A world where every major ideology rules a great power, while every minor ideology gets some minor powers aligned to one of the great powers. I've divided the world into four blocs, with each bloc corresponding with a corner of the

test because it's a nice, neat way to arrange everything. The other major aspect of this scenario is that every state is a hellish dystopia based on the most unforgiving straw men I could come up with.

Everyone has their own ideas about how society should be organized. While different ideologies have been dominant at different points in history, in the mid- to late-21st century the world no one ideology rules the world. Instead, the entire Solar System has been divided between four major ideological blocs, with many independent states and societies in the periphery. Naturally, each is sure that they have created the perfect society (or are about to get there), and everyone else is running a dystopian society.

The early 21st century was a chaotic time, one that overturned the dominance of Western, capitalist democracy over Earth. In the Middle East, the Islamic State succeeded in securing its current territories by the 2020s. In Europe, the European Union was split between left-leaning pro-union parties and right-leaning nationalist parties. The former won out, but at the cost several states’ exit from the new European Federation, while the European nationalists fled to South Africa. In the 2020s, a new world war began between Russia and the West, one that thankfully did not end in nuclear war but has divided Europe between East and West and created the Eurasian Union. In the 2040s and the Great Oil Crash, a new Depression hit the United States and China, resulting in civil war in both states. While the Chinese Communist Party hardliners succeeded in securing power, the United States was permanently fractured between ideologically opposed parties.

The four major blocs can be roughly described as being divided along authoritarian/libertarian, and economic left/right lines. Representing the authoritarian right is the Eurasian Security Organization. Led by the Eurasian Union, a post-Soviet project that has successfully reunited most of the former Soviet Union under what is essentially the lovechild of Imperial Russia and the Nazi Party. The new age of Russian glory is here! The New Russia Party, Putin’s successful ploy to secure Russia’s nationalists under himself, will lead the people to final victory. What's that, the oligarchs rule over the oppressed, starving masses in their lavish, gold-plated estates? They are patriots and hard workers, friend, they deserve these spoils. To protect Russia's youth and to keep the faith, the Russian Orthodox Church has its own force of robotic soldiers to find closet homosexuals and shoot them in the streets. The entire system has been designed to promote the Slavic master race and theirs alone. To keep them in their place, non-Slavs are practically enslaved, implanted with explosives and behavioral inhibitor chips, if they are not driven out of the country by pogroms. To ensure that the glorious Eurasian state continues, the FSB kicks down the doors of subversive anti-citizens in the middle of the night and makes them disappear without a trace. And of course the Eurasian military-industrial complex continues to rearm after the disastrous Third World War left Eastern Europe in shambles, for Eurasia is destined to stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific!

The Eurasians have some rather eclectic allies in the form of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has taken over much of the Middle East in the wake of the Iranian Wars of the 2050s, and has taken misogyny to such extremes that girls are implanted with behavioral inhibitors at birth and auctioned off to their future husbands when they turn ten, and religious laws are enforced by robotic drones that roam the streets and subject suspected "infidels" to on the spot neural scans and are sent to "religious camps" if they are found wanting in faith. The Iranian’s brand of Islamic fundamentalism is pro-Shia, but they do occasionally work with Sunni theocracies (except for ISIL). That the Iranians are aligned with the Christian Eurasians is a source of some tension, and don’t even think about making too much about the Israeli-Iranian alliance. Other allies tend to be theocracies of their own: the Christian States of America is a fundamentalist Protestant state founded by far right refugees of the Second American Civil War, the State of Israel has given up all pretenses of being a secular, democratic state and has installed a form of Jewish supremacy over the region, and the Holy Empire of Colombia is the Mecca (heh) for reactionary Catholics everywhere. The Union of South Africa is a racial supremacist state, ruled by the descendants of European white supremacists that has turned the genetic engineering technology of the 21st century to transforming Africa’s blacks into a perpetual servant race.

Representing the authoritarian left is the Communist International. Led by the People's Republic of China, which basically looked at Stalin, North Korea, and 1984 and said to themselves "everything you can do, we can do better." Don't you know, comrade, that true equality has been achieved in the heart of Asia? For here, the smiling face of Chairman Mao smiles on every man, from the Communist Party members who bravely uphold revolutionary principles (and are naturally rewarded for it by taking the first fruits, from grain to daughters; be happy that you are doing your part, comrade) to the heroic peasants who toil in the Party's fields and factories from sunup to sundown until they expire (and we mean that, comrade; attempting to escape is a counterrevolutionary act and you will be shot without hesitation like the imperialist running-dog you are). While the imperialists may believe that Chairman Mao is just a portrait, or just a preserved corpse, they are of course, mistaken. Chairman Mao is a divine being, who left his mortal coil to overthrow the Jade Emperor in the Celestial Sphere and bring communism with Chinese characteristics to all of Heaven. Now he is the Chairman of Heaven, and he watches you through the cameras, drones, computers and telescreens all over China. And he is literally watching, for in the years after the Great Oil Crash and the Second Chinese Civil War, the Party developed a new artificial intelligence observation system that eventually took over China’s computer systems and took the persona of Chairman Mao. The Party supports this intelligence, recognizing the great the propaganda value of a “divine spirit.” However, some Party officials have noted that “Mao” is starting to act independently of the Party’s edicts, leading to fears that the Party may lose control.

China naturally has a fraternal socialist brother in the form of the Socialist Workers' and Peasants' Democratic and Free People's Revolutionary Union of East Africa (try saying that five times fast), which totally isn't stuck in its revolutionary fervor and still dominated by Party-approved warlords that rule over the countryside in a feudal manner and have guillotines chopping off people's heads. The SWPDFPRUEA is governed by the doctrine of “permanent revolution,” and that means keeping the entire populace terrified that they may be the next “kulak” to go. Naturally, they spread this revolution to neighboring states, and the antics of the South Africans help push the desperate into their hands. And the Chinese have other allies, such as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, which has the distinction of being relatively unchanged even after a century, and the People's Union of Latin America, which has taken control of much of the far left in the Americas and adopted a form of radical “red Catholicism” to keep the conquered people in line. In Pakistan, internationalist Trotskyists have overthrown the government and established a hub for communist revolutionaries worldwide, causing trouble even when the Chinese don’t want it. In Europe, Romania once again fell to communism, but after an ideological split with their former Eurasian benefactors they have joined the Chinese bloc. In Indochina, the Chinese have established a Maoist government after their war with Vietnam, and in many ways it’s a return of the Khmer Rouge.

Representing the libertarian right is the Coalition for Freedom. Led by the Second Confederation of America, otherwise known as the Confederacy. They don't care about the implications of the name; this Confederacy won their civil war. This is the land where you own yourself. Well, not really; in truth you're born as the property of your parents' employer, for whom you are destined to work (unless they decide, for one reason or another, to sell you to someone else). But you can buy your freedom (if you're willing and able to toil for ten years without spending it on anything else except for food, rent and healthcare (which is, of course, absurdly expensive itself))! Everything is privatized, which means everything is for sale. Murdered someone? Pay the police and courts to look the other way. Of course, for a society where the propaganda exalts freedom, you can't get anything for free. If you can't pay, then tough luck; the weak deserve no share of the bounty of the great. Have no money to pay the police? Looks like that thief is getting away. Your house is burning down and you left all of your money inside? Looks like the fire department isn't saving your family. And don't expect anybody else to help you; in the new America, altruism is the greatest sin. Why are you looking for a handout, unless you're a parasite? Oh, and don't even think about replacing the system; the corporations that make up the Confederate Council, the state governments, and the Objectivist Party will have you terminated, and they are watching through every piece of electronic machinery in the country. But don't worry, due compensation will be given to your employer once your organs have been harvested and sold.

The Confederacy's greatest ally is the Republic of Japan, which after a rather nutty fascist stage post-Great Oil Crash (that got them nuked...again) has been taken over by the zaibatsu. The Japanese are rather more statist than their American counterparts, but all of their state assets are used to enforce the zaibatsu's will. And of course, salaryman culture has been applied to everyone. The Emperor has been done away with, but people still respect the former royal family; after all, they do own a large interest in Japan’s largest useless crap corporation. Other Confederate allies include the Republic of Korea, which has been nicknamed the “Samsung Republic” after that company took over much of Korean industry and then the Korean government. The Patagonian Union, a federation of South American states opposed to the Brazilians, have made quite a few bucks selling the organs of political dissidents and the very poorest to Confederate hospitals. The Mexican Economic Zone began as a Confederate experiment with anarcho-capitalism after the Mexican Civil War, but has been taken over by drug lords. The Confederation of Asian Republics, founded in response to Chinese militarism, has become tremendously rich by loosening restrictions on slave labor. And in the heart of Africa is the Objectivist State of the Congo, originally founded by a group of Confederate industrialists who thought the Confederacy was not enough of an unfettered market. The Congo has returned to the days of Leopold II, where men, women and children are mutilated if they do not meet their work quotas.

Representing the libertarian left is the Union of Allied Nations. Led by the European Federation, a federated union of Western European states, they really are the good guys here. Everything they do is for your own good! If you can't see that, well, maybe you need to take some good medicine? It's free, of course, and Brussels insists you take it. No, really, they insist. And why wouldn't you trust them? They're here to help you, and what's why the Federation's massive bureaucracy has taken it upon itself to micromanage every single aspect of your life! Oh, don't pay any attention to the fact that they're skimming off the top and mismanaging everything; that's just a flaw in the system. They're trying their best, and that's what really matters. And of course, in Europe everyone is equal and free. Free to do anything, except for one of the many things that violate the various regulations that are here to protect everything from the feelings of total strangers to endangered species (which may or may not have gone extinct in the past century; the gears of bureaucracy turn very slowly). Make sure you don't say anything politically incorrect, or we'll drill holes in your head and implant you with inhibitor chips. And of course, since it's Europe's duty to help the underprivileged, they will always take from the rich and give the needy their fair share. It just so happens that "the rich" tends to be synonymous with "vulnerable foreign countries and opponents of the regime," and "the needy" tends to be synonymous with "Union Party members, bureaucrats, and their families." Hey, the Party's members are activists and heroes of progressivism, they deserve everything you own for their hard work. And all of those poor refugees from the Middle East? The Europeans have take advantage of the most radical Islamists, using them as another enforcement arm while giving them legal carte blanche for any rapes and murders they might commit on the side. It’s their culture, you have to respect that, and Europe respects all cultures. This is why they preserve them in "Cultural Zones" in North Africa, where Europeans can culturally enrich themselves by watching these noble savages from the comfort of their heavily armed safari. They also provide cheap labor for European industry, but talking about that just kills the mood. And if you don't like the way Brussels does it, that really is too bad, because being a "reactionary" is a great way to disappear. Or get beaten in the street in broad daylight. And don't think you can hide, either; those cameras are everywhere.

Europe's most powerful ally is the Republic of India, where the government has decided that the most equitable solution to resolving religious and cultural disputes is by wiping them out. This isn’t just genocide; the “fortunate” are exiled to the countries in India’s periphery, which has caused a lot of tension in the region and the creation of many radical religious terrorist organizations. Europe's other allies include the Republic of Canada. The Confederate appellation "People's Republic of Canada" is not that inaccurate; while the Canadians prefer to drug the water supply to keep people in line, they aren’t above using guns and random arrests if need be. If you critique the government, you’ll be thrown in jail for bigotry. An unchallenged Democratic Party governs the New American Republic, another successor state to the old United States. They crucify any Christians they find, with the aid of Islamic fundamentalists, and have an entire underclass of “welfare drones” used as government slave laborers. The United Communes of Mexico, an anarcho-communist experiment, is another hellish “permanent revolution” state where demagogues rule the roost and order the Mexican people around like any other tyrant. Thailand has turned the transsexual phenomenon in its country into a point of pride after a pro-European revolution, and have perfected a drug that will transform a male fetus into a phenotypically female one. That this is force-fed to the female political dissidents, or the wives of male ones, is seen as an act of mercy: we could kill your child, but we’d just turn him into an infertile “woman” instead.

Sweden has been divided into a feminist and an MRA zone, a division arising after WWIII. The former is a staunch European ally, where men are considered second-class citizens that can be accused of rape and shot at any time, and are being steadily replaced with men genetically engineered to be subservient, artificial insemination and sex bots. The latter is a staunch Eurasian ally, where women are considered second-class citizens that can be raped and shot at any time, and are being steadily replaced with women genetically engineered to be subservient, artificial wombs and sex bots.

In the Middle East, ISIL is starting to fall apart, as the isolated theocracy lags behind and what’s left of its aging industrial base rots away. A new jihad may be needed. The irradiated sands of Arabia house the mad remnants of the Saudi Arabian state, while the heir to the House of Saud enjoys every luxury he could in the Confederacy. The United Kingdom, divided in 2014, 2033 and 2065, has turned inward; a reactionary royalist state that wishes nothing but death upon the rest of the world. The monarch has no power, of course; those belong to massive corporations and corrupt remnants of the UK's political parties all using royalist rhetoric to justify their heavy-handed autocracy. England will prevail one day, friend. A technocratic revolution has occurred Australia and spread throughout Oceania, and the country is now ruled by such a byzantine bureaucracy that nobody is entirely clear who is the leader of the country, while the people starve and money and resources disappear.



The Republic of Brazil, a state which has taken environmental defense to new heights by using the remains of dissidents as fertilizer and demolished entire cities in "endangered habitats" that just happen to match up perfectly with areas of major rebellion. In Switzerland, inhibitor chips are used on everyone to give the entire population a sense of constant euphoria. This eventually leads to boredom, and unplugging is so depressing that people kill themselves from withdrawal. A “perfect democracy” exists in Peru, where everyone is linked to a hive mind against their will and has to vote on everything. If you don’t like how the vote turned out, tough luck; looks like you won’t be getting much food. And in Antarctica, pacifists have established a society free of war. The price for this is subjecting the entire population to aversion therapy to violence, where even the thought of violence causes revulsion. That the therapy also confers aversion to any sort of disobedience is a nice bonus for the Antarctican leadership.

As the Earth heats up more and the air becomes choked in industrial wastes new and old, the great powers invest more in space exploration. Already, the skies are “filled” with orbital platforms. Some stations have been established by various ideological pariahs and subcultures; in the stars, they are free to make their own hells and to fight with one another over whether or not Kirk could beat up Han Solo. The Moon is generally limited to the great power governments, and a few skirmishes have already occurred there. However, Mars remains unexplored.

A great deal of technology has been invested in surveillance. Cameras, electronic monitors and tracking chips all feed the massive intelligence agencies of the great powers information on dissenters, who of course must be crushed. After all, the second Cold War is going on, the four-way ideological struggle for the soul of mankind, and anyone who disagrees with the “right” ideology is a traitor. The specter of a fourth world war hangs over everyone, and unlike WWIII, this one may not see any restraint.

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