Dictatorship in eFinland! (In English)

Day 1,930, 14:19 • Published in Finland Finland • by WP Attak

In Finnish: http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/2222229 (please vote this one also)



Dictatorship WTF you might say? Yes, I will not nominate any government. No ministers. No deputy ministers. Why? Let me tell you. But let's first start by looking at my history a bit.

International Business

Back when there still was a economic module, I joined a small team of Old Beards, players of 30 year+ in real life. I took the responsibility of running multiple businesses in eRepublik, across Europe: Poland, Russia, Romania, Ukraine, Hungary, ... wherever workforce was cheap or bonuses were good. During the big wars my homeland changed almost on daily basis.



But then came the big change, organizations had to be moved to your home country, and eventually had to be dissolved (unless you had friends in high places). I did not have them. So, with quite a lot of ingame capital, I suddenly turned from homeless businessman to extremely nationalistic eFinnish citizen. I was interested in getting involved with politics.

Slave for the Elite

When I arrived to eFinland, I was quickly recruited to LEP (then-current elite party) and almost immediately made to run the Ministry of Finance. I also noticed I had no power, none of my ideas were listened to, but was instead a puppet of a selected few people in eFinland. That didn't work for me for long.



People say I am not active in erepublik because I am not in IRC all the time. Although I have always been an ingame player, I am familiar also with IRC and forums. Actually I have been in the IRC since early 90s, but had a good 10 year break before joining the politics of eFinland. I was in IRC pretty much always during my LEP time. Immediately after moving away from politics I withdrew from IRC (except on some random Friday and Saturday evenings). I quickly became 100% opponent of the elite of small group of players who did politics in country forums and IRC. I found a lot of enemies, but even more friends. For me, IRC in eRepublic stands for InneR Circle. That is not democracy. It is elitism.



After withdrawing myself from the IRC elite, I started a small society project of my own inside the game, trying to get ingame people enjoy the game without having to join the forums or IRC. Some random projects we did included ingame message list for country priorities, active ingame discussions on military unit feed, party sub-branches in countries that had eFinland citizens.

Wanhat Parrat



Most of these activities happened in the same age-restricted bunch of people, the Wanhat Parrat (party and MU in eFinland), i.e. Old Beards. I was in key role to setting up both the party and the MU. Both of them grew fast to become the strongest political and military power in eFinland. Why? Because 80% of the WP players were ingame players. We kept a society of our own where most of the communications happened ingame. Only 10% of WP was seen in IRC or forums. Another reason why WP Army flourished was because rich people gave, and poor people received. Until they also became rich people and automatically started contributing.

But eventually, I started to transfer all my power away. WP (both party and MU) were built too much around myself. MU factories started to be run also by other players. Party was taken over by another person. And finally, we also found an active player to run the MU. I was jobless. I was happy. I was satisfied with the result.

Death and Rebirth



I thought I was ready to quit the game.

Then I thought, what about the rest (75😵 of eFinland? And suddenly I was resurrected.



Attak against the Elite

The plans I had were quite extreme, trying to do the same we did in WP across all of eFinland. This would make people angry. This would include quite drastic changes to the political scene. I did not know who else would have the passion and the courage to do the same. It would never be accepted by the current leading elite. In Finland this would require dictatorship. But how could I ever succeed with that?



There was a weird party in eFinland, the Korppipuolue (Raven/Crow party) who had always driven a funny ingame role play towards pure right wing dictatorship, and I planned to take that over. And so I did. That was the start of a long project.



I thought it would be a good idea to slowly change the party (this might have been a mistake) but the existing party members did not accept my party leadership. I took their exact agenda and started campaigning for dictatorship. They still hated my guts. So I slowly adjusted the plan to what I had in mind originally: help the 2-clickers to become more involved in the game. From extreme right-wing totalitarian party, we became slightly left, but still very much totalitarian. I was running for dictatorship after all!



It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what needed to be done:

1 ) create a party that had enough mass and interest to attract 2-clickers
2 ) create an agenda that aimed to take all power away from the forum and irc people
3 ) create, or incorporate a MU that was open for everyone and provided good supplies for 2-clickers
4 ) create economic situation where raws would move in the market (that is the main source of income for young players)



Of course high level people and those who were running the system would oppose the idea. What is in it for them? Nothing. But they are not my target audience. The key agenda in my presidency is to make the game more interesting for those 70-80% of players who do not idle in IRC all the time.

Dictatorship

In a series of articles over a month of time I publicly and openly discussed my plan for dictatorship.

1 ) First announcement was that I would run for presidency with no ministers, and use all of eFinlands money to support the only operational MU in eFinlan😛 WPA. This was mostly a wake-up call, a spontaneous first article on the topic. I left WP and joined the Crows.

2 ) Themes for running for Party Presidency (PP) included promise not to set any blacklisted people to congress list, statement that I would alone decide everything inside the party, and that I would set myself as President candidate. I won the PP election by a narrow margin.

3 ) In congress elections (for congress that eventually we would never get) I announced that only those players that had promised to obey me 100% would get to the candidate list. I did not appoint myself, but trusted 100% these candidates. We received about 20% of Finland's votes.

4 ) Finally, I announced the great plan: Single party system, no ministers but open advisor group inside party feed (visible to all), full control of all state organizations including those given out, tax changes, closing of forums and ban of secret opposition catherings, removal of past verdics set by the elite, support for WPA (the MU), and decission to stay in Asgard.

5 ) In discussion with rest of the top-5 parties we promised some changes to the agenda. None of the other top-5 parties supported us. Things that were discussed included a promise to think carefully before removing anyones past criminal penalties, and that I would leave party owned organizations alone (as long as they were not used for profit of the elite).

6 ) Finally, three days ago I announced the first Crow-General, and today in this article I named the second one.



Odin's Ravens

Many people are worried about my foreign policy. And they say I am not strong in that field. And they are right, this is not a priority in my agenda. My main focus is within eFinland. But I am not new to military alliances, and I have connections world-wide through our activities in Wanhat Parrat Army.

One of the key areas WPA operated in was eUSA, where we helped them in their projects against the PTO. Eventually, as I was running most of the military unit weapon factories, I moved away form eUSA to eArgentina, where we (a small team of WP activists) were active, and made a lot of friends in. WPA has also always been active in Asgard.



To complement my agenda, I will appoint two generals, who will take care of all military operations with our allies. I will attend, but not get actively involved if not needed. Haude is a person who has been active in eArgentina together with me, and will be my first Crow-General. Feuerstrahl has been successfully running the biggest private MU, the WPA (Wanhat Parrat Army) after I withdrew from the Commander position. He has also been actively involved in Asgard.

The fight for presidency/dictatorship will be hard, and extremely interesting. The forum people have voted, and all of them (4/5 top parties) are supporting my opponent. This was expected. Decisions were made by 15% of the party members, the "elite". But at the same time, Korpit (The Crows/Ravens, my party) quickly grew to became the #1 party in eFinland. Almost all minority parties immediately supported me.



If I win, there will be some drastic changes, a bit of role playing, and a lot of entertainment. But I think, changes will be for better. One key thing in my final success is when to pass forward the leadership, perhaps back to some form of democracy, perhaps to another strong-opinioned dictator. Dictators become a burden if they run their office for too long. Remind me of this if you see me as country president in 2014. 😉

Even if I do not succeed this month, I do not mind. I just hope, someone learned something on the way. And if we fail this month, our flock will just increase and the following month we will take over.

I said I would not have any ministers, but still I cannot do this completely alone. There is a bunch of people who for various reasons have become excited in the project. As I said I will also appoint two generals from private MU's, after all a strong dictator needs a strong army, right. They are in a key role in activating the citizens within the MU's. No there will not be a state military under my rule. It has proven to fail in so many attempts in a low population country like eFinland.

To conclude, I just wish this will be an honest election. Good luck to my opponent, and no harm meant even if it goes dirty, which it most likely will.

Kraak! (crow yell, that will sound first in eFinland, and maybe eventually across the eWorld)



Hopefully, if we get enough Crows worldwide, the admins will also notice that we need an ingame social media.

Thank you to you all who are supporting me in this project!



Endnotes:

1 ) You are free to translate this article to whatever language, just link to this original article and urge people to vote the article if they think there is any idea behind my project. And let me know if you want updates on how the project is progressing. I can provide English updates for translation also in the future.

2 ) Those of you who think dictatorship is equal to evil, please think with your brains. Not all dictators are evil. You cannot easily commit mass genocide in eRepublic. And no I will not start claiming I invented the Q7 bun, and I do not want any regions or countries named after me. I just have a completely unselfish idea, and I am willing to contribute my own resources to make it happen. And no I am not going to steal the coffins of eFinland, don't bother asking for any gold or CC for your help. 😉

3) This is a game. This is not life. Not even eLife. This is a game. Don't be so serious! But I am 100% serious with this campaign.