Election from hell

[Bootstoots]

Okay, so here's the situation. You're in a bizarre parallel universe, and the two most popular parties in your country are the Nazis and the Italian Fascists, who have ended up in the same country, which you also end up in, because of weirdness in the space-time continuum.

Hitler and Mussolini are running against each other in a nationwide FPTP vote for president in a strong-presidential system, and the race is neck-and-neck. You've bothered to read Mein Kampf and some of Mussolini's writings, so you know that Hitler is a huge believer in racial supremacy and wants to take over most of Europe and depopulate it, replacing the inhabitants with the "superior races", while exterminating Jews. And you know that Mussolini is also bad and differs much more in degree than in kind from Hitler - he'll probably just install a garden-variety authoritarian state, stir nationalist sentiment, and invade Ethiopia or something. He'll say anti-Semitic things or racist things when it suits him, and not when it doesn't. Total death toll will probably be in the thousands to tens of thousands, not counting the Ethiopians. Pretty bad, but small potatoes compared to the alternative.

Also, because it's my bizarre fever dream, Ralph Nader is running and is polling about 3% of the vote. Competing forms of ultranationalist authoritarianism are in vogue, and actually remaining democratic with an emphasis on consumer safety and social democracy just isn't cutting it with this crowd.

These are the only three candidates. Current polling has Hitler and Mussolini at 45-45, with 3% for Nader and 7% undecided.

The election is free and fair in the sense that there's no fraud and ballots are cast secretly and counted accurately. You can be pretty sure this is going to be the last such election for a long while, but this election is not a sham. Still, the outgoing president has criminalized leaving the country without an exit visa, which are almost impossible to obtain, and people attempting to do so are shot along with their closest friends and family members. So don't even think about trying to flee the country.

I'm going to assume that you have at least enough of a conscience to not vote for Hitler. Do you vote for Mussolini so that things less bad than Hitler, or do you vote for Nader even though that advantages Hitler vis a vis Mussolini, or do you abstain/cast a blank ballot?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Need more data. Where is our country, and where does it stand in regards to resources and military strength as compared to the neighbors.

I might be altruistic enough to vote for Hitler if I'm convinced that the resulting war will result in our forces being crushed.

 

[Ryika]

I'd probably vote for Hitler, at least he'd put Germany first. #edgy

Joking aside... hard to tell. It would probably depend very much on how the situation came to be. Were the people really dumb enough to make these people their primary choices? In that case I'd probably abstain out of pure frustration. It's not like I actually have any influence with my 1 vote, so I'd probably be fine with not being part of the idiocy given that the one candidate that sounds reasonable has no chance anyway, and I usually don't have a desire for "symbolic" actions when I know they're not actually going to achieve anything anyway.

 

[Bootstoots]

Need more data. Where is our country, and where does it stand in regards to resources and military strength as compared to the neighbors.

I might be altruistic enough to vote for Hitler if I'm convinced that the resulting war will result in our forces being crushed.

Okay, I'll try to be more specific - not realistic, because this is a weird parallel universe, but specific. Let's say our country consists of the 1914 borders of Imperial Germany+Austria-Hungary+Italy, all combined into one entity. They all got lumped together into one state by a bizarre series of treaties that ended WWI, which ended in a stalemate rather than an Allied victory, with neither side able to force arms reductions or reparations or significant territorial concessions on the other. The Italians had gone with the Central Powers and all three of them decided they were Stronger Together after the war, for some reason, and were able to crush the various separatisms in Germano-Italia that popped up after this. The USSR developed the same way it did in real life, including the fact that it had to allow Poland and the Baltics to become independent following the revolution and surrender, but Germano-Italia doesn't get to hold onto the eastern territories (although it doesn't have to cede Danzig or Posen to Poland - Poland is a weak and landlocked state made entirely from Russian Empire land). Stalin still rose to power the same way he did IRL and is busy doing his thing.

So Germano-Italia is by far the strongest land force in Europe, occupying a large north-south chunk of central Europe. The Royal Navy struggles to keep it in check on the high seas. Britain and France do have a defensive alliance with little Euro-states like Poland, Romania, Serbia, Greece, and Bulgaria along with token forces in each of these countries, in order to try to keep both Germano-Italia and the USSR in check. The US is also explicitly allied with Britain and France, as a further check to try to keep world order relatively stable. Any WWII would be much more difficult than the real one, although it is likely that the combined resources of the US (operating through the UK) and the Soviet Union would eventually win a protracted 10-year war if it were to be launched. The year of the election is 1938.

I'd probably vote for Hitler, at least he'd put Germany first. #edgy

Joking aside... hard to tell. It would probably depend very much on how the situation came to be. Were the people really dumb enough to make these people their primary choices? In that case I'd probably abstain out of pure frustration. It's not like I actually have any influence with my 1 vote, so I'd probably be fine with not being part of the idiocy given that the one candidate that sounds reasonable has no chance anyway, and I usually don't have a desire for "symbolic" actions when I know they're not actually going to achieve anything anyway.

The people really were dumb enough to make these the primary choices, aided by some less-than-savory machinations against serious socialists and Communists to keep them off the ballot. Nader was allowed to contest to add a little legitimacy and because they knew he'd go nowhere. The system is essentially electoral authoritarianism, with a couple of viable but repugnant parties which do hold real elections between each other, while conspiring to keep out everyone but a few minor independents and third parties scattered around so that they would have no real influence. But it's gotten bad enough that there's a good chance even this little exercise in faux-democracy will turn into one-party rule, depending on who wins this election.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Boots you should repost this with a poll. Gobble gobble, I love polls...

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Okay, I'll try to be more specific - not realistic, because this is a weird parallel universe, but specific. Let's say our country consists of the 1914 borders of Imperial Germany+Austria-Hungary+Italy, all combined into one entity. They all got lumped together into one state by a bizarre series of treaties that ended WWI, which ended in a stalemate rather than an Allied victory, with neither side able to force arms reductions or reparations or significant territorial concessions on the other. The Italians had gone with the Central Powers and all three of them decided they were Stronger Together after the war, for some reason, and were able to crush the various separatisms in Germano-Italia that popped up after this. The USSR developed the same way it did in real life, including the fact that it had to allow Poland and the Baltics to become independent following the revolution and surrender, but Germano-Italia doesn't get to hold onto the eastern territories (although it doesn't have to cede Danzig or Posen to Poland - Poland is a weak and landlocked state made entirely from Russian Empire land). Stalin still rose to power the same way he did IRL and is busy doing his thing.

So Germano-Italia is by far the strongest land force in Europe, occupying a large north-south chunk of central Europe. The Royal Navy struggles to keep it in check on the high seas. Britain and France do have a defensive alliance with little Euro-states like Poland, Romania, Serbia, Greece, and Bulgaria along with token forces in each of these countries, in order to try to keep both Germano-Italia and the USSR in check. The US is also explicitly allied with Britain and France, as a further check to try to keep world order relatively stable. Any WWII would be much more difficult than the real one, although it is likely that the combined resources of the US (operating through the UK) and the Soviet Union would eventually win a protracted 10-year war if it were to be launched. The year of the election is 1938.



The people really were dumb enough to make these the primary choices, aided by some less-than-savory machinations against serious socialists and Communists to keep them off the ballot. Nader was allowed to contest to add a little legitimacy and because they knew he'd go nowhere. The system is essentially electoral authoritarianism, with a couple of viable but repugnant parties which do hold real elections between each other, while conspiring to keep out everyone but a few minor independents and third parties scattered around so that they would have no real influence. But it's gotten bad enough that there's a good chance even this little exercise in faux-democracy will turn into one-party rule, depending on who wins this election.

With that start I think I see too much chance for Hitler to win. Probably better to vote for Mussolini and hope that the fascist state deteriorates in relative strength under his regime until a delayed world war is more likely to cut against us.

 

[Commodore]

Voted Hitler because I am white and male. Apparently, according to what the internet tells me, being white and male makes me "literally Hitler" so why wouldn't I vote for myself?

 

[Bootstoots]

Boots you should repost this with a poll. Gobble gobble, I love polls...

Right, totally forgot to do that. Poll added!

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Voted Hitler because I am white and male. Apparently, according to what the internet tells me, being white and male makes me "literally Hitler" so why wouldn't I vote for myself?

Funny, I'm white and male and the internet never seems to say that about me.

 

[Broken_Erika]

Went with Nader so i can say "I Voted for Nader! I hate everyone!" while others are arguing over whether hitler or mussolini is better.

 

[mrt144]

Voted Hitler because I am white and male. Apparently, according to what the internet tells me, being white and male makes me "literally Hitler" so why wouldn't I vote for myself?

You sound more like a self pitying Mussolini voter

 

[mrt144]

Funny, I'm white and male and the internet never seems to say that about me.

Some people filter out all criticism and only hear praise. Other people filter out praise and only hear criticism which they suggest is patently false and thusly absolves them of giving a crap.

 

[red_elk]

Vote for Mussolini, try to find a way to flee the country.

 

[Perfection]

 

[EgonSpengler]

Well, in this alternate universe, I'm stuck in a time-loop and have experienced this election three times already. I supported Nader each time but ultimately voted Mussolini for strategic reasons, the lesser evil and so on. Hitler won the first two iterations of the time-loop, so in the third iteration, I tried to talk some of the National Socialists into supporting Gregor Strasser instead of Hitler, but that went over like a lead balloon. I also tried to get Nader inside the PNF and displace Mussolini before the election, but he was just too entrenched. Hitler won all three times because he was the more cunning campaigner, was much more willing to lie to the electorate and make ridiculous, clearly false but damaging claims about Il Duce (Goebbels really is very good, you have to give him that).

So here I am, in the early days of the fourth iteration of the time-loop. If the signposts indicate that events are going to repeat themselves again, then I'd like to follow my conscience and vote for Nader, even knowing it's futile. But I've noticed that some of the details of the time-loop vary with each iteration, which suggests that it's malleable, if only I can figure out how. They say the definition of insanity is repeating the same behavior and expecting different results, so I don't know what it would say about me if I vote for Mussolini a fourth time. There's a theory that the way to escape a time-loop is to stop fighting it, ride it out until the end of the story, and then move on from there. It gets darkest before the dawn? Is that Buddhist? "Let Hitler wreck everything and rebuild from the ashes" scares the bejeezuz out of me, though. Honestly, I'm not one of the people the Hitlerists are likely to come for in the dead of night, purely by an accident of birth. I might weather the storm with only some scrapes and bruises, but I have friends who probably wouldn't be so lucky.

 

[red_elk]

Honestly, I'm not one of the people the Hitlerists are likely to come for in the dead of night, purely by an accident of birth. I might weather the storm with only some scrapes and bruises, but I have friends who probably wouldn't be so lucky.

Just move out of Dresden if you're there by any chance.

 

[GoodEnoughForMe]

I'd probably vote Nader, I'd rather not have "voted for a fascist" on my resume. But it's tough to say. I might just leave the country as fast as I could.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

I have notified the Richard Lewis estate about your abuse of the "blank from hell" formula, they expect payment by midnight, else Larry David will show up and steal all your mantras.

 

[Sommerswerd]

I'd probably vote Nader, I'd rather not have "voted for a fascist" on my resume. But it's tough to say. I might just leave the country as fast as I could.

You cant leave, that was one of the specific parameters of the game as I understand it.

Mussolini seems like the easy pick... I'm not Jewish, but simply bypassing the holocaust seems like a worthy enough goal on its own, everything else being equal. Like @Ryika, I'm not a YUGE fan of symbolic voting for its own sake. But then again I supported Hillary, so I obviously have the whole lesser of two evils thing down...

 

[Ajidica]

I'll be honest, I'd vote Mussolini. Nader stands no chance so any vote there is wasted, and not voting for Hitler, is, well, obvious. Mussolini, despite being a fascist, wasn't into exterminating entire races on industrial lines. (Although he was a fan of gassing African hill tribes.)