 16th 2018 at 1:46:50 AM

"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"

Which might be one reason his anti-capitalist message fell flat. That and the EVIL capitalist Ferengi were just not particularly credible as an antagonistic faction.

Disgusted, but not surprised

So, I was watching past page of this therad since I dont have internet and I it take a way to get a head and I saw the whole "is confederate/nazi foot soldier super evil?" come more of what we expect evil to be.

in general we expect that if you follow a evil dead like the holocaust and slavery then you have a personality to match, in fact more often that not is villian and not overly villnious people complain of apologia.

I think another issue is that in general, we kinda expect soldiers to be do whatever the country demand a any moment and not question it, so in general when a country do something awfull(and even the allies do, let face it, the japanise camps come to mind) we kinda expect them to question that while a the same time serve the country without complain.

Is....weird.

"not everyone deserves sympathy and if I don't like someone then of course I'm going to enjoy their misfortune"

Sure but it come as....disturbing a lot of times, there is this tendecy of "evil people deserve evil on themselves" which is.....awfull in general, that is why I never enjoy punisher.

Edited by unknowing on Jul 16th 2018 at 6:13:48 AM

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"

This is actually a major issue in the recent novels of the Expanse because the books have the protagonists having to deal with the Former Regime Personnel of the previous groups of bad guys. One of the biggest controversies is the ending of Babylon's Ashes where the protagonists must recruit one of the former leaders of the Free Belter Navy.

People who didn't commit genocide but had been party of a planet-wide Colony Drop equivalent to Zeon. The Free Belter Navy killed half of Earth's population a.k.a 15 billion people. Michio Pa breaks away from the group after this, not because of Earth's deaths but the deaths of Belters who died in the aftermath when Admiral Marco abandoned Ceres Station to Earth. She ends up a ally of the heroes who becomes head of the Spacer's Guild

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jul 16th 2018 at 3:44:35 AM

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

...Well, that was a lot of thumping in the last two pages.

Now, having been on Alternate History.com for a few years now, I must ask-what is it about alternate history that attracts so many toxic people? Having spent plenty of time on that site, there's a whole ton of people who are either right-wing bigots or brocialist semi-tankies, with not much in between. Is political extremism just something that inherently comes with the genre?

"Somehow the hated have to walk a tightrope, while those who hate do not."

Because history has prominently seen evil regimes fall eventually and it’s an easy alt history to do one where they didn’t, if you’re righting an alt history that has the Conferancy, the Nazis or the USSR not fall than it’s easy enough to fall into apologia for said regimes.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

It's similar to how some strategy games like those created by Paradox Interactive also tend to attract such people, when the authoritarian entity you idolize historically fell an opportunity to avert that can be attractive to a particular sort of degenerate.

"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn

A bit late to this, but I think when you're talking about stories with black and white morality, I think the nuance comes in exploring how and why people come to believe and act the way they do, because it helps make them more believable.

People are not born fascists, white supremacists, or criminals. They become those things as a result of their choices and their environment. It doesn't mean that seeing the reasons for why they became the people they are would make you more sympathetic towards them (that's a misconception people often have), but it would add a lot of verisimilitude to the story you're trying to tell.

Edited by Draghinazzo on Jul 16th 2018 at 7:35:02 AM

"Degenerate" is not an ideal insult. I am not trying to throw stones since I fucked up last page myself but,well, it's not usually used in a good way or by people you would like.

As for history games (kind of) I must again invoke my time playing Civilization II where Mao represented China and Henry VIII England. What the fuck.

Hell, in more modern games, Bismarck represents Germany and he was not exactly a great guy from what I know. I guess he's sort of "transcended the stigma" like Napoleon or whatever.

I appreciate the advice

But I'm well aware of the Nazi/reactionary use of the word, that's why I use it. It applies to them far more then it does to their victims.

Yeah, though IIRC I believe Mao is respected in China so that one is... somewhat egregious but understandable. And Civilization is not afraid of having some rather brutal leaders (like Julius Caesar or Stalin).

Sounds about right.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Jul 16th 2018 at 7:45:06 AM

"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn

Ah, so it's sort of "taking the word back" thing. That's a good idea.

Anyway, with Julius Caesar, it's sort of like Alexander being the leader for the Greeks. (ev en though I don't think he was technically Greek. I don't really understand how it works, i just know the people we traditionally think of as Greeks all regarded his kingdom as a bunch of bumpkins)

1. They're both pivotal figures in "Western history" and Alexander I know for a fact to be one of the most famous figures in history period.

2.They both lived thousands of years ago so they get somewhat of a pass on doing bad things.

So basically you're just left with "these two guys who accomplished amazing things and are highly respected or famous" with little or none of the moral stigma.

But it's also just part of a trend I've long since noticed and wondered at. People love conquerors. I wish I could find like a book on this but it just seems like a leader who gets up and starts wrecking shit and taking names gets some manner of...respect I guess you could call it. We are fascinated with them and not in the morbid way people re fascinated by serial killers or whatever.

I don't know, there are some AH works like Anglo/American-Nazi War that realistically show a regime such as the Third Reich surviving longer than OTL...only to fall not too long after the Po D, and spectacularly so.

Actually, that's something I've noticed in "victorious Nazis" alternate histories. It's always written as some direct analogue of the Cold War, except replace the USSR with Nazi Germany and communism with fascism.

"Somehow the hated have to walk a tightrope, while those who hate do not."

Nazi Germany survived in Turtledove's Worldwar series only to spectacularly fuck themselves over at the start of Colonization. They had kinda contaminated Britain though.

There's also something I personally like to call "historical distance" - Genghis Khan was a mass murderer and Alexander conquered and toppled civilisations for the sake of his own ego. Charlemagne had thousands of Saxons slaughtered for refusing to convert. Heck, some Civ games have the first Emperor of China who was a murderous (and later insane) tyrant as well.

Here's the thing: These people lived a very long time ago - meanwhile you can still talk to people who lived through Stalin's or Mao's regimes.

At least they actually removed Mao and Stalin from later Civ games - some idiots kept asking for Hitler as a leader "because Mao and Stalin are in the game as well". So Firaxis did the right thing and removed both of them instead.

It's not that these people are somehow more virtuous or "better" - it's that we're far enough removed from them that their appearance in media doesn't affect us directly.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Jul 16th 2018 at 2:05:37 PM

Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.

Personally, I'm not opposed to Stalin, Mao, or Hitler being in Civilization (and usually even get mods to put them in there). The reason being that depiction isn't the same thing as endorsement, and nothing's quite as cathartic as sending tanks to attack Nazi Germany.

"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"

Well the main problem was in the older games you only got one choice. Picking Hitler to represent Germany or Mao to represent China is just kind of inherently insulting in a way.

I mean, it's not like you actually player Hitler or Mao. You can do whatever you want. Make Nazi Germany a giant pacifist Jewish state.

But having these people who are clearly supposed to be representatives of a culture is kinda not cool. I don't want people to judge all Americans by Trump.

Edited by Nikkolas on Jul 16th 2018 at 5:25:40 AM

There's a lot of craziness which needs to go into your typical evil fascist regime surviving to the Modern Day. Fatherland is a novel which attempted to be "realistic" about Nazi Germany surviving to the present day and that required an AMAZING amount of effort and happy coincidences.

Also, one of the things about the Confederacy surviving to even the end of the 19th century is that it requires a massive amount of craziness as the system was unsustainable beyond measure.

The people who love Space 1899 for example HATED the decision to include a surviving Confederacy because it turned their romantic steampunk (sorry, Gaslamp fantasy) game into one which included a truly repulsive Luddite regime.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

The terrifying fact is that there are historians—respectable ones—who try to play up the efficiency of Nazi Germany. Azar Gat, who wrote an award winning book on the history of warfare, opined in it that the Nazis, unlike the Communists, were incredibly efficient and presented a viable alternative to liberal democracy. He went onto claim that if the Nazi regime hadn't started World War II, but had instead gone the Cold War route it could easily have replaced liberal democracy as the de facto state of governance around the world, due to its economic efficiency and ability to mobilize its population in ways democracies just can't.

I may have proceeded to take that book apart in class the following day, because you've got to be high, braindamaged, or both to believe any of the stuff I just typed there.

Realistically an "independent" Confederacy would have wound up as either a client state for one of the Great Powers, collapsed into civil war (the irony), seen a string of military coups, been reconquered by the USA eventually, or all of the above. They just did not have the industrial base to enter the modern world; they were a reactionary state even by the standards of a reactionary age.

Timeline 191 essentially had the Confederacy kept alive by infusions of money from Great Britain and France, and even then, the whole point was to show what a terrible, terrible place an independent CSA would have become. By the time they're slaughtering their African-American population—and getting nuked by the USA in turn—most of the Confederate fanboys who had bought into the series were opting out, because it had suddenly turned hostile to their fantasy of a glorious independent Confederacy that isn't a stain on human history.

Edited by AmbarSonofDeshar on Jul 16th 2018 at 9:05:31 AM

...How does the CSA build a nuke before the U.S. in TL-191?

"Somehow the hated have to walk a tightrope, while those who hate do not."

Pretty sure that's not what they said - the US nukes them after the CSA started genociding their black subjects, not after the CSA nuked them.

Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.

The actual answer is "because the author wanted the ending to have some tension and he'd already made it clear the CSA could not win a straight up fight." The in-universe explanation is that the CSA manages to launch an air raid and (I think) a suicide bombing attack on the US facility that knocks their production back by months. The CSA also gets a massive amount of help from Britain, who shares their information with the Confederates in a way the Germans and Austro-Hungarians aren't as prepared to do with the USA.

The actual order of getting nukes goes Germany, Britain, CSA, USA.

Actually, he's correct—the CSA does nuke the USA first. However, you're not wrong about how it ultimately plays out. The Confederates have one, tiny bomb, that blows up half of Philadelphia. The USA has an arsenal and blows two entire Confederate cities off the map, then threatens to nuke more.

Edited by AmbarSonofDeshar on Jul 16th 2018 at 9:16:23 AM