Context: In HOI4 Kaiserreich, the Combined Syndicates of America (socialist faction in the American Civil War) has three routes: Market "Socialism", Wholesome Anarcho-Syndicalism and the tankie, redfash Totalists because of course.
Kaiser Cat (a fan merchandise group) has the Totalists, led by Earl Browder no less, naturally win out in the CSA power struggle in their "Divided States" series and check off every box for Black Book-tier stupidity. This drives the main character to decry the false song of Communism Syndicalism and defect to the Defenders of Democracy™ (remnants of the Federal government in the West Coast whose incompetence caused the Civil War in the first place). The plot follows her trying to get a German nuclear scientist to the Federal government in California so they can win the war (how they will be able to produce enough nuclear weapons with their limited resources in time is anyone's guess). Now we're at this point where the team has dropped all pretenses of "nuance" and are posting "ironic" memes like this. To add, even the American Union State, which takes inspiration from the Spanish Nationalists (in the team's own words), are given more nuance and character than the big bad Syndies.
It's all funny when you consider how some of the original devs for KR back in the Hearts of Iron 2 days were actual Syndicalists.
Why is the KR Community like this? So much of this nonsense and "rEcLaIm ThE bIrThRiGhT :so-true: " bullshit
Funny thing is most of the devs are based. It's the community, and the new people who try to join the dev team that are cringe. All the based people in the community aren't allowed to do similar things without getting dogpiled and banned by libs.
Yeah, the upcoming updates for France, Norway, and a few others seem to indicate that there are actual leftists on the team.
This is something I noticed for some other mods, as well (like TNO). The Devs/writers tend to be more left (if not outright Leftists) whereas the community managers, and their corresponding communities, tend to run from radlib to reactionary. I know in TNO's discord you can't express any opinion left of milquetoast reformism without getting banned.
I think that's because the devs are creating things while the community managers are like internet security guards. Kind get off on rules so naturally they wanna make the janitor an administrative position and create a mess of rules instead of simply trying to create a good community.
Because the KR community mods are sympathizers to it and purged all the leftists who used to push back against it.
The cat's been out of the bag since the first iteration of KR where the creators wanted to create a war scenario that's "morally grey" (unlike WWII). Only they didn't ponder the implications of equating the socialists with reactionary revanchists (Entente) and an empire which oppresses millions across three continents (Reichspakt). The funny thing is that, the way it's set up in-game, the Third International may as well be the good guys by being the "least bad" of the factions.
Even if the devs turned left overnight and wanted to stop pandering to the fans of the latter two groups, they'd be worried about losing the crowd that they amassed.
The closest you can get to a "morally grey" war scenario is to just make it a naked conflict between various imperialist nations vying for colonies and power, and even there you have to just ignore the agency of the colonised peoples being forced into service and exploited.
KR annoys me so much. It has so much effort, but is so fucking radlib. It is pure "what if the "good" communists one" by which they mean ones who cannot deal with any real counter-revolutionary force and never face the real world weaknesses they have, oh and cut out most actual radicalism. It is the epitome of that idea that western "leftists" only like failure cause they find purity in that.
The entire "totalist" thing is just stupid
If I remember there was one that allowed a second October Revolution in Kerenskyite Russia, and you can choose to get either the syndies, leftcoms, or the bolchevik remnants as "totalists" in power under Kirov. Sadly it's also fucking hamfisted by twisting Kirov's figure into the orwellian distortion of Stalin because shitlibs can't be bothered to read history. Like even paradox's main studio has done deeper research into the Soviet union's power structure than them.
I remember playing with that submod. It's literally "Wholesome Democratic Lev Kamenev" + 9 different degrees of bad to worse, from Zinoviev to Kaganovich. I think the peak IDEOLOGY moment was when you read about how Kamenev truly believes in democracy or some shit therefore the "Dictatorship" of the Proletariat is unnecessary.
:marx-joker:
And they wonder why the left-opposition factionalists were concidered traitors to the revolution.
Alt History is when you just replace guys with other guys who do the same things.
There is a mod that's instead "what if the German Revolution succeeded", though it is far from out yet.
Spartakus. There's also Krasnacht (KR sequel) and Reds!. All of which are written by actual leftists (though not MLs).
Grouping Marxists and Fascists into the same ideology :galaxy-brain:
I am so sick of having to research every figure in a totalist gov to check which are nazis and which are like Jewish soviet partisans. It is really gross
You should have touched that grass when we told you :stalin-gun-1::stalin-gun-2:
So their hero is gonna commit a nuclear genocide against the syndicalists and it'll fix everything and bring back America? Fuckin' Gamers...
Actually, I'm pretty sure the villain shifts from the Syndies to the American Union State who defeats them, which then devolves into a Christian fascist state. Yes, you heard that right, a faction situated in the industrial heart of the nation somehow loses to a faction situated in the South. Which include white supremacists and don't have to deal with the constant threat of insurgency from the large Syndie-sympathetic African-American population. (The fact that all of the main characters in the series are white is coincidence, I'm sure)
Still, the nuke plot speaks to the sort of hypocrisy where the Ends somehow only justify the Means when the result is preserving the status quo (unlike those evil commies actually wanting something better).
The entire premise of KR is stupid. It just goes “what if the freedom loving white people did communism instead of the sneaky orientals”
it just doesn't seem believable, its just extremely intrusively obvious that they felt they had to decide on a different leftist tendency to dominate movements because alt history.
In fairness, some of the original devs were Syndicalists, so it's not like they just threw a dart blindfolded to decide.
In this game you can play as 汪精卫 and betray to the Japanese just like in the real timeline
Wang is actually based in this TL. He literally just sails from the KMT base in France to China with a fully-modernized division once the Left KMT uprising starts in earnest :gigachad-hd:
It helps that Cash My-Cheque got killed off earlier in the timeline, so the KMT merges with the CPC and goes left as opposed to becoming the "cringe side" of the Chinese Civil War like in OTL.
I think they're doing the alt-history version of the meme to show an alt-history version of the Red Scare. I kinda like how absurd it makes the quote, tho. Like, who (besides the literal capitalists) feels threatened by "syndicalists"? Even reactionaries tend to just call them commies.
