Micronations: The Anarchist Commune at the Heart of Denmark
In 1648, the Peace of Westphalia laid the legal foundation of the nation-state as a sovereign entity. Through nearly four centuries the nation-state has become the apex political authority governing greater degrees of power through even more sophisticated state machinery. The nation-state thrives on identity politics premised on the foremost identity of the population as the national citizenry. It is this aspect that is integral to the functioning of the nation-state. As noted by Hardt and Negri in ‘Empire’(2000), the modern state is a ‘sovereignty machine’ where national people take shape as national citizenry and citizenship thereby becomes a tool of state power. This occurs on two-levels. Firstly, citizenship is obedience to a set of institutions which become the criterion by which an individual is ‘declared to be a sovereign’. Sovereignty, in this sense, cannot be displaced from the notion of being subject to the nation-state. All citizens are, therefore, sovereigns who belong to the nation. Secondly, as Hardt and Negri recognize citizenship has a political power as an idea and an ideal. It is an idea which qualify citizens as homologous thereby marginalizing local and regional identities to create one hegemonic idea of a nation linked with the nation-state. A violence is institutionalized in the formation of the subject category of citizens because it requires the negation of identities which do not conform to the nation-state. This by large has remained the logic of the global empire. There is reason to disagree with their claim which reads, “We believe it is a grave mistake to harbour any nostalgia for the power of the nation-state”. The power of the nation-state continues to be sustained by the reality of institutionalized sovereignties. The nation-state still holds the capacity to produce its people. The point of counter-empire that Hardt and Negri refer to does not always depend on a demand for global citizenship. Groups and communities within the citizenry, deliberately detach their identities from these forms of institutionalised sovereignty and are thus capable of producing their own socio-political reality. There is a production of a two-fold resistance to the logic of the empire, through the formation of micronations. On one hand, the community makes a deliberate attempt at shedding their identity as sovereigns belonging to the nation-state and define their own sovereignty often through institutions radically defying the logic of their nation-state counterparts and on the other, they challenge the pre-conceived idea and ideal of citizenship often by asserting hitherto marginalised identities.
Micronations are themselves unlikely to reproduce the politico-juridical institutional structure of the nation-state, firstly, because their whole existence is based on difference from the nation-state and this existence is consciously maintained because it now becomes the identity of the inhabitants and secondly because they are not recognized by other sovereign nations or international institutions and organisations. Their existence seldom depends on reciprocity with the global empire and its institutional structure. They create a different political reality or rather an alternate political reality. The very circumstances of the creation of micronation is rooted in challenging the power hegemony of the state. For example, Akhzivland was founded in 1971 on Israeli territory in response to the Israeli government demolishing an illegally inhabited house. Several others are based on libertarian principles or on notions of no borders. The micronations, like the nation-state, have also faced the impact of immigration and other trends of globalization. The influx of a new population causes a rupture in the notion of the micronation because they were not part of the conscious effort for the initiation of a different political reality. The important inquiry here is whether there is an otherization of migrant communities and thus a reproduction of the logic of the ideal of citizenship. This is unlikely because the micronations firstly usually do not depend on institutionalized sovereignty and secondly, the populations are usually minute, causing little problems of multiculturalism. The absence of a normalized national culture is another mechanism which ameliorates potential tensions.
FREETOWN CHRISTIANIA
Freetown Christiania is in Copenhagen, Denmark. It was founded on 26th September 1971. Their mottos sum up the life approach of the micronation as well as their inhabitation of a space differential than the government of Denmark. They read, “Just relax, everything is temporary” and “Governments come and go, but Christiania remains.” It deliberately posits itself in a framework of permanent existence as opposed to the temporary nature of governments.
The project began in 1971 when abandoned military barracks at the site were overrun by squatters who stalked the area out as being a “free city”. Christiania defies two of the primary principles of the modern state. There is no ownership of any kind and there is no taxation. In academic terms, Christiania can be described as an anarchist commune. The rejection of the institution of taxation and property ownership affirm how the micronation detaches the notion of sovereignty from such institutions. More importantly, the residents are aware of this political reality that they create. The residents say that they have “fought to maintain Freetown as the property of everyone and no one.”. To preserve that they have entered into an agreement with the Danish government to pay 76 million Kroner. The residents keep to themselves and do not want to be made into exotic subjects. Hence, they have little liking for tourism and photography is prohibited. The more troubling threat comes from the possibility of the reproduction of normative state institutions which is interlinked with the intrusion of capital. However, sticking to the introductory qualification, they are unlikely to reproduce the institutions of the state because there is a deliberate attempt to maintain the heterogenous differential identity by the inhabitants. The attempt at alteration of the structure of Christiania comes not from the inhabitants themselves but from the Danish state. ‘Creative Copenhagen’ is an initiative to redevelop areas of Copenhagen. It is a state-generated plan to renew city-spaces to make them attractive to investment. In this way the empire continues its attempts to keep sovereignty circumscribed within its own territory. The identity of micronations can only survive if they are making a real difference in the lives of the people within them. The micronation thus fails if it loses its differential characteristics.
Freetown Christiania has sustained its libertarian foundations despite the Danish government’s attempt to overturn it. In 2004 the government passed a law abolishing a collective and treating the inhabitants as individuals which was resisted in a series of protests. The inhabitants are aware of the new sovereignty that they have framed and are unwilling to accept a legal code which is a tool for turning them back into subjects. This example is not in isolation. The inhabitants of Christiania also rejected a government proposal to turn it into a residential area with regular rent and additional residential buildings. However, it is a concern how long Christiania can sustain themselves as a micronation particularly after the 2013 repeal of Christianite laws and the normalized application of Danish laws assented to, by all parties of Denmark except the People’s Party. At all times, the Danish government has allowed for a massive police presence in the region to enforce its initiatives. The use of coercion to produce the replication of politico-juridical institutions (which includes compelling Christiania to buy land which it had occupied for forty years) is symptomatic of the nation-state’s consistent project to subvert deviant realities. It is how they reproduce the ideal of citizenship.
It is important to add a qualification here, regarding the existence of micronation in the context of what appears to be an imminent disruption of Christiania. Oeulliet notes, “You’re a micronation when you want to be.” Hence, a micronation supersedes institutional existence. The inhabitants of Christiania will remain inhabitants of Christiania if the Danish government decides to abolish the Foundation Freetown Christiania. They do not need a state of their own. Their unofficial anthem, “You cannot kill us” by Tom Lunden represents the irony of their existence. You cannot kill what never existed. This consciousness of defiance is the point of counter-empire which has transcended the conformist reality of the nation-state. This moulds an alternate political reality which is simultaneously creating new identities and displacing institutionalized sovereignties.
