Roleplay / The Long March

The Long March (a TNO-sequel Comintern quest) is a Forum Quest created by StarMaker764 on Sufficient Velocity.com, based on The New Order Last Days Of Europe. It began on 14 May 2023.

Beginning in 1975, the world of TNO is unrecognizable from just ten years. The Second West Russian War ended in a stalemate between the Russian Empire and the German Reich, Japan licks its wounds from its defeat in the Third Sino-Japanese War, and the OFN has been crippled by America's withdrawal from world affairs. But the vacuum opened by the losses suffered by each of superpowers allows for a revival of socialist movements worldwide. Now Fourth Communist International, an alliance of socialist nations scattered across the world, may be the last hope of this Earth.

The players are in control of the Comintern and must navigate a world fundamentally hostile to them with the intent to defeat of all the other capitalist and fascist powers to unite humanity in socialism.

The Long March features the following tropes:

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• Addled Addict: A nationwide example with the German Reich, whose entire population is made to consume methamphetamine and other addictive substances due to its ubiquitous presence in various foods and items, leading refugees escaping the Reich to experience severe withdrawals as bad as developing psychosis and children developing behavioral problems.
• The Alliance: The Fourth Communist International is an alliance of socialist and communist democratic states fighting against imperialist and fascist powers across the world^{Starting members}United Arab Republic, People's Republic of Bharat (India), Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia, West African People's Union (Cameroon), Republic of Cuba, People's Republic of the Philippines, Republic of Chile, Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic, Hellenic People's Republic (North Greece), Suomi Socialist Republic (Finland), and the Socialist Republics of Benin, Mali, Guinea, Niger, Ghana, Liberia, Wolofia, Sierra Leone and Burkina Faso ^{Current members (Unmarked Spoilers)}United Arab Republic, African Socialist Union, People's Socialist Union of Anatolia (ex-Turkey), Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic, Union of Eurasian Soviet Socialist Republics and Communes (ex-Russia), Revolutionary Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (East Afghanistan), People's Republic of Bharat (India), People's Democratic Republic of Nepal, Indochinese People's Union (Laos and Vietnam), People's Republic of the Philippines, People's Union of China, Hellenic People's Republic (North Greece), People's Republic of Yunan/Ionia (South Greece), Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia, People's Republic of Romania, Socialist Republic of the Federated Councils of Hungary, Zapadoslavic Socialist Republic (East Czechia, Slovakia and South Poland), Socialist Federation of Mediterranean Council Republics (ex-Italy), French People's Republic, Free Socialist Council Republic of Germany (Alsace-Lorraine), United People’s Republics of Suomi (Finland), Kalaalit Nunaat (ex-Greenland), Republic of Cuba, Socialist Republic of Haiti, Socialist Union of the Andes (ex-Bolivia), People's Republic of Brazil, People's Republic of Paraguay, Republic of Chile and the International Proletarian Reconstruction Mandates of Iberia, Ukraine (South Ukraine) and the Baltics.
  • Subverted with the Coalition of Democratic Nations. As the name suggests, the CDN claims to be a mutually-supportive alliance of independent liberal democracies hoping to defend against all forms of despotism and imperialism, be it fascist or socialist. In reality, it is dominated by the US and used as a legitimate front for American neocolonialism facilitated by the other member states' comprador regimes.
• Allohistorical Allusion:
  • "One China, Two Systems" designates the dual power system in the Republic of China between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China.
  • José Luis de Arrese, the Führer of Falangist Iberia, dies in exactly the same way as Luis Carrero Blanco did IOTL, as the bomb under his car is so powerful it projects it far in the air, leading him to be nicknamed the first Iberian astronaut.
  • The Iberian Falangists' anti-intellectual campaign going as far as executing people for wearing glasses is reminiscent of the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.
  • A terrorist group named Boko Haram emerges 20 years earlier than the OTL one.
  • A terrorist attack involving a nerve agent in the Tokyo subway happens 13 years before the OTL Tokyo subway sarin attack.
  • Hugo Banzer declares that if they don't take Santiago by next week, then they can call him a Cojudo (Bolivian slang for dumbass), alluding to Hermann Göring's famous "you can call me Meyer" quote.
  • The term "Tankies", instead of designating supporters of the Soviet invasion of Hungary and other authoritarian measures, exists as a nickname for Hungarian tank regiments (formed from refitted old German tanks) earning their renown during the country's socialist revolution and, soon after, other revolutionary campaigns in Europe in 1984.
  • The State of Tkuma bans the use of Yiddish and Ladino languages in public spaces, with Hebrew as the sole language of the country. This alludes to OTL attempts by Zionist activists in Mandatory Palestine and later the Israeli government to eradicate the use of Yiddish and Ladino among Jews in preference to Hebrew, and make their use socially unacceptable.
  • A news headline announcing a project to create a wooden city is based on a real project.
  • The assassin of Thomas Sankara confesses to committing his crime to impress his fiance, a reason deliberately similar to John Hinckley Jr.'s reason for attempting to assassinate Ronald Reagan OTL.
  • Che Guevara provokes a crisis in Canada when he ends a speech with "Vive Le Québec Libre!", similar to Charles de Gaulle sparking an outcry by declaring the same OTL.
  • A football match between Honduras and El Salvador escalates to a full-blown war, just like the OTL Football War.
• Alternate History: Being a Fan Work of The New Order, this is expected.
• And There Was Much Rejoicing: Frequently, whenever a hated fascist or anti-communist leader suffers or dies.
• Animal Motifs: The political factions of the Comintern are each represented by a bird^ListPheonix for Revolutionary Militants, raven for Cybernetic Marxists, dove for Religious Socialists, emperor penguin for Neo-Bukharinists, seagull for International Supremacists, rooster for Agrarian Socialists, condor for National Communists and hummingbird for Ecological Leftists.
• Anti-Climax:
  • The Second West Russian War, rather than the climax and death kneel for Hitler's empire would end up a half-victory for the Russian Empire.
  • The Comintern's Iberian campaign proved to be one. The UAR's army secured the south of the peninsula with little resistance as the Falangists were greatly lacking in modern weapons and ammunitions and afterwards the lack of infrastucture and the ongoing humanitarian disaster proved to be a bigger issue than the Falangist forces melting away upon contact.
• Anything but That!: Mandatory courses in material dialectics are considered by some to be worse than being sent to a gulag.
• Arcadia:
  • Deconstructed for Falangist Iberia, which creates a hell on Earth bereft of modern medicine.
  • The Visigothic Kingdom of Hessen is founded by various SS occultists seeking to recreate the aesthetics and way of life of tribal Visigoths to a ridiculous degree, with programs such as abolishing cities and enforcing a nomadic or a "village lifestyle" on all people as a way of curtailing "decadence", banning showering and soap and replacing Christianity with a strange religion where the Abrahamic god is the hated enemy of the Aryans, who wage a war against him in the afterlife.
• Army of Thieves and Whores: The founders of the Soldier Kingdom of Prussia are ragtag group of mercenaries, SS, and Wehrmacht soldiers serving as mercenaries for the CDN.
• Artifact of Attraction: For some reason the mummy of Vladimir Lenin of all things becomes this. After being stolen from the Smithsonian it passes from insurgent groups to cults with insane designs for the dead body before finally being acquired by the Comintern and buried in Suomi.
• Assassination Attempt:
  • David Ben-Gurion was assassinated by a Lehite extremist. Except not really.
  • Phyllis Schlafly is shot shortly after her re-election by an unidentified gunman, dying two days later.
  • Huey Newton manages to survive multiple and flees to the ASU, now one of the few surviving figures of the U.S. Civil Rights and Black Power movements.
  • The President of the Republic of China Wang Kunlun is assassinated by a Falun Gong initiate after increased government scrutiny over the cult's ties with the U.S.
  • Thomas Sankara is assassinated shortly after his retirement.
  • A failed attempt is made on US President McMath's life, which serves only to radicalize him into pushing bolder reforms.
• Assassin Outclassin': Fidel Castro turns this up to eleven compared to OTL.
• The Atoner: Several nations, particularly but not exclusively those that underwent socialist revolutions, make it a point to mend the scars of their past crimes and abuses. They include:
  • Finland/Suomi. The first country to undergo a communist revolution since the fall of the Soviet Union, the newly-established United People's Republic has dedicated itself to make amends for White Finland's role in the second world war as well as the White regime's attempts at ethnic cleansing and settler-colonialism in Karelia and the portions of Russia it annexed. In the process, it has become a model for minority rights and self-determination (and refuge to many persecuted ethnic groups in surrounding nations) as well as a major technological contributor in Comintern development programs.
  • The French People's Republic immediately attempts to build bridges with nations formerly colonized by France through cultural exchange and developmental programs. Though not without suspicion and old grudges resurfacing (especially within the ASU after Sankara's assassination in Paris), the former colonies have been warmly receptive of France's overtures for the most part.
  • Türkiye/Anatolia, after its revolution, has made major strides in addressing the old republic's history of genocide and imperialism.
  • Australia (eventually Oceania), while still remaining liberal and capitalist under its Labor-dominated government, has set out to "decolonize" itself (beginning with the repeal of White Australia and implementing other anti-racist legislation) and fight fascism and Japanese imperialism abroad while coordinating with the Comintern ever since its humbling defeat at its hands in the Great African War along with the rest of the OFN. Subverted as some of its methods of doing so have been criticized as misguided, paternalistic and unintentionally bigoted however well-intentioned^note with conditioning welfare to aboriginal communities on them having more children as the most notable example. More skeptical voices within the Comintern see it as simply a cynical attempt by the Australian ruling class at revitalizing their nation as a major power through immigration and trade.
  • The Free Socialist Republic of Deutschland based in Alsace-Lorraine is often stereotyped within the Comintern as a nation full of Atoner Complexes.
  • In general, European communist nations (especially in Eastern Europe) address their past histories of vicious antisemitism and pass Right of Return laws for Jewish families who emigrated or were forcefully displaced, leading to a small but stable Jewish community in Comintern-controlled Europe to slowly regrow in their historic lands after being decimated by decades of genocide at the hands of the Einheitspakt and Tsarist Russia.
• Back from the Brink: The rise of the Comintern allows a resurgence of socialist and communist ideologies.
• Balkanize Me:
  • The Greek Civil War of 1972 ended with the country divided between a socialist north and capitalist south.
  • The Irish Crisis ends with the division of the island between a Pakt puppet in the north and a CDN puppet in the south. The country is reunified under the latter during the 1984 Crisis.
  • When Fascist Italy finally collapses, it breaks up into tens of pieces, resulting in balkanization being known as italinisation in TLM. Eventually they consolidate under the Comintern into a dozen of polities in a loose confederation.
  • The fate of the German Reich after its collapse, being divided into rival successor states loosely united by the CDN and the threat of Comintern invasion.
  • After the fall of the British fascist government, Great Britain is balkanized again by the USA into England, Scotland, Wales and Cornwall, all puppet states.
  • The Second Russian Civil War ends with Russia divided between two Eurasian states.
  • Switzerland collapses when the deputized fascist and ultranationalist militias of remnants fleeing France, Germany and Italy seize power for themselves in corresponding linguistic regions while the remnants of the Swiss government hold on to a small portion of its territory.
• Berserk Button: A common stereotype about the Mediterranean Federation is that theirs is to call them Italians while Zapadoslavics' is to have anything that can be interpreted as German in their vicinity.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: The Boer-Belgian White Democratic Bastion State is crushed by the Comintern, but not before they enact scorched earth policies across several regions and force their children to partake in mass suicide alongside them.
• Big "WHAT?!": A CIA higher up and George H. W. Bush's reaction upon learning of the Red Triad event, the Comintern's triple nuclear strikes at the start of 1984.
• Black Shirt: As soon as the UK declares war on Ireland, Ulster explodes in violence as pro-British Unionists rise up to pave way for their fascist patrons.
• Boring, but Practical: Mujahidul Islam is essentially this and even Invoked in-universe: his projects as head minister of the Comintern are as mundane as he is compared to the other candidates, with his main proposal being a Comintern-wide standardization and infrastructure building project that greatly improves the Comintern's capacities once implemented.
• Breaking the Glass Ceiling:
  • Phyllis Schlafly became the first female POTUS, to the dismay of both progressives and conservatives for different reasons.
  • Leila Khaled becomes the first female president of the UAR.
  • Svetlana Bukharina becomes the first Vice-chairwoman of the Comintern.
  • Rosa Negrin becomes the first female President of Cuba.
  • Else Christensen becomes the first female leader of Denmark as the leader of the All-Danish Social Republic.
• Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": HIV is instead known as the ICS, Immunity Collapse Syndrome.
• Capitalism Is Bad: With socialists as the protagonists and a USA dominated by big business among the antagonists, this is a given.
• Changing of the Guard: Steve Smith, protagonist of a small sidestory in TNO where he travels through the Russian Anarchy, is succeeded by his daughter Irene doing the same in the German Anarchy, surviving the experience relatively unscathed, as her father did.
• Chummy Commies: The Comintern is unambiguously presented as the good guy and its member states have all adopted democratic forms of socialism.
• Civil War: Too many to count, with some even occurring within the Comintern itself.
  • China falls into a new civil war after the right-wing factions of the KMT refuse to accept Zhou Enlai, supported by the CPC and the rest of the KMT, as an interim president. The war devolves into a three-way conflict when the revolting faction of the KMT splitting between pro- and anti-Japanese sides.
  • Italy collapses into civil war once news of their Duce Giani's death break out.
  • The German Reich falls into civil after the death of most of its leadership in a fire, quickly followed by the rest of its sphere of puppet regimes under assault by liberals, communists and anti-German fascists eager to free thesmselves from the Nazi jackboot.
  • Following this the socialists in France rise up against the technocratic-fascist puppet government, starting the Third French Revolution. The socialists secure France with the Comintern's help before the CDN can intervene.
  • A similar communist revolution in Hungary quickly removes the fascists from power while another in Romania encounters difficulty requiring much help from the Comintern to succeed.
  • Brazil and Turkey fall into civil war in 1984 as their government reject the electoral victory of the Communists and attempt to suppress them with the help of the far-right. The Communists win in Turkey with Comintern support but the intervention of America in Brazil results in a stalemate, lest the world dies in nuclear fire.
  • The collapse of the Russian army after its failed offensive into China leads to the general collapse of the Empire into civil war. The civil war ends with Russia divided between the Comintern and the CDN each backing a different Eurasian republic.
  • The Filipino Brother War is started by a faction of anti-Comintern national communists opposing the Comintern's demands in resources to prosecute conflicts in which the Philippines are not involved. The war is quickly won by the Comintern but foremost exposes the inequalities of the Comintern structure and a growing dissatisfaction towards it.
  • Afghanistan falls into civil war as Islamists and Maoists rise up against the Royalist government.
  • Yunan/Ionia eventually falls into civil war from the divisions between its many rival ethnicities.
• Les Collaborateurs:
  • Despite being defeated during the French Civil War, a collaborationist regime was restored in France after the German-Iberian invasion of France in 1974.
  • The British collaborators are still in power in the UK under A. K. Chesterton at the start of the Quest.
  • Some wealthier African-Americans have come to support segregation due to obtaining a privileged position within its racial hierarchy, they are known as "Albino Dons".
  • Park Chung-hee, better known in-universe as Takagi Masao, is the first and only Korean member of the Japanese Diet.
• Commie Nazis: The Revolutionary Nationalists are essentially Strasserists for a new age, allying ultranationalist racial supremacism and economic corporatism while employing anti-capitalist rhetoric. Serov's Ordosocialism was also subsumed into it.
  • After the collapse of Germany and the Pakt, Revolutionary Nationalist regimes come to power in Denmark and the Netherlands, and in some German successor states.
• Conspiracy Theorist: Unsurprisingly, fascist powers blame all of their problems on Jews and other hated enemies.
  • Albert Speer's death is blamed on a Burgundian-Zionist plot by the Reich.
  • The De-Germanisation League believes modern German culture is a Yiddish perversion of true Aryan identity that they must eliminate and replace by "true" Aryan culture as defined by Theo Eibenschütz, a pseudo-historian whose entire work is nothing but hoaxes, pseudoscience and his own wild imagination.
• Continuation: Of The New Order.
  • America elected George Wallace for two terms, who created the African mandates after his victory in the South African War and the Malagasy Civil War. Phyllis Schlafly would succeed him in 1972.
  • The collaborators won the English Civil War and reunified the UK under A. K. Chesterton.
  • In Germany, the Gang of Four came out victorious in the power struggle, but their gains were soon reversed by the twin punch of the Oil Crisis and the Second West Russian War, allowing Speer to win back power by allying with Theodor Oberländer.
  • Niccolò Giani became Duce of Italy and turned the country into a hermit kingdom.
  • The Falangists won the Iberian Wars.
  • The Red Poppy Movement dismantled Burgundy and the French Resistance won the French Civil War, creating a Socialist France. It was subsequently invaded by the German Reich and Falangist Iberia, who reestablished the Vichy regime.
  • The PALF won the West African War.
  • The Pan-Arab Revolt during the Oil Crisis was victorious across the Middle East.
  • Russia was reunified by Chita under Shepunov.
  • The liberal monarchists under Shapour Bakhtiar won the Iranian Civil War, allowing Crown Prince Reza to ascend as Shah.
  • Japan elected Takagi Sōkichi but his administration is in question after they lost the Great Asian War to China. He's later succeeded by Sejima Ryūzō.
• Cool Train: Mujahidul Islam's "Cape to Macau" railway.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: The Japanese Zaibatsus and American corporations ruthlessly exploit populations across the world for profit.
• The Coup:
  • Several attempts were made even before the start of the Quest to overthrow Giani and his mystic fascists from power in Italy.
    • And many more are made right after the revelation of his death.
  • The liberal government of Japan is overthrown by a Military Coup when a group of soldiers deliver an ultimatum to the Diet ending democracy and creating an "emergency government of national salvation" led by Sejima Ryūzō.
  • A coup attempt in 1985 Costa Rica is foiled.
• The British fascist regime is overthrown in a bloodless coup by resentful army generals and remnants of the Conservative and Labor parties who immediately bend the knee to the USA.
• Crapsack World: In 1975, the world is for the most part dominated by authoritarian superpowers. Sub-Saharan Africa is a giant colonial playground for mercenaries and corporations, the oppressed peoples trapped within the Nazi and Japanese spheres of influence live in suffering, Eastern Europeans are doomed to be exterminated and replaced by German colonists, and America's worst impulses were unleashed, creating a Jim Crow nation. And on top of that Earth is heading towards an ecological collapse due to none of the great powers taking any measure to fight pollution.
  • By 1984, Iberia has become the epitome of this trope. The destruction of any and all technology and culture on the peninsula resulted in gigantic famines and epidemics, so much that by the time the Comintern invades it, much of the population is dead, the country is littered with ghost towns, and Spanish culture is practically gone. One UAR soldier unfavorably compares it to the Dark Ages.
• Crazy-Prepared: Due to being landlocked and surrounded by hostile nations, Kyrgyzstan has adopted extreme measures to survive such as the codifying universal conscription for all citizens regardless of sex, and the dedication of a large portion of its economic abilities to the defense budget. The average Kyrgyz citizen goes through a two-year mandatory military service and even afterward is expected to take part in routine exercises and drills as well as enlist in the worker and peasant militias, with longer service periods mandated for specialists such as engineers and medics. It has proven a wise investment when the Kyrgyz people managed to fight off a joint Tajik-Uzbek invasion in 1967, followed by an attempted incursion by Kazakhstan the next year.
• Cult of Personality: Duce Giani's cult portrays him as a messiah-like figure who saved Italy in its darkest hour, with an abundance of pictures, portraits, and statues of the illustrious Duce everywhere. This is further reinforced by the suppression of Christianity, substituting fascism as the country's new religion, asking nothing less than fanaticism from the people of Italy and to treat his word as gospel.
• Culture Chop Suey: The Confederation of Aryan Republics merges Nazism with elements of the United States from 1776, the leadership of the CAR making no secret of their admiration for the USA and modelling some of their policies after theirs, they consider both America and Germany to be their "parent states". Both have founding fathers, very autonomous states, a parliament with an executive office much more limited than typical Führerprinzip and multiple political parties (though in the CAR's case they are all officially part of a single party and must all adhere to the CAR's Aryan Thought ideology). The CAR also has Agoge schools inspired by Ancient Sparta.
• Darkest Hour: The start of the war in 1984 as the Comintern finds itself attacked from all sides by the superpowers.
• Dark Horse Victory:
  • Most non-Dixiecrats believed that George Wallace would not last a single term before he had went too far and got himself impeached or forced to resign. Instead he managed to get reelected, to their shock and horror.
  • Sid McMath's US election victory is highly unexpected as his opponent was initially riding high in the polls from victorious foreign wars, only for his support to plummet with the stock market crash hitting the USA.
• David Versus Goliath: The Comintern begins as the underdog against several superpowers, but as the Quest progresses it becomes a superpower in its own right, on par with its rivals.
• Dead All Along: It is revealed in 1984 that Niccolò Giani, the Duce of Italy, had been dead for two years while the fascist regime hid the truth.
• Deal with the Devil:
  • Several times the Comintern, and thus the players, are given the option to accept a deal by another powerful nation giving them generous advantages in exchange for selling out their principles.
  • Ireland calling the USA and its alliance for help led them to sign one such deal. The Americans provided air support, but would deploy troops only if Ireland if it joins the alliance (which requires members to spend 5% of their GDP on CDN maintenance with the option of taking out loans to pay for it and to cease all trade with all nations hostile to CDN interests), adopts Schlaflyist market reforms, opens their market to American companies without any restrictions and establishes free trade zones throughout Ireland under the jurisdiction of CDN forces and law, effectively turning the country into an American colony. With Wehrmacht forces bearing down on Dublin and seemingly no other option, the government accepted.
• Disc-One Final Boss: The German Reich collapses in 1984, but the much more threatening United States takes its place as the suzerain state to all of non-communist Europe. In addition to that, Japan under Sejima implements reforms to revitalize the CPS to better hold out against the red tide sweeping Asia.
• Different World, Different Movies:
  • Star Wars is never made due to George Lucas being blacklisted from the filmmaking business for "communist sympathies".
  • A series named Star Trek exists but has nothing to do with the OTL version, being made by a Boer expat director who based the series loosely on the Boer Trekkers, with the show focusing on the efforts of the America-coded Democratic Star Confederacy's vanguard fleet to clear habitable planets of natives and subdue them (with the prime directive referring to subjucation protocols).
  • Red Dawn (1984) is made with a heavy dose of white supremacism and antisemitism added to the Dirty Communists invading the USA and a different ending where American and Nazi German forces arrive on time to save the day. The film is originally meant to feature blacks and arabs as the main enemies but this is changed to asians due to few African-Americans and Arab-Americans being willing to act for it and the film is heavily revised to keep it in line with The Hays Code.
  • In general, science-fiction is dominant over fantasy within the Comintern with Afrofuturism, Arabmodernism and other artistic movements being dominant in the 80s and 90s, but fantasy starts to experience a surge in the 2000s as a new fantasypunk movement rises to revise and innovate on fantasy settings to make them more leftist-friendly (with a niche genre of Maoist commune Isekais).
  • Avatar is directed and produced by a film collective made up of indigenous peoples from around the world, becoming a triumph of CGI and worldbuilding with a rich story that explores themes of colonialism, environmentalism and modernity.
• The Dissenter Is Always Right: The only Central Asian nation to not participate in the attempted invasion of Kyrgyzstan in 1984, Karakalpakstan, is the only one to not have its army annihilated by tactical nuclear weapons.
• Driven to Suicide: The commander of the submarine that was forced to nuke the CAR navy despite knowing it to make heavy use of Human Shield tactics is mentioned to eventually have taken his own life from the guilt.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Albert Speer, Führer of the German Reich, is crushed by a giant steel swastika prop as he gives a speech celebrating the completed extermination of Jews in Europe.
• Due to the Dead: The death of Delmer Berg, the last survivor of the Lincoln Battalion, goes unnoticed in the USA save for Californian fascist groups organizing a march to celebrate his death and picket his funeral while he and his comrades are commemorated and honored by the Comintern in liberated Madrid.
• Dying for Symbolism:
  • The extinction of the bald eagle, America's symbol, due to ecological devastation serves to show how far the USA has fallen from its stated principles.
  • Fred Rogers is assassinated on New Years Day 1984, preluding the chaos to come that same year.
• Eagleland: Type 2 to the extreme. The USA in TLM no longer represents the bastion of any sort of liberty with its worst aspects unshackled and any redeeming quality long gone after the Wallace and Schlafly presidencies. Racial segregation is constitutionally enshrined, white supremacist violence is normalized, eugenics are still accepted practices, the government tests sterilization programs targeting minorities and violently suppresses opposition outside of its Overton window very slanted to the right, regulations and workers' protections were cut down to the benefit of predatory private corporations, and Schlafly's incompetence contributed to worsening misogyny in America by making the idea of a woman in charge of anything laughable.
• Eagle Squadron:
  • The International Revolutionary Brigades, the Comintern's international military force, includes members from neutral and antagonistic nations.
  • During the Great African War, the OFN receives foreign volunteers, including the Garvey Regiments from America and the Pan-Europa forces from the Einheitspakt (including many former SS and non-Germans promised honorary Aryan status for service or simply press-ganged). Meanwhile the Comintern receives help from Chinese, Brazilian and Azad Hind volunteers.
  • The Coalition of Democratic States creates its own version of the IRB, the Global Democracy Legions.
• Ecocidal Antagonist: The USA, the German Reich, the Japanese Empire and most of their spheres don't care at all for the environment, resulting in ecological ravages. In America, they oppose any sort of environmental regulations as obstacles to the free market. The CAR actually considers it a positive if it can make the lives of non-Aryans worse.
• Egopolis:
  • The Nazis build SpeerStadt in Antarctica, self-sufficient city named after the late Führer.
  • After conquering Haiti, the Dominican Republic renamed Port-au-Prince to Trujilloidad after their dictator.
  • After taking over the city, the White Democratic Bastion State establishes Lumumbashi as its capital and renames it "Degrelle", after the late Belgian fascist leader.
• Emperor Scientist: The Rational Germanic State tries to be this but is hampered by many of its "experts" being still fully committed to various lines of Nazi pseudoscience. Though it does have the highest concentration of scientists, engineers, and medical personnel in the entire post-Reich Germany.
• The Empire: The German Reich, the Empire of Japan, and later the United States of America.
• Enemy Mine:
  • During the Karelian War, Mikhail Oktan bungled the war and his reputation with Murmansk hard enough that the socialists among the Russian rebels allied with Red Finland to drive him back. The Russian and Finnish socialists became allies afterwards but not without ethnic tensions.
  • During the Great African War OFN troops and SS volunteers, who were enemies during the South African War, find themselves fighting side by side against the African independentists as both want to maintain colonial rule in Africa.
  • Following the collapse of Nazi Germany, the remnants of the German sphere, even hardline Nazi states, chose to accept American help and CDN membership to protect themselves from the Comintern.
• The Enemy Weapons Are Better: At first the Comintern has archaic weapons compared to more powerful nations and the superpowers especially due to most members lacking the industrial capacity and technology to make them. As the Comintern bridges the technological gap through the Quest their weapons become on par with those of their enemies.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: The glorified mercenary company with a state attached in Germany, the Soldier Kingdom of Prussia, practices a unique form of National Socialism where “Aryanness” is determined not by race or ethnicity but rather fighting prowess and ruthlessness. As such, it employs soldiers of all walks of life from across the world, including those conventionally deemed “untermenschen” by Nazis like Slavs and black Africans (particularly Waffen-SS/Wehrmacht veterans from the defunct RKs). This stands in stark contrast with most other post-Reich statelets.
• Evil Chancellor: After Albert Speer's death, Theodor Oberländer installs the late Führer's son as his successor to control the Reich from behind the throne.
• Evil Colonialist: The OFN treats the African mandates as colonies from which they extract as much wealth as possible. They also establish self-ruling dominions of Anglo, Belgian, German, Italian and Jewish settlers in areas where they were the majority to perpetuate colonial rule under the guise of national self-determination.
• Evil Luddite: The Iberian Falangists engage in a massive de-industrialization and de-urbanization campaign, reasoning that the only way to truly eradicate socialism, syndicalism, or any strain of leftism is to eradicate the industry and urban areas from which they arise, resulting in mass deaths, the destruction of Iberia's academic base and Iberia becoming fully dependent on Germany for all non-military related industries and reliant on Ukrainian grain.
• Evil Old Folks: The leadership of the White Army Junta, Boris Shepunov in tow, is made up of old men and the empire they created and rule is autocratic and rabidly antisemitic.
• Evil Reactionary:
  • The Nazis and fascists in general believe in a return to a fantasized glorious past and violently oppose any change from this vision.
  • The Russian Empire wants to restore the autocratic Russia from before the February and October Revolutions and shares the old empire's rabid antisemitism.
  • American Presidents George Wallace and Phyllis Schlafly. Wallace is a segregationist and general racist who successfully prevented the advancement of civil rights for oppressed groups and blacks especially. Schlafly believes in a return to "traditional values" (in substance a white supremacist, Christian nationalist and misogynistic society) and undoes all New Deal policies and Wallace's populist legislation, allowing private companies to exploit Americans and other nations as if the Gilded Age had never ended.
• The Exile:
  • The Comintern nations host many socialist exiles.
    • Svetlana Bukharina, Yuri Andropov, Nikolai Kardashev, Nikolai Voznesensky, Mikhail Suslov, Mikhail Tukhachevsky and Lazar Kaganovich fled Russia to the UAR. The Russian red emigre community also includes the surviving followers of the late Valery Sablin and Genrikh Yagoda, though the latter are much more marginal.
    • Mohammad Danesh is an exile from Azad Hind to Bharat.
    • Alexander Men managed to escape from Russia to Bharat.
    • Huey Newton fled America to the ASU after an assassination attempt, where he continues to organize the Black Panthers on an international level.
    • Western artisans and scientists such as Murray Bookchin, Francis Crick, Freeman Dyson, Creator/Carl Sagan, Jonas Salk, and James Watson have taken refuge in the UAR and Cuba.
  • Mikhail Matkovsky, Svetlana Stalina and Dmitry Likhachyov managed to escape Russia for America.
  • Former European colonists fleeing the Great African War and finding the United States too liberal for their taste find themselves welcomed alongside Iberian refugees by the Dominican Republic's Trujillo regime attempting to "whiten" the island's population. Some of the exiles like Moshe Dayan (escaping war crimes charges) are hired to train the regime's troops.
  • Hayao Miyazaki fled to Azad Hind due to getting in trouble with the government for the content of his works. They would ironically become far more popular outside Japan.
  • Steve Smith became a target of harrasment for the FBI for “socialist sympathies” after his return from the Russian Anarchy and moved to Eurasia eventually, where he had his daughter Irene.
• Exotic Entree: A newspaper headline reads "Penguin meat increasingly popular across the Japanese sphere."
• Faking the Dead: Abba Kovner is said to have been killed and his body set on fire by the Nazis before being thrown into a canyon, becoming a legend as The Burned Jew. However reports of disappearing German patrols continue and the text on the death of the Nazi leadership in a building fire is concluded by a single word associated with Kovner: Nakam (Revenge).
• Fallen States of America: Wallace's segregationist policies combined with Schlafly's isolationism and neoliberal/right-libertarian economics led the USA to lose considerable influence in the world, to the point of not even being considered a contender in the Cold War by the start of the Quest, and no longer represents any ideal of liberty.
• Fascist, but Inefficient: Practically an aesop, the fascist and authoritarian regimes in TLM are incapable of alleviating the issues they create, much less a prosperous, lasting nation, and will most often blame anyone but themselves for their failures.
• The Federation:
  • The Suomi Socialist Republic adopts a non-territorial federal structure, creating autonomous republics for its minority populations allowing a great deal of autonomy in their internal affairs and renaming the state to United People’s Republics of Suomi.
  • The African Socialist Union adopts a federalist system inspired by the Soviet Union's (A)SSRs while also taking cues from Bharat on the language question (Hausa and English as national languages with many others as regional languages).
• Fictional Flag: Contributors to the Quest created many fictional flags for its nations. Some examples:
  • Flags of the Comintern
    • ^France The flag of the French People's Republic (of Soviets and Communes) is evocative of multiple aspects of French revolutionary history. It is the French tricolor dominated by its red portion which is large enough to resemble the red banner of the Paris Commune, showing the historical progression from the original bourgeois nationalist revolution starting from 1789 to the realization of the internationalist proletarian revolution from 1871 to 1972/1984 (Commune to the first and second People's Republics, respectively). The cog and wreathe symbolize nature and agriculture in harmony with industry and technology, while the Red Poppy both commemorates the original Red Poppy uprising by the enslaved workers of Ordenstaat Burgund (within the larger French Civil War) as well as the sacrifices they and so many other martyred French toilers have made towards a peaceful and prosperous future.
  • Flags of the rest of the world
    • ^CARThe flag of the Confederation of Aryan Republics is a gaudy and menacing image sloppily blending together elements of the flags of the American Betsy Ross, the Confederate Stars and Bars, the Teutonic Order's Grandmaster standard, and the Second German Reich's banner, signifying the historic destiny of the supposed master race colonizing the lands of "subhuman savages" to build their own self-governing agricultural paradises from the Northern Crusades to Generalplan Ost. This commemoration of the worst aspects of German and American history is joined by a nod to the ancient Greek city state of Sparta in the Swastika-bearing Hoplite 'Aspis', referencing the CAR's self-image as a Spartiate society wherein German settlements are sustained by Slavic/Baltic "helots" kept in line by the militaristic Aryan ruling caste.
• Fictional Political Party:
  • Factions of the Comintern:
    • Revolutionary Militants. They are united by an aggressive foreign policy, mass mobilization and militarism, believing there can be no peace with capitalism. They include Thomas Sankara and Muammar Gaddafi.
    • Cybernetic Marxists. Techno-optimists who focus on science and technology as the pathway to communism with ambitions towards full automation, life extension and space exploration. They focus on supporting education and scientific advancement in the Comintern. They include Ali Sabri and Nikolai Kardashev.
    • Religious Socialists. They gather all those syncretizing religion and socialism and want to promote their doctrines to the non-socialist faithful. They are moderate and can lean conservative and have a pacifist foreign policy.
    • Neo-Bukharinists. Those who still adhere to the ideas of Nikolai Bukharin despite the fall of the USSR, advocating for variants of Bukharin's New Economic Policy too build up the Comintern's industry. Their reform proposals are notably more mundane but nonetheless capable and are moderate on social and foreign policy issues.
    • International Supremacists. Primarily composed of left communists but not only, they are the most radical advocates for turning the Comintern into a world government. Contrary to most, they see liberal and progressive capitalist powers as the greater threat due to being much more sustainable systems than a fascism doomed to collapse. They include Svetlana Bukharina.
    • Agrarian Socialists. Socialists who focus on rural, agrarian and local interests but are not united on other issues.
    • National Communists. Left-wing nationalists solely united by their opposition to empowering the Comintern.
    • Ecological Leftists. Socialists united by a concern of the environmental degradation brought on by human/capitalist actions, especially the often disastrous endeavors of fascist regimes. They are almost as techno-optimist and belligerent as the Cybernetic Marxists and the Revolutionary Militants respectively.
  • The Confederation of Aryan Republics is ruled by the Aryan Farmer and Laborer's National Socialist Party, officially a single party containing multiple factions but de facto multiple Nazi parties in a trenchcoat.
• Fictional United Nations: The Comintern attempts to reach out to neutral countries by creating the United Nations as a world forum that is essentially the OTL organization. However the UN is short-lived and dissolved in the aftermath of the Great Jihad of 1984 as neutral nations abandon the organization, leading to it being subsumed into the Comintern's institutions.
• Final Solution:
  • The Nazis never stopped their extermination projects.
  • In America:
    • The US government launched a secret program to sterilize Puerto Ricans to test if this would be a feasible to reduce “troublesome” populations to controllable levels with minimal disruptions. The project is discontinued after its discovery and the subsequent backlash.
    • Several southern states create "Negro-free zones". Certain states outside the South with relatively sparse African-American populations beforehand such as Wyoming, Montana and Vermont have declared themselves "Negro-free" after "inexplicable black flight".
  • Nazi-ruled Norway and independent Sweden both deport the entirety of their Sami populations.
  • Falangist Iberia launches an extermination campaign against the Basques, Catalans and Galicians.
• Fighting for a Homeland: The Zionist movement attempts several times to create an independent nation by taking over someone else's land and failing, first in Palestine, then in Namibia and Angola with the OFN's blessing, only to be finally given one by the USA in ex-East Prussia, renamed Tkuma, when the German Reich collapses.
• Forgettable Character: Greenland is stereotyped as this among the Comintern, even though they are important as a forerunner of indigenous rights.

Who? — Thomas Sankara on being told Greenland has petitioned to join the Comintern.

• Former Regime Personnel: The Russian Empire employs some of the former Russian warlords for its own purposes:
  • Ivan Serov managed to survive the Komi power struggle and to secure himself a position in the Russian Empire's Okhrana, where he created a secret ordosocialist clique.
  • Alexander Pokryshkin was imprisoned by Tomsk but liberated by the Russian Empire in return for training their new air force.
  • The Eurasian Social Republic ends up doing the same with the remnants of the Tsarist forces, offering them amnesty in exchange for a place in their new state.
• Fourth-Wall Observer: Der Schrimherr, Nuremberg's leader, was once but an ignorant failson of a wealthy Nazi party official who one day just before the German Civil War broke out got so high out of his mind that he accidentally discovered that the world of TLM isn't real and is just the product of the imagination of an incomprehensible entity (the author, which he sees in the form of his Sufficient Velocity profile picture) who is dreaming it into being out of sheer boredom. The revelation that literally everything he ever knew and loved was not real and mere make belief broke him so much that he threw himself wholly and fully into establishing Nuremberg and making it as insane as possible in an effort to keep the sleeping god entertained and content so he doesn't wake up and the world vanish from existence.
• Gendercide: The Romanian Iron Guard regime in 1984, in response to the Bucharest-based socialist uprising and Comintern intervention, mobilizes every "able-bodied adult" male it can find (read: able to carry a hand grenade) to fight off the Reds or die trying in a desperate bid to "save" Romania from Communism. When the dust settles and the Comintern forces prevail, it is revealed that 90 percent of the male population of Romania dies in the bloodbath, which leads the new female-dominated Red Romania to hastily seek measures to address the massive gender imbalance on top of the desolation of much of the country outside the Bucharest region. This includes everything from relatively mundane policies like encouraging male-skewed immigration from other parts of the Comintern and providing conventional Natalist incentives to more radical solutions like adopting revolutionary gender-noncomformative family policies, legalizing polyamory and conducting experiments in communal living and child-raising.
• Genocide from the Inside: The De-Germanisation League practices self-genocide on German culture because it believes its modern iteration is a Yiddish perversion of true Aryan identity that they must eliminate and replace by "true" Aryan culture as defined by pseudo-historian Theo Eibenschütz.
• Global Ignorance: US President Donald Regan thinks Greenland is an African island, it's in North America.
• Golden Mean Fallacy: The US employs it to positively portray its occupation of Norway as "keepers of the peace" standing between the German settlers who want to secede into their own state and the Norwegian natives who want to remove them.
• Gondor Calls for Aid: The IRB coming to the aid of Ireland during the Irish Crisis.
• Good Is Not Soft: The Comintern in general, whose position as the most righteous bloc does not mean it isn't willing to use violence and subversion against fascism and capitalism when it deems those measures necessary. Taken to an extreme with the Revolutionary Militant faction within the Comintern which advocates for constant aggression and revolutionary agitation against the capitalist world, seeing whatever death and destruction caused by the resulting conflicts as paltry compared to if capitalism is allowed to run its course any longer than necessary.It's not coincidental that they make major gains in the 1985 election as the CDN and CPS are seemingly more desperate for profit and markets (to the point of the former extending its protection to genocidal fascist states like the CAR as the red tide nears).
• Government in Exile:
  • After the losing the Egyptian Civil War that birthed the United Arab Republic, Anwar Sadat fled to Iran and set up a government in exile there.
  • The CDN is host to dozens of governments in exile that it recognizes as the legitimate governments of their communist homelands, such as the Kingdom of Egypt and Sudan or France.
• Gratuitous Foreign Language: Some countries are commonly called by their native name: Suomi for Finland, Bharat for India and Kalaallit Nunaat^note literally "Land of the Kalaallit" (the Inuit ethnic group indigenous to Greenland) for Greenland.
• Great Offscreen War: The Second West Russian War happened after the end of TNO and before the start of TLM.
• Guilt Complex: The Free Socialist Council Republic of Germany and the French People's Republic do this a lot due to the stain of Nazism and colonialism respectively on their histories.
• Head-in-the-Sand Management: How the USA deals with the ICS (OTL HIV) at first, even denying its initial arrival on American soil.
• The Hedonist: Ramfis Trujillo is more interested in partying and car racing than actually running the country which he leaves in the care of his late father's generals and lackeys for the most part. This lifestyle would spell his end as he dies falling from the twentieth floor after having caught fire in a drug-induced mania, landing on a car that promptly exploded.
• Heel Realization:
  • George Wallace came to one as he became overwhelmed by the guilt and horror of what he had unleashed, leading him to heavy drinking and eventually suicide.
  • Sejima regrets doing his coup every single day, largely because of how difficult and precarious it is to keep all the relevant parties in the CPS satisfied and how short-sighted the Zaibatsus are, especially when it comes to keeping the Sea of Japan suitable for complex life.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation:
  • Muammar Gaddafi's bluster is partially to hide his deep insecurity about not being as well read or versed in the complexities of theory as his peers, and he suffers deeply from imposter syndrome.
  • Svetlana Bukharina likewise feels like all her achievements and accomplishments come down to her family name alone and all she truly owns are her failures, whether in Komi or the Comintern.
  • Mujahidul Islam knows that he lacks charisma compared to his peers and is deeply afraid of being forgotten as a footnote in history, working himself to the bone on SISO and rarely sleeping more than 5 hours a day.
• Historical Hero Upgrade:
  • Josef Stalin, as a result of losing the Soviet power struggle to Nikolai Bukharin, never takes power in the USSR. However, certain theories and economic proposals of his have positively impacted his legacy after their tremendously successful implementation in some Comintern countries. As a result, he is remembered as a brilliant if controversial revolutionary and theoretician, with some believing he would have led the Comintern to victory and prosperity had he taken power instead of Bukharin.
  • Mao Zedong dies during the Second Sino-Japanese War and his legacy is impacted in a similar way to Stalin's. He never became a dictator and some of his ideas survived him to be implemented in a democratic fashion by various Comintern countries in Asia inspired by Maoism.
  • Gamal Abdel Nasser leads a much more democratic and successful UAR than OTL and retires rather than die in office, though he was a Permanent Elected Official until then.
  • Kim II-sung never became a dictator, instead being remembered as a hero of the Great Asian War fighting the Japanese in Manchuria. After the war he became a leader of the Korean-Chinese community and a clandestine supporter of Korean independence groups until he retired from politics.
  • Muammar Gaddafi is a fully democratic leader in TLM as the Chairman of the Comintern. He retains his OTL Cloudcuckoolander and Warhawk tendencies in service of humankind.
• History Repeats:
  • When the Great African War starts, the Boer nationalists declare their independence from South Africa and the ANC rises up just like they did during the South African War. And just like last time the former are defeated, but by the Comintern rather than the OFN while the ANC stands on the side of the victors this time.
  • The failure of a puppet Tsar to break free and institute liberal reforms after his strongman regent's death is repeated with Shepunov's death.
  • Invoked by a Neo-Soviet partisan during the Second Russian Civil War.
  "Our soldiers are dying in a meatgrinder, famine grips the land, riots in every city and the Tsar is incompetent, God help me this is 1917 all over again."
• Human Shield: The CAR has absolutely no qualms about using non-Aryans in this manner.
• Hypocrite: The USA claims to fight for freedom against Comintern tyranny even though the people of the Comintern are freer than the American people have ever been.
• I Hate You, Vampire Dad: Yunan's opinion regarding Turkey/Anatolia, having been used by Turkey as both a settler colony and a dumping ground for non-Turkish ethnicities in a land bereft of most of its original Greek population (though a few remain), making the relations between the artificial country's many ethnicities tense.
• Insane Troll Logic: The Iberian Falangists are troubled by the fact that despite all the efforts of the likes of Hitler, Pétain, and even their own Franco, the left seemed to somehow rise again and again in fascist states, even suppressing and exterminating rebellious minorities doesn't work. Their conclusion is that the Marxist theory that leftism and socialism are inevitable byproducts of modern industrial societies is right and therefore the only way to destroy leftism is to destroy industrial society entirely.
• Internal Reformist: American President Sid McMath, who attempts to enact progressive reforms for the benefit of all Americans regardless of race. However the previous administrations made the issues he tries to combat very well-entrenched and he is going to be accused of crypto-bolshevism and stonewalled by his opponents no matter what he does despite being clearly in words and deeds a progressive capitalist with an anti-communist outlook, all of it making implementing even the mildest items on his agenda difficult. Surviving his assassination attempt radicalizes him into pushing a bolder but still reformist agenda.
• Irony:
  • With their destruction of industrial society, the Iberian Falangists can no longer operate their death camps as they no longer have the means to produce Zyklon B.
  • When Lenin's remains are finally back in Red hands, they are buried in Helsinki (the city where he took his fateful return trip to Petrograd) in a Red Finland bordering a White Russia. The irony is lost on no one.
• I Shall Return: After the Irish Crisis, it is a wish of the Comintern to one day come back to Ireland and liberate it.
• Just the First Citizen: The leader of the Rational Germanic State abandoned the title of Führer in favor of the less bombastic Chancellor for its leader.
• Kaiserreich: The Reborn Reich of Sacred Germany and the Soldier Kingdom of Prussia both deliberately invoke this imagery. The former is ruled by the last remnants and descendants of the Junker aristocracy and headed by a "Kaiser" claiming to descend from Wilhelm II (an unverified claim as he remains in power by virtue of his word being backed by too many guns to be ignored).
• Kick the Dog:
  • The Nazis throw celebrations whenever they successfully exterminate an entire ethno-religious group they consider sub-humans from their sphere of influence.
  • The Japanese forces remains infamous for the numerous atrocities they commit, most notably the Rape of Sri Lanka, during which they destroyed everything of use, poisoned the soils and water sources, and crippled civilians to make them a burden on the independent govenrment.
  • Among the most heinous crimes the United States commit is the Decimation of Iceland during George H. W. Bush's invasion to clear the way to Europe. It starts by nuking the German fleet anchored at Reykjavik, instantly erasing half of the island's population in the process. This nuclear attack is followed by American troops systemically terrorizing, raping and destroying every trace of human civilization in the land with the full blessing of their high command in order to punish the "ungrateful" Icelanders and set a threatening example to wavering CDN members. Those who aren't killed or part of the 40 000 refugees who successfully fled to Greenland in the ensuing campaign are then deported away to Antarctica or Tkuma if they're luckier (being passed as Scandinavian crypto-Jews).
• King on His Deathbed: As the Grand Regent Boris Shepunov nears his 90th birthday he has become barely mobile and requires two handlers at all times to function, but he has yet to name an official successor (in part, because all the candidates keep dropping dead from old age themselves), leading to a brewing power struggle.
• Land of One City: The Free City of Nuremberg, controlling only the city and its surroundings.
• Landslide Election:
  • Thomas Sankara is elected Chairman of the Comintern by a crushing majority.
  • George H. W. Bush wins the 1980 US presidential election by a landslide.
  • Sid McMath wins the 1984 US presidential election by a landslide, winning all states except Texas.
• Let No Crisis Go to Waste:
  • The outbreak Nipponese-Bengali War reveals the Empire of Japan's weakness, taken advantage of by all those who want to liberate their country from the Co-Prosperity Sphere.
  • The Haitian slaves take advantage of the power struggle in the Dominican Republic's leadership after Rafis Trujillo's death to liberate themselves.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: Subverted. The Quest doesn't shy away from showing how "democratic" colonial powers that some would consider a lesser evil can (and did) commit atrocities on par with the fascists, especially in their colonial endeavors.
• A Lighter Shade of Gray: Many of the remaining non-aligned blocs are not immediately hostile to the Comintern, though some tend to be more dubious than others:
  • Oceania (formerly Australia and New Zealand/Aotearoa) is the "friendliest" to the Comintern, having formed trade agreements with them and cooperating on ecological conservationism. Their society is still rather racist however, and they have a poor record of indigenous rights.
    • Costa Rica, in an effort to avoid being subsumed by the CDN, CPS, or Comintern, allied itself with Oceania.
  • Imperial Iran liberated the Caucasus from the CAR and outright refused to join the CDN on moral grounds on account of the CAR's membership within it, but they purged their own communists before the Quest began and are shaping to be a regional thorn in the Comintern's Middle Eastern regions.
  • Mexico, in an attempt to avoid further domination by the USA, makes simultaneous offers with the CDN, CPS, the Comintern, and Oceania, making them untrustworthy in the eyes of everyone.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: The US government is fond of arranging "accidents" for its political dissidents.
  • Francis Parker Yockey died in a "mysterious housefire".
  • Gus Hall was officially trampled to death by a horse. In reality, he was beaten to death by an FBI agent to cover up the fact they spent a few million dollars on a horse-feminizing ray (in OTL they simply sterilized his horses).
• Meaningful Name: Tkuma, the name of the CDN-aligned Jewish state in ex-East Prussia, means "Revival" in Hebrew and refers to the name of a far-right Jewish ethnoreligious supremacist party in OTL Israel. Its capital's name, Masada, means "Fortress" in Hebrew and refers to the ancient fortification in southern Israel.
• Meaningful Rename:
  • As part of the country's "civilizational project" for the creation of a new identity divorced Anglo settle-dominated past Australia is renamed Oceania. New Zealand similarly changes its name to Aotearoa.
  • Both successor states to the Russian Empire abandon the Russian identity in favor of a new Eurasian one with both having different interpretations of it.
• Meet the New Boss: After the victory of the OFN over the Nazi colonies in Sub-Saharan Africa, the natives themselves would see little change to their conditions on the ground.
• MegaCorp: The Zaibatsus are still around and have expanded their influence to dominate the Russian Empire's economy after Japan lost control of China.
• Middle Eastern Terrorists: The UAR must deal with terrorist attacks from Islamist groups supported by the enemies of the Comintern.
• Miscarriage of Justice: The suppression of dissent by authoritarian and anticommunist liberal governments involves a lot of these
  • Noam Chomsky is imprisoned after being arrested on charges of being a Comintern spy, his incarceration has radicalized him.
• The Mole: Prince Souphanouvang, the Prime Minister of Laos, secretly despises the Japanese Empire and cooperates with the Comintern while publicly remaining loyal to the Co-Prosperity Sphere. A week after Japan withdraws from Vietnam, the masquerade is no longer needed, and the Red Prince announces the birth of the Lao Socialist Republic.
• Monumental Damage:
  • The Burgundian SS scrapped the Eiffel Tower in Ost-Paris and used its parts to expand their industrial complex in Rodomo.
  • As part of their efforts to erase non-German culture in the lebensraum, the Nazis destroy Kyiv's St. Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery and replace it with a golden statue of Adolf Hitler.
  • The year 1984 kicks off with Italian Blackshirts declaring Catholicism to be heretical to Italian Fascism, sparking an orgy of raping, pillaging, and burning across Vatican City that ends with the Pope slaughtered, countless artifacts and tomes destroyed, and the Catholic Church in a succession crisis.
  • During their conquest and genocide of the island, a general policy for US forces in Iceland was to destroy any signs of Old Norse civilization and Icelandic culture, from nordic ruins to museums.
• Murder by Mistake: A sniper tries to assassinate Fidel Castro but accidentally shoots another assassin instead.
• National Anthem: Many countries in TLM have a different anthem or are fictional countries given one.
  • The national anthems of Comintern members are co-official with The Internationale in each nation.
  • The African Socialist Union has Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika (Lord Bless Africa), a song associated with pan-African liberation and the OTL anthem of several African countries, including post-apartheid South Africa.
  • The United Arab Republic has Al-Watan Al-Akbar (The Greatest Homeland), a pan-Arab song composed to celebrate the creation of the OTL UAR.
  • Suomi/Finland has Taistojen Tiellä (On the Road to Battle), a Finnish Working Class Anthem.
  • Kalaallit Nunaat/Greenland has Nuna asiilasooq (The Land of Great Length), the OTL ethnic anthem of the Kalaallit natives of Greenland.
  • The Philippines has Bayan Ko (My Country), a patriotic independentist song considered OTL the second, unofficial anthem of the country.
  • The Hellenic People's Republic has Arniémai! (I Refuse!).
  • The Socialist Republic of Haiti has Mawonyèn (The Song of the Maroons), a fictional song made in the same tune as La Dessalinienne (Haiti's real life anthem).
  • The Falangist State of Iberia has Cara al Sol (Facing the Sun), the anthem of the FET y de las JONS and the unofficial anthem of Francoist Spain.
  • The United Kingdom of Great Britain adopted Rule, Britannia!, a popular British patriotic song, under fascist rule.
  • The Irish National State has Hitler, Freund, Comrádaí, a fictional song reflecting its status as a puppet state of Nazi Germany (and also a reference to the East German song "Stalin, Freund, Genosse").
  • The Russian Empire's official anthem is Bozhe, Tsarya khrani! (God Save the Tsar!), the same as before 1917, but the de facto anthem is Marš Drozdovskogo Polka (March of the Drozdovsky Regiment).
  • The Republic of China and its successor the People's Union of China use Yìyǒngjūn Jìnxíngqǔ (March of the Volunteers), the anthem of the People's Republic of China but originally referencing the anti-Japanese volunteer armies that opposed Japan's invasion of Manchuria in the 1930s.
  • The People's Socialist Union of Anatolia uses Devrim Māršī (Revolution March), a fictional song in the same tune as Turkey's real life Independence March anthem.
  • The Socialist Union of the Andes uses Canción de Tiempos del las Guerrillas (Song of the Time of the Guerillas), a fictional song.
  • The People's Republic of Brazil uses Minha Bandeira (My Banner).
  • The Union of Eurasian Soviet Socialist Republics and Communes uses Da Zdravstvuyet Nasha Derzhava (Long Live Our State), a Soviet patriotic song.
  • The French People's Republic uses La Marseillaise des Communards, a fictional song meant to be a reprise of the La Marseillaise de la Commune written in 1871.
  • The Socialist Republic of the Federated Councils of Hungary uses Népihimnusz (People's Anthem), a fictional song closely related to Hungary's old Himnusz.
  • The Socialist Federation of Mediterranean Council Republics uses Bandiera Rossa (Red Flag) and as co-official/confederal anthem Avanti, Marinaie Rossa! (Forward, Red Sailors!), a fictional translated variant of the Soviet naval sea shanty with a similar name (Forward, Red Marines!) which emphasizes the constituent maritime republics.
  • The Paraguayan People's Republic uses Canción del Pueblo Paraguayo (Song of the Paraguayan People), a fictional song commemorating Paraguayan workers and peasants.
  • The People's Republic of Romania uses Zdrobite Cătușe (Broken Chains), which was its OTL anthem from 1948 to 1953.
  • The Confederation of Aryan Republics uses Wehrbauerblut (Blood of the Soldier-Peasant), a fictional song to the tune of Pionierlied.
  • The Republic of Great Britain uses the hymn Jerusalem.
  • The Republic of Cornwall uses Trelawny (The Song of the Western Men), a Cornish patriotic song.
  • The All-Danish Social Republic uses Legionærsangen (Song of the Free Corps), a song referring to the collaborationist Free Corps Denmark part of the SS.
  • The Eurasian Social Republic of the Pacific uses Velikiye Skifiya (Great Scythia), a fictional song heavily influenced by The Evil God and the Dance of the Pagan Monsters from Prokoviev's Scythian Suite.
  • The National Volksrepubliek of the Netherlands uses Zwarte Soldaten (Soldiers in Black), a Dutch nationalist song written under Nazi occupation.
  • The Coalition of Democratic Nations and its Mandates use the fictional song Freedom's Price.
  • The Imperial East Asian Federation uses Daitōakessen'nouta (Song of the Greater East Asian Struggle), an Imperial Japanese military song.
  • The People's Republic of Ionia uses Armonikós Ýmnos stous Laoús tis Ionías/İyonya'nın Uyumlu Halklarının İlahisi (Hymn of the Harmonious Peoples of Yunan/Ionia), a fictional song.
  • The State of Tkuma uses Hatikvah (The Hope), the OTL anthem of Israel.
  • The Republic of Scotland uses Flower of Scotland, the OTL unofficial national anthem of Scotland.
• The Necrocracy: The Holy Roman Reich is officially ruled by Emperor Barbarossa, the 12th century ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, who is said to return to save Germany in its most desperate hour.
• Neutral No Longer: After retreating into neutrality after the Great African War, Australia (later renamed Oceania) exits this neutrality by forming its own alliance.
• Never Suicide: Cesar Chavez's death is "officially" listed as suicide, despite the multiple bullet holes in the back of his head indicating otherwise.
• Newspeak: The official language of the Social Republic of Italy is Fasci Italian, a version of the language with a limited vocabulary and complex grammar and hybridized with Latin to such a degree that it is difficult to figure out whether it isn't a bastardized Latin language.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
  • Phyllis Schlafly is ironically the Comintern's favorite American president for turning a blind eye to their expansion and even allowing private companies to sell equipment to Comintern nations. Had the USA decided to crush the Comintern in its infancy, it would have likely succeeded.
  • The Hamburg Volksstaat accidentally creates a Maoist revolt against itself after disseminating Mao's work among their population due to misinterprating it as anti-communist because of translation errors.
  • Canada attempts to counter the growing the Quebec independence movement as it picks up steam after Che's speech by violently repressing it further, which only serves to legitimize and fuel the movement.
• Nuclear Option: After Bharat develops nuclear weapons, the Comintern distributes them to its member to allow for a greater coverage by the Nuclear Umbrella. Nukes end up being used in 1984 when other powers try to invade fringe Comintern nations thinking they would be safe from this trope.
  • Finland erases the invading Swedish fleet using a nuclear torpedo.
    • They later do the same to the CAR's navy, although the strikes kill several hundred slaves being used as human shields.
  • Facing impossible odds, Chile launches several nuclear strikes against positions of the Triple Alliance, instantly inverting the course of the war and allowing Bolivia, whose army was vaporized, to be couped by Comintern-friendly militias.
  • Kyrgyzstan launches three nukes against the invading armies of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, instantly throwing the three nations into chaos.
• Nuke 'em: During WWIII, the Americans wipe out the Kriegsmarine fleet in Iceland by nuking Reykjavik.
• Odd Friendship: Quite a lot.
  • Within the Comintern: Zapadoslavia and Nepal, China and Red Germany...
  • Comintern and Ireland due to the former's support for the latter during Irish Crisis, particularly with the International Revolutionary Brigades.
• Occupiers Out of Our Country:
  • The Yugoslavs and the Filippinos successfully revolted against Italian and Japanese rule respectively before the start of the Quest.
  • The Great African War begins with the natives of the African OFN mandates revolting after one too many massacres committed by their troops and escalates into a conflict to expel all colonial powers from Sub-Saharan Africa with the intervention of the Comintern.
  • The Viet Minh's continued its guerilla war against the Japanese and their collaborators, ultimately expelling them from Vietnam.
  • The Welsh and Northern Irish socialist revolts against the British and Pakt Irish fascist regimes during the 1984 Crisis. Both revolts end up crushed by the invading USA.
  • Poles, Ukrainians, Czechs and Slovaks rise up against the Nazi puppet government in Slovakia, founding the Zapadoslavic Socialist Republic, which aims to liberate all of their lands from the German Reich.
• Pay Evil unto Evil:
  • Josef Mengele was captured by African partisans during the South African War, who decided to use him as an experiment on how much you can mutilate a human body while leaving it technically alive. His corpse was never identified.
  • Hans Hüttig was beaten to death with a metal chair by a heavily abused secretary, who committed suicide immediately afterwards.
  • After being conquered by Samara, the Aryan Brotherhood proved to be so loathsome and vile that even Oktan was disgusted by them and had their leaders' bodies tortuously and fatally bent to the shape of a swatiska.
  • Heinrich Himmler was captured by partisans during Burgundy's collapse, tortured for hours before being stripped naked and marched into a gas chamber along with dozens of other captured SS personnel.
  • Sayyed Qutb was captured and buried alive by partisans during the Egyptian Civil War, in imitation of the tradition of burying infant girls alive that he and his islamists supported.
  • Hassan el Hudyebi was tried by a revolutionary tribunal for collaboration with Italy and promoting genocide against the Copt population. He was sentenced to death by being fired from a canon in the general direction of Italy.
  • Adolf Eichmann is captured by the UAR in South Africa and given to Jewish communists in Palestine as a show of good faith. He was never seen again.
• People's Republic of Tyranny:
  • Ironically averted by the Comintern. The majority of Comintern member states have "People's" in their name but operate under democratic political systems.
  • Once it is fully reunited and reorganized under the CDN in 1984, Ireland's full name is changed to the "Free Democratic Republic of Ireland" and it is anything but. A thinly-veiled neocolonial vassal state which is constantly pillaged by American corporations as part of the CDN-mandated "free market" reforms, it must crack down on popular unrest lest the CDN does the job itself, as it made clear with the massacre of the Ulster-based Provisional People's Republic of Ireland^note The short-lived socialist republic established by northern IRA cells after they toppled the Pakt puppet state.
  • Amidst the chaos of 1984, the revolting Afrikaner-Belgian settlers in the African Socialist Union establish the "White Democratic Bastion State" which attempts to exterminate/deport the majority-black African population within its borders before the ASU crushes it by the end of the year.
  • The Imperial East Asian Federation purports to be a truly pan-Asian state by granting everyone in it citizenship. However to this is added a tiered system of ethnic-based residencies keeping the Japanese in a privileged position while non-Japanese are restricted at different degrees in their ability to own land and businesses and their residency rights. As an example, there is but a single Korean representative in the entire Diet (and even this is considered going too far for some Japanese nationalists).
  • The Weimar Reich calls itself a democracy but is in truth an oligarchy controlled by the surviving German megacorporations, with political parties identical save for some token issues facing off in meaningless elections. Their politicians still subscribe to Nazism and justify Hitler's dictatorship as a necessary period to purge Germany of subversive elements that would have taken advantage of democracy (which it clearly wasn't).
  • The Free City of Nuremberg is in theory a democracy but actually completely controlled by Der Schrimherr, who rules the city with an iron fist thanks to his charisma, oratory skills and American support.
• Plot-Triggering Death:
  • The death of China's president Wang Kunlun starts the chain of events that will result in the Second Chinese Civil War.
  • The revelation of the death of Il Duce Niccolò Giani is immediately followed by a series of coup and counter-coups as the fascists tear themselves apart for the control of the state.
  • The death of most of the Nazi leadership, Führer Oberländer included, results in the complete collapse of the German Reich and its sphere into chaos and civil war.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: A given in an Axis Victory scenario where unrepentent, genocidal fascist regimes reign freely. It is also shown that the Western liberal democracies of the OFN and later the CDN, while not as vile as the European fascist states or Imperial Japan, are not too far removed as they'd like to believe, with their oppressive racialized hierarchies existing under the hypocritical guise of "liberty" (as seen in their colonies or under segregation), and this only worsens in a world where such concepts are legitimized by Nazi Germany's "success". This comes to a head when the United States becomes the new master of the former German sphere and allows into the CDN not one but several fascist states.
• Power Trio: Muammar Gaddafi, Svetlana Bukharina and Mujahidul Islam form a triumvirate, working together to lead the Comintern after Sankara's retirement. The arrangement ensures that each of them has enough influence to be able to implement at least part of their agendas while effectively acting as checks on each other.
• Pragmatic Villainy:
  • The Sejima regime pragmatically grants concessions and benefits to certain groups and nations in the Sphere in order to shore up domestic support and cultivate a comprador class and so make its regime much more sustainable.
    • Their Korean conscripts are kept loyal by the promises of more privileges or even land grants in China for honorable service.
  • The Shahdom of Persia adopts welfare and egalitarian reforms for the survival of its regime, which remains authoritarian towards dissenting voices in newly-acquired territory who oppose annexation.
• Press-Ganged: When the German Reich doesn't enough bodies for war, it simply presses into service non-Germans, with German colonists taking their place in their native land.
• Pretext for War:
  • A scuffle between a British fishing fleet and Irish patrol boats led to a British ship exploding, likely due to engine malfunction. Chesterton uses this to justify declaring war and invading Ireland.
  • Japan uses the explosion of one of their civilian ships in Azad Hind as a pretext to declare war on their restive puppet state.
• Prisoner's Work: The German Reich uses prison labor to develop their Antarctic colony of New Swabia.
• Private Military Contractors:
  • The OFN hires the finest mercenaries to supplement their troops in Sub-Saharan Africa after the USA withdrew from the organization.
  • The Sejima regime relies on PMCs to police and garrison the regions of China it occupies.
  • The Soldier Kingdom of Prussia essentially acts as one within post-Reich Germany and even occasionally beyond in other CDN hotzones with active insurgencies like in Latin America. The main authority is handled by a military junta in coordination with American bureaucrats, which deploys mercenary brigades to the rest of Germany to provide “security services”, which can include participating in border skirmishes, strike-breaking and putting down rebellions. This arrangement is maintained both to rake in a massive profit as well as to keep Germany perpetually destabilized and fractured.
• Proud Scholar Race: Chile is stereotyped as this due to its advances in cybernetics over the rest of the world, notably applied to planned economy like Cybersyn.
• The Puppet Cuts His Strings: Just like Mikhail II before him, the puppet Tsar of the Russian Empire attempts to break free from his Gilded Cage and bring about his vision of a more liberal tsardom to life. And just like last time it fails.
• Puppet King:
  • Tsar Nikita is well-known to be nothing more than a puppet for the Grand Regent Boris Shepunov.
  • Führer Speer Jr. is a puppet of Theodor Oberländer.
• Rapid Aging: Thomas Sankara appears to have aged two decades rather than just one by the end of his term as Chairman of the Comintern.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: Prior to Oberländer's ascendency, the Nazi regime used the Eastern colonies as a dumping ground for party members and National Socialist theoreticians whose views were considered too heterodox but not too dangerous to be executed. These exiles would become the founders of the Confederation of Aryan Republics.
• Red Scare: Most of the powers that aren't part of the Comintern are rabidly anti-socialist.
• Regent for Life:
  • Grand Regent Boris Shepunov, leader of the Russian Empire until his death.
  • The Holy Roman Reich is ruled by a whole council of them, ruling in the stead of Emperor Barbarossa.
• Remember the Alamo: A French Red Front fighter cries to remember the 1871 Commune of Paris, the People's Republic crushed by the Nazis and the atrocities of SS Burgundy as they rise up against the collaborator government.
• The Remnant:
  • Reactionary partisans backed by the CPS plague the interior of the Philippines.
  • After the failure of Pinochet's Military Coup, his supporters would continue to fight a guerilla war against the Chilean government.
  • After the end of the Great African War, many surviving European settlers in the ASU still harbor colonialist ideas. They take up arms again with America's support against the Comintern during the 1984 War, during which they are completely destroyed.
  • An American soldier held out in Hawaii for 40 years and managed to return to the mainland, only to be shot and killed immediately upon arrival. The reason? He was Asian.
• Renegade Splinter Faction: The Confederation of Aryan Republics, covering Nazi Germany's eastern holdings and led by the most fanatical Nazis, embody the absolute worst aspects of Nazi colonialism. Their opposition to Oberlander's reforms (notably those declaring compliant non-Germans to be Aryan) lead to their secession from Germany after its collapse.
• Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: Che Guevara is declared dead by the Argentinian government, only to re-emerge in Congo fighting the Great African War.
• La Résistance: Insurgent groups exist everywhere autoritarianism does and are particularly present within the spheres of the superpowers.
  • In Vietnam, the Viet Minh continued to fight a guerilla war against the Japanese and the collaborators until they overthrow finally them.
  • In Ireland the Socialist-IRA becomes the main insurgent force against the Nazis and the CDN. However it doesn't survive the 1984 Crisis and is replaced by the Irish Revolutionary Republican Army after the reunification of Ireland under the CDN.
  • Leftist insurgencies spring up in most of Central and South America due to being greatly empowered by the suppression of any electoral alternative, especially after 1984, with Costa Rica's in particular essentially becomes their country's de facto army, defending them from CDN incursions and right-wing counter-insurgencies and Peru's taking control of entire regions.
  • Prior to the McMath presidency, the US's brutal crackdowns on the Civil Rights movements and numerous other left-wing, progressive tendencies largely radicalized the American Left into this. The largest organizations of which, the Rainbow Coalition and the CPUSA, advocate for dual-power, mass struggle and even armed resistance against the American state, even after McMath's pragmatic attempts to mend bridges with them.
• Resurgent Empire:
  • The USA under Bush successfully makes its come-back on the world stage after eight years of isolationism with foreign interventions and the expansion of its new alliance, the Coalition of Democratic Nations.
  • The United Kingdom attempts to accomplish this by invading Ireland and annexing it. Their failure to do so provokes the opposite, with Nazi Germany's grip on Great Britain being reinforced after the Irish Crisis ends in a stalemate.
• Retirony: Thomas Sankara is assassinated shortly after he retires from his position.
• Revenge:
  • The Golem regiments of the IRB are composed of Jewish volunteers who fight Nazi troops while screaming battle cries in Yiddish and demanding vengeance for those who died in the Shoah.
  • Paragayans in the Comintern are stereotyped as holding long-lasting grudges when it comes to pranks.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Vilified: The socialist revolutions in the nations that would form the Comintern established democratic regimes.
• Richard Nixon, the Used Car Salesman:
  • Ronald Reagan got tossed on the streets after his career bombed and Schlafly's policies practically destroyed Hollywood creative craft unions, leading to massive layoffs, and died from a cocaine overdose.
  • Margaret Thatcher narrowly escaped being purged by the British fascists to the US, where she lived in poverty and destitution, an experience that radicalised her to the left and inspired her to join an underground anarchist group.
  • Kim Jong-Il stays away from politics and pursues a career in filmmaking.
  • Jackie Chan could not pursue an acting career due to anti-Chinese racism and instead would become a cadre of the Communist Party of China in Hong Kong.
  • Bashar al-Assad is pursuing a career as an ophthalmologist, distancing himself from politics.
  • Siad Barre, OTL communist dictator of Somalia, signed up with the Italian colonial auxiliary forces, rose through the ranks until independence after which he died when the UAR invaded Somalia during the Great African War.
  • Christopher Lee volunteered to fight in Finland during the Winter War and stayed there after the fall of the UK before throwing his lot with the Finnish Reds during the Finnish Civil War after being desillusioned with the White Finnish government, becoming a senior agent of the Finnish secret service.
  • Ariel Sharon is a dyed-in-the-wool communist and a decorated commander in the IRB. His family being forcefully relocated by occupying Italian troops from their moshav community into a crowded and impoverished neighborhood in Haifa, along with his interaction with arab communists there, was what radicalized him.
  • Saddam Hussein tried to become a UAR delegate and succeeded for a while before being voted out. Afterwards and now he became a bus driver and writer and cheesy romance novels in his spare time.
• Riddle for the Ages: Who is responsible for President Schlafly's death?
• Right-Wing Militia Fanatic:
  • South Africa invites militias of Boer nationalists back to the fold to shore up support against the ANC.
• The Rival: The USA/CDN's Global Democracy Legions are this to the Comintern's IRB.
• Salt the Earth:
  • Realizing they cannot hold the African mandates, the OFN destroys anything that can be use before withdrawing to South Africa, destroying crops, poisoning soils and dismantling infrastructure, leaving behind desiccated lands, overcrowded refugee camps, slums and the napalm blasted ruins of villages. Later when they attempt the same strategy in South Africa itself it results in the white civilian population turning against them.
  • The Japanese commit similar atrocities, dismantling, burning and looting as much as they can, and poisoning the soils and sources of water upon withdrawing from Sri Lanka, unable to defeat the pro-Bharat rebels. But some regiments go further by mutilating tens of thousands of young people in an effort to saddle any post-occupation government with the costs of their care.
• The Scapegoat:
  • Many Americans blame the failures of the Schlafly presidency on the fact she was a woman rather than any of her policies.
  • Falangist Iberia blames the Basques, Galicians and Catalans' "hereditary socialism" for all of Iberia's woes.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: The Iberian Falangist government continues to use cars despite banning their use for the rest of the population.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The withdrawal of the USA from the OFN left the rest of the alliance leashed to the African mandates.
• Serendipitous Survival: Piet Kahl, a low NSDAP functionary, survives the mass death of the Nazi leadership in a fire because he had to leave the party early to attend to some urgent matter at home.
• Shoot the Dog: Finland decides to destroy the CAR navy despite knowing that there are thousands of human shields onboard.
• Shouting Free-for-All: The content of the Bush tapes.
• Shout-Out:
  • The Free City of Nuremberg, one of the warlord states born of the Reich's explosion, is one to Avant-Garde France from Red Flood. It too is an accelerationist regime led by someone whose title translates as "Le Patron" in French; it also proceeds to declare war on reality (and later on nitrogen, as in the gas).
  • To Overly Sarcastic Productions, as its entry on the dispute between various claimants to the Papacy is entitled "Pope fight" after one of their videos series on this exact subject.
  • The April Fools Day entry is a crossover with The Red Order: First Days of Eurasia, the spinoff of The New Order.
• Sketchy Successor: Donald Regan, Schlafly's VP, proves to be an even worst president than her after she is assassinated.
• Slave Liberation:
  • The Haitian slaves launch one as their ancestors did to liberate themselves from the white supremacist Trujillo regime when their dictator Ramfis' death sparks a power struggle.
  • As the 1984 German Civil War and concurrent Slovak Revolution begin, the enslaved populations of the Reich's eastern territories rise up and successfully liberate southern Poland, eastern Czechia, and almost all of the Baltic with help of Red Slovak and Comintern forces.
    • Just the main Comintern armies agree to cease their assault on the CAR and German warlord states under threat of CDN nuclear retaliation, Ukrainian and Caucasian slaves stage a massive, coordinated uprising which liberates all of the Caucasus and the southern half of Ukraine with the Comintern's covert aid. It is only through US military intervention that the CAR didn't entirely collapse.
• Small Name, Big Ego:
  • The All-Danish Social Republic has the ambition to reclaim a "Greater Denmark" encompassing much of Northern Germany, Norway, and Greenland, but doesn't have the means to do and even rely on American aid to just survive.
  • The National Volksrepubliek of the Netherlands goes even further with even less means by intending to "reclaim" its colonial empire, restarting its claims not only on Indonesia and Belgium, but South Africa, Oceania, New Zealand, Ukraine and even the eastern seaboard of the US including NYC (which the state officially refers to as New Amsterdam), which makes the USA wonders if it shouldn't just replace them with more pliable puppets after they induct them into the CDN.
• The Smurfette Principle: Else Christensen, the leader of the All-Danish Social Republic, is the only female leader of the CDN.
• Sociopathic Soldier: Among the many other examples of this in the quest, the soldiers and militiamen of the Confederation of Aryan Republics somehow exceed standards during the wars of 1984. They think nothing of abusing "non-Aryan" life whether as a sick tactic to gain an edge over the invading Reds (such as the use of Slavic and Baltic slaves as human shields) or simply because it gives them gratification. Not even "Aryan" life is safe as they are not above using their own children as soldiers, even going as far as crafting weapons and explosives small enough to use, to take advantage of the communists' "weakness". In response, the Comintern forces of the Eurasian theatre adopt General Order No. 103 and IRB Order 87 to loosen and suspend laws of war when dealing with CAR personnel.
• Sore Loser: After losing the presidential election to MacMath, Bush passes the rest of his time in office sabotaging his coming presidency, notably by removing the letter M from every typewriter in the White House, withdrawing the recognition from all communist nations, and worst of all accepting the remains of Germany and the Confederation of Aryan Republics into the CDN.
• Soviet Superscience: It is the ambition of the Cybernetic Marxist faction to achieve this for the Comintern, though with much more grounded technology as TLM isn't a work of science-fiction.
• Space Cold War: The Cold War of TNO between the OFN, the Einheitspakt and the CPS has evolved with the withdrawal of America from the OFN and the rise of Russia, China and the Comintern as new regional powers. With the collapse of the OFN and the return of America on the world stage, it is replaced by the Coalition of Democratic Nations.
• Space-Filling Empire:
  • The German Reich until its downfall and ultimate collapse.
  • The United Arab Republic extends from Morocco to Iraq and from Syria to Somalia, covering most of the Arab world.
    • The addition of Malta in 1985 makes it the world's only tri-continental state.
  • After the Great African War the African Socialist Union spans the entire continent, with the exception of the parts belonging to the United Arab Republic.
• Speak Ill of the Dead:
  • The newspaper Al-Bassallah has always headlines making fun of the death of fascists and dictators.
  • The obtuary given by the Comintern for Albert Speer is a "Reason You Suck" Speech ripping his legacy apart. The Speaker can barely finish before breaking into laughter.
• Strawman News Media: American Newspapers and The Economist will lionize any group opposing the Comintern, silencing any atrocities or authoritarian goals, while demonizing every action by the Comintern and declaring their latest policy will be its downfall, only to be proven wrong systematically.
• Succession Crisis:
  • The death of Ramfis Trujillo immediately sparks a power struggle in the Dominican Republic.
  • The death of President Wang Kunlun leads to one as the many factions of the Kuomintang squabble over the direction the country must take.
  • After the Third Reich's leadership are slaughtered in a building fire by Abba "The Burned Jew" Kovner, the subsequent leadership struggle quickly devolves into a full German Civil War.
  • Italy implodes after Il Duce Giani's death, with Vatican City being razed as collateral damage. Post-1984, multiple cardinals across the world have claimed the title of Pope (The Red Catholic Press counts at least nine and the latter "Pope fight" entry counts more than sixteen from around the world).
    • The Popes in the Comintern opt to peacefully settle the succession by convening a council in Luanda, which also serves to discuss reforms of the Church.
• Suffrage and Political Liberation:
  • In America, the Civil Rights Movement was annihilated by government suppression.
  • In the Comintern, different movement of historically oppressed groups like indigenous peoples are formed and receive support from it.
• Thanatos Gambit: President McMath selected a man more radical than him, Bernie Sanders, as his Vice-President, leading to suspicions he is an insurance in case anyone tries to assassinate him, as it would lead to Sanders becoming president, which McMath's opponents want even less than him being president in the first place.
• The Theocracy: The Reich of Light is a fascist theocracy practicing "Christianity returned to its National Socialist roots'', in truth a religious Nazism picking elements from both Catholicism and Protestantism (like Martin Luther's antisemitism).
• Third Time's The Charm: The third attempt by French socialists to establish a socialist republic (the 1871 Commune of Paris being the first time and the French People's Republic founded after the French Civil War and the Red Poppy's rebellion being the second one) ends up being the one to not just succeed but last.
• Unperson: After violently conquering Iceland, the United States launch a propaganda campaign to deny that Iceland has had a history before German occupation to "justify" the crimes that are committed against the inhabitants.
• Vestigial Empire:
  • Italy lost most of its empire during the Oil Crisis and the Yugoslav revolts, leaving it to become an hermit kingdom.
  • The Fourth Reich is the last remnant of the original Third Reich after the German Civil War, a rump state in Austria and the leader of the Pan-European Reich only in name.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Both George Wallace and Phyllis Schlafly managed to be popular enough to be elected for two terms. Wallace's relatively progressive welfare and union legislation in particular proved popular with white working-class Americans alongside his success in prosecuting the South African War to a complete OFN victory. Schlafly's victorious re-election was in part thanks to a massive media campaign bankrolled by several wealthy admirers and lobbyists.
• Virtue Is Weakness: The CAR leadership considers empathy and compassion to be "degeneracy", and tries to use Comintern soldiers' empathy against them by crippling their slaves to burden supply lines and using them as human shields.
• Violence Really Is the Answer: A Hard Truth Aesop for TLM is that against fascists and imperialists, violence is the only answer to stop them, no peace, no appeasement, the sooner they are taken out the better.
• Warhawk:
  • The Comintern has its lot of belligerent leaders eager to take every opportunity to advance the world revolution, mostly concentrated in the Revolutionary Militant faction though other factions like the Ecological Leftists are also notably aggressive.
  • Gaddafi wants to invade Iran as soon as they give the Comintern an excuse and maybe even without one.
  • The Bush administration breaks completely from the previous Schlaflyite isolationism by embarking on a campaign of foreign interventions to restore American influence across the world.
• We ARE Struggling Together:
  • George Wallace's rivals in the NPP proved too divided to oppose his nomination for a second term by the party.
  • The OFN is hampered in waging the Great African War because Canada and Australia engage in a bitter struggle to become the new leader of the alliance by blaming each other for their failures against Comintern forces.
  • Pakt volunteers and Zionist militias fighting on the same side in Africa couldn't work with each other for obvious reasons and even sabotaged each other, this would lead to a general collapse of the front.
  • The Filipino Brother War is an extreme case for the Comintern where local national communists take arms against the Comintern because they consider its demands in resources for conflicts not affecting the Philippines to be red imperialism and categorically opposing them.
  • When Cyprus becomes the last stronghold of Turkish and Greek reactionaries and fascists and the remains of the Italian Navy, they attempt to form a coalition against the Comintern bound to invade the island. However this ragtag coalition of anti-communists, all possessing mutually exclusive goals and being mortal enemies of each other mere months ago, is unable to mount a cohesive defense, resulting in their near complete annihilation as their strongholds were torn down by the concentrated might of the Comintern.
  • When the Revolutionary Nationalists from around the world organize a meeting of their movements it quickly devolves into a series of shouting matches, accusations of Judeo-arab Bolshevism, and bringing up national grudges, all of which culminating in the first day of the meeting having to be ended early when a fist fight breaks out. The whole project ends in utter disaster as infighting and mutually exclusive national ambitions makes any alliance or even just cooperation impossible and no further attempts take place.
• Western Terrorists:
  • Even years after the Burgundian Collapse, France is still plagued by Wehrwolf SS terror groups. Adding to this are Pied-Noir ultranationalists bitter about the loss of Algeria and who even Vichy fascists find deranged and unhinged committing acts of terrorism to overthrow their government.
  • After its state collapsed, the All-Russian Black League became a terrorist organization in the new Russian Empire.
• World Tour: Sankara attempts to embark on one shortly after his retirement. Tragically, he's shot dead in France by a lone assassin.
• World War III: An unofficial one kicks off in 1984, later gaining the nickname "The Great Jihad", and dies down by the year's end. It remains mostly conventional due to most of the major powers confronting each other indirectly. In the case of the Nazis, the Third Reich's nuclear codes are lost in the chaos of the German Civil War.
• Wrongfully Committed:
  • Angela Davis was arrested and deemed clinically insane before being thrown into an asylum for her activism against the American government.
  • Ursula K. Le Guin is institutionalized as insane and lobotomized.
• You Are in Command Now:
  • At the start of the Quest the players are given the mission to transform the Comintern from an ad hoc effort to present a united front to a respectable global organization that can actually act as an international government.
  • Rostya Borisov was initially a colonel but was swiftly promoted after many of his higher-ups died from old age one by one until he found himself a general. Then he is chosen as Regent, precisely because he is seen as a nobody with no political experience who can act as a placeholder until a true contender can take the mantle of Regent.
• You Cannot Kill An Idea:
  • Despite the collapse of the USSR, Communism survived and even makes a return, with even a Neo-Bukharinist faction within the Comintern.
    • Despite Mao Zedong's death, the CPC and guerillas across Asia continue to keep his ideas alive.
    • Ultra-visionary Socialism survived Zhdanov's death thanks to Nikolai Kardashev's survival, becoming part of the Comintern's Cybernetic Marxist faction.
  • Lev Gumilyov's Eurasianism survived his death but in a changed form, syncretized with other ideologies left- and right-wing.
• You Have Failed Me: After the death of Giani, the doctors who failed to keep the dying dictator alive are executed.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Bush reacts to being informed of the formation of the Confederation of Aryan Republics by asking if it a bad joke.
• Young and in Charge: Thomas Sankara is the youngest candidate at 26 years old when he becomes Chairman of the Comintern.

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