[castlebravo92]

Originally Posted by Raellus

That's brilliant, castlebravo92. It wouldn't be the first time a CIA catspaw had gotten out of control.

Given the rise of White Power Accelerationist militia/terrorist groups in the USA over the last 20 years or so, and the emergence and growth of anti-gov't militias during the Clinton administration (many of which embraced some stripe of racist ideology), New America has never struck me as being an unrealistic entity, even in an alternate timeline where the USSR never goes away. That said, your stuff does a good job of explaining its seemingly sudden appearance, rapid expansion, and early successes during the Twilight War.
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Fair points. I guess I should be more explicit on what I consider "unrealistic".

Sorry if this ends up being something akin to a doctoral thesis.

If we take a look at the U.S as of Jan 1, 2001, we see in effect what are three or four large "successor" states in the US: MilGov, CivGov, New America, and Mexico (Mexico is debatable, so I'll leave them out of the discussion for now). MilGov inherited the bulk of intact domestic Federal capacity (and not an insignificant amount of remaining state government capacity) after the dissolution of the civilian Federal government in May of 1998. CivGov formed from disaffected MilGov components, surviving members of Congress, newly appointed members from the states, and some component of the Federal and state bureaucracies. But the net is, both MilGov and CivGov are successor states with some claim to legitimacy that are able to leverage surviving infrastructure and bureaucracies to organize their respective populations.

Per canon, New America doesn't really have that. The canon portrait of Hughes in Airlords of the Ozarks isn't all that flattering in terms of his ability to get things done:

His father had died in 1974, leaving him independently wealthy. He used a large part of that money to launch a political campaign aimed at getting him nominated for president on an independent ticket for the 1976 elections. The debacle before the press and against seasoned and soundly-backed campaigners was complete enough that he retired from politics at once, but not before fighting and losing a lengthy court battle over nonpayment of taxes and faulty reporting of campaign funding. He served eight months in prison on charges of income tax evasion.

it continues:

During the early to mid-1980's he returned to politics briefly
when he became deeply involved in the fundamentalist Christian conservative political movement, but his inability to win the confidence of several popular Christian leaders led to his dissociation from traditional religions by the time of the 1988 elections.

Hughes can be seen as an amalgam of Lyndon LaRouche (the crazy political movement), Howard Hughes (the reclusive billionaire angle), and maybe a splash of L. Ron Hubbard.

On New America membership (pre-war):

BACKGROUND AND HISTORY

New America has its roots in the numerous ultraright-wing, militant organizations which proliferated throughout North America during the 1970's and 80's. The organization formed by Carl Hughes in 1979 was an unusual coalition of survivalists, tax and "big government" resistance groups, neo-Nazis, ultraright-wing and militant religious organizations, and racists

This is a sanitized way of describing a bunch what are a bunch of crackpots and marginalized members of society, led by a guy with a bunch of crackpot ideas with questionable political and organizational skills based on prior performance.

The idea that these Hughes and his followers, as original written, would be able to stand up a parallel state that posed an existential threat to both MilGov and CivGov is one of the things I find unrealistic, but can be made a little more workable with some retconning of pre-war background without affecting the overall plot arcs.

The other aspect I found unrealistic is that a large group would escape notice by the Feds. Historically, radical groups are thoroughly penetrated by the Feds, and the larger they get the greater the likelihood that they are compromised. For a recent example, in the Whitmer kidnapping plot there were as many Feds and Fed informants as there were actual plotters. The leader of the Proud Boys was an FBI informant. The III Percenters were/are riddled with informants. The Islamist group that planned and executed the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York had an FBI informant in it (who came up with the idea of bombing the WTC...but I digress). The FBI penetrated the Weather Underground (Larry Grathwohl), the Nation of Islam, the KKK, and a bunch of other groups. The government is actually pretty good at this stuff...and the canon New America doesn't sound like an organization filled with the type of people that could maintain opsec over 15 years of development and growth. It took the left decades to hone their craft and develop the concept of affinity groups to reduce (not eliminate) the threat of informants. The cartels in Mexico limited penetration for a while by leveraging mutual family relationships in Sinaloa. But it doesn't take a lot to get exposed. Some New America mid-level guy kills his wife in a domestic dispute or gets popped smuggling rocket launchers in the trunk of his car to build up his group's post apocalyptic arsenal, and decides to cut a deal, and all of a sudden you have a Federal investigation, and things will unravel pdq. We don't really have a rationalization of why some white supremacist cell leader in Idaho would have some great, self-sacrificial loyalty to a crackpot recluse in the Shenandoah mountains.

But...if you have the CIA in your pocket (or they think you are in theirs), then that local or Federal investigation gets squashed...national security trumps all. The CIA steered DEA investigations away from people like Noriega in Panama for years before he was finally cut loose.

So, we can retcon Hughes & New America into being CIA assets. Make New America less overtly racist to make them more politically palatable pre-war so legitimate politicians and elected officials are co-opted into membership, and you have a scenario by which New America escapes suppression pre-war, and an explanation of how they are able to assume some of the pre-existing functions of government post-collapse in a similar manner to CivGov and MilGov rather than simply being an up-gunned, large marauder band. That's the premise anyway. Still needs a lot of development, IMHO.