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An UnFascist world

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It's been a while since the last map of mine so here's a rather dark map for your enjoyment. This world's source of dystopia comes from a far more successful fascist movement, but with a twist. Instead of the old cliche of nazi boots in london and the IJN having bases in San Francisco, the leading fascist evil empires of this world are some of our world's paragons of liberal democratic virtue: France, the United Kingdom and even the United States of America.

This scenario is inspired by multiple pieces which include Soc.history.what-if's "Unfascist Britain" threads, several B_Munro maps featuring fascist Britain's promoting colonialism, Scott palter's "Dark America", Chris Nuttal's "King of Traitors" to name a few.

The divergence of this world is sometime late in the Russian revolution, when Lenin is killed in 1920 before the USSR can consolidate. It falls into anarchy, and is eventually reunified by a strongman on a white horse in a regime that resembles typical latin juntas. Removing the USSR from the scene early does two things: weakens red scares but unlike the alternative of removing it entirely still provides memorable moments from the 1917 revolution for would-be rebels to reenact.

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Initially, this doesn't change that much. The first big changes start in the United States, where a less suppressed socialist movement re-organizes in the wake of the palmer raids. The first big change comes when the 1926 general strike is far worse and long-lasting, prompting a very repressive response. The fact that catholic/protestant fighting began in Ulster and Ireland's leader Michael Collins did a large raid on belfast to "liberate" the north didn't help either. By 1928, there is an emergency regime in place in the United Kingdom. Think paranoid elites mixed with amoral Lloyd George types who are able to use the Emergency to do various foreign and domestic policies that weren't possible before. Things like using mixes of bribes and bullying to regain the fealty of the dominions, forming a comprehensive china strategy to work with Japan(finding a warlord, crowning him emperor of china and gaining money from rigged trade deals), promoting white settlement in Kenya and Rhodesia even over the objections of local planters(They didn't want messy working-class types) to name a few.

1929 marks the year that the Great Depression happened, which increased trouble world-wide. The depression would also mark the collapse of Taisho Democracy, along with democracy in both France and America. Attempted left-wing risings along with a less competent president than FDR meant that early 1934 led to an informal coup done by a group of economic royalists. France's own descent into fascism came in the wake of instability in the early and mid 1930s, which enabled the Croix de feu movement to strike and take power. Even without a soviet union, the increased international instability allowed one Adolf Hitler to take power. However, a more militarized UK squished Germany at Munich. Hitler, goering and himmler ended up hanging while Rommel was made Regent to a restored puppet Kaiser. Meanwhile, with both British and Japanese backing a puppet warlord reunited China by 1940. By 1950, the fall of night had covered most of the planet. There were only a few pale remnants of liberal democracy in the form of Belgium, The netherlands, the scandanavian states, Switzerland and Czechslovakia.

The period of 1920 to 1950 can be thought of as the time old liberal democratic, monarchic or even military regimes were replaced by one flavor of fascism or another. From Poland to paraguay, the old order fell to be replaced by a new order of blood and iron. Many of these fascist states ended up restoring their monarchs as symbols of national greatness. Even without a war, the fascist states were able to recover from the depression thanks to massive infrastructure projects and of course the task of creating military infrastructure for the long-term. Instead of consumer growth, the economies of these states were focused on capital spending, infrastructure, research, infrastructure, massive police states, military-industrial complexes and in time space travel -- instead of the postwar consumer boom for citizens in developed nations we instead have the imperial cores as the engine for a force-draft modernization of first earth and then the solar system.

Since 1950, the main concerns have been space, maintaining order in the empires and most importantly ensuring no subversion at home. Belgium and the Netherlands both were starting to lose... resolve and were talking "independence" in the dutch case and "home rule" for the belgian case. Such defiance of the system would not be tolerated -- the cases were handled of course by Britain consficating the Congo and running it as a mandate, along with putting a puppet into power in rump indonesia. After all, disruptions to the order would not be brooked. The largest disruption, can of course be France's near-revolution of 1976 which was put down with British assistance and most of the French empire being graciously restored by the british except for a few exceptions(Indochina, Morocco and a piece of west africa) taken by Britain as "fair" compensation. Another disruptive change during this period was India's economic rise and becoming an equal partner in the Alliance of ORder and Progress -- India went from being practically a medieval wasteland to being a well-run police state with a functioning capitalist economy. Everything was and is going as planned...

Meanwhile, off of earth the space race started earlier than OTL thanks to Britain's getting Germany's rocket scientists after the munich war ended. The first beeping ball of tin was launched in 1946 with com, recon, weather and other sattelites following not long after. Britain started this space race, but it's allies Japan, France and America all soon followed. What came after was a large-scale economic expansion into the inner system and even in recent years the asteroid belt. Mars is a decade into a century-long planned terraforming program, the preliminary studies for terraforming venus are being concluded and there are even starship docks in earth orbit where a fleet of starships was sent out in 1999, with another already being constructed. Much more effort being put into space, along with space's becoming self-financing thanks to asteroid mining and solar power have created the resources for telescopes that put hubble to shame. They have found a surprising number of potentially habitable worlds within the 50 lightyear local bubble. Each ship on the fleet is meant to hold 10,000 colonists and thus the fleet was sent to transport colonists to 4 worlds(one 4 light years away(Alpha centauri), 7.78 light years away(Wolf 359), 12 lightyears away(61 Cygni) and 19 light years away(Sigma draconis). There are other worlds, but the rationale of the council was to try them on the next batch, which is only 5 years away from being finished. The fact the best starship drive that can be managed currently is 5% of light speed, along with the state of the art cryogenics systems only managing to safely hold people for 10 years at a time, before needing a 6 months 'cooloff' period of course makes this high frontier a daunting effort but with Will all things are possible. Besides, the scientists in the lab are saying they can manage 6% of light speed and 15 years of cold sleep time so it'll be better this time!

The technological growth curve since 1950 has of course been far higher than OTL, even if things average citizens from OTL are used to such as cellphones, the internet or even multi-purpose computers have been rejected on grounds of being "unsafe". This is a world of solar power sattelites, exuberant futurist skyscrapers made practical by an improved materials science, 90 year lifespans being normal in wealthy nations, moving roads, holographic TV but no cellphones, laptops or Facebook. Potential energy crises on the horizon have been dodged thanks to orbital solar, nuclear power and in recent years exploiting ocean thermal energy. Other resource shortages have been mitigated or entirely avoided thanks to more efficient mining techniques combined with asteroid mining.

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On the surface, Britain looks like a normal if conservative democracy but beneath the polite outer facade lies the reality of brutal despotism and authoritarianism. UnFascist Britain is far too polite to openly admit it's fascism so they find dodges such as citing "Defense of the Realm Act" and justifying things like thbbe return to public execution as ye olde englishe tradition. It controls much of Africa and the indian ocean rim with mandates, colonies and protected kingdoms such as Botswana. With an imperial core to exploit, combined with a city of London that isn't dominated by financiers the British economy, and in particular the industrial sector is doing far better. This prosperity, combined with a few threats and cooption of leadership has turned the great industry-wide union into bastions of supprot for King and Country. Ireland, which was re-annexed following the 1920s Belfast incident is a bit troublesome as usual, but Rhodesia or Kenya's parliaments are constantly talking about their need for more white people to hold off the kaffir problem so two niggling long-term problems may be solveable at once...

The dominions aren't that much better for the most part. They're all one-party states with rigged elections and toothless opposition parties whose members are sometimes outside of jail for long enough to run elections. Canada is the best of the lot, and it's ruled by the heirs of Maurice Dupleiss in a regime even more conservative than say De Valera's Ireland. Oddly enough, Canada still serves as a safety valve compared to a repressive United States. South Africa has full-on post 1948 grand apartheid and is considered liberal in this world. Rhodesia is like a less racist south africa, with a few token black people in their parliament. Kenya is somewhere in between the two. Australia is a nasty populist dictatorship and arguably even more unpleasant than Britain itself.

As part of it's informal empire, Britain maintains a large network of puppet states under it's control. These are as diverse as Portugal's integralist government, the turkish junta, Saudi Arabia, The Shahdom of Iran, etc. Some areas such as Iran and Saudi Arabia are watched, while others like Tibet or Portugal are mostly left alone as long as they don't cause trouble. One constant factor though is that the economy in all of the puppet states is owned by British and now in recent years Indian corporations.

India, the former crown jewel of the empire has become an equal partner to Britain. In the early 1950s certain left-wing types like Gandhi or Nehru were executed but London was able to find solid chaps like Bose and Jinnah to work with as allies. The result is an India which is nominally a federal democracy, but in practice is a decentralized police state that strongly enforces it's caste system. It's capitalistic economy means it's as rich as OTL PRC, even if it's far more unequal. This inequality is reflected in the lower castes having even worse lives than OTL, and the fact that the brahmins are discussing implementing a one-child policy on a national level the way some provinces have done and both South Africa and the United States have done with their africans.

America stands as the second core of this alliance of empires. Since the coup of 1934, the United States has been a populist dictatorship that like the United Kingdom uses a fig-leaf of democracy to mask the truth. Populist socioeconomics along with cooperative links between the government and the churches keep the public loyal. For the overall "feel" of this united states think of 1950s america, but with a massive religious revival going on. This revival, combined with other pro-natalist policies has translated to the United States havin a 50% higher population than OTL. The demographics are different without post-1965 immigration, though. A one-child policy dating to 1948 combined with making many criminal offenses lead to sterilization for blacks means there are many fewer people of african descent in America than OTL. What blacks there are live in walled-off, seperate townships called autonurbs and in most states either need passes to leave them or can't leave them at all.

Latin America is a collection of populist dictatorships on the United States model that are less... politically developed or sophisticated. Many are even more socially reactionary than the United States itself. The strongly catholic regimes have managed to keep evangelical missionaries out unlike OTL. The only positive side of all this is that the region is far more economically developed. This comes at the price of having the economies geared towards serving the American market.

A more populous empire of Japan is the third member of the original "Two oceans alliance", which later became the Alliance of Order and Progress. The government remains authoritarian, but at least the economy is more capitalist and less confusing. Japan is a much more militarized society than OTL. Japanese men are expected to serve 5 years, find a good job and father multiple sons. The women are expected to be good wives and wise mothers, and stay in the kitchen. If they fail to produce four sons, there is pressure to commit seppuku in more conservative areas. However, married women over 30 have been able to vote with their husband's permission since 1978. They still produce large amounts of disturbing animated pornography. Fewer tentacles, though(That was an innovation created in OTL to bypass censorship laws implemented by allied occupation forces. Korean and Taiwanese culture aren't doing too well under the brunt of recent japanization pushes.

Last and probably least is the Empire of France, which still holds Algeria and portions of Africa as directly-ruled colonies. Algeria has been europeanized by massacre and forced religious/cultural conversion of the locals who survived. France has a couple puppet states in africa along with Lebanon and Hatay, which enjoy the same level of independence as say cold war-era bulgaria or East Germany.

The member states of the Alliance of Order and Progress, along with their puppet states cooperate in repression of opposition.

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Russia is the largest power outside of the council. It's ruled by a populist junta -- think Salazar's portugal in the large economy size but without Salazar's reservations re: economic growth. The Russian Federal union also has some worrying theocratic tendencies. In fact, Russia even has a starship program of it's own, but due to Russia's having to work with only their resources and not 90% of the planet's resources they're a couple decades behind, even factoring in theft of technical data.

Yemen is a backwater monarchy roughly as poor as OTL, but with less warlordism. A decent chunk of the population lives off of remittances from guest workers in the British Empire's muslim lands.

The Netherlands is nominally a democracy but the same conservative party keeps winning every election. Also, the populations of it's small remnant colonial empire still don't have suffrage, but there are those voices calling for granting them full citizenship. The fact that the Netherlands is located quite close to both Britain and France makes taking such liberal moves a Bad Idea, though.

The descendents of Baron Ungern-Sternberg rule Mongolia as a crapsack monarchy.

China is a slowly modernizing monarchy trying to slowly ease it's way out of puppet state status and earn it's way as a full partner in the Alliance of Order and Progress. The X'in Dynasty is corrupt and capitalist, but thanks to various rigged economic treaties about a generation behind OTL's China in terms of economic development.

Germany is a one party state with oppressive laws that are partially balanced out by the fact that the bureaucrats are honest and are legalistic.

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Socially, the norm for this world is populist dictatorship. The more liberal places like the United States or even Britain for white people have a fig-leaf of elections to cover up the reality. The norm is of course something like 1980s el salvador or mussolini's italy or Franco's spain or the greece of the colonels with a good chunk of the planet as being worse. Society is regimented with side effects on youth culture -- some form of scouting participation is mandatory, school uniforms are the norm worldwide and extra attention is put into ferreting out "subversion" in youth culture. Also, people spending multiple years in the military if they're male is normal.

The lack of an internet means that "mom&pop" stores, local stores and in particular stores that focus on electronics or videos or music are doing better. The cultural scene is naturally rather more centralized without the internet to divide it. Instead of being a vehicle for madison avenue to sell product, popular culture is what the troops will like. This is a world that despite better materials science, a big space program and a new wave of suburban expansion fueled by solar power and moving roads is much more like the world of 1960 on a technological level in many ways. The Internet has been kept down on "obscenity" grounds and is literally illegal for private citizens.

This is a world with quite regressive public morals. For example, gay rights is unthinkable to the point where punishments for homosexual conduct range from long prison terms to public execution. Women's rights also lag OTL to a large extent with corrosponding side effects on the population sizes of the white west.
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Meanwhile, Switzerland and Sweden look on from their mountains and fjords and wondering why the rest of the world isn't okay with direct democracy in the case of Switzerland and social democracy in Sweden's case.