Community micronation

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Various members of the micronational community at MicroCon 2017. A community micronation would have members of the micronational community as its citizens.

A community micronation, known colloquially as a Microwikistan, is a hypothetical micronation that would be a collective project of the MicroWiki community. Rather than a political union of the existing nations that make up the MicroWiki sector, a community micronation would be a new nation with the micronationalists who run the countries in that sector as its citizens. Some proposals envision using existing MicroWiki sector memes and in-jokes as the foundation for the nation's culture, and some envision a formal link between the nation and MicroWiki or MicroWiki@Discord, such as a parliament making Discord rules.

There have been several proposals for a community micronation in the history of the MicroWiki community, but none has ever come to fruition. At the same time, nations such as Amager, Abelden and New Virginia could be considered de facto community micronations in certain periods of their history as they had many prominent community members as citizens.

History

In 2020, Newton von Uberquie and Anthony Clark, with minor participation from the then-new micronationalist Daniel Hamilton, proposed a community micronation that would have had limited democratic control over MicroWiki and MicroWiki@Discord, creating a Discord server for the project and doing some work to develop a proposed political system. The project became inactive in the following weeks, however, and was abandoned.

In January 2021, Ives Blackwood, David R. Easterling, Kunhee Lee, Morwenna Fydtroust, Jan Šťastný and Isaiah David started the 2021 attempt to create a community micronation.

National symbols

Name

Naming a hypothetical community micronation would be problematic, as the community generally identifies itself with the name MicroWiki, which is not immediately appropriate for a country, and terms like "MicroWiki nation" are already commonly used to refer to micronations that are part of the MicroWiki sector.

Proposed short name Proposed formal name When By whom Notes
Anthea (/'ænθiə/ AN-thee-ah) Republic of Articles December 2020 Ives Blackwood Republic of Articles references the Republic of Letters, adapted to refer to MicroWiki articles. Anthea (an + the + a) is a pun based on the grammatical meaning of article.

Colloquially, a community nation is often called "Microwikistan". The use of the Persian suffix -stan for improvised country-sounding names is common in right-wing and gamer culture online circles on Discord and Reddit. Furthermore, the more obvious construction using the suffix -ia is not possible, as MicroWikia already refers to a 2012–18 schismatic group based on the wiki hosting platform Wikia.

Flag

Easterling's proposed flag.

In December 2020, on the MicroWiki Discord, David Easterling proposed a flag for a community micronation with a dark blue field in the same colour as the MicroWiki logo, defaced with a MicroWiki globe with colours in the spaces, representing "the diversity of microwiki, both politically and generally". The yellow and purple colours in the spaces represent the two traditions of classical secessionism and classical simulationism respectively.

Political system

Von Uberquie and Clark's proposal from 2020 would have given the community nation some political control over MicroWiki and the MicroWiki Discord, making the MicroWiki admins and the Discord moderators members of the new micronation's civil service. Their proposal to ensure this would not stop the wiki from functioning effectively was to have a set of "take your shoes off before you jump on the trampoline" rules that could not be amended without the consent of the MicroWiki admins. Blackwood proposed having a two-part constitution with an "overlaw" that would include the standard provisions of a national constitution and could be amended in a normal way, and an "underlaw" that would include the "take your shoes off before you jump on the trampoline" provisions.

Similar concepts

Micronations

Some micronations — such as the Abeldane Empire — have drawn their citizens and politicians from active members of the MicroWiki community who also led other states, functioning (to some extent) as a de facto community micronation with a distinctive aesthetic.

In 2016, several notable micronations had the same micronationalists, holding multiple citizenships, in each of their legislatures. This practice was condemned by some newer members of the community in mid-July, leading to the "Micronational existential crisis". Some younger micronationalists, notably including Anthony Clark, briefly left the community due to this crisis. In response, Paravia, Grémmia, Cinnamon Creek and Nedland (all micronations that engaged in the practice) signed the Treaty of Nyros, an attempt to revitalise the community by merging these states into one federal empire, the Paravian Federal Empire. The Paravian Federal Empire can be regarded as a de facto attempt to create a community micronation. At around the same time, Ava Neasa and Nick Kaos created the Federal Empire of Aarbaro, a state with similar ambitions to unite the community's powers, and in mid-2017 several of Paravia's federal states defected to Aarbaro. Both projects ended in autumn 2017.

The historical Glastieven concept of Envardia and an Envardian Republic is similar to some proposals for a community micronation. "Envardia" was Glastieve's name for a subculture of creative, socially-marginalised friendship groups that they believed already existed across the United Kingdom, and the Envardian Republic was a proposal to create a federal micronation by encouraging existing alternative, nerdy or weeaboo groups of friends to create New Secessionist governments for themselves and join the association as provinces.

The flag of The Online Republic, representing four hands from different nationalities coming together.

In 2018, the Reddit community r/LetsCreateaCountry, led by u/LordAkatosh, attempted to create "the first virtual country". This attempt to create a general online nation has some similarities with the idea of creating a community micronation on MicroWiki. After building a small community on Reddit, Lord Akatosh founded The Online Republic (TOR) on a Discord server, and it briefly accrued over two hundred members and managed to sustain an active political system for a short period of time. However, TOR collapsed a few months after it was founded and Akatosh's subsequent attempts to create further general online nations through r/LetsCreateaCountry have all been unsuccessful. TOR would probably have been considered a classical simulationist micronation — its focus was on creating an active political simulation for its own sake, in a similar vein to a US government roleplay or a model United Nations, and the appearance of an independent state was just window-dressing. This is one possible approach for a community micronation.

Organisations

Some more-integrated alternatives to the Grand Unified Micronational, such as the Cupertino Alliance (CUP), have some structural similarities to a community micronation. Other than the absence of a formal claim to sovereignty, the main difference between a group like the CUP and a similar community micronation is that these organisations have states rather than individuals as members. The failed Statecraft Association in 2019, which would have had individual micronationalists as members rather than states, was also similar to a community micronation. The main structural difference there was that Statecraft claimed to exist outside the world of micronational politics and deliberately had almost no governance structure.

See also