The MicroCon convention commenced last month at a Holiday Inn in Joliet, Illinois, a perfectly adequate place for people from all over America to gather for an event featuring speeches, diplomacy, athletics and a bit of dining and dancing.
In some respects, it looked like any other convention at any other hotel — at least for the first minute, or two. It didn't take much more time than that to appreciate that this was a special group, indeed.
For example: There are three young men representing the Grand Republic of Moontonia, a micronation they established and now govern across several small plots of land in south St. Louis — as well as that one tract of land they claim on the moon.
The idea might sound odd at best, malevolent at worst, but at MicroCon, the Moontonians were among their fellow travelers, or at least fellow imagineers. Think of MicroCon as sort of a United Nations for Americans who've laid claim to ordinary plots of land and turned them into their own idiosyncratic nation states.
For these micronation founders, the goal is not splitting from the U.S. or establishing actual sovereignty. Instead, it's about dreaming up a new nation that coexists with the old one — and with maps, a lexicon and sometimes even a language, having a lot of fun with the idea.
Take Moontonia, a micronation headed up by the Supreme General Commander Grand Sergeant Major Chief Master Sergeant Supreme Leader King Iain Turnbull, leader of the Grand Republic of Moontonia, governor of Moonvia. Those allied with Moontonia — like his top lieutenants and MicroCon buds Benjamin Ellis and Matthew Lucy — can refer to him as Supreme Leader, King, Sir or Iain.
In real life, he's an 18-year-old St. Louis native who lives with his parents and began Moontonia as a fourth-grade school project. The actual assignment didn't go perfectly, Turnbull acknowledges: "I did mine wrong. I failed to meet one of the criteria." After reading a book about a kid who created a society based on the watermelon, the class was supposed to make a society based around a different fruit, but Turnbull based his society off "the preservation of nature" as a whole.
Even so, he was off and running, ultimately parlaying an interest in both politics and lunar travel into "something that evolved into a side hobby."
Moontonia has a web presence, one of the most important elements of any micronation. The well-maintained moontonia.org describes the place as "a sovereign independent micronation. Our currency is the 'Moon Ruble,' however, shops will also take USD. We also hold the unofficial title of the only micronation in St. Louis, Missouri. We strive to let our citizens prosper while also protecting and maintaining nature. We value teamwork, friendship and just plain old fun!"
The smallest state in Moontonia is Ragrad, which is the one not found in south St. Louis but rather on the moon. An uninhabited 10-foot by 10-foot area, Ragrad was named after Ra, the sun god. Notes the site, "This state is run by the Commander of Religion and Sciences." That'd be another friend, Montana Knight, also aged 18.
Moontonia's other five territories, as noted, are scattered around south city. Turnbull and his two lieutenants work at Clementine's Naughty & Nice Creamery and are able to chat a bit at work, keeping tabs on their micronational activities around town. One of the states, called Bentonia, is known in many quarters as Benton Park — just the park, not the neighborhood around it. Another is the former Central Visual and Performing Arts High School on Garrison Avenue, which they chose because it looked like a castle and was for sale at the time. Now in private hands (not theirs, alas), they call it the state of Mooncastle.
Turnbull says that "young people bring new ideas" to the micronational movement, adding, "This has been my life's work for a few years."
The creation of the term "micronation" is often credited to another young American: Robert Ben Madison, the Mad King of Talossa, who started his own micronation at age 14. It's true: Midwestern kids with imaginations are at the heart of the micronational movement.
As Atlas Obscura has written about Talossa, "The territory lines of the Kingdom of Talossa started out small, its boundaries encompassing just the bedroom of a 14-year-old Milwaukee boy who had just lost his mother. It was December 26, 1979, when young Robert Ben Madison decided to secede from his country, declaring his bedroom to be the sovereign nation named after the (quite lovely) Finnish word for 'inside the house.'"
This kind of wholesome stuff is much of the contemporary micronational scene's backstory, as young people claim a small territory in or around their homes.
In other cases, it's the heads of a family who declare that they and their kin have micronational status. That's the case for the Republic of Molossia, which was founded in 1977 and now holds 11.3 acres of land near Dayton, Nevada. That micronation is under the benevolent rule of Kevin Baugh and contains multiple members of his family. They seem to have totally signed onto the idea, with Molossia rocking one of the biggest contingencies at MicroCon.
A total of 133 people were registered at MicroCon's U.S. outing this year, with 42 micronations represented, augmented by a dozen members of the media. That was a bit of a bump from last year's COVID-19-delayed gathering in Las Vegas, but was also small enough that many of the primary events were easily held inside a single ballroom. That said, the hallways nearby also held some life, as registrants set up displays that evoked a middle-school science fair.
While this slender area was a central hub of participant activity, the entire hotel was given over to occasional micronational chatter. In the main lobby, huddled around pots of free coffee, micronationalists riffed on the impact of Latin on the creation of their own individual microlanguages and the dissolution of this kingdom or that principality, these threads of conversation spilling from Reddit or Discord into the IRL realm.
At night, the same groups assembled at the manmade pond out back, having the same conversations as a chorus of frogs sang along to their stories, "regular" hotel guests sneaking glances at the costumes, which ranged from micronational T-shirts to white-glove formal. Anyone staying at the inn was going to be treated to some MicroCon info — whether they wanted it, or not.
Just like their real-world counterparts, micronations have policies and protocol. Sometimes, they clash — the history of Molossia notes not only its robust recycling program and ban on incandescent lightbulbs but also its three-week war with Mustachistan in the spring of 2006. (After an invasion a few years later, the nation was briefly dubbed Kickassia, but the Molossian government's successful reinstallation put a halt to that three-day experiment.)
And micronations, too, have athletic programs. Among the unlikeliest things at MicroCon might well be the sports. There's a full morning of lightly competitive athletics, based on the ideals of the Olympics — the Nemean Games, a name brought back to life from ancient Greek athletics.
About 30 folks gathered in a creekside field in Joliet on the final Friday morning in June for the primary athletic component of MicroCon 2023. Three events were wed into the morning's activities, all of them liberally adapted from the official versions.
It turns out that you can hold a shot put competition without the actual tool of the sport, the heavy, metallic, projectable "shot." Just sub in a tennis ball. You can have a discus contest with only a couple of dog frisbees and some willing throwers. You can run multiple heats of the 50-meter dash if you've got enough folks willing to sprint across a pock-marked grassfield, found aside an abandoned tennis court, next to a picture-postcard creek, below a suburban subdivision. At MicroCon all of this was not only possible, but was actually done.
Part of that is thanks to a huge assist from Matthew "Fearless" Salzer. This resident of Lemoore, California, previously spent four years as a wrestler at Missouri Baptist University in St. Louis County and is now among the Nemean Games' small corps of officials and referees.
Last year, in Las Vegas, the Nemean Games drew only six competitors to a Vegas park on a brutally hot morning. This year, the heat in Joliet was real, but not as oppressive as in '22, and just over two dozen athletes took part. And the vice president of the Micronational Olympic Federation was deeply involved in scorekeeping and general wrangling.
That's one of several titles Salzer enjoys, including his status as baron within the Royal Republic of Ladonia, for which he serves as Minister of Religion, Irreligion and Grappling. (A lifelong wrestler, he's also helped establish the IRL Sequoia Sumo Club in California.)
"I just want to get across that the micronational community does actually have a history of sports," he says. "Obviously, we're all not going to be the most athletic people." No reason not to play.
The Nemean Games, with its tennis balls and frisbees and sprints, was indeed a bonding experience. A colorful character, Salzer says this year's Nemean Games "was definitely a step up from where we came from, our humble origins. We had something that ballooned into what's beyond anything I could have possibly imagined."
And speaking of imagination ...
Princept Anna I of the Circle of Belmoor notes that their micronation, based in Columbia, Missouri, was very much an outgrowth of the pandemic, a classic COVID-19 idea that grew into, you know, a real thing. To the point that Anna I, a "former theater kid" (known as Anna Ralls-Ulrich in normie circles), was invited to speak at MicroCon, laying down a solid summation of the role of ceremony with the micronationalism movement. Organized and thorough, Anna I's lecture showed an affable personality engaging with a topic that's still new to them.
The Circle's website (circlebelmoor.wixsite.com/website) instructs, "The Incorporeal Principality of the Circle of Belmoor is a micronation founded in 2020. Based around shared values and community care rather than a land claim, Belmoor exists to promote equality and community to its citizens. The Writ of Belmoor was signed on September 5, 2020. This national holiday is now known as Circlemas." The website further states — in a refreshing bit of candid reality — that "all citizenship in the Circle of Belmoor is dual citizenship in conjunction with the citizenship of the physical macronations in which its citizens reside. The Circle of Belmoor exists in supplement to, and not in replacement of, the physical nations in which citizens reside."
Ralls-Ulrich began her research at the dawn of the pandemic. Midway through the year, she'd learned enough to cook up the idea of the Circle of Belmoor, influenced as much by cinema as by already existing micronations. Even so, as other micronations came to the newly crowned Princept Anna I's attention, they were key in creating a more fixed, formal notion of what the Circle might be all about.
Thinking back, Princept Anna I says, "I was, like, 'OK, well, the first thing we need is our founding document. So I looked up a bunch of other major nations, kind of what their founding documents looked like. I found templates online, and then I obviously did a lot of modifications."
With The Princess Diaries as a notable influence, the Circle's definitely been about the flash and sizzle of its royal elements, incorporating things "like titles, awards, nobility, stuff like that. In our early months, it was all about brainstorming it out."
That said, there's also a serious effort to incorporate inclusion through LGBTQ+ verbiage, diverse citizenship and a general notion of goodwill, as "we're focused specifically in mutual aid, community care."
Anna I works in real estate as a day job, but the micronational aspect of their life stays central. MicroCon was a way to establish some real-world interactions with folks who otherwise might have only been names on a screen.
"The goal was to meet people and make more friends, and I'm definitely doing that," they say. "You know, because for most of us, this is not a job. It's not for me, as well. I mean, I've got my day job, I've got my double life as a writer. And then, because writing doesn't pay the bills, I've got this, which I guess would fall under 'hobbies.'"
Anna I guesses that they spent from 50 to 100 hours on things like the website, speech prep for the MicroCon address and other odds and ends to a pandemic project that continues to thrive. Not all of their friends are hip to what micronationalism is about, but that's where events like MicroCon come in. You have an idea. You execute the idea. You discuss it online. And once every two years, you come together to compare notes, to hash out ideals, to engage in some relaxed diplomacy in the pastel hallways of a Holiday Inn in Joliet, Illinois.
Sometimes, you even get to level up, sharing your mission and ideas of best practices with everyone in the whole community.
Anna I was able to knock their speech outta the proverbial park. The address may spur more activities for the micronation, which has paused a bit after its hot start in 2020. MicroCon's mighty wind is likely going to help propel the micronation for a bit. But there's no end game, per se; it's all about the experience, the enjoyment, the education.
"The process," says Anna I, "is the product."
What Micronations Typically Are Not
If you are a person who likes to study geography, you might come across names on the map that suggest micronational status. Europe, alone, claims places like Andorra, Lichtenstein, Vatican City, Monaco. They’re recognized by international bodies such as the United Nations. They are, yes, nations, just very small ones.
Assuming these places are part of the micronational movement is somewhat understandable. They’re micro, they’re nations. But they’re real, true, tiny places on a map with full recognition around the world. This is one mild inaccuracy in the way the general public views micronations.
Another is that micronations are born by people with major bones to pick with the government that surrounds them. True, a big part of micronationalism has to do with establishing a core identity outside of the host nation state’s norm. But American splinter/protest groups like the Branch Davidians and the Bundys of Nevada aren’t playing the same game.
For the Free Press, reporter Adam Popescu recently profiled “Texians,” citizens of the Republic of Texas who are finding community in something of a state-within-the-state. They, too, recently held a conference.
Popescu wrote in that July 3 piece, “Men of No Country,” that the Republic of Texas is “a sovereign citizen group that’s been around since the mid-1990s and claims to have around 10,000 members. The FBI estimates there are around 300,000 U.S. citizens who claim no allegiance to the elected government in any form — and their numbers are rising. For some members of the Republic, their goal is to meet and vent at town halls. … Others want a full secession. In the meantime, they’re busy figuring out how to disobey the courts, avoid taxes, and generally find ways to circumvent the U.S. government.”
Again, this is not modern micronationalism, per se, though some minor states may take on this type of breakaway, secessionist language.
What is notable is that a host of micronations are headed up by former members of the U.S. military, and there’s a definite sense of militarism that runs through some of the younger members’ micronations, with epaulets on many a military-styled jacket at MicroCon. But there’s not an implicit sense that any of these folks would engage in actual gunplay with the jurisdictions that surround their micronation.
Walking through MicroCon, you can’t help but wonder if someone there — be they dressed to the nines in political cosplay or fitting in more subtly — is representing the goals of the greater state, just there to low-key keep tabs on the MicroCon community.
Show-Me Micronations
Searching for micronations can be a bit of a daunting task, as these places can come and go without much fanfare, leaving nothing more than a trail of years-old Reddit mentions in their wake. The site micronations.wiki suggests that Missouri’s micronational community features more defunct and inactive communities than live ones, despite the state’s representation at MicroCon.
Some of the names might indicate the general political vibe of those lost-to-the-ages places: the Federation of Secundomian Socialist Republics, the Democratic People’s Republic of Kirkland, the People’s Republic of Domolica, the Socialist Republic of Kinderia.
One state, Ethosia, reportedly active in the Ozarks, is “home to a majority German/Anglo population with many of its inhabitants able to accurately trace their ancestry to Germany and England.”
An entry from micronations.wiki shows the internal political fissures that can break out in the micronational world: “Ethosians would find hope in the month of December 2020 when the original leader, Gabriel Sebastian, was granted the position of governor in the Federation of American States, a micronation dedicated to a reformed America. Sebastian worked hard with the government to recognize Ethosians and Ethosian lands as ethnic territories but to no avail. Sebastian would run for president against the nation’s founder, Gabriel Hackman. Hackman would go on to purposely lie to the public and submit fraudulent reports after Sebastian was taking the lead in key states. Once news got out, Sebastian and his government in Missouri declared independence on the 15th of December 2020 from the Federation on the basis that Ethosia was a rightfully independent group that deserved self rule from the tyranny of President Hackman. The Federation and Ethosia to this day have conflicted ties with each other.” Wild!
Notable here, too, is that micronations often offer citizenship to people from anywhere in the world, sometimes even offering royal titles for a bit of extra coin. So there’s no exact way to say how many people in Missouri might be a citizen of places hither and yon. At least dozens? Almost certainly. Hundreds? Probably. Thousands? Maybe barely.
Just know that someone playing chess at your local coffeehouse might just be a micronationalist, a quiet member of a unique subgroup of the world’s citizens.
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