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Dystopia Is Hard:
Merry Chistmas everyone. This is, admittedly, a rather depressing scenario but it is still 2020 so I'm sure this is still quite apt.

A world where the most recognised ideologies has a major power to demonstrate it.

In this world some changes in the American Revolutionary War see the United States reformations fail and the fledgling nation stumble on as a loose association of states and territories that are effectively independent rather than a cohesive nation – and then get even less centralised from there. The French Revolution still happens and, despite some butterflies, Napoleon still rises to power and actually has even more luck than OTL, beating Russia into submission (though definitely not conquering it) and locking Britain off of the continent. Russia expands eastward even earlier than OTL, encroaching on China at the same time that the UK, looking for a means to recover from the economic costs of the ARW and Napoleonic Wars, puts even more pressure on the Middle Kingdom to open them up as an exploitable market.

Things spiral further out of control from there and in doing so, the major powers of Earth do what they can to keep a grip on control. History happens.

The dream of America has, for some, come true. The United States ended a long time ago and in its place has emerged the Free Liberties of America, a “playground for the free and righteous spirit,” or so the popular national rhetoric says. The reality is a bit different as political anarchism reigns in so many different forms. There is no central government, no true shared national ideal and, in many ways, no actual nation, just an idea that has managed to sprawl itself across the middle of the North American continent and held other groups at bay with bloody minded belligerence and zeal.

America is a mess with all kinds of different anarchic political philosophies existing within their region. From syndicalist worker communes and anarcho-communist stateless territories to 'Hoppeanist' business chains and libertarian territorial monopolies. As long as it disavows central governance and does not survive on taxation, it is allowed. By this point the Free Liberties are a patchwork of different ideological petty states (though they all hate that word) that barely co-exist and often even engage in low-key warfare against one another with militia forces. Outside of these are the numerous nomadic communities that travel the roads, pathways and, on occasion, just plough through wilderness and live by their own moral and legal codes. Of course nearly everyone is as heavily armed as they can be since laws are entirely dependent on mob justice and the direct consensus of the local community at the time that a ‘crime’ has been committed and it is often necessary for the perpetrator of a crime to defend themselves – especially since there is no legal system and so physical violence is often the only defence available to them.

The only real authorities that exist across the entirety of America are the extensive crime syndicates. Large organised criminal groups can often not only have a presence across vast areas of land but often even outright control recognised anarchic territories. For some they represent the only organised chain of resource suppliers, buying, transporting and selling through enormous black markets that would probably look like their legitimate counterparts in a more functional state (black supermarkets, if you will). The lack of consistent law enforcement is as much a hindrance as it is an asset, however, arbitrarily applied standards of ‘justice’ can jeopardise many criminal ventures. Turf wars usually get massive and can see local militias hired as mercenaries in many territories, assuming the militias are willing to go along with this.

Mass industry is rather more awkward and usually only exists in the objectivist territories which are more amenable to collective action and organisation, as long as it doesn’t involve state-based governance. The chain of resources needed to sustain all of this often goes through multiple links of different ideologies, groups and interests, many of them ‘criminal’. Once the products are completed it doesn’t matter who they’re sold or subsequently resold to from there. These pockets of stable production are both absolutely vital to the survival of the Free Liberties and are, at the same time, despised and often sabotaged by people from other portions of America, prompting strong defences.

Slavery is an awkward issue. In certain territories of the Free Liberties it’s a man’s god-given right to own slaves but its not their right to force other people to return them if they escape. Often all a slave has to do is get off their owner’s property and then they’re free, assuming the neighbour doesn’t feel generous enough to catch and return them on their own initiative.

There is no official military force in America, a system of self-supported militias and private paramilitary groups serving to defend America. At time, large enough groups have also banded together to ruthlessly pry more territory from other states and foment revolutions that have expanded the Free Liberties but those expeditions eventually fracture. Despite being so intrinsically opposed to one another in their forms of anarchic ideology, whenever an outside power threatens the Free Liberties the Americans will band together. Some, particularly those in urban areas can also get remarkably well supplied and equipped – and there’s always black market foreign-made military hardware – but for the most part it is just bloody minded fanaticism, xenophobia and guerilla tactics that keep foreign incursions from overrunning the mess that is America.

Europe remained under French domination for well over a century but Napoleon’s dynasty would not last even if his empire would, sort of. The Six Years War, which broke the Ottoman Empire, secured France’s dominion over Eastern Europe and saw *fascism take over Russia also led to a violent radical, socialist uprising that swept across the entire Napoleonic Empire.

In theory the Communarian Internationale is a fraternity of socialist states that all cooperate as equals in their effort to spread the global revolution. The reality is that it is a highly centralised, strictly controlled, totalitarian empire with a heavy bias towards French but a lot of ideological contempt towards all pre-revolution cultures. Even after decades of truce between the great powers the goal of the Internationale is global revolution and (again, in theory) all of their efforts and actions are dedicated to destabilising the other powers. According to the government all of this is in preparation for the great war/s that will finally bring the rest of the world under their regime and usher in a perfect socialist world.

Life in the Internationale is horrible but, for the most part, it is at least consistent in how horrible it is – unless a minor error in the bureaucracy wipes out your regular ration stipend and lets you starve or misfiles you as a dissident and gets you arrested and summarily executed. Everything is closely watched by the government, managed by the government and judged by the government to see whether or not a citizen’s actions qualify as dissident or not. All people in the Internationale are effectively the property of the state and can be used as the government, as the arbiters of the Internationale, see fit. It isn’t uncommon for entire communities to be pulled up from their homes and transported across the entirety of the Internationale’s territory to a new area. Of course they’re more likely to be split up and redistributed across multiple regions.

Surveillance equipment is everywhere and the government’s biggest project has been improving, integrating and computerising this network. The algorithms that are judging citizen’s crimes by themselves may not be perfect but the arrest rates aren’t really hat much higher (or more arbitrary) so the secret police aren’t that concerned with their accuracy.

The Internationale’s other big project is the destruction of all pre-revolutionary culture and its replacement with a new ‘socialised and revolutionary’ culture. Though the prejudices and preferences of the leadership have seen some old artefacts survive and even be replicated in the massive architectural and infrastructural projects (the first consul of the Internationale was a BIG fan of neo-classical Greco-Roman designs). Outside of the consul’s approved pet projects everything else that is created is incredibly bland and drably utilitarian in design with nearly every public building being an unadorned block of concrete with rooms and passageways cut into it. Art is centred around realism, with the exception of depicting the Internationale’s enemies who are subjected to all kinds of visual dehumanisation for the sake of propaganda. Anything that does go outside of the prescribed designs of the government – unless the consul specifically approves of them for personal reasons – is banned and anyone who propagates them is them accused of treason.

Language is also deconstructed. Efforts to develop a working conlang have not often born fruit but an *Esparanto analogue that has also been thoroughly trimmed to remove words that could spread dissension in the populace is now being aggressively taught at school. Its use is also being encouraged in every public space and the government hopes to soon replace all pre-revolutionary languages within, at most, a generation, if even that.

Across from the Internationale, their greatest enemy is the Domination of Russia and its, admittedly few, allies/puppets. In the aftermath of the Six Years War the Russian monarchy was overthrown by a populist, *fascist movement. The peace of exhaustion was too solidified for the new regime to capitalise that much on chaos in Europe and the Middle East but the relative calm allowed the *fascists to cement their own rule.

*Fascist Russia is a hypernational and hypermilitarised despotism, albeit one that has moved from unilateral dictatorship to party-based oligarchism. Everything is highly stratified with a carefully controlled class system – primarily based on race – that holds up a regimented and tightly controlled society with almost military levels of discipline. Within this class system is an additional hierarchy based around party membership an, on top of that, affiliation with the various para-governmental organisations within the *fascist party. Paranoia is everywhere (not that that’s very different from anywhere else) as, like the Internationale, a massive state surveillance network watches everything. Communal activities are encouraged regularly to get people to gather in locations where they can be more easily monitored. Of course the government also watches itself with most sub-committees and organisations within the fascist* party competing with one another for influence within the regime; internal rivalries and espionage is commonplace.

Religiosity, specifically Orthodox Christianity, is encouraged but unlike in the Caliphate the church is definitely subordinate to the state and is merely another method of controlling and motivating the populace. The state controlled education system is also geared toward offering completely different curriculums based on both sex and race in an attempt to keep the demographics divided, complacent and less likely to relate to one another.

Life in Russia is subjected to almost military levels of discipline with everything controlled by the state as if it were a matter of logistics. Punishment for crimes is harsh with public executions a regular occurrence and concentration camps (with quotas to fill, I might add) awaiting criminals, dissidents and plenty of accused innocents whose charges don’t warrant public punishment. Everything is rationed but it is not distributed evenly with ethnically Russian citizens receiving the most luxurious stipends and groups lower down the complex hierarchy of Russian society getting less and less. Propaganda, espousing the superiority of Russia, the overwhelming power of the fascist* party, the inferiority of other cultures and ethnicities and the threat of other nations and ideologies, is everywhere. Public evens are common, most of them being military parades and sporting events but there are also more conventional political rallies that usually involve the denouncement of Russia’s many enemies both internal and external.

One important thing the Internationale and New Order share is extensive eugenics programs. The Internationale is obsessed with creating the ‘new socialist man,’ and has dedicated a lot of time to trying to promote racial intermarriage to break down old ethnic boundaries and testing for minor congenital mental disabilities – the latter is so they can then prevent those people from breeding unless they have neuroses that the party considers beneficial. People who do exhibit ‘undesired’ traits are often segregated or arrested on trumped up charges to prevent them from reproducing whilst government propaganda encourages the population at large to breed for the sake of the state and the revolutionary ideal. Families are being slowly dissolved in favour of communal, state-run childcare and marriage is discouraged as an archaic institution, all to help mould the future human race the Internationale is trying to create. Russia, meanwhile, practises eugenics for the sake of racial purity though some ideas around breeding a superior strain of human have crept in. Records are made and kept of every citizen’s genetic lineage to ensure that cross-breeding between ethnicities is avoided – the reality of the program is that its, of course, not as extensive as it claims to be and the standards it sets for racial categorisation are often rather arbitrary. Russia’s propaganda machine is also very supportive of large families and often employs religious rhetoric to back it up. When women fail to meet their government mandated child quota and lack a sufficient excuse (some official are pragmatic enough to acknowledge medical problems as a good reason to now have more children) then they’re often sent to rape-camps to be forcibly impregnated.

China weathered a century of humiliation but only barely. The Six Year War and the brief Russian Revolution drew out Russian influence from their borders and Britain’s economic woes ended the East India Company’s direct exploitation of their territory. In that time a new dynasty rose, overthrowing the Qing and instating a regime that combined more modern methods of totalitarian state empowerment with traditional Chinese imperial monarchy. The Zise dynasty rose on the idea that through their new state, Chinese power was assured and permanent… immortal.

Whilst most states have moved away from total dictatorship-with-cult-of-personality to something more malleable for the sake of newer generations of totalitarian leadership, the Chinese embrace the idea wholeheartedly. Portraits, icons and propaganda pictures of the first Zise emperor and the current incumbent of the throne are everywhere with at least one example of either in every public space and citizens requiring to keep a copy of these images somewhere prominent in their home. The emperor is not expected to handle all forms of governance, with a vast bureaucracy of ministries to delegate to but they have their final say on any decisions they wish to involve themselves in and are the manager of the secret police for the purpose of keeping an eye on the rest of the government – and the current emperor is competent enough to keep the loyalty of his agents. Political power games have extended the government into a massive, bloated state that matches the Internationale and Japan in corpulence and secret, well-hidden corruption.

Life in China isn’t that unfamiliar to many older Chinese people. Despite intense modernisation most of the nation still remains underdeveloped with the majority of the population still living in rural, unindustrialised, agrarian communities. Regional population can and will be conscripted enmasse for construction projects, military campaigns and whatever else requires lots and lots of unskilled labour and cannon fodder. Whether in the countryside or the cities, traditional examinations are the only way to rise up the social ladder in China. Of course all this does is put you under greater scrutiny by the secret police to prevent potential subversion – higher education means a higher chance of organising revolution, after all.

Traditional values are emphatically encouraged by the government and whilst foreign ideas regarding technology are accepted (a long potential social disruptions can be mitigated) everything else is banned. Sub-departments of the secret police exist for the express purpose of uncovering foreign influence, foreign contraband and dissidents – or anyone suspected of being a dissident. Trade does take place, even with the hated British and Russians but it is conducted only by state-owned groups and very tightly controlled. Smuggling contraband from outside the empire (and just smuggling in general really) is a crime on par with treason and very harshly punished. Christians and Muslims, especially, are targeted by the government. In the latter’s case its because their faith refuses to acknowledge the Mandate of Heaven (or so says the propaganda, that is) whilst the former are associated with the hated Europeans and also allegedly disregard the Mandate of Heaven.

Cut out from Europe by France, the British turned to building their empire up as much as possible. Unfortunately the costs from the wars in America and Europe led to them outsourcing much of this expansion to private ventures. The ‘White Rajah’ phenomenon could only get so far though and so royal charter companies were turned to. As time went on more and more of the empire power was slowly ceded to these companies and the increasingly massive businesses that sprung up as the Industrial Revolution took off, the British Empire found itself under total corporatist rule.

Technically Britain is supposed to be a constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy but in reality everything is under the – either formal or informal – control of corporate monopolies and lobbyist groups. At the top of the corporate political hierarchy are the royal charter companies who actually engage in direct governance of territory on behalf of the government (or direct the empire’s colonial puppet governments) with a descending ladder of more conventional corporations who essentially manage entire aspects of the empire’s economy in massive monopolies of materials or manufacturing bases. Technically the king is supposed to be the head of the royal charter companies but he is completely ineffectual and parliament, whilst still holding elections, is basically a rubber-stamp for the lobbyists’ decisions or handling additional bureaucracy.

Most of Britain’s population are some form of wage-slave. Workers unions or any form of organisation amongst the workforce that is outside of direct corporate purview or interference is illegal and suppressed or broken up by paramilitary businesses that hire themselves out as goons. Workers who can’t meet the rent or mortgage payments, if they qualify for bank loans, get evicted and end up in workhouses to pay debts that only ever increase as expenses for feeding and housing them get added on.

Many settlements are now ‘company towns’ effectively owned by whatever business dominates the local economy. Nothing is guaranteed for the work force with wages, work hours, management ethics and everything else in their work-life depending on the attitude of their company and sometimes even on the individual management staff of their department. People in unskilled labouring positions are even encouraged to compete for work-shifts, offering either the lowest pay rate and work time they can or the highest quality job in order to win the chance to work that day. With the education system also privatised it is difficult for anyone to rise above the level of a wage slave and even then the labyrinthine and self-serving corporate legal systems it is ridiculously difficult to earn a promotion unless you already have connections with the elitist upper echelons of the mega-corporations. Poor education and gruelling work hours also helps keep people too ignorant and busy to properly ponder other political possibilities.

Though there are corporate forces watching the population the government still manages most national security with their equipment and apparatus simply be co-opted when necessary by the monopolies. National and corporate armed forces often cooperate when necessary as well but when they don’t have to work together both sides are quite separate.

The British Empire is theoretically post-racial and it is possible for people of all races to rise up the corporate ranks but the executive boards of the mega-corporations do tend to be primarily white, the Indians being the demographic most likely to rise that high after them and even then their chances are low compared to their white counterparts. Everyone’s money is good to the corporate rulers of the British Empire, however and its not like the white working class are treated any better in this system. Working conditions in the UK and the traditionally white dominions are almost as wretched as the rapidly (and cheaply) industrialised territories in India, South Asia and Africa.

When the Ottoman Empire collapsed in the Six Year War chaos engulfed the Middle East. Revolution swept through Europe and Russia before empire could exploit this and so the fighting was primarily between local forces. By the time the dust had settled, the Arab nationalists that had been poised to take over were swept aside by the other big faction: the theocratic Islamists.

The Caliphate of the House of Islam, centred in Riyadh, is the ‘Wahabist’ empire that the house of al-Saud built (though it wouldn’t look that familiar to any OTL Wahabists after the amount of mutation its gone through). Of course, this authority didn’t actually remain in their hands for long as the post-war chaos continued and power was gradually transferred into the hands of the militant imams leading the Islamist forces until they had complete control and the Saudis were relegated to figureheads. Though there is just enough pragmatism in the government to allow for some modern civilisation to survive in the Caliphate practically every facet of society is subjected to religious scrutiny and a religious official is stationed at every institution to make sure it complies with official dogma. Roving bands of partially officiated religious police – practically militia groups with members that have some religious education – march the streets, keeping an eye out for ‘inappropriate’ behaviour and have the right to detain these offenders and administer punishment in public.

Life is restrictive, conformist and tightly controlled in the caliphate and very, very traditional – read as: medieval unless the government needs to concede to more modern technology for the sake of controlling their empire. Education is strictly religious and entire topics that even the other totalitarian states allow – even if only tentatively – are banned by religious law. Some are carefully permitted for select people in order to allow modern industry and technology to function but these engineers and scientists are all distrusted and closely monitored by the religious authorities for any possible subversive behaviour. Archaeology, palaeontology and certain geology specialities are completely forbidden.

Whilst not a fan of eugenics and actually quite post-racial as long as a person is a properly devout Muslim (of the Caliphate’s specific Wahabist sect, of course) the Caliphate does encourage very large families and pro-natal ideas. This has caused some problems with feeding said massive, growing population in their arid nation, with few more advanced agricultural technologies available to them. Population movements will soon be taken to redistribute people to regions that could potentially support more people.

In addition to discriminating against all sexual minorities and followers of other faiths, the Caliphate encourages strict traditional social norms. Women are required to wear concealing clothing when in public and rooms likely to host visitors, assuming they’re allowed to leave the house at all.

Brazil initially looked like it would end up being some sort of satellite, likely for the UK but the exiled House of Braganza managed to wrestle some self-determination for themselves. Settling down into an uneasy position, the Brazilians tuned towards their slave-based agrarian industries to expand the economy and build up their strength. Eventually this led to the slavocrat plantation owners growing to greater and greater prominence and eventually overthrowing the monarchy and declaring a republic with their class as undisputed masters of the nation.

Slavery, what was once a ‘peculiar institution’ in Brazil as the rest of the world dropped the more traditional forms of privatised forced labour in favour of less institutionally overt systems, is now the most important one and has become vital for the running of the nation. The Brazilian government is almost entirely made up of slave-owning families who have complete control over the vast slave plantations and businesses that dominate the economy. The only other institution that holds a lot of political power are the paramilitary slave-catchers that oversee the plantations, suppress uprisings, prevent abolitionist gatherings and catch runaway slaves.

After modern industries also adopted the use of chattel slaves – for the simple jobs, anyway – the free population found fewer and fewer employment opportunities. Unemployment is rife and, in many ways, the free population end up treated no better than the slaves if they fall into deep poverty. Propaganda keeps the unemployed free Brazilians angry at the slaves specifically for this, dividing the disenfranchised from organising against the ruling parties. The best employment opportunities for free Brazilians is actually in the various enforcement and police organisations that keep slaves in line or the army where they can expect good treatment for their efforts to prevent uprisings amongst both the slaves and the free population.

Japan was forcibly opened up by Britain and made a satellite of their empire with the newly built Honourable West Pacific Company taking virtual control of the entire nation. For much of the 19th Century the Japanese were a British economic client: then came the Six Year War. During the SixYear War the HWPC began to fail and squeezed its economic satellites harder and harder until finally an uprising took place. This rebellion, however, took place from within. Corporate trained and educated Japanese officials and executives removed and purged their British counterparts and overseers and took power for themselves. Internal power struggles then reorganised everything until a particular group held total power: the technocrats.

Modern Japan has been reformed into the Scientific Technate, a post-national, rationalist state dedicated to developing human civilisation to the next level, free of superstition, ignorance and irrationality. In pursuit of this goal – and as a response to their very low resources – the Technate has tuned into an authoritarian nightmare dedicated to squeezing as much use out of their resources, both natural and human, as possible for the sake of achieving a new, rationalised post-human.

Technate governance is managed by a cadre of individuals chosen through a series of intense examinations. Education is compulsory, harsh and organised around discovering the mental aptitude of the population and then organising people around the skills they show on their exams. Though the Technate is not as interested in eugenics as the Internationale or Russia they do sterilise people with mental development issues and have considered extending this policy to who exhibit irrational (read as: religious or spiritual) beliefs in life even after indoctrination. Politics is generally ignored by the Technate outside of presenting the rest of the world as self-destructively ignorant and stupid, engendering a belief of intellectual superiority in the Technate’s population.

Though resources are quite scarce the Technate still performs scientific research and development to improve their technological base. Projects are assessed carefully to assess their costs and likelihood of success and if there are too many failures the personnel involved will be reassessed to ensure they are actually smart enough for their positions. Too many mistakes in the Technate will often lead to demotion in the system and mental reconditioning. The state’s security and police force have extensive powers – though their leadership are also technocrats as well – and often look for subversion, whether intentional or otherwise. People who are judged as spreading irrational ideas, even if they don’t realise it, will end up accused of thought-crimes and be sent for either a lobotomy and execution or torture and mental reconditioning.

The ultimate goal of the Technate is to create a new human society and a new human being. Irrational distractions will be removed or scrubbed away in order to make people as productive as possible – ants, bees and other hive forming insects are often seen as an ideal in propaganda. Of course this has left the population very depressed and the state-organised rations are heavily laced with anti-depressants and a number of other motivating drugs. Dosages are measured in averages so plenty of people will often have nasty reactions or suffer side-effects but the gradual modifications the population will receive from genetic engineering (the technology will be properly developed, any day now) will solve this. Until then, the problem is simply dealt with by the secret police if these behaviours interfere with social efficiency.

With the entire world under authoritarian rule this world is technologically backward compared to OTL, still lingering in the 1980s, at best. For most people its not even that advanced: the ruling powers get the best stuff and most technological developments are dedicated to the military and security forces.

Due to the extraction and processing techniques being less advanced than OTL, this world would be suffering from resource shortages but fewer people, even in the corporocratic British Empire, can’t afford to consume as much. This has also helped keep climate change from getting too bad but things are still going to get worse. What’s more pollution is liable to get even worse than OTL as mismanaged industrial zones around the world spew out more and more toxic by-products. This is not likely to change any time soon either as most governments are more concerned with maintaining the Cold War with their rivals or pursuing their ideological goals than worrying about the state of the planet.

Tensions have been at a simmer since ICBMs were invented and made conventional wars between the dystopias too dangerous to pursue. With the status quo looking to remain static and the authoritarian regimes more interested in keeping their own populations under control rather than conquering other peoples’ these wars may not even be necessary, other than as rhetoric to keep the global population scared and easier to manipulate. The “boot,” must remain pressed down on the world’s face, after all and an actual war, no matter the gains it might offer would interfere with that.

Description

Dystopia Is Hard:
Merry Chistmas everyone. This is, admittedly, a rather depressing scenario but it is still 2020 so I'm sure this is still quite apt.

A world where the most recognised ideologies has a major power to demonstrate it.

In this world some changes in the American Revolutionary War see the United States reformations fail and the fledgling nation stumble on as a loose association of states and territories that are effectively independent rather than a cohesive nation – and then get even less centralised from there. The French Revolution still happens and, despite some butterflies, Napoleon still rises to power and actually has even more luck than OTL, beating Russia into submission (though definitely not conquering it) and locking Britain off of the continent. Russia expands eastward even earlier than OTL, encroaching on China at the same time that the UK, looking for a means to recover from the economic costs of the ARW and Napoleonic Wars, puts even more pressure on the Middle Kingdom to open them up as an exploitable market.

Things spiral further out of control from there and in doing so, the major powers of Earth do what they can to keep a grip on control. History happens.

The dream of America has, for some, come true. The United States ended a long time ago and in its place has emerged the Free Liberties of America, a “playground for the free and righteous spirit,” or so the popular national rhetoric says. The reality is a bit different as political anarchism reigns in so many different forms. There is no central government, no true shared national ideal and, in many ways, no actual nation, just an idea that has managed to sprawl itself across the middle of the North American continent and held other groups at bay with bloody minded belligerence and zeal.

America is a mess with all kinds of different anarchic political philosophies existing within their region. From syndicalist worker communes and anarcho-communist stateless territories to 'Hoppeanist' business chains and libertarian territorial monopolies. As long as it disavows central governance and does not survive on taxation, it is allowed. By this point the Free Liberties are a patchwork of different ideological petty states (though they all hate that word) that barely co-exist and often even engage in low-key warfare against one another with militia forces. Outside of these are the numerous nomadic communities that travel the roads, pathways and, on occasion, just plough through wilderness and live by their own moral and legal codes. Of course nearly everyone is as heavily armed as they can be since laws are entirely dependent on mob justice and the direct consensus of the local community at the time that a ‘crime’ has been committed and it is often necessary for the perpetrator of a crime to defend themselves – especially since there is no legal system and so physical violence is often the only defence available to them.

The only real authorities that exist across the entirety of America are the extensive crime syndicates. Large organised criminal groups can often not only have a presence across vast areas of land but often even outright control recognised anarchic territories. For some they represent the only organised chain of resource suppliers, buying, transporting and selling through enormous black markets that would probably look like their legitimate counterparts in a more functional state (black supermarkets, if you will). The lack of consistent law enforcement is as much a hindrance as it is an asset, however, arbitrarily applied standards of ‘justice’ can jeopardise many criminal ventures. Turf wars usually get massive and can see local militias hired as mercenaries in many territories, assuming the militias are willing to go along with this.

Mass industry is rather more awkward and usually only exists in the objectivist territories which are more amenable to collective action and organisation, as long as it doesn’t involve state-based governance. The chain of resources needed to sustain all of this often goes through multiple links of different ideologies, groups and interests, many of them ‘criminal’. Once the products are completed it doesn’t matter who they’re sold or subsequently resold to from there. These pockets of stable production are both absolutely vital to the survival of the Free Liberties and are, at the same time, despised and often sabotaged by people from other portions of America, prompting strong defences.

Slavery is an awkward issue. In certain territories of the Free Liberties it’s a man’s god-given right to own slaves but its not their right to force other people to return them if they escape. Often all a slave has to do is get off their owner’s property and then they’re free, assuming the neighbour doesn’t feel generous enough to catch and return them on their own initiative.

There is no official military force in America, a system of self-supported militias and private paramilitary groups serving to defend America. At time, large enough groups have also banded together to ruthlessly pry more territory from other states and foment revolutions that have expanded the Free Liberties but those expeditions eventually fracture. Despite being so intrinsically opposed to one another in their forms of anarchic ideology, whenever an outside power threatens the Free Liberties the Americans will band together. Some, particularly those in urban areas can also get remarkably well supplied and equipped – and there’s always black market foreign-made military hardware – but for the most part it is just bloody minded fanaticism, xenophobia and guerilla tactics that keep foreign incursions from overrunning the mess that is America.

Europe remained under French domination for well over a century but Napoleon’s dynasty would not last even if his empire would, sort of. The Six Years War, which broke the Ottoman Empire, secured France’s dominion over Eastern Europe and saw *fascism take over Russia also led to a violent radical, socialist uprising that swept across the entire Napoleonic Empire.

In theory the Communarian Internationale is a fraternity of socialist states that all cooperate as equals in their effort to spread the global revolution. The reality is that it is a highly centralised, strictly controlled, totalitarian empire with a heavy bias towards French but a lot of ideological contempt towards all pre-revolution cultures. Even after decades of truce between the great powers the goal of the Internationale is global revolution and (again, in theory) all of their efforts and actions are dedicated to destabilising the other powers. According to the government all of this is in preparation for the great war/s that will finally bring the rest of the world under their regime and usher in a perfect socialist world.

Life in the Internationale is horrible but, for the most part, it is at least consistent in how horrible it is – unless a minor error in the bureaucracy wipes out your regular ration stipend and lets you starve or misfiles you as a dissident and gets you arrested and summarily executed. Everything is closely watched by the government, managed by the government and judged by the government to see whether or not a citizen’s actions qualify as dissident or not. All people in the Internationale are effectively the property of the state and can be used as the government, as the arbiters of the Internationale, see fit. It isn’t uncommon for entire communities to be pulled up from their homes and transported across the entirety of the Internationale’s territory to a new area. Of course they’re more likely to be split up and redistributed across multiple regions.

Surveillance equipment is everywhere and the government’s biggest project has been improving, integrating and computerising this network. The algorithms that are judging citizen’s crimes by themselves may not be perfect but the arrest rates aren’t really hat much higher (or more arbitrary) so the secret police aren’t that concerned with their accuracy.

The Internationale’s other big project is the destruction of all pre-revolutionary culture and its replacement with a new ‘socialised and revolutionary’ culture. Though the prejudices and preferences of the leadership have seen some old artefacts survive and even be replicated in the massive architectural and infrastructural projects (the first consul of the Internationale was a BIG fan of neo-classical Greco-Roman designs). Outside of the consul’s approved pet projects everything else that is created is incredibly bland and drably utilitarian in design with nearly every public building being an unadorned block of concrete with rooms and passageways cut into it. Art is centred around realism, with the exception of depicting the Internationale’s enemies who are subjected to all kinds of visual dehumanisation for the sake of propaganda. Anything that does go outside of the prescribed designs of the government – unless the consul specifically approves of them for personal reasons – is banned and anyone who propagates them is them accused of treason.

Language is also deconstructed. Efforts to develop a working conlang have not often born fruit but an *Esparanto analogue that has also been thoroughly trimmed to remove words that could spread dissension in the populace is now being aggressively taught at school. Its use is also being encouraged in every public space and the government hopes to soon replace all pre-revolutionary languages within, at most, a generation, if even that.

Across from the Internationale, their greatest enemy is the Domination of Russia and its, admittedly few, allies/puppets. In the aftermath of the Six Years War the Russian monarchy was overthrown by a populist, *fascist movement. The peace of exhaustion was too solidified for the new regime to capitalise that much on chaos in Europe and the Middle East but the relative calm allowed the *fascists to cement their own rule.

*Fascist Russia is a hypernational and hypermilitarised despotism, albeit one that has moved from unilateral dictatorship to party-based oligarchism. Everything is highly stratified with a carefully controlled class system – primarily based on race – that holds up a regimented and tightly controlled society with almost military levels of discipline. Within this class system is an additional hierarchy based around party membership an, on top of that, affiliation with the various para-governmental organisations within the *fascist party. Paranoia is everywhere (not that that’s very different from anywhere else) as, like the Internationale, a massive state surveillance network watches everything. Communal activities are encouraged regularly to get people to gather in locations where they can be more easily monitored. Of course the government also watches itself with most sub-committees and organisations within the fascist* party competing with one another for influence within the regime; internal rivalries and espionage is commonplace.

Religiosity, specifically Orthodox Christianity, is encouraged but unlike in the Caliphate the church is definitely subordinate to the state and is merely another method of controlling and motivating the populace. The state controlled education system is also geared toward offering completely different curriculums based on both sex and race in an attempt to keep the demographics divided, complacent and less likely to relate to one another.

Life in Russia is subjected to almost military levels of discipline with everything controlled by the state as if it were a matter of logistics. Punishment for crimes is harsh with public executions a regular occurrence and concentration camps (with quotas to fill, I might add) awaiting criminals, dissidents and plenty of accused innocents whose charges don’t warrant public punishment. Everything is rationed but it is not distributed evenly with ethnically Russian citizens receiving the most luxurious stipends and groups lower down the complex hierarchy of Russian society getting less and less. Propaganda, espousing the superiority of Russia, the overwhelming power of the fascist* party, the inferiority of other cultures and ethnicities and the threat of other nations and ideologies, is everywhere. Public evens are common, most of them being military parades and sporting events but there are also more conventional political rallies that usually involve the denouncement of Russia’s many enemies both internal and external.

One important thing the Internationale and New Order share is extensive eugenics programs. The Internationale is obsessed with creating the ‘new socialist man,’ and has dedicated a lot of time to trying to promote racial intermarriage to break down old ethnic boundaries and testing for minor congenital mental disabilities – the latter is so they can then prevent those people from breeding unless they have neuroses that the party considers beneficial. People who do exhibit ‘undesired’ traits are often segregated or arrested on trumped up charges to prevent them from reproducing whilst government propaganda encourages the population at large to breed for the sake of the state and the revolutionary ideal. Families are being slowly dissolved in favour of communal, state-run childcare and marriage is discouraged as an archaic institution, all to help mould the future human race the Internationale is trying to create. Russia, meanwhile, practises eugenics for the sake of racial purity though some ideas around breeding a superior strain of human have crept in. Records are made and kept of every citizen’s genetic lineage to ensure that cross-breeding between ethnicities is avoided – the reality of the program is that its, of course, not as extensive as it claims to be and the standards it sets for racial categorisation are often rather arbitrary. Russia’s propaganda machine is also very supportive of large families and often employs religious rhetoric to back it up. When women fail to meet their government mandated child quota and lack a sufficient excuse (some official are pragmatic enough to acknowledge medical problems as a good reason to now have more children) then they’re often sent to rape-camps to be forcibly impregnated.

China weathered a century of humiliation but only barely. The Six Year War and the brief Russian Revolution drew out Russian influence from their borders and Britain’s economic woes ended the East India Company’s direct exploitation of their territory. In that time a new dynasty rose, overthrowing the Qing and instating a regime that combined more modern methods of totalitarian state empowerment with traditional Chinese imperial monarchy. The Zise dynasty rose on the idea that through their new state, Chinese power was assured and permanent… immortal.

Whilst most states have moved away from total dictatorship-with-cult-of-personality to something more malleable for the sake of newer generations of totalitarian leadership, the Chinese embrace the idea wholeheartedly. Portraits, icons and propaganda pictures of the first Zise emperor and the current incumbent of the throne are everywhere with at least one example of either in every public space and citizens requiring to keep a copy of these images somewhere prominent in their home. The emperor is not expected to handle all forms of governance, with a vast bureaucracy of ministries to delegate to but they have their final say on any decisions they wish to involve themselves in and are the manager of the secret police for the purpose of keeping an eye on the rest of the government – and the current emperor is competent enough to keep the loyalty of his agents. Political power games have extended the government into a massive, bloated state that matches the Internationale and Japan in corpulence and secret, well-hidden corruption.

Life in China isn’t that unfamiliar to many older Chinese people. Despite intense modernisation most of the nation still remains underdeveloped with the majority of the population still living in rural, unindustrialised, agrarian communities. Regional population can and will be conscripted enmasse for construction projects, military campaigns and whatever else requires lots and lots of unskilled labour and cannon fodder. Whether in the countryside or the cities, traditional examinations are the only way to rise up the social ladder in China. Of course all this does is put you under greater scrutiny by the secret police to prevent potential subversion – higher education means a higher chance of organising revolution, after all.

Traditional values are emphatically encouraged by the government and whilst foreign ideas regarding technology are accepted (a long potential social disruptions can be mitigated) everything else is banned. Sub-departments of the secret police exist for the express purpose of uncovering foreign influence, foreign contraband and dissidents – or anyone suspected of being a dissident. Trade does take place, even with the hated British and Russians but it is conducted only by state-owned groups and very tightly controlled. Smuggling contraband from outside the empire (and just smuggling in general really) is a crime on par with treason and very harshly punished. Christians and Muslims, especially, are targeted by the government. In the latter’s case its because their faith refuses to acknowledge the Mandate of Heaven (or so says the propaganda, that is) whilst the former are associated with the hated Europeans and also allegedly disregard the Mandate of Heaven.

Cut out from Europe by France, the British turned to building their empire up as much as possible. Unfortunately the costs from the wars in America and Europe led to them outsourcing much of this expansion to private ventures. The ‘White Rajah’ phenomenon could only get so far though and so royal charter companies were turned to. As time went on more and more of the empire power was slowly ceded to these companies and the increasingly massive businesses that sprung up as the Industrial Revolution took off, the British Empire found itself under total corporatist rule.

Technically Britain is supposed to be a constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy but in reality everything is under the – either formal or informal – control of corporate monopolies and lobbyist groups. At the top of the corporate political hierarchy are the royal charter companies who actually engage in direct governance of territory on behalf of the government (or direct the empire’s colonial puppet governments) with a descending ladder of more conventional corporations who essentially manage entire aspects of the empire’s economy in massive monopolies of materials or manufacturing bases. Technically the king is supposed to be the head of the royal charter companies but he is completely ineffectual and parliament, whilst still holding elections, is basically a rubber-stamp for the lobbyists’ decisions or handling additional bureaucracy.

Most of Britain’s population are some form of wage-slave. Workers unions or any form of organisation amongst the workforce that is outside of direct corporate purview or interference is illegal and suppressed or broken up by paramilitary businesses that hire themselves out as goons. Workers who can’t meet the rent or mortgage payments, if they qualify for bank loans, get evicted and end up in workhouses to pay debts that only ever increase as expenses for feeding and housing them get added on.

Many settlements are now ‘company towns’ effectively owned by whatever business dominates the local economy. Nothing is guaranteed for the work force with wages, work hours, management ethics and everything else in their work-life depending on the attitude of their company and sometimes even on the individual management staff of their department. People in unskilled labouring positions are even encouraged to compete for work-shifts, offering either the lowest pay rate and work time they can or the highest quality job in order to win the chance to work that day. With the education system also privatised it is difficult for anyone to rise above the level of a wage slave and even then the labyrinthine and self-serving corporate legal systems it is ridiculously difficult to earn a promotion unless you already have connections with the elitist upper echelons of the mega-corporations. Poor education and gruelling work hours also helps keep people too ignorant and busy to properly ponder other political possibilities.

Though there are corporate forces watching the population the government still manages most national security with their equipment and apparatus simply be co-opted when necessary by the monopolies. National and corporate armed forces often cooperate when necessary as well but when they don’t have to work together both sides are quite separate.

The British Empire is theoretically post-racial and it is possible for people of all races to rise up the corporate ranks but the executive boards of the mega-corporations do tend to be primarily white, the Indians being the demographic most likely to rise that high after them and even then their chances are low compared to their white counterparts. Everyone’s money is good to the corporate rulers of the British Empire, however and its not like the white working class are treated any better in this system. Working conditions in the UK and the traditionally white dominions are almost as wretched as the rapidly (and cheaply) industrialised territories in India, South Asia and Africa.

When the Ottoman Empire collapsed in the Six Year War chaos engulfed the Middle East. Revolution swept through Europe and Russia before empire could exploit this and so the fighting was primarily between local forces. By the time the dust had settled, the Arab nationalists that had been poised to take over were swept aside by the other big faction: the theocratic Islamists.

The Caliphate of the House of Islam, centred in Riyadh, is the ‘Wahabist’ empire that the house of al-Saud built (though it wouldn’t look that familiar to any OTL Wahabists after the amount of mutation its gone through). Of course, this authority didn’t actually remain in their hands for long as the post-war chaos continued and power was gradually transferred into the hands of the militant imams leading the Islamist forces until they had complete control and the Saudis were relegated to figureheads. Though there is just enough pragmatism in the government to allow for some modern civilisation to survive in the Caliphate practically every facet of society is subjected to religious scrutiny and a religious official is stationed at every institution to make sure it complies with official dogma. Roving bands of partially officiated religious police – practically militia groups with members that have some religious education – march the streets, keeping an eye out for ‘inappropriate’ behaviour and have the right to detain these offenders and administer punishment in public.

Life is restrictive, conformist and tightly controlled in the caliphate and very, very traditional – read as: medieval unless the government needs to concede to more modern technology for the sake of controlling their empire. Education is strictly religious and entire topics that even the other totalitarian states allow – even if only tentatively – are banned by religious law. Some are carefully permitted for select people in order to allow modern industry and technology to function but these engineers and scientists are all distrusted and closely monitored by the religious authorities for any possible subversive behaviour. Archaeology, palaeontology and certain geology specialities are completely forbidden.

Whilst not a fan of eugenics and actually quite post-racial as long as a person is a properly devout Muslim (of the Caliphate’s specific Wahabist sect, of course) the Caliphate does encourage very large families and pro-natal ideas. This has caused some problems with feeding said massive, growing population in their arid nation, with few more advanced agricultural technologies available to them. Population movements will soon be taken to redistribute people to regions that could potentially support more people.

In addition to discriminating against all sexual minorities and followers of other faiths, the Caliphate encourages strict traditional social norms. Women are required to wear concealing clothing when in public and rooms likely to host visitors, assuming they’re allowed to leave the house at all.

Brazil initially looked like it would end up being some sort of satellite, likely for the UK but the exiled House of Braganza managed to wrestle some self-determination for themselves. Settling down into an uneasy position, the Brazilians tuned towards their slave-based agrarian industries to expand the economy and build up their strength. Eventually this led to the slavocrat plantation owners growing to greater and greater prominence and eventually overthrowing the monarchy and declaring a republic with their class as undisputed masters of the nation.

Slavery, what was once a ‘peculiar institution’ in Brazil as the rest of the world dropped the more traditional forms of privatised forced labour in favour of less institutionally overt systems, is now the most important one and has become vital for the running of the nation. The Brazilian government is almost entirely made up of slave-owning families who have complete control over the vast slave plantations and businesses that dominate the economy. The only other institution that holds a lot of political power are the paramilitary slave-catchers that oversee the plantations, suppress uprisings, prevent abolitionist gatherings and catch runaway slaves.

After modern industries also adopted the use of chattel slaves – for the simple jobs, anyway – the free population found fewer and fewer employment opportunities. Unemployment is rife and, in many ways, the free population end up treated no better than the slaves if they fall into deep poverty. Propaganda keeps the unemployed free Brazilians angry at the slaves specifically for this, dividing the disenfranchised from organising against the ruling parties. The best employment opportunities for free Brazilians is actually in the various enforcement and police organisations that keep slaves in line or the army where they can expect good treatment for their efforts to prevent uprisings amongst both the slaves and the free population.

Japan was forcibly opened up by Britain and made a satellite of their empire with the newly built Honourable West Pacific Company taking virtual control of the entire nation. For much of the 19th Century the Japanese were a British economic client: then came the Six Year War. During the SixYear War the HWPC began to fail and squeezed its economic satellites harder and harder until finally an uprising took place. This rebellion, however, took place from within. Corporate trained and educated Japanese officials and executives removed and purged their British counterparts and overseers and took power for themselves. Internal power struggles then reorganised everything until a particular group held total power: the technocrats.

Modern Japan has been reformed into the Scientific Technate, a post-national, rationalist state dedicated to developing human civilisation to the next level, free of superstition, ignorance and irrationality. In pursuit of this goal – and as a response to their very low resources – the Technate has tuned into an authoritarian nightmare dedicated to squeezing as much use out of their resources, both natural and human, as possible for the sake of achieving a new, rationalised post-human.

Technate governance is managed by a cadre of individuals chosen through a series of intense examinations. Education is compulsory, harsh and organised around discovering the mental aptitude of the population and then organising people around the skills they show on their exams. Though the Technate is not as interested in eugenics as the Internationale or Russia they do sterilise people with mental development issues and have considered extending this policy to who exhibit irrational (read as: religious or spiritual) beliefs in life even after indoctrination. Politics is generally ignored by the Technate outside of presenting the rest of the world as self-destructively ignorant and stupid, engendering a belief of intellectual superiority in the Technate’s population.

Though resources are quite scarce the Technate still performs scientific research and development to improve their technological base. Projects are assessed carefully to assess their costs and likelihood of success and if there are too many failures the personnel involved will be reassessed to ensure they are actually smart enough for their positions. Too many mistakes in the Technate will often lead to demotion in the system and mental reconditioning. The state’s security and police force have extensive powers – though their leadership are also technocrats as well – and often look for subversion, whether intentional or otherwise. People who are judged as spreading irrational ideas, even if they don’t realise it, will end up accused of thought-crimes and be sent for either a lobotomy and execution or torture and mental reconditioning.

The ultimate goal of the Technate is to create a new human society and a new human being. Irrational distractions will be removed or scrubbed away in order to make people as productive as possible – ants, bees and other hive forming insects are often seen as an ideal in propaganda. Of course this has left the population very depressed and the state-organised rations are heavily laced with anti-depressants and a number of other motivating drugs. Dosages are measured in averages so plenty of people will often have nasty reactions or suffer side-effects but the gradual modifications the population will receive from genetic engineering (the technology will be properly developed, any day now) will solve this. Until then, the problem is simply dealt with by the secret police if these behaviours interfere with social efficiency.

With the entire world under authoritarian rule this world is technologically backward compared to OTL, still lingering in the 1980s, at best. For most people its not even that advanced: the ruling powers get the best stuff and most technological developments are dedicated to the military and security forces.

Due to the extraction and processing techniques being less advanced than OTL, this world would be suffering from resource shortages but fewer people, even in the corporocratic British Empire, can’t afford to consume as much. This has also helped keep climate change from getting too bad but things are still going to get worse. What’s more pollution is liable to get even worse than OTL as mismanaged industrial zones around the world spew out more and more toxic by-products. This is not likely to change any time soon either as most governments are more concerned with maintaining the Cold War with their rivals or pursuing their ideological goals than worrying about the state of the planet.

Tensions have been at a simmer since ICBMs were invented and made conventional wars between the dystopias too dangerous to pursue. With the status quo looking to remain static and the authoritarian regimes more interested in keeping their own populations under control rather than conquering other peoples’ these wars may not even be necessary, other than as rhetoric to keep the global population scared and easier to manipulate. The “boot,” must remain pressed down on the world’s face, after all and an actual war, no matter the gains it might offer would interfere with that.