A Mad Tea-Party 195
Someone needs to tell Roger that playing the “my people suffered more than your people” card might not be the best idea. Even when it’s probably true.
“Contract labourers.” I hope that bit makes sense. Again, it’s not really a big part of the story so I don’t want to give it more space in the comic. It’s just one of the many things the Calendi did to Earth to turn the New Youth so xenophobic. This was one of the “unequal” treaties the Calendi had with the now-defunct UN, which allowed them to ship off some of Earth’s “excess population” (mostly criminals, probably) to act as a workforce in asteroid mines and on other planets with no realistic hope of release from their contracts. Apparently, decades later, most of them are still out there somewhere.
Just started reading this and I have to say it’s an excellent story. I’m particularly interested in the New Youth and the Maldivians, they remind me of Garibaldi’s Redshirts or the extremist nationalist groups in China during the late 19th century- nationalists reacting against what was or is genuine oppression but taking it to the extreme of persecuting minorities and foriegners regardless of any culpability.
In particular the Maldivians who you described as being both fanatical nationalists and as having some socialist elements. Why one might almost characterize them as National Socialists…
Thanks! I like those analogies. Partly because they’re exactly the sense what I was trying to convey, and partly because they weren’t the specific examples I was using as inspiration, which just makes them all the better.
Before the Russian revolution, leftist groups were actually MORE likely to expound xenophobic rhetoric than right-wing groups. The only reason they stopped is because international socialism proposed an alliance of working-class people of all nationalities. It’s not outside the realm of possibility that that could change again.