Public opinion polls consistently indicate that roughly 1 in 4 Americans, approximately 75-80 million people, are currently sympathetic to secession by their locality or region. The obvious implication of this for those of us who are advocates of pan-secessionism is that we do not need to go out and start converting people to the cause of secession. In other words, the most difficult part of our work has already been done, i.e. influencing public opinion in our direction. No, we are not yet a majority but twenty-five percent is fine for the time being.
Instead, at this phase in the struggle our task is to simply awaken those who are already in our camp in terms of emotional or intellectual sympathies, and motivate them to take action. Of course, the big question is the matter of how to go about doing this.
The first step is to remove the feeling of isolation many of our sympathizers or potential sympathizers may be experiencing. Maybe they’re hesitant to come out publicly as a secessionist, or maybe they feel like they don’t know anyone else who is a secessionist (although, statistically speaking, they probably do). The way to do this is to simply expand the public visibility of secessionists so that others will not feel they are alone, or that there’s something weird about them, because of their sympathy with the secessionist cause.
An important part of this first step towards expanding our visibility would be to flood the internet with our presence. There needs to be as many websites, blogs, social media pages, podcasts, youtube accounts, and videocasts as possible that are oriented towards the idea of secession. Further, the many websites and other forms of online media that are oriented towards secession should target particular demographics in terms of both localities and population groups. There should be online media oriented towards elderly Republicans explaining the virtue of secession in terms and within the context of issues that they can understand. There should be the same for Californians, African-Americans, environmentalists, Floridians, gun owners, evangelical Christians, Cascadians, and Spanish-speakers.
The next step is to move the secessionist movement offline and into public forums. This can be done both by holding local “town meeting”-like forums for the purpose of discussing secessionist ideas, and by holding national or regional conferences on secession. These should be open forums that the press is invited to attend. In fact, the organizers of these events should go out of their way to get as much press coverage as possible.
The third step would be to run symbolic candidates in local and regional elections on specifically secessionist platforms. This could be done by many different kinds of candidates, reflecting a wide spectrum of political tendencies, on a simultaneous basis. The individual candidates should then make a point of recognizing and endorsing each others’ campaigns.
As the secession movement grows, its opponents will become ever more vocal. These will include representatives of the federal government, conventional state and local governments, the media, “watchdog” organizations, independent critics, and many others. The louder the voice of the opposition becomes the more we will know that we are gaining traction. The enemy will consistently respond with a barrage of lies, slander, and hysteria. This is to be expected and a necessary part of the struggle. However, the important issue at this juncture will be for the secessionists to take control of the discourse. It will not be the role of the secessionists to offer apologizes, rebuttals, refutations, qualifications, or denials concerning any accusations the enemies of secession may have raised. Instead, the consistent and resolute attitude and demeanor of the secessionists should simply be “We do what we do.” If the secessionist movement does not generate severe public controversy, then we are not doing it right. The ultimate goal is political polarization leading to dissolution and then revolution. Obviously, this cannot be done without ruffling quite a few feathers along the way.
