Military Wings in American Political Parties

[IchBinDieKaiser]

A facet of European politics that hasn't formed in American politics(at least on a major level) is the idea of military wings of Political parties. The Nazis had the SS and SA. Mussolini had his black shirts. The Bolsheviks had the red army and the Mensheviks had the white army.

What would it take to have American Political Parties adopt military wings?

 

[RogueBeaver]

All of those were totalitarian or authoritarian regimes. The US is a democracy, therefore this is ASB unless there is a USSA or Fascist America.

 

[Kome]

A larger culture of assassination attempts among socialist/communist/anarchist groups or class riots by the lower classes. Enough successful mobbing or killings and some party bosses are bound to think, "Hey this is really getting violent out there, maybe i should get some protection for myself. And uniforms, i like uniforms =D".

Or maybe some bosses try this and find that paramilitary wings and fancy uniforms look cool and directly increase voter turnout and votes for their party. Like most good ideas, everyone starts copying it.

 

[Sachyriel]

There are militant people of lots of political factions, but in order not to damage the legitimacy of the larger peaceful group/party for the publics eye they tend to act as unaffiliated cells.

 

[Mark 4 Morrel Barrel]

Does the Secret Service count?
I mean wasnt the Waffen SS orginally and partially throughout the war Hitler's bodyguards

 

[Thande]

The US doesn't need paramilitaries, because the US military knows that it can always get its way with either political party.

 

[black angel]

get the KKK more closely linked to the Dems, though in the Mid-west in the 1920s the KKK ran whole states to not so AH there, um the Know-nothings and Redeemers were thug movements that dressed up as Political Parties, and the old party bosses could always round up a mob to do what they liked or break some ones face if they voted wrong.

 

[Technocrat]

Dystopia Timeline:

The Klan "goes respectable", the Know Nothings return in the U.S. and this time they're Democrats (which actually means the Bourbon Democrats will have more constituency in the North than just the few Democratic Machine cities like New York). The Jacksonians (South) and the Benjamin Franklin Society (North) merge into the first official political party paramilitary auxiliary in the United States; the Minutemen.

The GOP's Alexandrians (Alexander Hamilton was the Republicans' favorite Founder during the Gilded Age) are little more than strikebreakers and other hired thugs for corporate and political interests, kept on the payroll.

Without a Progressive movement to split the Republican Party and to make liberalism a going concern in both major parties, instead the callousness and militancy against their own people of the Republicans causes the Populists and the Socialists to grow larger, more multitendency, and grow towards each other bridging the gap between small town protestant and urban immigrant. The Farmer-Labor Party develops and forms militias in the granges and unions.

 

[Life In Black]

Give the US Secret Service the power of the FBI, and it might happen. Tom Kratman wrote a book like that called "A State of Disobedience".

 

[lukedalton]

Give the US Secret Service the power of the FBI, and it might happen. Tom Kratman wrote a book like that called "A State of Disobedience".

Yes but he has even wrote a book about the arabian conquest of western europe and the enstablishment of a new caliphate... so IMHO is better not take him as an example

 

[bobbis14]

All of those were totalitarian or authoritarian regimes. The US is a democracy, therefore this is ASB unless there is a USSA or Fascist America.

Not really Weimar Germany was a democracy but had paramilitaries running round it left right and centre, they don't have to be in charge only just causing chaos - i'm thinking the best op to do so would be OTL great depression getting out of hand

 

[Joseph Solis in Australia]

USA is a democracy as RougeBever said and its political system is difficult for the extremists from the military or other groups to take control in the political parties unless there's a coup or revolution. This is an ASB.

 

[Aelita]

USA is a democracy as RougeBever said and its political system is difficult for the extremists from the military or other groups to take control in the political parties unless there's a coup or revolution. This is an ASB.

Not really. The best sort of parallel for political party militias is the late period of the Weimar Republic. What is a necessary (though not necessarily sufficient) condition is political, social and economic instability in the state. In essence, the state and the dominant ideology that supports it must be failing.

Reform or the potential for reform needs to be impossible or seen as simply not enough by large sectors of the populace, and further, they need to cling to radical ideological movements instead. Which might lead them to arm, either in self-defense or as part of a conscious plan to begin a putsch against the state.

To get this in the US, the easiest way is to get reform movements after the Great Depression to fail, and for a blundering conservativish government preside over a long, deep economic period of turmoil. Without an FDR like figure to animate the public from 1933 onward towards a reform movement, it's very possible that large portions of the American populace join radical or reactionary movements.

So, conceivably, you could have a mass Communist Party and trade union complex resort to arming themselves to fight against strikebreakers, and reactionary militias.

 

[Meadow]

A facet of European politics that hasn't formed in American politics(at least on a major level) is the idea of military wings of Political parties. The Nazis had the SS and SA. Mussolini had his black shirts. The Bolsheviks had the red army and the Mensheviks had the white army.

What would it take to have American Political Parties adopt military wings?

My TL, set in a world turned upside down by CP victory in WWI, has just been updated with a chapter on the Second American Civil War. It features two major political organisations with politicised paramilitaries duking it out in cities and in the Dust Bowl. It does require a lot of butterflies, but take a look if you're interested.

 

[howzat15]

All of those were totalitarian or authoritarian regimes. The US is a democracy, therefore this is ASB unless there is a USSA or Fascist America.

Northern Ireland is part of Britain- which is a democracy yet Sinn Fein have the IRA.

 

[Lemon flavoured]

All of those were totalitarian or authoritarian regimes. The US is a democracy, therefore this is ASB unless there is a USSA or Fascist America.

Sinn Fein / IRA?

Ok, I got beaten to that point...

 

[I Blame Communism]

The Bolsheviks had the red army and the Mensheviks had the white army.

What?

The Red Army were not a political paramilitary. The RSDLP certainly had street-fighting paramilitary squads which became the Red Guard and helped them take the cities, but the Red Army - a conscript force officered in large part by men who had been officers and NCOs of the old Imperial Army and who were dubiously Bolshevik - was basically the abandonment of any idea of a political army, as opposed to an apolitical army watched over by commissars to keep it on the straight and narrow.

And as for the Whites, they as a rule hated socialists of all stripes and insofar as they had an ideology it was suspicious of parties generally.

Northern Ireland is part of Britain- which is a democracy yet Sinn Fein have the IRA.

They're disarmed, and before the civil rights movement one could hardly call Stormont a democracy in a meaningful sense.

 

[Chengar Qordath]

Does the Secret Service count?

The Secret Service is not tied to any one political party, so no.