(This is somewhat TRF-centric since that’s the side of Antifa that I am most familiar with. The MT Army, Genesis Defense Project, Shadow Warriors, and Anti Nazi Alliance set the stage for our current operations and deserve recognition.)
BIRTH OF ANTIFA
In July 2011, comrade members of The Internationale debated what to do about seized Nazi and fascist regions. The Internationale had already built embassies with the seized Nationalist Union, and further seizures and refounds by antifascist forces raised the question of what to do about the expanding list.
Not wanting to give the appearance that The Internationale was a fascist-aligned region by a cursory glance of its embassy list, the region’s comrade members voted to establish a “museum region” to hold the embassies.
Antifa was born.
Originally founded by Proletaurus (now known to Gameplay as Cora), Antifa’s start as a “trophy case” quickly changed to an umbrella organization to coordinate anti-fascist gameplayers. The most notable militaries in this category were The MT Army, led by Vippertooth33, and The Red Fleet, led by ForeStarnya. The Red Fleet quickly became the preeminent military on the Left, with several prominent comrades from The Internationale being named Squadron Admirals, including La Pasionaria, Marxingrad, Socialist Space Republic, and Proletaurus.
EARLY ANTIFASCIST ACTION
Early antifascist action primarily played out as a proxy war of raids and region hawks between Antifa and the Nazi and fascist regions of the time, including NAZI EUROPE and the Greater German Reich. With both sides secure in their home regions, the war between antifascists and fascists instead played out in smaller, generally insignificant regions.
Occasionally, this conflict bubbled out to include traditional raiders or defendersnotably in the fascist region Pact of Steel, where Antifa clashed with the United Defenders League, leading Antifa to treat UDL for a time as a pseudo-fascist organization for defending fascist regionsbut most of the action was confined to the smaller sphere of leftist and fascist regions themselves.
In 2011, ForeStarnya introduced an early tool to help The Red Fleet determine update times for regions. The “NationStates Update Time Cracker” (NUTCracker) was a Yahoo! Pipes program that relied on national legislation to provide an approximate update timeregions that did not have nations actively answering issues could only have their approximate update time sussed out by finding a nearby region that did.
This led eventually to the birth of The Red Fleet Marines, an update-ready task force within The Red Fleet designed to be able to make lightning strikes into regions, to avoid both defender interference and native interceptions. The Red Fleet Marines made their first strike on October 5, 2013, when the shock troops successfully took the delegate seat in White Mens Burden.
The Marines’ second and final target was The Republican Party, which was invaded on November 16, 2013. It was there that La Pasionaria, Squadron Admiral of the Solidarity Squadron of The Red Fleet and Founder of The Internationale, made a post that led to his puppet sweep by the site moderators.
BUILDING BRIDGES
Following the deletion of La Pasionaria in November 2013, most antifascist militaries turned to defensive action, recalling soldiers and sailors from the MT Army, Red Fleet, and other forces from operations in the field to secure The Internationale. Milograd reached out to the NS Left and built embassies between the Peoples Republic of Lazarus and several leftist regions, including The Internationale, Communist International, and The Red Fleet.
At the time, I was serving as a Lieutenant in the Solidarity Squadron, a primarily defensive piler squadron led by La Pasionaria. With La Pasionaria gone, the Fleet was reeling. During this time, The Red Fleet was scuttled and reborn twice. ForeStarnya declared the Fleet shut down shortly after La Pasionaria’s deletion, but Squadron Admiral Marxingrad stepped in and reversed the decision and appointed three members of the Fleet to a Commissariat. When real life pulled Marxingrad away from NationStates, the Fleet was left rudderless until I again reformed the Fleet, doing away with the inactive Commissariat and restoring a titular Admiralty Board.
With few, if any, members returning and a demoralized left reeling from what was essentially the overnight loss of its entire military command structure, the future for The Red Fleet and Antifa looked grim.
To learn more about successful raiding and defense, I applied for liaison masking with the Lazarene Liberation Army and watched them participate in several update operations. This was shortly after the release of NationStates++, which made update times immediately accessible. The Red Fleet launched a series of tag raids against Fascist-themed regions, hitting five regions in one update (at the time, a Fleet record) using update times reported by NS++ as a guide. This action put The Red Fleet back on the map and brought new sailors into the fold.
When Lone Wolves United invaded the password-protected NAZI EUROPE in June 2014, Antifa immediately mobilized to support the raid, with The Red Fleet leading the charge among the Left. After NAZI EUROPE was retaken by Right Wing Uprising, Antifa assisted with the anti-fascist recapture and then piled into the region en masse, bringing a third of the endorsers to point nation Tancerlo at its peak.
In December 2014, Right Wing Uprising invaded Anne Frank, leading to the creation of a massive international effort that united defenders, raiders, imperialists, and Antifa to oust them just before Christmas. Once the region was secured, Antifa provided the largest number of pilers and helps maintain the security of the region to this day.
ANTIFA TODAY
With connections made through participation in the NAZI EUROPE and Anne Frank anti-fascist operations, The Red Fleet gained the knowledge it needed to be able to move with greater precision than the old NUTCracker program allowed for.
New tools provided The Red Fleet with precise update times, a list of valid targets based on the Fleet’s target selection criteria, and other tools that made life easier for Fleet sailors and officers.
This led to a resurgence of leftist activity, with a renewed Red Fleet and Korean Peoples Army (of North Korea) working in tandem to combat fascist forces. For much of summer 2015, this was concentrated against the forces of REATO, whose leader Libertatem had previously been a member of the Right Wing Uprising and held embassies with notable fascist regions in its attempt to declare a “War on Communism.”
On September 22, 2015, Leather-Clad Germany ceased to exist. In the evening of Thursday, September 24, The Red Fleet sent a rallying cry to other militaries to join an operation to topple Verborgenen Herrn, the Nazi delegate who was being propped up with troops from Nazi Europa, and destroy the fash region once and for all. Within only six hours, some forty soldiers from across NationStates responded to the call to arms, and the combined force seized the region under the flag of The Red Fleet on the first jump. No counter-invasions were launched, allowing The Red Fleet to lock and clear the region during Z-Day, then refound it on November 2.
In November 2015, The Red Fleet was commended, marking the first time an ideological military had received a Security Council commendation and only the second active commendation of a raider military force. This widespread acceptance and approval of Antifascist Action has not been paralleled in NationStates history.
We hope it continues.