I attended a reunion of radicals this weekend.
It has been years since most of us were League of the South activists who regularly attended rallies around the South championing the cause of secession or protesting things like Southern demographic displacement, refugee resettlement or the removal of Confederate monuments. My days as an activist began in Obama’s second term and petered out after Charlottesville.
No one has really changed since those days. Some people who attended those rallies were old and have grown older. Some people became discouraged and dropped out of politics. Many others were young and have become middle aged. It mainly seems that those of us who were young back then have gotten married and have lots of kids. We have less time on our hands to attend radical protests.
It wasn’t all for naught:
I’ve been maintaining this website for over a decade now. In that time, I have kept tabs on the growth of secessionist sentiment. In between 2012 and 2014, it was common to see polls which indicated that around 25% of Americans supported secession. The temper tantrum of secession petitions that followed Barack Obama’s reelection in 2012 showed that secession already had some traction even then in the Republican base and all across regions of the country and was strongest in Texas.
In between 2014 and 2021, support for secession rose from 29.7% of Republicans and 21% of Democrats favoring it to 52% of Trump voters and 41% of Biden voters. 84% of Trump voters and 80% of Biden voters also see the other party as a danger to democracy. 57% of Trump voters and 51% of Biden voters strongly agree that the other side is a danger to democracy.
Needless to say, this was a major topic of discussion. The polls clearly show that secession and angst about anti-white discrimination and demographic displacement have triumphed and have gone mainstream among White Southern Republican and Independent voters. This has also happened over the last 7 years. We’ve encountered greater resistance and have become discouraged and more disorganized since Charlottesville at the very moment that our cause was reaching a tipping point.
In retrospect, our activism was a symptom of the growth of this sentiment. Millions of people became radicalized during the Obama years. It wasn’t small organizations like the League of the South or websites like Occidental Dissent that caused this. It was the growing perception among ordinary White people that America was in terminal decline. It was events playing out on the national stage which were driving this. Donald Trump came along and harnessed this sentiment and used it to get himself elected by giving these people false hope. After he failed to “Take Back America” and Joe Biden was elected though, millions more people were radicalized. Joe Biden’s extreme actions are throwing fuel on the fire.
As we settled down, our message has been heavily censored and we have grown less organized and less active than we were just a few years ago, we have taken our greatest leap forward in public opinion polls. The ruling class has discredited itself with its extreme actions while we have mostly sat at home and watched. We didn’t come out and engage with the George Floyd protests. We weren’t in Washington for the Capitol Siege either. It was a bunch of MAGA normies who stormed the Capitol.
Look at it this way: all of those Deep State leaks and plots to undermine Trump, all of those mobs who vandalized and toppled historic monuments, all of that sanctimonious preaching about “white supremacy” and systematic racism, all of that censorship on social media, the collapse of the border, the vaccine mandates and lockdowns, the impeachments, all of those Black Lives Matter riots and attacks on the police made our case for us and far more persuasively than we could have ever done by exposing ourselves to the risks of being in the public spotlight. They have always been in the driver’s seat.
Every toppled monument was a tear in the social fabric and a new source of grievance and alienation. They brought down the monuments and Trump at the cost of radicalizing millions of new people and deepening polarization. Everything that I have seen suggests that we are better off when the other side feels compelled to “do something” because their extreme actions drive more people into our camp. Vastly fewer people were sympathetic to our ideas when we were free to make our case on the internet and in the public square without harassment. Normies see Antifa as their enemy now.
If this country ever comes apart again, it won’t be because of anything we do. It will be because of what they do. This is the way it happened the last time around with the John Brown raid, the reaction to the Dred Scott decision and the election of Abraham Lincoln. It was this series of events which suddenly pushed millions of people over the edge and destroyed their confidence in the Union and the Constitution. Southerners ceased to believe that a Union under the control of Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party would respect their rights. It was that perception which made disunion inevitable.
How close are we to that threshold today? Does the average Trump supporter or Republican believe that a government controlled by Joe Biden and the Democrats will protect their constitutional rights?
Note: Going from 25% to 44% overall support for secession in the South and 66% support among Southern Republicans and 50% among Southern Independents in half a decade ISN’T THAT BAD. Just saying. We have no reason to be discouraged.
Is the highest rate of secessionism, in the Southwest (much higher than the Southeast) explained by Hispanics wanting to be indepedent or possibly re-join Mexico?
They might want to be part of Mexico, but they want the US taxpayer subsidizing them with their free housing, food, and medical care.
Last time a population threw off the banking parasites they were bombed into oblivion, starved and their women mass raped. Secession is meaningless if you don’t control your own currency.
“the growth of secessionist sentiment.”
Structural cracks in a failing system.
Say “Yugoslavia”
Almost no one cares about the idols which have been destroyed in recent years. We are better off with them gone.
The George Floyd idols going up are more appropriate. That better represents the nation we have, a hyena state. But is this the kind of nation we want?
I remember talking to four or five mexam truck drivers in Texas. I mentioned that since Texas was now majority Mexican, maybe Texas would secede. All of them broke out laughing.
No, one told me, those Mexicans will never secede. Then they all started naming welfare programs. WIC, SNAP, section 8, there were a lot of them. And none of that in Mexico.
Well, sheet, I could retire now and get some “social security”.
When the checks become worthless or stop coming, then it will break apart. It will be during wartime.
Almost no one cares about the idols which have been destroyed in recent years. We are better off with them gone.
LOL
Had a blast meeting up last weekend and other fellow SN’s.
It was good seeing you
When I was in (a majority-white) elementary and middle school, the mantra of those preaching about MLK was that “his peaceful protests and sit-ins proved the Southern racists wrong about African-Americans.” It was hammered in extensively that at the end of his career, even Malcolm X wished he had followed King’s example from the start.
I wonder if black schools received the same message.
King was killed because he was in the process of procuring arms from the Soviet Union and was intent on arming inner city blacks. Who is the great deceiver?
@ Ah, good!, Nothing like getting together with old friends, glad you all, had a nice time.
If I live to see 90 years , they will still be talking about secession.
This whole secession fantasy…the Paleo-cons sit around and talk like they have any power. It’s like playing Monopoly with no money, and you’re deciding how many hotels you’re putting on Park Place.
There isn’t anyone to make this happen. Like a bunch of guys with their grandfathers’ gun cabinets can take on the five branches of the military.
The government isn’t going to let any states secede. They need more and more money to support the hordes of nonwhites they bring in. Notice I say, bring in.
Every state generates a lot of revenue. So they aren’t going to let any state just “leave”.
Once you pass go and win the jackpot in the middle, you can decide these things.
“a bunch of guys with their grandfathers’ gun cabinets can take on the five branches of the military”:
Don’t forget the Empire now has a “Space Force” also – https://thehill.com/policy/defense/573212-new-space-force-uniforms-draw-comparisons-to-star-trek-battlestar-galactica – with the mission to neocolonize, militarize and privatize (corporatize and financialize) the Moon, Mars, asteroids, and Space in general.
“…when we were free to make our case on the internet and in the public square”. That sentence really summarizes the situation of the country and our people since January. Can you imagine having the freedom to be able to speak out and make your case politically these days? Of course, as you eluded to that ended after Charlottesville. The new “racist insurgents”, as the media propagandists proclaim, is the mainstream right. I really do miss the camaraderie everyone enjoyed during the years of activism though. Now it’s just doing the daddy thing and creating a large family (in a few months we’ll be 3 children in 4 years). I wish I could have been there to see yall!