Alternate History And its Right Wing Rabbit Hole | Mia Mulder
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- Опубліковано 30 лис 2022
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The world of alternate history is a wonderful world of fun, wonder and right wing propaganda. Let's explore the good and the bad of alternate history together!
Special thanks to @Rosencreutzzz who helped me make this video
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We need some alt history scenarios that are more creative than 'what if the Nazis won'. My nomination: what if the Haitian Revolution set off a string of successful slave revolts across the Caribbean and Central America?
Another one is what if Reconstruction wasn't sabotaged by people like Andrew Johnson?
There are plenty, though. I'd strongly recommend Malé Rising. It's a pretty much universally beloved Alt history about a slave revolt in Brazil that leads to the establishment of a former slave state in West Africa.
The nation dies young, but its fame leads to successor states that make the Scramble for Africa less successful, and widespread slave uprisings in Brazil and the US, the latter of which taking place during the Civil War and thoroughly reshaping Reconstruction.
My personal favorite: what if the Triple Alliance defeated Hernan Cortes, leaving the native people of our timeline’s Mexico to continue what was, at the time, their rapid expansion and development? What would a 20th century Aztec Empire look like?
@@theotherohlourdespadua1131 it doesnt they just get way less clicks.
Id recoment years of rice and salt if you want a good. Not euro golden age book.
What if rome hadnt ever existed
My favourite alternative history scenario is where everything turns out okay
What if parents went to therapy
Man
That would be an awful nice change. Something completely new, even. Can we try that for once? Please?
Thats just Red world mod from HOI4 (jk)
BORING
This is why C&C Red Alert was so good: It didn't start with the premise, "What if the Nazis won?" It started with the premise, "What if the Nazis didn't fucking exist?"
I mean to be fair that's also basically Kaiserreich
@@demilembias2527 Nah, the Nazis still exist in Kaiserreich, its just that most of the Nazis in Kaiserreich are Totalists by name. Same as how most of the Communists are Syndicalist. I think the same is true in Fuhrerreich, i cant remember the name of the big ideologies in that one though.
Yes, for the glorious future that is Tiberium.
But it also eventually gave us that one scene that almost got Tim Curry to crack up laughing.
@@msaoichan Space! Red Alert, where you never have enough camp. Those are definitely trees, and why wouldn't they have bears.
GOD I remember a couple years ago when I was first getting into alternate history on youtube and watched basically anyone who made alt history videos. Monsieur Z uploaded a (now deleted as far as I know) video where he talked about if America was split into ethnostates, and how the white ethnostate would be "peaceful and prosperous" without having to worry about the "lower classes" and even as a teenager with no real political education I had to stop it there and just reevaluate what I was doing.
There's also that lovely time he went on an extended tirade about what a hero Joe McCarthy was.
From what I've seen AltHis Hub is about the only one who isn't openly racist, and he is still fairly right leaning....
@@TheSquareheadgamer I was gonna mention that at least he isn't an outright nazi, and promptly discovered a collabl with Monsieur Z, so at this point to hell with the lot of them
Monsieur Z is just a fascist who runs with a fascist group formerly called the “American Populist Union.” Now called “American Virtue.”
He's still producing that 💩, and at least superficially "objective" while screaming all the dog whistles. What should we call it, Mayflower envy? The giveaway, imo, is the stereotypes he chooses and the not-subtle tones about what he finds virtuous or not. Insidious tripe.
I can't believe Mia didn't touch on the other HoI4 alt hist mod The New Order which asks "What if the Nazis won WW2" and is set during a cold war between a flagging united states and a crumbling Nazi government while Russia has devolved into warlord states.
It is one of the bleakest stories I've ever experienced in gaming and is insanely effective at showcasing the true horror of what a nazi government would look like.
Hell the game ends more often than not (and is in fact the win state of a particular nazi leader) in nuclear Armageddon and the extinction of humanity
Thinking about him (Taboritsky) 🥰
STRENG GEHEIM
It's a fantastic mod with some good humor in it, even if it's mostly bleak. Lots of intrigue and great writing.
i kinda expected TNO to be in this video too. I personally really like Red Flood for its batshit insanity. I've never played any of the mods though because i really suck at Paradox games in general so i have abandoned them. TNO is cool but i personally believe Thousand Week Reich is a bit more realistic because Nazi germany crumbles immediately after they win the war.
TNO is definitely one of the best mods out there story wise but I would say that TWR has better gameplay
@@therealgaben5527 yeah TNO is mostly a wait-to-read-the-next-event simulator
"Nazis are bad because they're gay" was not a take I expected to hear today, but I guess it makes sense coming from a 1937 book.
I mean…if it works at getting people away from fascism then I can’t complain. /s
It's not as weird a take coming from someone in the thirties as you might think. The SA(stormtroopers) were more or less pro-gay, as they thought homosexuality promoted camraderie. Then Hitler betrayed* them on the Night of the Long Knives in order to curry favor with the military, and the Reich subsequently became explicitly homophobic.
*this is not to impy sympathy for the SA, they were the Nazis primary enforcers in the early days, using violence and intimidation against ethnic minorities, trade unions, and socialists. Fuck the SA.
The Super-man fantasy is alive and well in today's alt-right, afaict, and we can still snicker about the weirdos who can't get girls figuratively stroking each other up in various ways online.
The "camp Nazi" was a really common trope until recently, framing them as effeminate weaklings against the square-jawed, well-bred masculinity of the Allies, which really goes to show the extent to which their ideals didn't remotely die with them
@@tudoraragornofgreyscot8482 The problem with it is that it associates homosexuality with fascism, implying that homosexuals and by association "the left" are supporters of fascism. Portraying fascism as something different from what it was encourages people with fascist tendencies to think of themselves as defenders of freedom.
I wrote the Nazi Bar Problem thread. I got so many death threats I had to delete my reddit account.
THANK YOU MIA! I am so glad you brought this all up!
Legend 🙏
that explains why that post is listed as written by u/deleted
only half way through the vid does mia go into depth about the nazi bar problem? cause IDK what that is and the screenshot didn't have post text
@@hornylink The Nazi Bar Problem is an anecdotal story that tells of a person, sitting at a bar, chatting to the bartender. A Nazi walks in and immediately the bartender tells them to fuck off and never come back. The Nazi states something to the effect of "What's your deal, I only came in for a drink" and the bartender is having none of it, so the Nazi leaves. Person at the bar, unknowing, asks the bartender why he kicked that guy out and the bartender says, "He's a Nazi". Person at the bar asks how he knew, and the bartender says, "You see enough of them, you learn to recognize it", and continues with "You let one in, soon enough, they bring their friends. Then those friends bring their friends and all of a sudden, you've got a Nazi bar. Gotta nip it in the bud before it happens".
@@scoobs.online ah right that old problem. thanks for clarifying
Thank you for your service
I think the only World War II alternate history question worth addressing is Harry Turtledove's: what if aliens invaded right in the middle of the war?
Absolutely the best what if scenario. I dig the culture of the lizard people he made too, the whole thing with Americans raising some lizards as Americans… I love it.
@dennissullivan1651 Joking & not joking, I guess. I haven't actually read a whole lot of alternate history, but I remember that series being really fun, despite, or maybe because of, the ridiculous premise being taken to its rational conclusions.
@@BiologyTube What's ridiculous about aliens existing?
Im with you on this one! That was basically the series that introduced me to Alt History as a thing.
@@himoffthequakeroatbox4320 the ridiculous premise is aliens existing, being advanced enough to reach earth, and caring enough about our likely backwater planet to invade during the war
I like The Yiddish Policemen’s Union in part because it imagines living Jews instead of winning Nazis.
And a destroyed state of Israel, but that's offscreen.
And the Holocaust was a fraction of the scale compared to actual history, so I'd say a net improvement.
Yup. Living Jews. Something completely lacking in the alt history genre
Haven't read that book but my parents love it.
I love YPU, too
Literally this. Real life already got the Bad End; "what if the nazis won" is just the _even worse_ version.
I remember a while ago a very interesting alternate history scenario, where the only difference was that Nintendo and Sony went through with the initial plan for the collaborative playstation between them, told through interviews and memoirs and IGN articles, and it's something very simple, but it's something that would have a outsized impact on culture just some 20 years later. I think Small AH stuff like that is underrated, especially compared with how much what if x won y war stuff there is.
If you are talking about the “Player Two Start” series, I agree heavily. It is one of the most captivating works of fiction I have read in a while. It just gets my head spinning with how different my life could have been in that world. The fact that it is the case at all speaks a lot to the condition of the modern internet nerd. It is confusing, perhaps harrowing, that if I were transported into that world, I may sooner notice the non existence of Pikmin or Splatoon than the Iraq War and Obama Presidency.
I read one a while ago where Brian Wilson got therapy and The Beach Boys finished SMiLE in 1966. That one butterflied out extremely quickly. It literally shifted the entire arc of popular music
@@trystero1729 do you remember what that was called/where to find it? I love The Beach Boys so that sounds like it was made for me
@@heckporterit’s on the alternatehistory forums, it’s called The Beach Boys finish Smile
@@trystero1729 That one seems made mostly to fulfill a wish of Beach Boys taking center stage ahead of the Beatles. I found it kind of forced compared to other alternate history stories.
I heard a funny story about Turtledove's "Guns of the South". Apparently Turtledove was asked at a party, "Do you think the South could have won the American Civil War?" Turtledove started laughing and stated, "Only if a time traveler gave them AK-47s!" To which someone else replied, "Well, don't you write science fiction?"
there's this sort of hubris among althistory writers where they love to smugly assume that there are absolutely no conditions where a particular loser (usually the Nazis or CSA) could've *ever* won. it's a very arrogent statement on it's own, but worse it's often just a veil for a very moralistic understanding of history - where the bad guys never win and the good guys never lose and the morally right side was always the pinacle of organisation and strategy and the morally wrong side was the most incompetent monument to failure that ever walked the earth, and it reflects (especially when shown in people who are also invested in politics and intend to eventually *win*) a terrible outlook on history, where victory is garunteed - it's like they live in a world where 1/3rd of the earth wasn't at one point controlled by eugenecist protestants from an atlantic backwater island
@@deathgripskaraoke9351 Truthfully, Nazis and the Confederacy are the only two I've ever really heard described as being "inevitable" and even there it was because of economic and political factors that no one had much control over once the shooting started.
All modern wars are resource wars, and the South had negligible industry. They had bonkers-skilled generals against nincompoops from the bargain basement of the General store, and they still lost hard. "If they were given AK-47s" is just "if they were backed by better industry".
Fortunately, the South is still a Zero in terms of resources and industry, so even if they *rise again*, their belligerence would be a suicide mission.
@@River-zo6ve The southern generals of the confederacy are overrated, especially Lee. Most of them had a short term vision of the war where they had to to win decisive war-winning napoleonic battles and meanwhile the north focused more on the long term with actions like the Anaconda plan or the March to the sea. I recommend watching Atun-shei's series called Checkmate Lincolnite.
@@majorian6201 Elevating the South's officer corps while denigrating the North's was a central component of the Lost Cause, the deliberate effort to rewrite history to favor the Confederacy, carried out through the early years of the 20th Century and whose ripples are still felt to this day. I suppose you could call it the grandest, most effective, work of alternate history ever crafted.
When I was younger my favorite alternative history was "what if I was born a girl"
Yeah we all know what transpires later :v
An Australian world order?
Of course, the great man of history theory has been thoroughly criticised by Tolstoy in his novel War and Peace. (For those who have not read the book, no, I am not joking about that)
Wolfenstein has the best explanation for "OK but *how exactly* did the Nazis win the war?", and that answer is stealing magic Jewish space lasers. It is a brilliant plot point.
I feel the implausible historical scenario we should be exploring instead of the Nazis winning the Second World War is "what if the Austro-Hungarian empire *somehow* still existed?"
I think if one is to explore the idea of the Confederacy surviving the US civil war one should explore the authoritarian, Christian nationalist slave empire they actually wanted to build and how that would actually function in a modern setting, particularly with other countries.
jewish space lasers are actually a thing in the wolfenstein universe?? that is both absolutely hilarious and raises so many questions for me
fr i never really understood where that particular conspiracy theory came from or why it would be blamed on the jews for any reason other that they tend to be the de-facto boogeyman conspiracists go for
Well they would have faced the same fate as apartheid South Africa they were effectively the same. Ostracized from the wider world until they changed.
@@reis5011 It does have all sorts of Jewish magic tech but I don't think it literally includes a space laser.
Honestly, I have no idea how the hell MTG's mind works. She was always a conspiracy theorist as long as she's been in the public eye. I think no matter where she started, her belief in conspiracy theories was always going to end up with some amount of anti-semitism just by the nature of conspiracy theories and the communities around them.
I found Wolfenstein's "ancient Jewish secret society that hoards supertechnology" plot point a bit...disconcerting because you can find plenty of antisemitic conspiracy nutters claiming basically the same thing. But it's better than the usual Nazi Superscience angle where the Nazis just technologically outpace their enemies for no adequately explained reason.
@@HeadsFullOfEyeballsTbh I love it as a choice because it really showcases the hypocrisy of the nazi regime in Wolfenstein, constantly proclaiming German technological supremacy all for it to have been built on Jewish science(much like real life German science lmao)
_“We’ve heard some exciting ones, like ‘What if Germany had Won World War II,’ ‘What if the South Had Won the Civil War,’ ‘What if Bath Mats Were Never Invented,’ and ‘What if (Somehow) Germany had Won the Civil War?’ ”_
*_Welcome to Night Vale_* ep. 92, _If He Had Lived_
Shoot... That's pretty close to what these guys fantasize about. Nazi Germany invading just the North...
I study history, and we've had a course about alt-history, and I noticed there how frustrating it was that almost all of it is military history, even in academia... I ended up writing an alt-history paper about my cities traffic planning and it was hillarious to do :) it's sad that such an interesting style of history has been co-opted by these people...
I feel, in part (as a hobbyist who one day wants to get a major in the subject) that it's because military history is... simpler? It's easier to get by without knowing the intricacies of social trends. If you learn general history, you need to know a little; social history is almost entirely; economic history is also a lot. Military history, though, is the story of small numbers of men. It's less work, less research, and fundamentally less understanding.
Granted I have a bit of a bias, haha.
A lot of Historical Romance does alt history.
Transit, trains and urbanism all honestly get pretty decent receptions on the big AH forum.
i also study both history and archeology and most of my university class is filled with right wing military history nerds (who also play paradox games and call people sjws because they mentioned queer people in history once). Almost all of them are men and really just want to only hear about armor and battles and stuff like that. Sometimes they keep asking about the origins of ethnicities and populations which is borderline mask-off fash. Even some of the professors call them out on it, both their obsession with military history and race.
If i didn't know better or didn't study sociology in high school (and i was lucky for that because my country's right wing government removed it from the curriculum right after i graduated because "it made kids marxists") before coming here, i know i'd be one of them, a little bigoted shit still thinking that history is about how many battles and weaponry you've memorized from that one video game you played when you were 16.
@@torcaace StepBack had a decent comment about how these folks tend to get driven out of serious history by the graduate level - might have been on a stream though
So Newt was feeding into what is known as the Lost Cause, a great example of the danger of alternate history. Generally speaking it is an attempt to frame the Civil War as being about state's rights and freedom from tyranny instead of being about slavery, which it really was. Atun Shei, here on UA-cam, does an amazing series called Checkmate Lincolnites where he goes point by point and disproves some of the classic tenants of this mythology and is definitely worth a watch.
I once wrote an alternate history short story in this vein, except it wasn't the usual, "What if the Nazis won?" or, "What if you went back in time and killed Hitler?" Rather, the protagonist travels back in time to before WWI to encounter a 17 year-old Adolf living on the streets of Vienna, and teaches him to become a better artist. To see the beauty in humans of all ages and races, and to recognize that life is precious because it's ephemeral. As a result, Adolf gets into the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and goes on to become a successful artist, dedicating his work to the memory of his mother Klara. The Nazis still rise to power under their leader Joseph Goebbels, but thanks to the efforts of an antifascist propaganda movement led by a certain artist, they are stopped much earlier. When the protagonist returns to the present, he learns in history class that Adolf changed his last name to Polzl and married his love Eva before retiring to the countryside.
That's the kind of alternate history I'd like to see more of.
A perfect world doesn’t exis…
Kinda reminds me of "Our Struggle" talking about how, what was back in the time, modern art movements and a more direct involvement in WW1 made the mustace man lean into the left-wing. It's certainly an interesting story, to put it lightly. Actually getting the names and references in that alt-history give the reader this forboding connection to real life, and how things could have gone differently.
He is the main reason why art schools nor accept everyone ;P
That's a nice idea, but I feel like it's too optimistic. In real life (from what I understand at least), Hitler was just kind of born with and shaped by his abusive childhood into someone with a narcissistic, deranged personality. Maybe someone could convince him to not kill people, but he probably wouldn't end up the best person.
perfectly shows how "great man" theory of history makes for more compelling narratives in alt history stories. I think that Germany would fall to some sort of authoritarianism anyway
Good to see Paradox having a spine and standing up to the fascos. Their games are brilliant and allow you to explore all kinds of quirky what-ifs, they get years of continued support and always stay fresh.
In Paradox’s newest game, Victoria 3, they got a lot of nazis angry. Basically, in Victoria 2 they described Asian and African nations as “Uncivilized Nations” and called the process of becoming civilized “Westernization”. In Victoria 3, they removed the Westernization process and called these nations “Unrecognized Powers”. This is a good change by Paradox acknowledging that Asians and Africans aren’t savages (so brave lol), but the nazis freaked out really hard over it. They also hate that communism is actually really strong too.
Maybe they used the wrong terms, but europe was far more technologically advanced than the rest of the world, and the problem is that paradox removed the capitalist AI, so there aren't important differences between scientific socialism and capitalism.
the seething was due to the changes in gameplay, not because they stopped calling non europeans "uncivilized".
I love al the news articles talking about how righties are angry that communism is “too OP” in Victoria 3, because Paradox just…made an economic system that is realistic. 😂
I actually did pretty left wing policies in Vic 2 cuz it brings the militantly down and I hate some policies mainly the ones we’re you can’t build factories especially if you don’t have a bunch of capitalist pops
You don't need to be a Nazi to see the issue with this.
Regarding that Vaush debate, my god that was a wild one. WhatIfAltHist was unironically arguing that the Abolitionist movement, Civil rights movement, and modern BLM movement have literally nothing to do with one another and are completely unrelated.
His reasoning? Well you see, the previous movements didn't build private schools in which latter movement leaders could provably be shown to have learned from. What about historically black colleges, the popular books and writings that are required readings by lectures, the fact that they cited previous leaders as inspiration in their own writings? That doesn't count as evidence because you are not presenting it to me in the form of an academic journal or piece of literature made by a respectable professor.
The reason he was likely arguing this was because he made a video saying that abolitionism was good, Civil right was alright if a bit overrated, and BLM was bad and Vaush was arguing that it was incoherent because the movements are ideological progressions of the others.
The dude basically was completely unwilling to engage in any argument at any point and was a slog to watch.
Alt hist then “left” for an unannounced appointment at like 9pm his time.
@@colinmurphy525 my internal theory, and I have literally no method of proving this, is whatifalthist didn’t have zoom premium, and thus the debate got cut short because it went longer than 40 minutes
@@DwRockett if the host has premium then it doesn't matter.
Vowsh bAd!
@@Lack_Of_Interest That's true, Vaush debates the dumbest people on the internet he can find because he's only marginally more intelligent than them.
Years of Rice and Salt is an underrated gem about a post-medieval world history without Europeans.
holy mfin shit based
@@malum9478 It's interesting but I wouldn't exactly call a book where 99% of Europe is killed by the Bubonic Plague based.
I want this book to get a series like For All Mankind
Underrated gem? Literally everyone in alt history knows about it, if anything it’s overrated and people only like it because it’s non-Eurocentric
Actually that idea is on par with nazis winning, south winning, soviets winning etc. Also after some centuries of colonization the people in there in that timeline would actually become Europeans... Americans (descendents of Europeans, Africans etc) are called Americans even if they arent native to America. You know what I mean?
I absolutely, in middle school (and I am almost 40 if that helps pin this down), was told that "Robert E Lee was fighting for his home, not for slavery." As if even if that were his sentiment, that would have made it true! Even if he really was fighting for his home, that choice put him on the side of slavery, and he knew that, and so whatever his driving sentiment may have been, his sentiment was entirely inconsequential. If some vague notion of the integrity of Virginia was more important to him than the freedom of so many people, then his supposed sentiment would be nothing more than a flimsy excuse.
What if I told you that the battery in your smart phone was made by child labor (slavery) cobalt mining in Africa? Does that make you a patron of slavery?
@@kennylee1732 It makes me a beneficiary. It diffuses SOME of the responsibility into me and every other smartphone customer. But my phone is from 2014, because I make these last as long as I can, rather than use them as fashion accessories. Apple, LG, whoever else, they don't want us to do this. They are the prime beneficiaries of slavery. What is it that you are trying to get at here? That Lee did nothing wrong because he said he was fighting for his home, not slavery? It's a FAR cry between paying low dollar for a common smartphone and directing the military effort of one side of the bloodiest conflict to EVER grace the planet up until that point in history. Yes, the use of literal military force in support of slavery is a much bigger no-no than buying a smartphone, I guarantee you.
@@VitriolicVermillion no I am just pointing out that you have more in common than you think when you worded it the way you did. The fact you say it’s a low dollar common item doesn’t make it any better or worse. Children don’t have to be forced to this unless your desire to have an low cost item trumps all. Some vague notion that your responsibility is defused because every other person has it is like southern soldiers saying “I am not fighting for slavery, I don’t even own slaves.”. Your sentiments on it are rather inconsequential when so many children die daily from forced cobalt mining. Cellphones are a luxury. The green revolution is built on the back of Africans. We blame people in the past for horrendous crimes against humanity yet we loudly applaud the need to save the planet by the blood of children in Congo. Instead of berating Lee you can be the hero you wanted people in the past to be. You can’t change slavery in 1800 America but you sure can change the exploitation going on currently.
As a fellow alternate history loving lefty I know your pain
I'm tempted to recommend some online lefty althistory content but I'm afraid of inviting bigots and trolls by mentioning the titles
@@gluteusmaximus4989 id like some! Would you want to maybe send it to me on discord or something?
@@godofthetranses3183 I know Reds! A Revolutionary Timeline is one, it has a few versions and I don't know which is currently being worked on. Also another one is The Fire Never Dies, though the author is taking a bit of a break to edit her initial chapters. Both are about Socialist America with the likes of Eugene Debs and Daniel DeLeon.
Same
Harry Turtledove’s TL-191 doesn’t seem to have a right wing bias and it even involved the Socialist Party replacing Republicans as the left wing party in America.
Mr. Z also released a full-length, fully-argued unironic video presented as an alternate history that was JUST him arguing for ethnostates. He deleted it pretty quickly but you can notice the fascists in his community pages pretty blatantly.
I personally love alternate history and I love to imagine alternate timelines where LGBTQ rights happen much earlier, it's a way to think about how the world could have gone much better.
Just imagine how different the world and pop-culture could be if Same-Sex marriage had been legalized decades or even centuries earlier and if society were culturally decades more progressive or what if civil rights act had been enacted in 1930s-1940s.
I personally love to imagine alternate history pop-culture and what culture would be like in other timelines.
Imagine Rupaul's drag race in 1980s or non-binary and trans folks being common and visible in 2000s reality tv.
Maybe we could do: What if the Hayes Code was never enacted? Since it was responsible for pushing back progress in representation for queer people, POC, and other stuff along those lines.
@@zabbee2323 I can just imagine a John Waters-esque queer camp noir movie about Lesbian detectives and Gay spies in 1940s-1950s
I feel like The Yiddish Policeman's Union, which was on that scroll-through of popular alternate history books, deserves special mention for bucking almost all of the trends mentioned here.
those are two concepts i never thought would be put together and it's definitely piqued my interest as i try to wrap my mind around what it could mean
No it doesn’t, it plays into some of the most racist beliefs about Palestinians and really any people under colonization that rivel the likes of Ben gvir. That they are uncontrollable beasts (I mean last time I checked my starving unemployed family are not) in need of controlling. Thank you though for showing me the state of white western leftist humanity for me but not for thee (especially if you live in the third world). I cannot thank you enough for showing other ignorant white people why a lot of third world citizens are justified in absolute hate of you racist scum.
Probably because you believe in neo-colonialist myth. Half that horrid book is some of the most spat out racist lines only riveted by things like manifest destiny. Selfish racist western leftist.
@@reis5011 The premise is that a significant fraction of Europe's Jews were resettled in Alaska and thus escaped the Holocaust. The main character is a down-on-his-luck police detective from that settlement, and the plot is (at least superficially) a murder mystery
@@vannakinder352 Did we read the same book? The one I read takes place in Alaska, and has IIRC no Palestinian characters. There are some religious Zionist characters with the kind of racist views one would expect, but they're unquestionably the villains of the story--literal terrorists and murderers.
I'm always ready to discover a blind spot, but I really can't think what your referring to.
One inherent problem with historical war games - including the kinds we're talking about here that essentially let you generate your own alternate history by replaying the Crusades or WWII or whatever - is that they're games. As such, there's a need for balance for them to work as games. Even if one side really had unsurmountable advantages in reality, a game where that side always wins no matter what the player does isn't a fun game.
So people play these and their clever decisions let them reverse the outcome and they think "If the Nazis had just done that, they would have won", but it's not really true, since the game creates that opportunity in order to be playable.
I haven't been anywhere near 4chan in nearly 10 years, but the name Newt Gingrich still makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on edge.
It's wild that that man was Speaker of the House, even if only for a few years.
You mean Newty-boi?
My favorite part of Whatifalthist’s videos is when he makes claims about contemporary events based on the “many people have told me” source and presents these claims as factual rather than anecdotal or, more likely, made up entirely. Anyway, great video Mia love it
Whatifalthist is suspect in several ways. Mia said that none of the UA-cam alternate history channels are claiming to be real historians but that's not completely true: whatifalthist claims to be a working historian, even though he doesn't even have a Bachelor's degree. I admit I found his videos compelling until I realized how right-wing he is.
He literally claimed medieval Indian armies were identical in structure to their bronze age counterparts and that Indian armies had fewer moments of bravery than European and middle Eastern armies.
So I can't really take anything he says seriously. Politics aside, he's just extremely full of himself and cannot look outside of his narrow worldview, even for the sake of argument.
@@carolcyr8553 so because he is right wing makes his videos wrong. I thought judging people based on their ideologies was frowned upon in today's times
@@yashgoyal8280 Fair point. I think I didn't express myself very well. There are two different things going on in my opinions about him: him being suspect, and me not agreeing with his approach. First of all, I find him suspect because he uses the "Many people have told me" thing to "prove" some things he says, and also because he claims to be a working historian despite not having a Bachelor's degree. So, those are the things that make me suspect that the things he says are not true. Additionally, he said something in one of his videos that I did a quick fact check on, and found it was absolutely false. Based on these factors, I have to wonder how many of the other things he says are false, and how rigorous his commitment to the truth is.
Then there is the other thing, me not agreeing with him. I find most right-wing viewpoints to be utterly lacking in sense, truthfulness and compassion. So, the fact that he is right-wing causes me to disagree with much of his approach. I have a right to my opinion and to disagree with him, just as anyone does. I don't find that he is suspect because he's right-wing, but because of the other factors I pointed to in the previous paragraph. I hope this explains my position more fully.
Whatifalthist actually learnt the methods of historical research from Herodotus himself
I am not even 6 minutes into this video and I had to pause to absorb “He would have adored to set his body, his strong bones and willing hard muscles between Knight Alfred and all harm”. It’s so damn erotic it hurts. This phrase is all I can think of now. It’s stuck there. Forever
althist writers try not to write an extremely erotic scenario between victorious gay nazis challenge (impossible)
Reminds me of that "ben shapiro x pillsbury doughboy" fanfic
Holy shit i think this woman just figured out the problem with all youtube althistory. Trying to find paterns in history rather then making a good story narative.
This is fucking briljant.
29:30 I highly recommend The Years of Rice and Salt. It's a book about "what if the Black Plague wiped out 90% of Europe instead of 30%?" and its author's other books played a role in me becoming a socialist.
Failed ideology lmao
To be fair to PKD, Man in the High Castle (book) isn't actually about "what if the nazis had one" so much as it is SPOILERS "what if the japanese empire and nazis controlled america but also a group of people realized they were inside an alternate history scenario that was fundamentally unsustainable and was going to collapse", cause that's how the ol coot did it.
Yeah the man in the high castle is more sci-fi than alt-history with all the dimension hopping
It is one of the weirdest ones, but given that PKD that is expected. There is that mirror in a mirror thing going on with the book The grasshopper lies heavy.
It's also a "in a way, the Nazis did win in reality" kind of story. Considering when it was written--in the early '60s in America after a decade of Red Scare when Russia and communism was still the great enemy and when Jim Crow still reigned in the South officially and unofficially everywhere else--I'm sure it felt that way at times to a semi-leftist like Dick.
@@stephennootens916 With the joke being that _The Grasshopper_ is itself alt-hist, being based on the premise that the attack on Pearl Harbor failed, that being the only way Hawthorne Abendsen could imagine the Japanese not winning.
@@JohnHughesChampigny I forgot about that but it has been so long since I read it
What I remember is that the book was vary much a PKD book making or unlike any alt history story you'll read in your life. There was points when it felt completely plotless and it was just a story about people going about their lives in this shitty world.
One of my favorite alternate history series is the Temeraire series. It's arguably historical fantasy (because it's the Napoleonic Wars But What If There Was Dragons) but I'd say it just happens to have a single isolated fantastical element. It reads like alternate history. The later books drag a little but the first several are fascinating. For example, England's navy is less important, because dragons (but also it's absolutely critical because dragons. It's complicated and really interesting). Because dragons, they go a lot of places, and you can tell Novik really did her research on the places they travel to.
I’d say Temeraire/His Majesty’s Dragon both fails and succeeds as an alternative history. It succeeds in the Napoleonic Wars But With Dragons part, but it fails for some because the reader also has to suspend their disbelief that Earth With Dragons ended up with such familiar nations/cultures despite the (intelligent, powerful, speaking) dragons having been there since prehistory. However, it is the same suspension of disbelief required of any historical and urban fantasy without a masquerade, so it’s still fun to read how dragons butterfly things once the story starts.
She also proposes interesting and pretty coherent changes to the world based on it, like South American dragons ruling over a human populace that was decimated by smallpox, African nations pushing out colonial powers by having a strong relationship with their own dragons, and Russia getting bit in the ass by its mistreatment of its native dragons.
I love those books so much
Oh, it is so based that other people like this series.
Gosh this is a great topic.
I had a conversation with a friend about 2 weeks ago about the lockdowns we experienced in Melbourne Aus in 2020 and 2021. I said “the lockdowns saved thousands of lives,” and my friend, who is a lot more centrist than I, said “well, that’s just speculation though.”
I feel like this kind of response, which isn’t outwardly harmful, is a great way of right wingers to downplay the wins of the left, as the left make progressive steps toward an outcome. Because it’s not technically ‘incorrect’ - it’s only designed to cast doubt on a good outcome.
Yeah. Speculations are better or worse in their grounding, you're offering a perfectly plausible one based on comparisons with similar circumstances and simple epidemiology, and your friend is lumping that in with (e.g.) conspiracy theories.
Imagine if Australia had won the Emu War, emboldened by this they would have conquered half the globe by now.
To this day they refuse to acknowledge this war over at the canberra war memorial. Talk about manipulating history
The Emus did nothing wrong.
If they had allied with the Emus, then they would have conquered all of it ;)
Impossible
@@steveholmes11in alternate history Emus stole Lindy Chamberlain’s baby
Whatifalthist saying that present-day Pakistan and Bangladesh is where all the Muslims in India were during colonial times tells me all I need to know about his knowledge of history
Also, I generally agree with your video and like it! I think one of the alternate history channels I like more is AlternateHistoryHub. The stuff he made during his first year or 2 on youtube could've been better, but his stuff since then is pretty good. I find it funny almost because most of his videos' conclusions end up being "yeah, most of what happened since would've been the same, but now this historical figure isn't the center of the story," and then he explains all the other factors going on at the time that would've made our timeline functionally the same.
Like in his most recent video on Nixon, he starts off saying there's no realistic scenario where Nixon would even lose in 1968 unless his opponent changed, and then he just talks about how much of our timeline still would've been the same, with the only major difference being that watergate (probably) doesn't happen
"Whatifalthist saying that present-day Pakistan and Bangladesh is where all the Muslims in India"
Jesus fucking christ, that vid made by blood boil as someone whose grandparents grew up during the Raj since there were significant populations of Muslims elsewhere in British India before partition (and still a great number of places if not states to this day).
@@thewisp7447, yeah, I took one look at that and went, "Uh, you DO know about the Muslim migrations to Pakistan? You know, the ones where around 2 million people died?!" This is part of why I've never watched whatifalthist in the last few years. It's just terrible.
@@occam7382 Funnily, people forget about the Southeast Asian country which my parents grew up in thanks to it being isolated as duck (and probably will be a mini-North Korea again after a certain coup)
@@thewisp7447, which country is that? Just curious.
@@occam7382 yeah it's Myanmar lol
Both surprised and impressed that you never mentioned Harry Turtledove. He’s problematic in several ways, but I think he gave us the best depiction of the best possible world where the Confederacy wins… and it’s a nightmarish reality. His magnum opus series is basically a 10 novel fuck you to the Lost Causers, and also a damn fine read if you have the stamina for it.
My fav author growing up, with the Videssos series being one of my fav book series. I think he was the gateway into sf and fantasy for me. I realized his problematic aspects when he blocked me on Twitter for vaguely suggesting supporting Biden and the Democrats wasn’t exactly very leftist of him. Now, as an adult, a lot of his books have very… questionable content.
As a paradox player who's definitely on the left side of the political spectrum this video seemed tailor-made for me 😂
SAME
And me. I knew it was kaiserreich as soon as the submarine warfare stopped 😅
It’s part of why I love Kaiserreich, they actually make some democratic paths fun and viable. Even base HoI4’s democratic paths tend to hamstring you or just be boring isolationism.
Five words: Socialist Republic of Long Texas
@@justineberlein5916 anarcho capitalist north Korea when
I love alt history, I have more than 2000 hours on eu4 and hundreds on other Paradox games. As a trans woman I feel really uncomfortable interacting with people from the alt history community, and that's such a shame because I really feel like the genre provides so many opportunities for great stories. It's nice knowing that I'm not the only lefty that enjoys this stuff lol. Great video as always!
Alt history is funny like that. Pretty much anything alt history related anyone ever cares about is "what if the Nazis won WWII". The second most popular is "what if the south won the civil war". You can see why it draws a lot of far right people. But there are us lefties out there more interested in other stuff. What if the Americas never existed? What if Antarctica was habitable? What if the dark ages never happened in Europe? All really fascinating stuff that's not inherently right wing.
Same!
Yeah. I really love marching songs and hymns but the people that usually likes this songs are also far right ethonationalists, and here in Brazil monarchists. It’s really sad
Bruh this makes me sad. I really dont like people feel gate kept from this genre. I guess best bet might be reddit since it does get some conversation and has strong modderation.
I am even pretty right wing. So i guess i am sorry for those other idotes.
@@a.jherbert5436 I really like The New Order it's a nazi victory scenario but made by leftists which frequently shows the incompetence and cruelty of fascism and basically follows the fairly quick collapse of the axis powers.
thin thin line between "what if" and an ideological "should have"
As someone who became a huge ck3 fan while i was doing my politics undergrad, I found myself questioning the actions that players can take a lot especially when I started decolonisation modules at my university. There really does come a point where the only thing left for you to do is to expand your realm, and there's definitely in-game incentives to converting faiths in new lands and forcing your culture onto your new subjects. I can definitely see how it can become a colonisation simulator and I'm very surprised I haven't seen any large creators at least mention this aspect of the game in any video essays.
At the end of the day, it is just a game, and it's arguably one of my favourites of the last decade as I'm a giant medieval history nerd. On the other hand, it does encourage a sort of despotic mindset where your culture is the one that must succeed, your faith is the one that must prevail etc etc. I don't think it's inherently problematic as a game but I would be interested to see some left-wing creators dive deeper into the topic and acknowledge some of the decisions us as players can take, it would be an interesting deep dive into what makes humans want to conquer the other.
Great video as always!! :)
I'd place the blame on the game mechanics and their limitations. I mean, every strategy game from Age of Empires to Sim City is essentially a collectivist nightmare run by an undying whimsical despot, namely the player, who may or may not wage pointless wars or amuse himself with megalomaniacal building projects. Best case is a benevolent and caring dictator.
Lol. Civilisation series much the same. I rarely play a peaceful game. im always playing deity level and need to wage war to catch up in tech and empire size or risk being crushed myself.
At the end of the day, Ck is game about crafting a legacy for your dynasty that will last long after you die. Whether you're a benevolent ruler or an iron fisted dictator. The ultimate goal of CK is not for your country to have the most land, or to hoard the most money, or to have your faith and/or culture be the most dominant. It's about having your dynasty go down in history as the most famous (or infamous) familial dynasty to have ever existed. After all, much of the time, it's not worth expanding your borders, or hoarding your wealth, or converting other people, because that can be more trouble than it's worth.
And like you said, it's just a game. It's not much deeper than that. This is a series that was made to be fun first and foremost. Alot of these games can be made with the acknowledgement that aggressive expansionism, and persecution of other cultures and faiths is far from a good thing in real life, but it's a video game, so have fun. It would be insulting to one's intelligence and maturity to say that Crusader Kings runs the risk of turning people into fascists because they can be rewarded by dominating other peoples. in fact, there's alot of downsides to it as well.
@@mnk9073 I actually ran into the perfect example of this in my Sweden->Scandinavia campaign in Victoria 3, because I ended up having a population and population growth of such scale that my self-imposed staying below 100 infamy (this was after going hog wild as Austria to see how far I could push things, which is 220 million population, 3 billion GDP, nine puppets, and total domination of continental Europe and Central Africa) was leading to a situation where not being the state equivalent of a rabid axe murderer was leading to an inevitable death spiral because resource buildings were all hitting their caps and strangling the economy. The only reason I could feasible restrain the ravenous beast (not that I wasn't the usual Pdox country type of ravenous beast within that 100 infamy limit) and not go bankrupt was because the enddate was close enough.
Actually the winning strat these days is to simply merge your culture with as many foreign cultures as you can so you can get e.g. sahel desert fighters, norse heavy infantry and mongol horse archers into the same culture. in other words the OP strat is multiculturalism
As a Slovak, the circus music backdrop to Neville Chamberlain soothes my soul. Press F in chat for the First Czechoslovak Republic.
Whenever i play hoi4 i always play as the 1st Czech Republic, Republican Spain, or popular front Grance and try to strangle fascism in 38. I love playing the underdog and fighting fascism and it infuriates me how much of the games alt history is based around being a Victorious fascist germany.
I'm embarrassed to admit it, but this isn't even the first Mia Mulder vid I've tried to clean the spot off my laptop screen only to realize it's that black spot on her wall.
(now, back to watching)
I'm glad someone is mentioning it. I always worry that there's a dead pixel on my screen before remembering, oh, it's just Mia's wall.
Oh God I saw it and tried to clean it too
History is one of my primary interests, and I've followed a number of fantastic alt-history creators on UA-cam. This was also the algorithm vector that served me actual Nazi apologism. The moment I realized this was the moment where I had an "oh shit" moment, reconsidered whatever decisions might have brought me to the Nazi part of the internet, and took measures to detach myself from algorithmic pathing.
Whatifalthist is an actual Nazi, btw, in case like me, you don't get those videos served up first.
Edit: I hadn't finished the video and just now saw where Mia calls out Whatifalthist. Srsly, guard up, this is the internet, where nonsense goes to masquerade as stuff you already like.
how Whatifalthist is a Nazi? i mean right wing yes. But Nazi far from it.
The fun thing about Nazi Germany is that it could have only won WWII if it hadn't been Nazi Germany, but a completely different country
@@joffreydelangle-treff4313 He's right ring
@@Gloomdrakeone of the better alt history channels actually made this point very clearly. They went through all the common things people bring up and dismantle them bit by but before ending on a wholistic “nazi germanywas broken from inside out and never could’ve won because of their ideology , because of who they are and what they did”
@@666kittycat666 what channel is this?
as someone who's been involved in alternate history communities for years and seen my fair share of fascists/nazis/extremists, i think this video is a very well done explanation for why this is the case. never knew that paradox interactive is actively trying to combat this but props to them for doing so
Holy shit, I think you set a record Mia, you managed to talk about alternate history fiction for 12 whole minutes before you even mentioned man in the high castle. ❤
I've tried reading multiple Harry Turtledove books, because he's such a well known name in alternate history, but so often, he seems to fall back on just having things play out the way they did, but in a different setting. He asked what would have happened had there been a continent between Europe and America, and his answer was basically, "America, Also."
Whatifalthist drives me nuts! He strikes me as the know it all kid who isn't humble enough to actually understand how history and the world actually works. The hubris in is voice raises my blood pressure
"What if America stayed great" would be a great essay title about the horrors of discrimination against black people, jews, immigrants of all kinds, in 1950s America.
I’m so glad you discussed the extremely far right tendencies of alt history UA-cam. I’ve been extremely dissatisfied with whatifalthist and Monsieur Z for a long time in particular, and it makes me feel heard as someone who likes alternate history but loathes the YT scene
This is an alternate timeline where Archduke Franz Ferdinand was never assassinated, resulting in WWI never happening. That would lead to a one world government led by none other than, you guessed it; Mathew Perry.
I was so disappointed to go back and try to reread 1632, which is a really fun alternate history premise of "1990s mining town gets transported back to 1632 Poland and how that affects technological and political developments", and get completely thrown out of it by--well. I struggled through a lot of weird Flint ideas, but I gave up on the book and threw it away when he canonized (ie, treated as historical fact!) the absurd and classist Stratfordian theory that William Shakespeare's works were written by a different (higher-class) guy. Like, there's NO credible evidence for this theory and to include it in an alternate history story REALLY makes it clear what Flint's biases as an author were.
That book was such an American cj I couldn't finish it
It is very Team America in the 1630’s.
Even Flint himself ended up realizing how dumb that was - in a later book a few characters bring up the Stratfordian theory to the effect of, "You know, I'm not sure that's what actually happened."
What threw me out of the series was the lack of a clear reading order and overall plot. It's is almost three decades old now and they haven't even gotten to 1640.
A great novel about an alternate American Civil War is "Fire on the Mountain" by Terry Bison that imagines John Brown's revolt succeeding and leading to a socialist New Africa. Also Kiaserreich mod in Hoi4 is really fun.
It is. Do you have any particular preferred scenario in that universe?
What if Hitler had stayed in his apartment in Vienna, playing Hearts of Iron 4 instead of becoming a politician?
Does Hitler still molest his cousin and drive her to suicide?
Another issue is that people just don’t seem to care what they say about history. _Maybe_ calling the concentration camps “troll factories” is not as bad as straight-up saying they were good, but as someone whose ancestors were sent there, it hurts just the same…
I've got a fun counter-scenario for "Guns of the South".
What if someone traveled back in time and gave John Brown, the noted abolitionist who died leading a failed slave revolt, a bunch of AK-47s?
Better(?) scenario: what if someone gave General Sherman nuclear weapons. I swear there's a comic about it. He's one of that handful who may actually have used that shit even if he knew exactly what it'd do
@@cGoryeo Sherman's March is probably the single biggest sticking point for Confederacy defenders and one of the most indefensible aspects of framing the Union as fighting for good.
Because the thing is, his tactics, while completely reprehensible, absolutely worked. They almost certainly shortened the war by quite a bit. And yet I still despise him for it.
Great video!
I love the idea of referring to Newt Gingrich as “That guy from Family Guy” 🤣
Read a pretty fascinating alt-history book a while ago called "If The Allies had Fallen" which mostly imagined how, even if various things during WW2 had been different in key ways, the Nazis STILL would have lost. It was kinda fun. Turns out the Nazis were doomed. And, as I recall, it was written by historians and contained as little speculation as they could manage.
whatif going after Vaush for his reading list was funny. It doesn't matter how many books you've read if you didn't understand them.
There was an alternate history where this vid didn’t slap, but it’s not this one!
this is strangely a Hetalia fandom video essay without Hetalia
My favorite Alternate History scenario is the one where the Tunguska Event happened in St. Petersburg
Thank you for talking about Whatifalthist, and Monziouer Z and other problematic right wing alternate history creators, I had been wondering about that for a while since I used to watch both of them (probably used to have very different politics), and it's been informative to see my suspicions about their politics, and views of history confirmed. I really started getting a bad taste in my mouth about Whatifalthist after he made a video about different regions of the United States and showed that he was completley misinformed about the history and politics of the pnw he literally just said the right wing talking points/caricatures of Seattle and Portland. It'd be really nice to see Whatifalthist, and Monziouer Z critiqued more beyond this perhaps by other leftist and left leaning history creators and historians (I can't believe I used to watch them, and take them seriously).
Thanks for the recommendation of a better alternative history channel as well, since currently the only other alternate history channel I watch is Alternate HistoryHub who I enjoy for his animations and humor and believe he is probably mostly harmless in terms of his politics and view of history (I don't think Alternate HistoryHub exists in the same way as Whatifalthist, and Monziouer Z where they exist to propogandize, Alternate History Hub seems to be mostly about fun, comedic retellings and stories of alternate history). And I'd really like to start seeing a proper movement of alternate history writers/UA-camrs who are more dedicated to the stuff beyond borders/militaries and wars such as economic, ideological, and social movement based alternate histories (I remember one of my history teachers in hs emphasized that these other aspects of history were extremely important and I think that sent me down a path towards much better leftist politics as we studied for that year in an IB history class mostly social movements, and ideological histories up until the 20th century, probably why I'm an anthropology/sociology major now because ANSO is a great medium for activism and studying social movements which is what I'm way more interested in rather than military history and "great" man theory. I really want to take this anthropology/sociology background and then use it towards trans activism and furthering trans rights in America, and anthropology/sociology, activism and an understanding of social movements is how I can do that).
Also maybe more ideological alternate history but what if Frank Meyer hadn't become a conservative and birthed the ideology of fusionism the underpinning of 20th century conservativism? What would American politics look like today if Frank Meyer hadn't moved to the right? What if there wasn't a shift rightward from many American socialists/communists in the 1950s-60s to conservatives. What effect would this have had on the red scare, or would that have even happened? What would conservatism look like without Frank Meyer, and what would American left wing politics look like with Frank Meyer? Similar question about what if the Chicago school of economics never happened? And then it's eventual descendant the even more autocratic Virginia School of economics never emerge from it? I'd really like to see an America not influenced by the very autocratic, authoritarian, semi-fascistic and wealth hoarding economic ideologies of the Chicago and Virginia schools. This would probably also require that Austrian economics never emerge but that's another even bigger question.
Finally decolonial/anti-colonial alternate history could be really cool! Like what if the Indian subcontinent had never been colonized not by the British, nor anyone else? There are a lot more of these that could be done of course that's just one that I think could be interesting especially since in the afformentioned IB class I wrote a paper on the history of Pakistan. And decolonial alternate history could be used to give a voice to the colonized, and oppressed which is something badly needed, and give them a platform to share their vision of the world.
Was skimming for AltHistoryHub being referenced in the comments, ngl.
Not sure if he still promotes it, but back when I was a fan (probably 3-4 years ago), he wrote an future alt-history where the nazis won and where the ending was a soldier killing his brother who had found out that everything they had been raised on was a lie. (Like one key point was that Hitler was depicted as a strong, blond man with blue eyes.) And although I enjoyed it at the time, looking back on it, I am more uncertain.
@@TheRunningLeopard yeah that’s good to keep in mind I’m going to have to reevaluate if I want to follow him anymore because of this video. Thanks for letting me know, that might have been something I wasn’t aware of at the time.
@@veronicaaristeguieta3072 It’s no problem. I’m still uncertain about how I feel about him as a UA-camr myself, not gonna lie.
@@TheRunningLeopard I don't watch AltHistoryHub, but I am curious how depecting an alternate history where the Nazis win indicates fascist beleifs in the author. In other words: Would you mind clarifying your point? I do agree that the Nazis winning WW2 is a greatly abused and now uninteresting scenario.
@@Zogerpogger To be honest, although the trope of the Nazis winning WW2 is overdone in my opinion, I don't think it always indicates fascism in the writer. I'll start off by saying that I did read the book over four years ago (and in that time graduated university), so what I remember may not be completely accurate.
It felt like watching one of the nazi superweapon specials on the History Channel, where a great deal of focus was put on how massive structures were and the traveling of machines across the now Mediterranean desert. Due to the story mostly taking place within this setting, the only people you see affected by their rule is either the soldiers or the people the soldiers are sent to brutally shoot down. And every single person who even begins to question the ideology is killed, with the story moving on soon after. Which, while making sense, with the fact the sequel novel that was suppose to show the main character realizing his brother was right in doubting the nazis, leads me to just be left a bit uncomfortable.
TLDR: The Atlantictropa Chronicles feels like a History Channel nazi special and with its lack of focus on characters outside of the two (nazi) brothers, leaves the whole thing feeling a bit odd in hindsight.
I, too, I’m fascinated with alternative history, but I’ve been very wary of exploring, UA-cam channels, because of the fascist leanings that you have pointed out. Thank you for recommending another channel. I read the Man in the high Castle, and found it much better than the treatment it got by the television series. To me, the man in the high tower showed how awful every gene run by the Nazis would be. Thank you again. PS: I’m blind and have to use voice to text and UA-cam doesn’t let me hear my comment before it’s posted so please forgive any weird errors
your comment reads perfectly fine! I totally forgot about that book/ series, I've got to finally pick it up now.
@@meeomelovescookiesandhisto459 I subscribe to your channel because of your playlist about using it to get things done even though you have ADHD because I do have ADHD, and I think I’ll find it useful.
@@valkyrievision oh my gosh! I totally made that for myself not thinking someone else could find it useful too. Hope it helps you, adhd compatriot, haha!
I really love paradox games. To me they certainly have the potential to be war crime simulators, but that makes playing the hero a little more satisfying. My current USA run on viki 3 allowed me to end slavery in 1840 and prevent the trail of tears. Very nice. . . Cough. I mean if wasn’t for the need for silk, opium, rubber, and oil I may very well have commented no war crimes at all.
I only follow one Alternate History youtube channel. Cody with AlternateHistoryHub is pretty good, and I'm fairly certain he's center left leaning. When he did his obligatory "What if the Nazi's won," video, he heavily front-loaded it with the fact that it was basically impossible because of a multitude of reasons.
The whole problem with the Nazis managing to win WW2 isn't that they couldn't, its that because they'd have to not be Nazis in order to stand any chance in the first place.
Considering the sorts of things that happened to real life popes. It wouldn't shock me, if it was discovered that someone actually ate a pope.
The single most tiring thing about any "what if the Nazis won?" scenario is the fact not a single person suggesting them ever considers the question that should follow such an idea - _how_ would the Nazis even win to begin with? It's always hand-waved in every scenario.
Man in the high Castle and Fatherland being two of the worst examples of it.
I think so many do it because handwaving it is the only thing you can do if you want your scenario to feel at least somewhat plausible.
@@somethinguncreative2634 which is like your name when the already implausible, a Nazi victory in the Second World War, is hand-waved via the impossible.
Its either hand wave it, or the Wolfenstein method where Nazis loot secret Jewish vaults for Marvel comics level super tech.
Maybe himmler aka paganist incel LARPer praise to some pagan god, and he get a super stone where he singlehandedlys use it on the wehrmacht making the wehrmacht super aryan warrior soldiers who shoot lazers
I feel the easiest way given the politicals divides of the time is just to have key different nations stay neutral or switch sides. For example, given how much more similar America was to Germany than to the USSR and how the Americans didn't like the Communist either. What if the Americans didn't wait till the 50's to have a red scare and instead joined Hitler's crusade against them and disregarded the English and French given how they dragged the US into the first world war, still owed them money, and knew that they had a lot of the blame for a new conflict in Europe. If the US went Axis, the Allies would have lost. What then would the new world order look like? Especially compared to the one we got where the US instead sided with the Communists and gave us the post war era that we know.
I always have the same question for these writers: "Why do you want the bad guy to win?"
Where's all the times where there's horses and camels in the New World? What about a world without the tsetse fly? What about a sovereign Hawaiian kingdom protected by the US and UK as the kingdom pits the two colonial powers against each other? What about A successful Decembrist? What about a Menshevik victory? What about 1848? What about Nat Turner? What if Cortes wound up decapitated on top of a pyramid? What if the American revolution sided against slavery? What if Reconstruction wasn't gutless and overturned by the Confederates? What if Czechoslovakia chose not to go down without a fight or France? What if the Chinese could have averted civil war? What if the Japanese Empire surrendered earlier so the bomb never gets off the drawing board? What if Italy stayed a Republic? What if Franco lost? What if Colombus was wrecked? What if Constantine lost? Sulla lost? Qin Shi Huang lost? What if Tecumseh lived? MLK Jr lived? What if the Indian rebellion succeed? What if Mir Jafar hadn't become Sultan Vile Betrayer?
Why is it always Gettysburg and Operation Sea Lion, which only had the most remote victories possible?
And funny how American historians drool over losing to the CSA or Third Reich, but never discuss losing to the French, indigenous powers, or the UK?
I am fascinated by military history and its dframa, but it's so frustrating how it's the domain of conservatives and nationalists. War is never a tragedy but a triumph, and nations are teams you wear jerseys for rather than flawed but human characters on a stage.
I haven't read more than a few alt history novels, but my favorite is The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal, where an asteroid hits the earth just off the coast of Washington DC in 1952 and starts an extinction event that forces global cooperation into the acceleration of spaceflight to colonize other planets. It's really interesting and also talks about how this event impacts the Civil Rights movement and women's rights in the workplace (because the sub-title is A Lady Astronaut Novel).
I just wanted to add the small "fun fact" that Murray Constantine is an alias for british author Katharine Burdekin. Thank you for this video !
As someone who is highly influenced by constructivism I really appreciate the message that history isn't made by single persons, events and decisions, but rather by many interacting trends and processes on every possible level. History told as history of leaders/great men is only serving our need to simplify things and should not be confused with what happened in 'reality'.
Just to nitpick a moment, the Crusades also matter to a bunch of Middle Easterners who are neither nerds nor fascists. (Yes, I do get and agree with your point and like the line in its obviously intended context.)
the convenient thing about “D*us V*lt” for fascists is that it both says “we want to kill Muslims” and “we want to kill Jews” at the same time
@@IsaacMayerCreativeWorks And they're all about asserted efficiency. Not actually doing it, but claiming it loudly.
alt history seems even more pernicious because it never questions a key assumption about technology and war (what if confederates had ak-47s? what if nazis could hops dimensions?) one of the weirder examples was when, in snyder's Watchmen, dr. manhattan wins the war in Vietnam for the USA, it tacitly argues that the reason the USA lost the war in real-life was becuase there wasn't sufficient military technology hurled into the conflict (repeating nixon's infamous claim that "throughout the war in Vietnam, the United States has exercised a degree of restraint unprecedented in the annals of war."--not that the USA lost because:
1) such technologies failed because they reflect a bureaucratic brute-force stupidity of the american military and, ultimately, an irrational endearment of high-tech annihilation still constantly employed (bombs, napalm, drones, agent orange, atomic weapons, etc.)
2) such technologies could be negated incredibly effectively by "low-tech" means (tunnels of cu chi, recycling american military equipment, punji stick traps, guerilla warfare more generally)
nick turse, john dower, michael sherry, and a number of other historians writes about this kind of military insularity and hubris, though I dont think you could do better than go to first-person accounts themselves in articulating these points like the ones compiled by mangold and penycate or documentaries like "The Cu Chi Tunnels" which you can find here on youtube with english subtitles. it's alt history like Watchmen which reinforce this broader obsession with high-tech annhilation; it's the same sort of mindset that crystalized in "shock-and-awe" and invoked during the iraq war. the fact that alt history keeps repeating the notion that wars are won this way says more about people's adherence to the myth of state competency, particularly military competency.
Man, I forgot how difficult "Ada, or Ardor" is. An amazing but super difficult book. I have to try to re-read it.
oh my god this video is my JAM. i absolutely adore alternate fiction and politics, so this was absolutely fabulous - thanks Mia 🙏
the alt fiction i gravitate towards tends to be realistic drama happening in alt timelines, like some of Michael Chabon’s books.
i HIGHLY recommend his work for anyone who likes stuff like that, specifically The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay or The Yiddish Policeman’s Union (the latter if you’d also like a religious element brought in).
Much food for thought, thanks! Also, I cant stop focusing on that spot on your background 😵💫
The greatest Alt-history series is the Anno Dracula series by Kim Newman. Absolutely brilliant.
_Back in the USSR_ is better.
i haven't seen the video yet so idk if you made that joke, but here it is anyways:
There is a meme/saying for people who enjoy Alt History and/or Paradox games: "They are either queer (specifically trans) or nazis. And sometimes they are both"
edit: finished it, absolute banger because it is exactly what i think about althistory and its appropriation by fascists. It also dunks on that arrogant prick whatifalthist so it gets bonus points from me
28:00
It is said that on returning to Paris after the Munich agreements Edouard Daladier, who expected to be booed for bowing to the nazis, was so surprised to be cheered by a huge crowd as he got off the plane that he muttered "ah les cons! S'ils savaient...", Which roughly translates as "f***ing morons! If they only knew..."
A somewhat different take than Chamberlain's.
I've been writing and making alternate history for over a decade now. Participating in those communities is the entire reason that I started learning how to make digital maps, which itself a large part of why I later started learning about graphic design as a whole. And with all of that said, there has never been a dedicated or even *tangential* alternate history community I've been witness to that has entirely escaped what you described. I have never ever delved into alternate history related youtube content because of what I've seen lurking out there, or what I've seen those videos help fester in folks who are still relatively young.
Oh snap, just what I need right when I needed it. Impeccable timing! I've even been on a little alternate history binge today. Also, I'm a big Paradox fan as well, and I had no idea about the Alt Right trend in the fan base. Thanks for the heads up
I thought you were talking about the adam and eve sponsorship lmao
it used to be much worse, I think it's improved a lot since... 2016? either way, I think it's one of the few alt-hist focussed fan groups that has as much if not more people complaining about fascists as the number of fascists, which while not ideal is still far away and ahead the best compared to almost any other similar group
As someone listening to this while playing EU4, the "war declared on you" sound horrified me
Best sponsor ad ever. Love your work Mia.
Really interesting video! You've prompted me to think of several good questions for worldbuilding my fantasy series 😂
Watching this hits different after being part of it lol.
Great video! You should consider doing a video on the witch cult hypothesis, its another bizarre debunked alternate history
wait that sounds really silly what's it about
@@cowgirltheworld its the theory that there was a secret european witch cult that continued on pagan traditions for thousands of years. Its the basis of a lot of feminist new age stuff like wicca and goddess worship but is total bs. Also weirdly substantiates historical witch hunts by saying that the victims were actual witches
yeahyou gotta give us more than that damn
They taught me that Robert E Lee was a good dude that opposed slavery but refused to fight against the South back in elementary school, I had to write a whole paper about it. My education was kinda fucked up
I was just catching up on a few older videos last night and today I get to watch a new one?
Tight.
This Friday in New Zealand is looking good, I'm getting baked and watching Mia Mulder!
Whatifalthist is just a soft fascist: Vaush made a great job removing his mask of "it's just a alternative history, bro".
I disagree, he definitely right-wing but he’s definitely not a fascist, even calling out the problem in his community.
Omg, yes. I like medival history but it always comes with fans of how "whoait" they supposedly were, and how they allegedly protected the "gooooood values". It is so frustrating sometimes.
This video has been excellent thusfar! ... and that dark spot on the wall in the lower-lefthand corner of the upper-right ninth of the frame made my brain scream.
I felt blessed every moment you obscured it in the frame. X)
I feel like one of the most important features of the kind of "what if the bad guys won" concept is to also juxtapose it with the real world, to make the current status quo seem more appealing. You know, the winners are the good guys. Today's USA is the good guys. Any history we can imagine where the US doesn't win, is worse. It reminds me of the "well capitalism isn't perfect but it's the best we've got" argument. "The USA isn't perfect BUT they did defeat the bad guys, and if they hadn't, oh no, the world would be worse."
It makes what we have today to be the best thing imaginable. I'd much rather imagine a world with fewer empires, less colonialism, and more restoration, than to say that our reality is the best we've got and the only alternate realities we can imagine are worse ones.
Cheers, Mia... this was my intro video to you, and I just wanted to give you some props.
I didn't expect to get stuck-like-glue the way that I did. I thought I passively appreciated alt history (namely in sci fi, not the right wing stuff), but your takes and demonstrations made me realize that I'm into it more than I thought, I'd just not placed a label on it.
On the street, a common alt-hist accepted-as-fact by many here in the south US is the occurrence of the "Southern Strategy," effectively the event that made the Republicans and Democrats swap political places. Many on the right refuse to accept that it happened, which is a bit bonkers when you view historical maps of confederate states and modern maps reporting R/D political affiliation.
Anyways, that's it... sending cheers from just outside of New Orleans, Louisiana!
(newest sub as of this writing)
If the Southern Strategy didn't happen, why did the RNC apologize for it?
@@vxicepickxv - it did happen, and I'm not talking about the RNC at all
I used to be really active on alt-his roleplay and writing forums and discord servers. The only one I found that didn't have *any* iffy people (also the only one I'm still in) is a fan server for a popular alt-his youtuber. The server itself is kinda small, so we've grown fairly close, considering that it's just a discord server. The funniest thing about the server is that it's *very* Latvian, 3/6 of the active members being from the nation. The rest are kinda wide-cast. Also very based, the concentration of communists and broader socialists is also quite notable for the genre. To be fair though, the server is only tangentially an alt-his server now. Its most active channel is one about the owl house and a few other series.
Gonna dive into the video now, just had to say this lol. Cheers!
i now want an alt-his scenario for the Owl House lmao. What if Luz never travelled back time to help Philipp? What if Kikimora turned rebel? so many outcomes lmao.
The main one: What if Disney didn't cancel the Owl House?
What alt hist youruber was it, as a fellow leftist I'm curious
@@AG-AG alternate history hub, the server is as it is because there is no actual link between Cody and the server, it's just a fan server. I think it would've been a lot more whitewashedly centrist if it was in any way endorsed by the creator.
@@adroitdroid5989 Interesting. If you are comtherble could you give me a link, I want to check it out? Is most of it just in Latvian?
@@AG-AG Check r/alternatehistoryhub there's a link in the rules. It's mostly English.
The Man in The High Castle was one of the first books written after WWII that dealt with alternate history, and it crosses over into science fiction, talking about the idea of many universes. Kind of ahead of its time in 1962, it became much more popular 20 years later.
If you haven't read it already, I highly recommend "The Yiddish Policeman's Union" by Michael Chabon. Its alternate history does begin in WWII, but it's not a "what if the N*zis won" story.
Great video Mia. Don’t let the size of another channel prevent you from challenging their content. If AltHist is wrong, point it out. Correcting an issue shouldn’t be considered drama.
"I have thousands of hours in paradox games"
she just like me fr