NationStates

Hello.

I am currently planning to write a new factbook, which will be about a fascist regime that existed during 1975 - 1978 in the Aquaria's history, with its behaviours somewhat identical to Nazi Germany.

I do not do it with the purpose to promote far-right and fascist ideology, but knowing that the NS have a strict rule against Nazism, will there be anything I should be aware of if I start writing the factbook about the regime? Or, should I do it?

Moved to Moderation, which is the appropriate venue for rules questions.

If your Factbook violates the rules then it will be deleted and you will be punished. In particular, if it appears to endorse Nazi Germany and its related atrocities then it is likely to be considered malicious content and trolling. You are not going to get advice from Moderators on just how Nazi Germany you get get away with being within the rules.

A more experienced roleplayer than myself would probably also tell you that there is far more interesting and original source material than Nazi Germany, which seems to be the default template for a low-effort "make an evil nation" attempt.

Sedgistan wrote:A more experienced roleplayer than myself would probably also tell you that there is far more interesting and original source material than Nazi Germany, which seems to be the default template for a low-effort "make an evil nation" attempt.

I'd be happy to help. I'm not really active in RPing anymore, but I think it's a fair statement to say I created one of the more successful Fascist and "evil" nations- and I'm also unironically a Fascist (albeit not a Nazi,) so knowing how a non-German National Socialist/Fascist movement could realistically be portrayed comes naturally.

A lot of Nazi nations fall into the trap of just going "well we do the Holocaust hahaha seethe faggots look at these swastikas, that make you mad???," or they join NS and their first thread is "we started building a bunch of camps, our leader really doesn't like Jews (or blatant caricatures thereof,) can you guess what happens next?" Much like with slaver countries, Nazi states are an easy way to rile people up OOCly but are generally easier to enforce against cause there's actual rules against it. Funny enough, during my edgy younger years (when the forums were still on Jolt,) I kinda did this by playing up the use of Nazi imagery in the GWO (it's still there, but it's mentioned in roleplay as a symbol a particular section of GWO society uses, not as an embedded image in a communique header.)

Generally, if you avoid dwelling on the more contentious issues, using Nazi symbols, and being in-your-face "BRO LOOK AT US, WE'RE N A Z I S," you should be fine. You should avoid calling it Nazi, especially if your country isn't German-speaking, and instead refer to it as "National Socialist," and you also should avoid any display of non-unique imagery- which would make sense from a lore perspective anyways, because nationalist movements tend to have their symbol be something significant to either their country or to their movement.

That said, there's also lots of other ways to be a Nazi/Fascist state that aren't clones of Nazi Germany. The Nazis were the most famous Fascist state, but far from the only one. There's a lot of examples in South America, there's Francoist Spain, there's also all the Fascist movements around the world that you could draw inspiration from. The GWO, for instance, is largely influenced by the British Union of Fascists and Fascist Italy, but it's plenty of its own thing so as to not be a copy of these things. The thing about nationalism is that it manifests in ways that are unique to the country it is from.


I'm willing to answer questions (from anyone) in my telegrams about the nature of nationalist, Fascist, and National Socialist movements in order to help people create unique ones for their country (this doesn't mean I'll make it for you, it's still your country) that are realistic and not in violation of NS's rule on malicious content. Maybe I'll try my hand at making a guide on it some day if it's something people are having issues with.

New Visayan Islands wrote:Speaking as an RPer, there are plenty of options for the roleplayer interested in making an Evil Nation. Indeed, we have dedicated resources for the roleplayer stickied in the boards under the National and International Roleplaying category, an example of which can be found here.

And yes, there are far more interesting source materials than Nazi Germany one can explore:

• Imperial Japan under Hirohito and Fascist Italy are perhaps the less-explored Axis powers when put in direct contrast to Nazi Germany. In my experience as an RPer, for example, I have, to my knowledge, interacted with one nation that was essentially Fantastical Imperial Japan, down to the veneration of the Emperor, and that’s before accounting for nations that are a mishmash of the same with other elements that functionally make them less like Imperial Japan as we understand it.
• It is entirely possible to play up the kind of human rights abuses one might expect from historical totalitarian nations, among them the above mentioned Axis Powers, the Soviet Union, the PRC, etc. as well as colonial empires—a notorious example of the latter being Leopold II appropriating Belgian folklore as a means of punishing Congolese slaves.
• Other fantastical evil nations can draw inspiration from alt-history and/or hypothetical scenarios as numerous as there are people brainstorming the same.

We also happen to have a dedicated prohibition on outright Nazi content to consider, if that isn’t incentive enough to dig into less-explored source material for evil nations.

New Visayan Islands
Game Moderator

The Grand World Order wrote:

Sedgistan wrote:A more experienced roleplayer than myself would probably also tell you that there is far more interesting and original source material than Nazi Germany, which seems to be the default template for a low-effort "make an evil nation" attempt.

I'd be happy to help. I'm not really active in RPing anymore, but I think it's a fair statement to say I created one of the more successful Fascist and "evil" nations- and I'm also unironically a Fascist (albeit not a Nazi,) so knowing how a non-German National Socialist/Fascist movement could realistically be portrayed comes naturally.

A lot of Nazi nations fall into the trap of just going "well we do the Holocaust hahaha seethe faggots look at these swastikas, that make you mad???," or they join NS and their first thread is "we started building a bunch of camps, our leader really doesn't like Jews (or blatant caricatures thereof,) can you guess what happens next?" Much like with slaver countries, Nazi states are an easy way to rile people up OOCly but are generally easier to enforce against cause there's actual rules against it. Funny enough, during my edgy younger years (when the forums were still on Jolt,) I kinda did this by playing up the use of Nazi imagery in the GWO (it's still there, but it's mentioned in roleplay as a symbol a particular section of GWO society uses, not as an embedded image in a communique header.)

Generally, if you avoid dwelling on the more contentious issues, using Nazi symbols, and being in-your-face "BRO LOOK AT US, WE'RE N A Z I S," you should be fine. You should avoid calling it Nazi, especially if your country isn't German-speaking, and instead refer to it as "National Socialist," and you also should avoid any display of non-unique imagery- which would make sense from a lore perspective anyways, because nationalist movements tend to have their symbol be something significant to either their country or to their movement.

That said, there's also lots of other ways to be a Nazi/Fascist state that aren't clones of Nazi Germany. The Nazis were the most famous Fascist state, but far from the only one. There's a lot of examples in South America, there's Francoist Spain, there's also all the Fascist movements around the world that you could draw inspiration from. The GWO, for instance, is largely influenced by the British Union of Fascists and Fascist Italy, but it's plenty of its own thing so as to not be a copy of these things. The thing about nationalism is that it manifests in ways that are unique to the country it is from.


I'm willing to answer questions (from anyone) in my telegrams about the nature of nationalist, Fascist, and National Socialist movements in order to help people create unique ones for their country (this doesn't mean I'll make it for you, it's still your country) that are realistic and not in violation of NS's rule on malicious content. Maybe I'll try my hand at making a guide on it some day if it's something people are having issues with.

Alright, thanks for your suggestions. I will see if anything can be done about the fascist regime to make it interesting and not violate the rules.