Name of Faction:
The Free Territory
Flag:
Platform:
Libertarianism (left)
Important Individuals:
“Batko 2.0”
“The Dark Horse”
Territory:
The Great Lakes region (Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin)
History:
The modern notion of Left-Libertarianism as a synonymous replacement to Anarchism was born from the writings and lectures of Murray Bookchin through the middle of the 20th century up until his death in the 1990's. The notion was inherited and indirectly carried on by Noam Chomsky. While the two political philosophers largely spoke to a rather limited intellectual audience, the notion that Left Libertarianism could be pressed in the new century grew out of the tragic defeat of the Bernie campaign and a subsequent reanalysis of the left in America.
While far outside the typical left-right spectrum of American centrist politics the notion a group of effective Anarchists could carve out a swathe of free territory in the United State was probably nominally impossible. Though through the melt down of the United States in the face of a disastrous war in Asia the impossible came to bare.
Promoting first and foremost the idea that local municipal government can first address the issues facing the common population, left-libertarians found wide support among even nominal anti-government conservatives. And based in part the modern realized notion that it has been more the mayors and city governments of the United States who perform the real policy on the ground, the area that came to be known as the Free Territory emerged not as an incident involving the merger of state governments, but the move of some of the larger urban municipalities and their dependents merging in league with one another.
This political shift supplanted the local State Governments and even directly usurped them through the political shift to the smallest political unit outside of the normal state political process. Inevitably, state resources and organizations were surrendered to the Free Territory's League of Municipalities and they organized in the face of growing instability in the United States.
Nominally, the Free Territory believes more in the notion of self defense for the citizens and self management of its resources actively seeking a balance between the ability of the resources of the region to produce vs what the populace needs. By seizing faltering corporate assets in the crumbling United States, the Free Territory pushed out capitalism, and while some may claim it a necessity has constructed an economy of needs rather than an economy of consumptive demands.
Parallels to draw with other such experimental initiatives might be made to the Hungarian Uprising of 1956, the Zapatistas in southern Mexico, or the Rojava Kurds.
The leadership of the movement is nominally a large council of delegates from its numerous municipal polities that form that makeup of the government. Leaders identifiable to significant broad roles are functionally invisible, though some of its most eccentric faces are notable public, in particular the region's chief strategist and military adviser who has become compared to the likes of Nestor Makhno of the previous century and thus referred to at Batko 2.0.
Military Forces:
The Free Territory organizes itself on that most fundamental principle of military self-defense in America, the trained professional militia. On need the Territory has begun drafting or seeking volunteers within the territory to act is citizen soldiers. Reporting in to be trained and equipped before returning to civilian duties and reporting in at regular intervals to be drilled. The structure of the Militias follow local ordinance and regulation.
Outside of the locally organized units are the spontaneously raised groups of quasi-adventurer soldiers attracted to the romance of this Second Great Experiment. Referred to both as the Citizen Legions or the Dark Horse Legions after the nickname of one of its younger commanders, these groups are self-organized, self contained armies in miniature with their own organized artillery, motor/cavalry, and infantry squads. These ideological volunteers can compose local supporters who are self armed, supporters from elsewhere in the United States, or foreign volunteers from across North America or the world migrating into the area out of sympathy to the movement akin to the International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War or in the Kurdish military in Syria.
Member
AliceAbigail
Scrawl Banditta
Wilted Rose
mickilennial
Ekreture
Supermaxx
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