Some years back, I rolled out the idea of a “pan-secessionist meta-party” as a means of implementing the wider ATS “anarcho-populist” strategy that I outlined some years before that.  The most recent polling data, involving a poll taken by the University of Virginia Center for Politics, indicates that 52 percent of Trump voters and 41 percent of Biden voters now favor pan-secession on at least a casual level. Collectively, that amounts to 70 million Americans.  It is likely that sympathy for pan-secession among eligible non-voters (about 80 million) and ineligible non-voters (about another 100 million, including minors, non-citizens, and convicted felons) is even higher. What this means is that about 100 million people collectively drawn from the Trumpist, Bidenist, and non-voting demographics now favor pan-secession to at least some degree.

Of course, just because the kind of movement that ATS has worked to develop would now have a potential 100 million sympathizers does not mean such a movement actually exists. Casual statements by random individuals and affirmative answers to opinion poll questions are not the same thing as on-the-ground action.  Nor is a “plan” for simply creating a Red country and a Blue country entirely viable, either. As Bill Bishop’s work points out, the geographical divide is primarily rural vs urban as much as it is a state-by-state divide.  Actual pan-secession would have to include a great more diversity and decentralization than the mere Red/Blue dichotomy even if this dichotomy continued to be the primary dividing line.

For instance, in large cities and metropolitan areas, something like Norman Mailer’s “power to the neighborhoods” idea would be a necessary means of affording at least some degree of autonomy to diverse populations that are in close geographical proximity. This also provides a framework for the creation of intentional communities reflecting whatever themes the participants wish, from far-right to far-left to anarchist to spiritually oriented.

We should remember that many of the US states are larger or just as large as many other countries. For instance, California is comparable to Iraq. Texas is comparable to Afghanistan. New York State is comparable to Germany, and New York City is comparable to Portugal. Plenty of examples can be found of microstates that are highly functional.

Many helpful historical examples can be found as well, from the religious and utopian colonies of early America to past civilizations like Greece (a collection of thousands of autonomous cities), the Holy Roman Empire (a federation of hundreds of largely autonomous principalities), and the Ottoman Empire (a polycentric system with a high degree of autonomy for ethnic and religious communities), or systems of confessional/consociational democracy.

The main thing that is lacking at the present time is a movement of actual advocates for these positions that would be able to marshal the high level of casual sympathy for pan-secession into actual on-the-ground action. It is clear that pan-secession is a concept that is divisive among all political factions, and the emergence of on-the-ground action would be even more divisive. It can be expected that within most geographical areas, pan-secession would be at least as divisive as Brexit was for the UK, if not more so. It is likely that different culture war factions would split among themselves over this question, along with most ethnic and religious communities, and in a way that transcends class differences as well. However, divisiveness over pan-secession would not be unwelcome because it would help to shift focus away from culture tribal/sectarian politics toward the system/anti-system dichotomy.

By Madison Hall and Bryan Metzger Business Insider

• A new poll has found that 52% of Trump voters want red states to secede.
• Eighty percent or more of both Biden and Trump voters fear the effects of the other party’s policies, the poll found.
• The UVA survey showcases the extreme divisions between the two major US political parties.

A majority of people who voted for former President Donald Trump are in favor of breaking up the country, a new poll from the University of Virginia Center for Politics has found.

UVA surveyed 2,012 voters — half of whom voted for Trump, the other half for President Joe Biden – in late July in order to better understand the growing split between the Democratic and Republican Parties.

The results show a country at ideological war with itself: More than half of the surveyed Trump voters — approximately 52% — said the “situation is such that I would favor [Blue/Red] states seceding from the union to form their own separate country.” Approximately 41% of Biden-voting respondents answered similarly.

Some Republicans have floated proposals to secede from the union, including former Texas GOP chair Allen West. After the Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit spearheaded by the Texas attorney general aimed at overturning the 2020 presidential election results, West said that “perhaps law-abiding states should bond together and form a Union of states that will abide by the constitution.”

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