If secessionists learn the truth about how our forefathers inspired the glorious American secessions of 1776 and 1861, we will be more equipped to inspire the next secession.
Although both secessions were preceded by talk of rights, such as modern libertarians and “tea party” conservatives constantly discuss… the populace wasn’t motivated to actually secede, and defend that secession with arms, until there was a real fear of death caused by the mother country. In both 1775 and 1860/61, as recent historians have shown, fear of slave revolt was the primary fear in the South. Additionally, in 1775 fear of a massive Indian attack was great in North and South.
It wasn’t talk of rights, liberty, and tyranny that motivated the actions of 1775 and 1776, according to Robert Parkinson’s book Thirteen Clocks: How Race United the Colonies and Made the Declaration of Independence. He wrote “Rights were not what dominated discussion at colonial dinner tables or tavern bars in 1775.” The primary message in American newspapers in 1775 was that agents of the government of Britain in America were recruiting Indian nations and slaves in America to attack Americans. This news alarmed the Americans so much that they felt alienated from Britain and lost loyalty to the King. They calculated that they would be safer in expelling British agents from their colonies, no matter the cost, than in allowing the status quo. It makes sense that fear would be more likely to inspire something as dramatic as secession. To cause such an action, a critical mass of the populace must see the costs of inaction as greater than the costs of action… real, visceral, and impactful costs.
This is laid out in a glorious Twitter thread here: https://twitter.com/SupremeDeist/status/1520055874496065536 It explains how the most deadly war America has ever experienced was an Indian attack in 1675. It was something that could still inspire horror in 1775.
Leading up to the War Between the States, efforts of Northern radical abolitionists to inspire a continent-wide slave revolt were the primary fear among the general populace of Southrons. John Brown’s raid had been funded by the most respected literature authors in the North. Although the common man had no slaves, he rightly feared that a slave insurrection could kill his family.
In hindsight we can presume the 1775 news was based on British attempts to respond to the successful August 1774 revolt of Massachusetts. When the British government tried to implement the Intolerable Acts in 1774, the militia in every county of Massachusetts excepting Boston intimidated the local government officials into quitting, as has been uncovered and wonderfully described in Ray Raphael’s book The Spirit of 74. So the 1775 news was probably fact-based, and these British actions were provoked by the Massachusetts revolt. The Massachusetts revolt provoked an over-reaction by the Crown.
Around the world, militia actions have been a common way to provoke a government over-reaction that causes the government to lose legitimacy and sometimes fall. The key is to alarm the government much more than the populace.
How can fear of attack/death be used in messaging in the modern secession movement?
How does the federal government attack our right to life?
1) The most obvious modern parallel is that the federal government’s nursing of Black grievances and CRT has inspired Black disregard for White lives. This has been reflected in crime statistics for decades. But Black crime rates, and only Black crime rates, spiked upward after George Floyd’s death. Was this spike in crime caused by an increased disregard for white lives, or just a reduction in police intervention in Black neighborhoods? Nevertheless, it’s evidence that Washington DC’s choices are causing crime.
BLM can be blamed on “culture” more than “government” yet it’s Washington DC’s choice to allow media outlets to operate in this way. Government and media/academia (quasi-government) help each other. A federation of red-states would be free from federal judges and the 14th Amendment. It would be free to outlaw CRT and porn in all media to reduce crime. It could also put a tax on foreign violent movies. (Hollywood would be foreign to red states).
[As a side paragraph, Black-on-Black crime is very high, because Blacks live near, associate with, and have gang competitions mostly with Blacks. But Black crime against Whites is far higher than White crime against Blacks. Every time a Black is in proximity to a White, a White is in proximity to a Black, so the crime rates should be the same in both directions. Of course, Blacks are more likely to commit a crime against any race than a White is. It’s been a decade since I looked at the numbers, so I don’t remember clearly whether I devised a way to discern a greater propensity of Blacks to disregard White lives than they regard Black lives. Perhaps Steve Sailor fans can comment below. But there have been several politically/racially motivated murders by Black supremacists recently.]
More broadly, the racial divisiveness of the US ruling class is a threat to the safety and security of red state communities, many of which have significant Black populations. Once free from federal judges, the states in the red-state federation could require respect for the host culture and assimilation instead of allow the fanning of historic racial grievances. Of course these states would have stricter citizenship and immigration rules too.
In 1775, the idea that Britons, previously considered to be cousins of Americans, would instigate attacks on Americans (by brutes who had no mercy) felt like a betrayal. In our time, secessionists can point to the ways that blue-state elites encourage the dispossession of the descendants of colonials (and Whites in general) as a betrayal. Why should we fund a government that works against us? The elite won’t even say “All lives matter”. They direct Covid vaccines and therapeutics specifically to Blacks of all ages, rather than to the people who needed it most (the elderly of all races).
The alt-right has already pushed these ideas, so the role of the secessionist is to identify the federal government’s role in the problem and to point to forceful red-state federation action as the solution.
2) The failure of the federal government to secure its borders has resulted in many deaths from crimes committed by migrants, drug cartel crime, and deaths by fentanyl and other deadly drugs. This is an especially compelling argument in Texas.
3) The federal government is deadly to those who value the 2nd Amendment because eventually the government will come for our guns. That would be a deadly event for those who have committed to defend the sovereignty of the people with their lives, but not if secession or regime change happens sooner.
4) The federal government is deadly because its incompetence and ideology will cause the economy to collapse to the point that medical care will be impeded and there perhaps could be some starvation, deadly riots, and deadly failure of infrastructure such as electrical grids, water, etc. The BLM riots would be child’s play if transportation into a major city stopped. Millions would have to leave the city to get food, some of them as raiding parties.
5) The virtue-signalling spirit of the US State Dept in Ukraine is putting all 50 states at risk of nuclear attack. A federation of red states would not do this. Analogously, the anti-God actions of the US government expose all 50 states to the risk of catastrophic divine judgement.
6) The federal government since Roe v. Wade has ruled anti-abortion law “unconstitutional” and no state has had the fortitude to ignore this yet, to the dismay of the modern abortion abolitionist movement, led by Free The States.
In conclusion, we will admit that the federal government is failing in many ways that don’t directly relate to death rates. There are many other arguments for why life would be better under the governance of a federation of red states than under the governance of the feds. But the point is: let’s not assume that talking about rights is the best way to inspire secession, because that’s not the only argument used in previous secessions, and it wasn’t the primary motivation. Perhaps the fear of attack/death is not our strongest argument yet, but let’s keep it in mind as circumstances change. And militia actions have caused over-reaction in the past.
Excellent article, thank you for posting it. I’ve taken interest in James Oglethorpe and the Georgia Experiment. Georgia was founded in the 1730’s, last of the colonies, and initially slavery was banned. Georgia was regarded as a buffer state against Spanish Florida and it was recognized that a large population of slaves would always pose the danger of a fifth column in being in the event of war with Spain. Irinically is was a victory against Spain secured by Colonel Oglethorpe which lessened the threat of Spain, leading to the ban on slavery in Georgia being lifted in 1751.
Slavery of course benefitted the few at the expense of the many. Most of the White population had to compete agaisnt slave labor, and a large part of the slave owning “Whites” were actually Jewish.
Interesting also by your take on the Ukraine. This is a war which the Biden regime sought, and was the first to issue nuclear threats with “All options are on the table.” Blue states are more vulnerable to nuclear war given the large cities. And there are a number of blue states which are one megaton from becoming red states. Michigan for example if one large urban area gets nuked, I won’t name it but it should be easy to figure out. Also the rotten borough congressional districts.
Thanks eNcubed. Regarding the history of slavery in Georgia that you bring up, it sounds like the ruling class in Georgia had 110 years (1751 to 1861) to run their get-rich-without-working scheme before all the people in Georgia faced the grimmest war in North American history. Following that there was the brutal “Reconstruction”, but the end of Reconstruction did not bring Georgia relief, let alone self-determination.
At least according to an interesting piece by Hunter Wallace, http://occidentaldissent.com/2019/04/28/southern-history-month-2019-the-impoverishment-of-appalachia/ Georgia continued to suffer until past the end of World War II from a railway system owned by Northern barons which systematically made it prohibitively expensive to transport finished goods from South to North, while simultaneously making it difficult to transport raw material from North to South. That is, the railway freight rates, controlled by the Northeastern establishment, formed a sort of anti-industrialization policy for the South. “Georgia, for example, despite its man cotton mills, had not a single fine-goods bleachery.”
So that’s at least 85 years of punishment, inflicted on all Georgians, by a few desiring wealth without work. And arguably, even after the freight system improved following construction of the interstate highway system, Georgia still has problems (e.g., Atlanta, and the [periodical] Atlanta Constitution) stemming from the same bad decisions taken in the mid 18th century.
As an aside, i should note that Hunter’s article was only very incidentally about Georgia. Its main topic was Appalachia and West Virginia, and their impoverishment due to the same Northern industrialists and bankers. There’s a moral here, i think, quite relevant to our cause, and that is, even if you do not secede, you may get punished for it. West Virginia, after all, famously did not secede (except from Virginia). But it was and is totally ignored by our rulers except for what cannon fodder it can provide. No ruler of ours wants to spend a dime on developing its people or its industry.
So if we have a chance to secede, we should take it.
And i think this fits in with the “fear motivation” that the post explores. If we’re not afraid, or at least somewhat angry, we should be.
Finally, and this is getting kind of remote from the post, the long twitter thread that Red State linked to is about “American ethnogenesis”. I don’t want to drift off-topic here, but i think our ethnogenesis was interrupted and not allowed to evolve naturally. Hopefully, if we can establish our own independent country and regain a say in the course we chart, that natural evolution can get started again and produce a truly coherent people.