What could be the most probable groups of Humans who would collaborate with an Alien Empire?

I tried raising the topics in the Politics in media thread, but after a long while, I think it's best if it would be better to start its own topic.

Namely, if said Alien Empire is not only sentient but also knows the art of pragmatism, which group of people would be likely to accept the offer?

I've been thinking far-righters may be the likelier candidates due to their tendencies and such, which at the same time, would contradict some of their racial ideals.

I mean, it depends what the aliens want and how they plan to get it?

The usual imperial solution is 'military victory, tithes of soldiers/goods/currency, limit interference in local government.' So, the most likely collaborators would be governmental survivors. But that obviously won't work for more ideologically motivated folks. So, to give an easy example, radically atheist aliens who object to the very notion of divinity and seek to expunge it from the universe...probably aren't going to get a lot of religious collaborators, while aliens who disguise themselves as angels, or other religious figures, because they've found a way to convert faith into energy, might get mostly religious collaborators.

I don't think there's any individual group that's going to be inherently more likely to collaborate (except maybe pragmatists, or cowards, depending on your POV/situation).

ETA: If your goal is to create a scenario where the far-right is more likely to collaborate, then you simply need to create aliens whose ideology, or behavior, appeals to them. The obvious way to do that would be to look for figures and ideologies which the far right supports/idolizes and base it off that.

Edited by ECD on Mar 31st 2024 at 10:24:05 AM

Would the pragmatists and cowards include far-righters?

Sure, and left-wingers and moderates. Cowardice, or pragmatism are not ideologically limited traits.

I'd say it depends on the aliens in question.

Assuming they are the scary dogmatic kind, then it would be opportunists, spineless cowards, grifters and demagogues.

If they have a keen sense for PR and spin, then they could entice people of any stripes, before they go mask off ofc.

If they are more benevolent of can make a convincing sob story (say they came to earth as refugees to escape an oppressive regime where they are the underclass), then chances are high bleeding hearts and other progressive people would've onboard (and an equally high chance more nativist and "earth for the earthlings" people would oppose them on principle)

If they have vast resources that people know have high value, they can invoke Every Man Has His Price and bribe their cooperation. The people most likely to take the bait would be techbros, CE Os and the generally wealthy.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Apr 1st 2024 at 8:00:35 AM

How would an empire of the dogmatic kind with keen PR fare in that case?

Edited by LoneCourier0 on Apr 1st 2024 at 5:05:44 PM

Quite well.

The key issue, in most scenarios, is that all of our information about them is going to come from them (and from our observations of their behavior), but a clever PR-wielding empire that has a reasonable understanding of humanity has a good chance of getting a significant majority of the population to be 'collaborators' unless their demands are transparently unreasonable.

Yeah the key thing to consider is that audiences are inherently more pricy to key info that in verse characters. That leads to Fourth Wall Myopia.

The aliens can theoretically dupe everyone on earth because they are in control of the narrative surrounding them. As long as they play their cards right, by the time the earthlings knew it would be far too late.

In fact there could be historical precedent of something like that. Herman Cortez claimed to be the human avatar of Quetzalcoatl afaik and he used that lie in his conquest. God Guise aside, a similar principle can be in play for any invasive extraterrestrial power.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Apr 1st 2024 at 9:22:45 AM

Let's consider this scenario;

Earth wasn't given a proper first contact, which proves to be advantageous to the Alien Empire that's the scary dogmatic type. Namely, one that practices an esoteric form of Darwinism and spartanism.

After some warning strikes, the emperor hijacks the signals and gives a long speech of how the Alien community has "abandoned" them, thinking they're too vicious and savage to be part of them. It's why they think they're alone, but now there's proof that there's life out there... And they will be the first ones to establish contact, through war.

But, if they wish to be spared, the emperor carefully uses his words to tempt Humans to collaborate with them by talking about how under them, all life forms will evolve into stronger beings as they cull all the weaker living beings in existence. As such, if they join his empire, they will ensure that Humanity can grow into a stronger species to the next stage of evolution.

Which of course turns out to be a lie if they win, where they'll treat Humans like a slave race since it proved of how Humanity has lost its "way" in life.

With this in mind, what kind of Humans would work with an empire that practices said form of Darwinism?

Edited by LoneCourier0 on Apr 1st 2024 at 8:09:12 PM

The usual Qlisling types (again opportunists, grifters, etc) and people who would be desperate enough to consider it. Plus your usual demagogues and right wingers. The claims about savagery would likely nab some atoner types as well.

Conversely there will be some people that would cotton onto their true nature or be overall suspicious of them. Particularly among those with a history of colonialism as perpetrator and as victim. After all, "civilizing the savages" was a rationale of the colonizers.

Also your spoiler markup is broken.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Apr 1st 2024 at 11:08:55 AM

Oops, fixed it.

But yeah, with that in mind, there comes the question regarding nationalists and racial supremacists on the equation...

Most will likely be onboard with them. Others will prolly try to ursurp them whether they are aware of their true motives or not. They will all try to manipulate them for their own ends.

It could be possible that they would be the ones going to bat for the pro human faction to their determent and cause bad PR for the humans as a result. After all if they find themselves superior to others they are not going to take contrary claims sitting down.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Apr 1st 2024 at 11:19:03 AM

Of course, it comes in their nature.

Sorry, are those 'warning strikes' a false flag operation, attempting to blame the rest of the galaxy, or are they openly attacking, then claiming that they're just 'culling the weak' or whatever?

If I'm tracking correctly, your goal is to have the far-right be the collaborators, so I think either of those could work, with a heavy emphasis on strength/purity and (at least theoretically) improving the strength of the collaborators.

You're generally going to need a story to explain why anyone would believe the aliens want that though. If they're explicitly 'survival of the fittest/social darwinist' why are they, in the minds of their allies, helping us, rather than leaving us to our fate?

Now, you can play into the victimhood complex some far-right figures hold about how strong they could be, if they weren't being held back by society...but there's some fairly obvious logical holes in that argument.

The issue is 'what do they want from us' has to have an answer which appeals to the far right. The answer which makes sense to me, given my limited understanding of the far right, would be something along the lines of 'they want us to be warriors, because we're physically, though not mentally/technologically superior.'

But more than that, you need a reasonable alternative to collaboration. Because if an advanced species capable of destroying the planet shows up, blows up a bunch of stuff and says 'bow or die'...well, uh, unless you've got an actual means to fight back, it's probably time to bow.

Edited by ECD on Apr 1st 2024 at 11:22:30 AM

The latter of sorts.

As for those who want to resist... It would depend on the kind of story.

If it's a very cynical one, then bowing down would be the outcome.

But if it's a middle ground, some would bow down out of survival but others would do everything to resist said Aliens... and of course, if it's more fantastical in nature, then certain superheroes would help turn the tide.

Yes, that's my point, you need a reasonable alternative to collaboration. I mean, you can write whatever you want, but for me as a reader, I find 'I dunno how we'll win, but we definitely will because of the power of teamwork/friendship/love/willpower,' supremely unconvincing. This doesn't have to be too elaborate, the usual theory of resistance movements is that you'll bleed the enemy until it's not worth it to stay, but that depends on a bunch of stuff, like, say, having access to the enemy to hurt them and them not deciding to simply blow the place up on the way out.

If you want them to launch a first strike and still have any collaborators who aren't simply cowards/demoralized, then that needs to be fairly carefully (or luckily) targeted. One could certainly imagine strikes focusing on sub-saharan Africa, on the basis that those countries are growing the fastest in population and therefore could provide the most soldiers in the long. One can imagine far-right groups coming up with their own reasons for why that had been done.

But you want to be careful, it's real easy to accidentally fall into the 'strategic bombing definitely works' theory of international relations, when it basically never does.

There’s always the possibility that the humans know that they have no chance against the aliens but-because they consider collaboration to be a Fate Worse than Death - are resisting in a Suicide by Cop , going out in a blaze of glory sort of way.

Edited by Stack26 on Apr 1st 2024 at 3:02:56 AM

My assumption is that the humans in universe do not know the true colors of the aliens. Its easier to dupe folk if they don't know anything about you after all. So I'm proposing a false flag op here.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Apr 1st 2024 at 4:55:59 AM

I think an interesting twist might be if the human collaboraters immediately turn around and start playing various alien factions against each other, being surprisingly good at "Game of Thrones" style insider politics.

You think so?

Humans forming their own faction within a larger Empire and slowly fighting for better rights and standards of living is certainly more plausible than Humanity somehow fighting off an interstellar empire.

That would be cool.

To be honest, I think a lot of people, regardless of "groups", would probably be like a pre-slippery slope Breen from Half-Life 2. Collaborating with the aliens in hope of avoiding the destruction of humanity (though Breen is ambiguous enough of a character that he might have done it all just for power, or a bit of both).

That, linking to 's point as well, would be great for creating moral ambigouity. What is better, to risk all of humanity for the hope of freedom, or to collaborate with an evil regime for the hope of humanity continuing, in at least some form? And what if the rebels come into conflict with the collaborators: both groups wanting the same thing (humanity to be saved) forced to fight each other. You could even portray the aliens as chess masters purposefully turning humanity against each other, though that wouldn't remove the moral ambiguity as it could be argued that either the collaborators are helping an alien empire who clearly want to destroy humanity, or that it's the rebels in the wrong for playing into the alien's hand and endangering humanity. Actually, thinking about it, replace 'Aliens' with Thalmor, rebels with Stormcloaks and collaborators with Imperials, and you get the Civil War plotline of Skyrim (where it's heavily implied that the Thalmor don't want either side to win, and instead are going to take advantage of the chaos the war has caused). Not too dissimilar to Palpatine's plot in the Star Wars Prequels either.

Edited by king15 on Apr 22nd 2024 at 10:18:04 AM

Except that the human collaborator faction knows this and is attempting to outplay the alien chess-masters at their own game. At least some of the "rebels" might be in on it too...

...twisty.

So, Angelus Nox provided a solid reason why right-wingers may be willing to join the dogmatic kind of Alien Empire.

Namely, not wanting to be lumped into the minorities they so despise, a desperate bid to escape the consequences of their behavior.

I mean, isn't that a motivation for literally anyone, assuming the aliens are being dicks to the rest of humanity? Submit or die is the classic demand of the conqueror. And the carrot that goes along with that stick is 'be a good slave/subject and you get better treatment/treats/rewards/whatever.'

If you want the far right to be the main collaborators in your story, then you want an ideological, not practical, basis for that. Or, if you want to be supremely cynical about humanity, the far right joins up first and so other groups react to that and refuse to join up, on the basis of polarization and enmity (or belief that if the aliens really want a bunch of far right loonies, then they aren't worth trusting/working with).

Edited by ECD on May 11th 2024 at 2:39:59 AM