A Shitlib pop history youtuber who makes lowbrow “what if” slop and has been recently getting into obnoxious slap fights with random communists and anarchists on Bird-site also has far right fans? Huh

  • Des [she/her, they/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    10 months ago

    cody is like really, really bad at alt-history. i say this as a fan and life long reader.

    his show sucks. doesn't surprise me he's alt-right adjacent.

    since i'm bitching: most alt-history writers are shit too. like the guy who did the "domination of draka" series which is just fascist wankfest. also none of them understand materialism.

    only good alt-history guy is Matt Christman and the other guy on his hinge points podcast

    • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      10 months ago

      Robert Silverberg is a sometimes a good alt-history writer, Christman has praised him. When he's at his best he's drawing parallels between divergent ruling classes and our own. He's at his worst when he's getting deep into the idealism, like his alternate Rome that survives to the modern day because Christianity was never invented, and so the western and eastern Roman Empires never fought one another. You got it right. Alt-history guys usually don't understand materialism.

      Kim Stanely Robinson wrote a pretty good alt-history novel, "Years of Rice and Salt." The premise is the black plague kills 99% of Europe, so it's a world without white people. So the whole world is split between various Chinese and Muslim states. It's a good novel because it's from the perspective of two people who keep getting reincarnated. There's a chapter where one of them is a tiger.

      • Des [she/her, they/them]
        ·
        10 months ago

        omg i forgot about KSR!! i love the years of rice and salt. KSR radicalized me literally my first introduction to socialism from the Mars Trilogy to that.

        the only thing about the years of rice and salt is I wish we could get longer stories out of some of the short stories from the bardo group. i really, really wanted an expansion of the japanese diaspora basically arming the Iroquois with steel working, weapons and gunpowder and having political marriages

        so much potential for it's own novel

    • RamrodBaguette [comrade/them, he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      10 months ago

      I wouldn't call him "alt-right adjacent". More just your run of the mill anti-communist shitlib who may or may not vote Sanders. The fact that he has far right fans is more just that the specific brand of low-effort althist gruel panders to the kind of audience who are susceptible to it otherwise.

      Side note but there's an interesting in-progress Drakaverse revolution forum quest (ie, alternate history where repliers can influence it as its written) by Marxists on SV.

      • Bloobish [comrade/them]
        ·
        10 months ago

        Shitlib Content creators asking "jeez why do I have so many fascist followers on social media??? Anyway here's why communists were worse than the Nazis, sponsored by creatinine packed GamerSups"