This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Proof_Individual6993 on 2025-01-06 00:21:56+00:00.
This is my first post here after lurking on this sub for a while. I hope you all would enjoy this post as the story here can be a bit wacky at times.
So here it is! The story of the most Controversial yet Popular Timelines on AlternateHistory.com.
What’s Alternate History?
Alternate History is a genre of science fiction primarily based upon looking at historical events and asking “What if?” in how it could have changed and the future consequences of those said changes on the timeline. In Alternate History Fandoms, a Timeline is slang for a written (Or sometimes drawn out like in r/ImaginaryMaps) piece of work that details an alternate universe that began from a Point of Divergence. A point of divergence in AltHist slang is the start of a timeline in which the timeline diverges from our own. AlternateHistory.com has hosted a wide array of timelines and has remained the dominant alternate history site on the web. It has hosted many famous alternate history timelines such as Reds!, Blue Skies in Camelot, and Decisive Darkness to name a few. I myself have posted my own timeline onto the site and I’m currently writing it.
How can it be problematic?
While many alternate history timelines have been praised, there have been others who have been deemed problematic. The main reason for why those timelines are deemed problematic is in how they portray historical events and people.
The depiction of the historical people can be deemed problematic if it is completely and wildly inaccurate to what they were actually like to real life to the point of being offensive in how wildly stretched and twisted their personalities and characters have been. These are blamed on the author and the author is usually accused of creating these untrue character traits because of their own political bias and personal views on those said people.
Some of the timelines that have been accused of being problematic because of these reasons include the Gumboverse (Mainly Rumsfieldia but that's a story for another day), Green Antarctica, and of course, the subject of the title…
New Deal Coalition Retained.
A coalition (Timeline) is born
On July 21st, 2016, a user by the name of “The Congressman” posted onto the Alternate History.com site about his timeline. In his opening statement he says,
“Hi all. This is my first thread. I've wanted to do a political timeline for a while, and I decided to try something familiar to me.
I just want to answer a few questions:
- This is not a wank. I may be on the conservative side of things but all sides will get a fair shake. Liberals and Conservatives will have fun reading this, I promise (This becomes debated later)
- This is not a No Southern Strategy (A similar timeline to this one) rip off. Yes, I am a huge fan of the timeline and yes, reading it did inspire me to try a wikibox timeline, but I do not and will not try and copy Gonzo and Nofix's amazing timeline.
- Feel free to leave any comment you wish, just please make it respectable
- Also, if any one of you has an interesting idea please let me know. If I like it you may find your suggestion part of history
Enjoy”
The timelines POD is that Eisenhower’s chief of staff, Sherman Adams, dies from a car accident. With this, Republicans are way less hesitant to advocate for civil rights and eventually in the 1960 election, Nixon is full throated in his support for civil rights, defeating LBJ. With this victory, Nixon passes civil rights acts that LBJ passed in OTL, leading to him and the Republicans getting the praise from black people including MLK himself and eventually blacks are solidified as a Republican voter block.
This leads to the Democrats remaining strongly within the South and eventually due to this POD’s consequences, the ideologies of both parties morph. The Republicans turn to Liberty Conservativism (Which is just conservatism but with also a more socially liberal view on civil rights) and the Democrats Communationalism (Which is fiscally liberal but socially conservative). There is also a new party that splits from the Democrats called the Progressive Party which follows Mina-Progressivism (Which is progressivism but with a more libertarian bent), though the party is relegated to only a few states and never wins a Presidential Election in the TL. The timeline has already shown itself to be a bit more on the conservative side of things, however it wasn’t too controversial among audiences.
Eventually, the timeline progresses into Nixon getting assassinated by Oswald in Baltimore instead of Dallas. This leads to his VP Nelson Rockefeller losing the election of 1964 against JFK, but later due to the chaos of the late 60’s, Kennedy gets primaried in 1968 by George Wallace who wins the election. The US in this timeline is also more ardently anti communist leading to a more conservative West. Many OTL far right leaders rebrand themselves as moderates including George Lincoln Rockwell who becomes a radio host. In his term, President Wallace also uses a more extreme approach to Vietnam via a total invasion/war strategy which actually makes America and South Vietnam win the war. Wallace is also way harsher on the CounterCulture movement, including a certain movie star….
Goodbye Hanoi Fonda!
In the timeline, Fonda is convicted of treason for heading to North Vietnam in the wake of the Death of Wallace’s VP McNamara in Vietnam. With that, she is executed in what is described by commenters who read to be in “Gruesome detail” with even one fan saying how the writing made it look like The Congressman wanted this to happen in our timeline.
This got the attention of the Mods of AlternateHistory.com and The Congressman was apparently kicked for a few days off the site for the Fonda torture porn. However he came back and it seems now, he has completely scrapped the execution and instead made Fonda be arrested for decades before retiring to a secluded area.
With that, the Congressman continued the TL as normal. Eventually, the US elected both Reagan and Rumsfeld as presidents respectively from 1976-1992. The Cold War continued to heat up with the Soviets and Americans having worse relations. Ted Bundy becomes governor of Washington and Jim Jones mayor of San Francisco. In Africa, Rhodesia and Apartheid South Africa continue to live on with Nelson Mandela accepting working in Apartheid to promote equality, but also agrees to expel many blacks and communists out of South Africa. This would be criticized by many users for being completely out of line for Mandela, but The Congressman shrugged it off saying how butterflies changed Mandela’s character. Also Park Chung-hee is elected President of South Korea and while still right wing, is still a democratic president and not the dictator like he was OTL. This would also be criticized as being antithetical to Chung-hee's personality and authoritarian tendencies.
Also Queen Elizabeth abdicates after her husband is killed by the IRA leading to Prince Charles becoming King and he marries Julie Nixon (Nixon's daughter) who becomes Queen (Yes this happened). The idea of a Queen Nixon led to critics calling the timeline “Queen Nixon” in a mocking manner. Later, Gerhard Frey (Who was a Neo Nazi OTL), abandons Nazism and starts “Freyism” which was made to “restore pride in German culture after WW2” and to fight against communism, and eventually he gets power in Germany and reverts it back to a constitutional monarchy. Also in Chile, Pinochet wins power like OTL and becomes a popular/successful president leading over a great economy and being opposed to South American communists. Eventually, the first part of the Timeline ends with Rumsfield led NATO and the Soviet/Warsaw Pact Allie’s declaring WW3 in 1988 with both sides shaking hands on not using nukes. This would lead to part 2 of the Timeline detailing WW3.
Multiple parts of the first part of the Timeline were criticized for changing many OTL figures in outlandish ways, and also for accusations that The Congressman was whitewashing Pinochet and Frey by portraying them as anti communist heroes.
However, during the beginning of Part 2, more drama would come to NDCR.
Battle of the Turtledoves!
For those who don’t know, the Turtledove Awards are awards on the Alternate History site for timelines deemed by users to be great in some way in a respective time period.
In April of 2018, the Turtledove Awards were in swing and NDCR was in battle with other timelines (Including No Southern Strategy) for the title of best Contemporary Cold War TL.
The thread for discussing which TL is the best for this award slowly degraded into becoming very heated. Many stated that they didn’t think NDCR was good. Criticisms were lobbied at the characterization of Mandela and Chung-hee, and comparisons were made to No Southern Strategy and how NDCR is inferior. The most heated criticisms were of Mandela in which the Congressman and NDCR fans tried to defend the characterization by saying how Mandela decided to work within Apartheid because the anti Apartheid movement was taken over by communists and Mandela decided that working within the Apartheid government was the lesser evil. This was criticized as by the POD of the TL, Mandela worked with communists against Apartheid so it wou...
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