Thomas Bobblehat

     

Thomas Connolly MP
Connolly in 2021
Member of the K.S. House of Commons for Mountain Empire West (Laguna's 10th district)
Incumbent
Assumed office November 28, 2022
Preceded by	Corbin Story
Personal details
Born	(1993-12-08) 8 December 1993 Mullingar, County Westmeath, Ireland
Spouse(s)	Astrid Eriksson (m. 2020)
Alma mater	Hudson County Community College Johns Hopkins University (BA, PhD)
Occupation	Politician novelist short story author essayist historian
Website	thomasbobblehat.com
Writing career
Pen name	Thomas Bobblehat
Genre	Science fiction, fantasy, alternate history, historical fiction, history
Notable works	The War to End All Wars Éire Rules the Waves 1973: Doomsday Hoc Divisum Mundi

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Thomas Connolly (born 8 December 1993), better known by his pen name Thomas Bobblehat, is an Irish-Continental politician, author and historian serving as the MP for Laguna's 10th district (Mountain Empire West). He is known for his work in the genres of alternate history, historical fiction, fantasy, true crime fiction and science fiction. Bobblehat is often cited as one of the most prolific figures in the alternate history community as a member of the "New Generation Writers".

He is most well-known for his alternate history novel The War to End All Wars and alternate history novel series 1973: Doomsday. In addition to his work as an author, he has been a vocal critic of the U.C. government and Landonism in general. In 2015, Bobblehat received widespread coverage in Anglo-American media in what became known as "Landongate" due to purported harassment and criminal investigation by the U.C. government for his political beliefs. The U.C. government later disputed such claims, asserting that Bobblehat was free to express himself and that while he was investigated for possible criminal charges, they were unrelated to his free speech on criticizing the government. Following the controversy, Bobblehat moved to San Diego in the Kingdom of Sierra and was given expedited naturalized citizenship. In 2022, running as a Democratic-Republican, Bobblehat ran for Laguna’s 10th parliamentary district, and won during the 2022 federal election, becoming a Sierran MP.

Early life and education

Bobblehat has been rather open about his personal life. He was born in Mullingar, a town in Ireland on the 8th of December, 1993, to David(b.1967) and Marie(b.1969). Bobblehat has two siblings, older brother Richard(b. 1991), a New York talk show host and Kaitlyn(b. 1996), an actress. He has confirmed that his name 'Thomas Bobblehat' was a pseudonym and intended to guard his true identity. At the age of four, he was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. In 1999, his father lost his job at a quarry and his family emigrated to Manhattan and he became a naturalized citizen of the United Commonwealth. He studied history at Hudson County Community College in New Jersey and later attended Johns Hopkins University where he obtained a Ph.D. in history in 2014. He wrote his dissertation on the history of the automobile in Anglo-America and the effects of cars on culture, society, and politics.

Around this time, he suffered from severe mental health problems. Speaking in 2019, he said “In college, I had four friends: depression, my computer, Johnnie Walker Black Label and Formula 1.” Many have speculated that the lack of effective treatment he received during this time, combined with his bringing up in Manhattan, led to a distrust of the Landonist system.

Career

During Bobblehat's college education, he spent time online freelance writing for various blogs and wikis. He became a prominent editor on the Alternate History Wiki and self-published his first novel, Warren. He also published short anthology series and novelettes on Threddit, where his story That Blood-Stained Boardwalk, about the son of a New York mafia boss who tries to get out of the ‘family business’ was adapted by Simon & Schuster in 2013. He published his first major alternate history work, The War to End All Wars in 2014, a novel which explored if Great War I had occurred earlier in 1914, with the point of divergence being the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferndinand of Austria.

Connolly promoting the film adaptation of That Blood-Stained Boardwalk in 2016

He became involved in a number of collaboration projects, most notably Merveilles des Morte where he contributed worldbuilding concepts to the decades-old series as a supporting writer. He also became a writer for 1973: Doomsday, one of the largest and well-known online alternate history projects. His Doomsday Report novel series, derived from his work on the project, received numerous accolades by the Divergent Awards for Alternate History Society. Other works published during this time included Callahan? Who’s He?, exploring the consequences of the Federalists winning the Continental Revolutionary War, which proved to be his most popular book, in 2015, and Eire Rules The Waves, set in a timeline where the 1798 Rebellion succeeds, creating an independent Irish state that grows into a major European power. In 2020, he co-authored Eucallipolis Exposed with Sierran alternate history writer Spencer Zerx and became a proponent of Zerx's Grand Jersey Apotheosis theory. In 2021, he authored and released Hoc Divisum Mundi, a timeline set in a universe where the Holy Roman Empire collapses, permanently dividing the region and complicating European history in general.

Political career

Connolly at the 2022 Democratic-Republican party conference

In an interview on German talk show Die Morgenshow in August 2021, Bobblehat expressed his wish to run for the following year’s Sierran federal elections. To quote the translated version:

Interesting question, and one I’ve thought about for a while: having experienced some persecution in the UC, I would be inclined to refuse such an offer… But, then again, who knows? Maybe I’ll run for next year’s Sierran federal elections… Actually, scratch that, I WILL run for next year’s Sierran federal elections.

—Thomas Connolly, August 4, 2021

As 2022 progressed, many began to speculate that Bobblehat would make good on his promises. The Bubbler hashtag #bobblehatforpresident reached number 4 on the Trending page in September and early October 2022, as preparations for the federal elections got underway. On the 19th of October, Bobblehat posted a Bubble saying this:

You might have heard I’m running for the elections this year… can confirm. Going for Laguna’s 15th parliamentary district as a Democratic-Republican. Let’s go. #bobblehatforpresident #elections #laguna

—Thomas Bobblehat(@the_real_tom_bobblehat), 19th October, 2022

The bubble was met with huge celebration from Bobblehat’s followers, and it went to the top of the #elections hashtag just 24 hours after it was first posted. The bubble received more than 60,000 rebubbles. Bobblehat was seen at many Democratic-Republican rallies and generally made more public appearances than previously.

On the 25th of November, it was confirmed on Bubbler by the Democratic-Republicans’ account that Bobblehat had won the seat for Laguna’s 15th parliamentary district.

Political beliefs

Bobblehat believes in democratic socialism and aligns himself with the libertarian left. He believes that the removal of capitalism is not the be-all-and-end-all, rather it must be properly regulated and controlled to prevent monopolies forming, using the United Commonwealth under the Federalists as an example of how unregulated capitalism can lead to disastrous consequences for a nation. Bobblehat has stated that he admires the Nordic model, claiming it to be "a shining example of how capitalism and socialism can coexist in harmony". He also advocates for state-funded and state-owned universal healthcare and education systems, but not total state control of all businesses.

Bobblehat’s views on Landonism and the United Commonwealth are mostly negative. He believes the Commonwealth to be "a twisted vision of a socialist utopia" and a society where "one man speaks and the rest nod aimlessly in agreement". Drawing from his experiences of being harassed for his political opinions, Bobblehat has also described the UC as "A place where everything you see, hear or read cannot be trusted because they want you to believe in one way: their way. If you don’t like their way, then they’ll come after you, harassing you until you give up and renounce your opinions or you leave the country altogether." However, he also criticises capitalist nations like Superior for their system of healthcare, with him saying that "it is absolutely extraordinary, shocking even, that people have to fork out thousands of dollars for a mere doctor’s checkup, while paying taxes, bills, etc, and the government simply refuses to do jackshit on the matter. Once that happens, you know you’ve failed at the most important role a politician can have: to stand up for the little guy. And, as soon as you realise that, you need to get up off your ass and do something about it."

Social commentators describe Bobblehat’s beliefs as socialism based on public benefits and not socialism based on social ownership of the means of production. Some describe his policies as "welfarist", while others describe it as "social democracy" but not traditional democratic socialism as defined as "an attempt to create a classless, property-less society". Members of socialist parties throughout North America, particularly the United Commonwealth, see Bobblehat as a pseudo-socialist, a mere reformer of capitalism. Much of Bobblehat’s criticism comes from Landonist nations such as the UC, where many regard him as a man with "opinions that are too outlandish to even be considered realistic", as one Toronto journalist put it. Others align him closer to the variant of democratic socialism found in Europe, particularly the Nordic region.

Personal life

Contrary to his mildly secretive policy around his early life, Bobblehat has lavished the limelight, holding impromptu fan Q&A sessions regularly and also attending multiple Grands Prix a year. Bobblehat has also appeared on British satirical news show Mock the Week on multiple occasions, and has written many columns in Sierran, Brazorian and Astorian newspapers and magazines as a guest columnist. He maintains a personal blog where he has shared his enthusiasm for Formula One, NASCAR, and automobiles in general. He currently resides in San Diego.

Fans of Thomas Bobblehat's works have called themselves "Bobbleheads" and has led to Internet memes such as "Bobbleposting" on websites such as VidStream and 3mage.

Bobblehat announced in 2018 that he was in a relationship with Swedish journalist Astrid Eriksson. They married in August 2020.

The origin of "Thomas Bobblehat"

In January 2023, Bobblehat posted a video to his VidStream channel that explained the origin of his pen-name, which by then had become a household name on the Internet. He went on to explain that when he was 12, he received a red woolly hat with a distinctive bobble on top as part of a birthday present. When he wore it to school, an unidentified friend called him ‘Mr Bobblehat’, and over time the nickname stuck. When writing his first book a few years later, he remembered the nickname and chose to use it as his pseudonym, plus a trademark drawing of a woolly hat.

Controversies

Landongate

In 2015, Connolly released a 25-page political manifesto titled The Great Landonist Truth on the Threddit community t/politics. The post received nearly 35,000 posivotes and 9,000 comments. Speaking to a German journalist in 2020, he received letters from the CIS that he was suspected of high treason, on another t/politics thread he had commented on the same day. He initially ignored this, and on 21 August, five days after the post was uploaded, he was detained and taken into questioning over allegations that he had conspired a violent overthrow of the government.

The topic was covered extensively by Anglo-American media, seeing this as alleged persecution of Bobblehat. Many on social media sympathised with the 22-year old expat, and Bobblehat himself would come forward, claiming that he had been pressed into admitting to the crimes and that he was kept in a solitary confinement cell during his time in custody. However, three days later, he was mysteriously released, after evidence came out that the alleged conversation had been manipulated by a fellow Threddit user who did not agree with his opinions on the Commonwealth government. Bobblehat stated that he received an offer to attend Kentucky Bend for vocational school, which he rejected immediately, having extensively studied its history as a prison camp.

After his release, he was made a martyr on social media; conversely, he was looked down upon in the United Commonwealth. He received 'near-endless' hate mail at his home in Camden and in Baltimore, with the severity of the letters ranging from degrading comments about his condition, sexuality and intelligence to "full-blown" death threats. After an incident in Brooklyn in December 2015 where he had a brick thrown at him by an unidentified man, he moved to San Diego in Sierra, citing "public hostility" and "associated personal security reasons" as his motives to move away to Sierra. He has only returned to the UC to visit close family in Manhattan since then. To this day, many critics in the UC, and some from abroad, see Bobblehat as a pariah who used a mere police questioning as an excuse to cry wolf.

2022 Chicago Sun-Times article

In September of 2022, the Chicago Sun-Times ran an article by Randolph Goodman, a libertarian socialist journalist who investigates allegations against the government, regarding Bobblehat's political activities. Throughout Goodman's investigation he requested information from the Commissariat of Inter-Services Intelligence's Eleventh Main Directorate, know colloquially as the Internal Discipline Office. The Sun-Times interviewed several of his closest colleagues at the the John Hopkins University regarding his life and political background. During the private investigation the Chicago Sun-Times discovered that the CIS acquired information that Bobblehat had made statements within a private online group advocating for the violent overthrow of the Continental government, a violation of Continental law similar to the legal provision in the Constitution of Sierra that prohibits treasonous activities or collaboration.

The Eleventh Main Directorate ultimately dropped the charges, having discovered that someone within the online group manipulated data to make it appear that Bobblehat advocated for violence and was conspiring with a citizen from the Antilles. Government documents opinioned by intelligence officials stated that Bobblehat was "ignorant of Continental law, philosophy and history" and was not a threat to the Continental state. The article looked into the admissions documents from the John Hopkins University, which detailed that Bobblehat was admitted partially on the grounds of his class background taking into the account of his father's working-class and immigratory background. When the Chicago Sun-Times asked the CIS about the flight status of Bobblehat, the agency responded "...Mr. Bobblehat was free to leave the country at his pleasure or remain within the country to peacefully advocate for whatever so-called reforms he wished."

Investigators from the Chicago Sun-Times also interviewed former General Secretary of the Continentalist Party, and former President of the United Commonwealth, Anthony Malito, about the investigation.

I'm trying to recall, it was a very minor blip on my radar during my time within government. From the report that the Commissar of the Commissariat of Inter-Services Intelligence I was provided, it appeared that we were actively being baited by some foreign government to overreact against Mr. Bobblehat's statements. I suspected it was either agents from the Antilles or Superior, but that's all quite unconfirmed. I told them to close the investigation and release Mr. Bobblehat from custody and let him find a real job.

—Anthony Malito, September 28, 2022

Documents acquired from the Commissariat for Agriculture indicated that they sent letters to Bobblehat inquiring if he wished to attend Kentucky Bend for vocational school. Kentucky Bend is a notorious re-education camp which historically brutalized political opponents of Continental regime, and the Sun-Times article outlined that the letter may have been viewed or intended as a threat. The Commissariat for Agriculture never forced or demanded Bobblehat to report to the political camp.

Letters from the Precinct Defense Committee located in Bobblehat's precinct in Camden were acquired by the Sun-Times, which out of all the various letters sent were most vicious towards Bobblehat. The letter stated that Bobblehat was a "pathetic writer of low quality" and that his indignation towards Landonism was in part due to his supposedly inadequate intelligence. Within the sealed envelope was a train ticket to Sierra, reportedly acquired through crowd funding by local Continentalist supporters in Camden. Bobblehat ultimately decided against using the ticket and continued to live at his home in Camden. Sun-Times investigators spoke with his neighbors, who reported that Bobblehat was never put under surveillance by physical agents of the government, but that the Precinct Defense Committee asked them to report on his activities.

Within the article the Sun-Times also looked into the various sporadic protests held in the United Commonwealth and across the globe surrounding the temporary detainment of Bobblehat. The Sun-Times reported that media outlets owned by the politically right-leaning Media Corporation, including The Bunker Hill Journal, Duluth Standard, and EBN News overstated the size and nature of the protests that took place in the United Commonwealth, which elevated the notoriety of Bobblehat. The National Broadcasting Cooperative covered the protests for a cumulative thirty minutes, while Associated Broadcasting covered the protests for a total of two hours.

Goodman's concluded within his article that the government did utilize "passive intimidation", but not to the extent in which media agencies or Bobblehat claimed. Goodman article also claims that government was not holding Bobblehat within the country, and was given ample opportunities to leave the United Commonwealth and that he is not facing any legal challenges. Goodman ended the article stating "Bobblehat's objections to asylum based on wanting to be vindicated by Continental legal system are futile as he is not currently under any legal investigation, and is only held by the court of public opinion."

Bobblehat’s reaction was one of mixed feelings. In a Bubbler post on the 30th of September, in which he tagged Goodman, he said "Just read that Chicago Sun-Times article by @randolph_goodman. Very mixed emotions, it must be said… not going to say much else for risk of offending him, or discrediting his effort in the article, because he seems to be a very good journalist."

Bibliography

Main article: Thomas Bobblehat bibliography

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Credited as				Notes
		Actor	Screenwriter	Producer	Executive producer