The Platform - Faction Information

[The Platform]

The Platform

Faction Information )

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Quick Info

Flag of the Platform

■ Alignment: Bundschuh ■ Ship Tag: (=)

Summary

The Platform is a Bundschuh sect espousing a far-left, anarchist political ideology. A compromise between platformist and synthesis anarchist tendencies, it and the sect were founded by the infamous Rheinland dissident Erich Klugmann and the more enigmatic and reclusive “Civil Servant” several months before the Blackout.

In spite of the contentiousness of its radical-left stance, the Platform has risen to prominence within the wider Bundschuh for several reasons. A fiery speech issued by Klugmann to the Bundschuh in 830 AS preceded the initial founding by half a month; the speech had lambasted the organization for ironically growing stagnant and tepid during his exile.

He advocated a vision far more extreme than he had in his days of leading the Vereinigte Widerstandsarmee: opposition to the state as a concept. In periodical pieces and follow-up speeches, he elaborated to his idealistic audience that a nation-state–even one with good intentions–was doomed to backslide into some variation of corrupt politics, stratified corporatism, and an entrenched prison-industrial complex. Illustrated timelines of the rise and fall of the Federal Republic of Rheinland–and of the Council of Gallia–served as ideological object lessons to support Klugmann’s arguments.

The Battlegroup Strausberg’s massacre of the crew of Bautzen Station in 832 did even more to sway a portion of the Bundschuh than Klugmann’s rhetoric alone; by the latter half of 833, ex-Zoners made up a substantial minority of those identifying with the Platform. This group had extrapolated from Klugmann’s rhetoric a sobering conclusion: a nation-state would only tolerate Zoner freedom and independence so long as it served that state’s purposes. These former Zoners had witnessed that political neutrality hadn’t spared Freeport 11 from The Core, Gran Canaria from Bretonia, Freeport 9 from the Corsair Empire, and most prominently, Planet Erie and Pennsylvania from the Republic of Liberty.

Starry-eyed political theorists from the Bundschuh’s latest generation joined these bitter ex-Zoners. They were further joined by Sirian leftists distancing themselves from perceived authoritarianism among the Coalition-Hessian Bloc, and by huddled masses yearning to breathe free from across the Sector.

Combined into an unwieldy but democratic confederation of subfactions allowed to keep their own identities, the Platform stands poised to radicalize not only the ideologies of the Bundschuh and Rheinland’s ideological dissidents, but also those beyond its borders. In the end, the State–and resistance to the State–share a universal language.

Primary Objectives

■ Engage in a guerilla war against the Second Empire of Rheinland, the Corsair Empire, and other states, corporations, and organizations, using all means available to the Bundschuh.

■ Ratification of a Charter or other “legal document” intended to codify–for the aid of its continued stability and shared direction–a decentralized anarchist combatant organization; one that is anti-authoritarian, anti-nationalist, and anti-capitalist. Additionally, able to hold its own without becoming overly dependent on other factions and organizations.

■ Promotion of and martial guardianship over mutual aid groups, to supplant former corporate and governmental models of resource and service exchange.

■ Ideological diffusion via propaganda and direct action; possible expansion of influence towards other nearby, potentially volatile planetary populations (Marne, Sprague, Houston, Erie).

//Huge thanks to @Civil Servant for art/formatting and @Petitioner for proofreading!