Category Archives: Secession

What Are So-Called “Second Amendment Sanctuaries?” Reply

by • Activism, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Secession, Strategy

Based on everything that has happened in 2020, I’d say the ATS position has largely been vindicated. On an international level, unipolarity seems to be moving toward retreat. Domestically, the lumpenproletariat has clearly demonstrated itself to be the vanguard class of the anarchist revolution. Pan-secessionism seems to be developing and coming from all points on the political spectrum as evidenced by sanctuary cities (from the left), 2nd amendment sanctuaries (from the right), and drug war resistance initiatives (from libertarians). The only major point I seem to have gotten wrong was overestimating the commitment of conventional radicals to overthrowing the system and underestimating the intensity of culture war psychology. That precludes the development of a left/right alliance against the state, but something just a valuable is happening in the form of the fractiousness that is taking place. The center is being delegitimized and the Left and Right have come to view each other as existential enemies with different factions, ranging from anti-lockdown protestors and to anti-police protestors, simply disregarding the state as they see fit.

Brady United

In a backlash to newly passed gun safety laws, gun rights extremists in some localities across the country are declaring that state gun safety laws don’t apply in their communities. Calling themselves “Second Amendment sanctuaries,” some localities are going so far as to pass resolutions declaring that they will refuse to enforce and dedicate tax-funded resources to the implementation of state gun safety measures.

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Sanctuary Cities, Counties, and States 3

by • Activism, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Immigration, Secession, Strategy

Center for Immigration Studies

The sanctuary jurisdictions are listed below. These cities, counties, and states have laws, ordinances, regulations, resolutions, policies, or other practices that obstruct immigration enforcement and shield criminals from ICE — either by refusing to or prohibiting agencies from complying with ICE detainers, imposing unreasonable conditions on detainer acceptance, denying ICE access to interview incarcerated aliens, or otherwise impeding communication or information exchanges between their personnel and federal immigration officers.

A detainer is the primary tool used by ICE to gain custody of criminal aliens for deportation. It is a notice to another law enforcement agency that ICE intends to assume custody of an alien and includes information on the alien’s previous criminal history, immigration violations, and potential threat to public safety or security.

Sanctuary Cities

OpenTheBooks Oversight Report - Federal Funding of America's Sanctuary Cities | Open The Books

Second Amendment Counties

Second Amendment sanctuary - Wikipedia

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What Will It Take for Americans to Consider Breaking Up? Reply

by • Activism, Secession, Strategy

I would point out that Jeff Deist, a supposed vocal proponent of secession, was actually opposed to CHAZ/CHOP, which probably indicates that many libertarians would oppose any form of secession that does not conform to bourgeois economic or behavioral norms, just as many left-wing anarchists oppose any kind of secession that does not embrace leftist cultural values, which means they are really not against the system but merely represent rival factions of the system.

By Jeff Deist, Mises Institute

It’s one thing for mass democracy to produce bad results, in the form of elected politicians or enacted policies. It’s another when the democratic process itself breaks down because nobody trusts the vote or the people who count it. But that’s precisely where we are.

As things stand at this writing, last night’s presidential election remains undecided and looking ugly. At least six states are still uncalled, and both the Trump and Biden camps have their legal teams claiming victory. We may be in for days, weeks, or even months of legal skirmishes, all of which can only add to our intense political (or more accurately cultural) breakdown.

Today, perhaps 140 million American voters are in purgatory, fearfully wondering what will happen to them if the other guy wins. This is nothing short of a national psychosis, absurd yet deadly real. And it gets worse every four years, despite the narrowing of any “policy” differences between the two parties over recent decades. If anything, presidential votes are overwhelmingly about tribal affiliations with our kind of person, not substantive ideology.

Yes, this is unhealthy. And yes, the psychosis manifests because the stakes are so high. It manifests because government is far too big and rapacious; lawmaking and jurisprudence too centralized in DC; the unitary executive presidency too powerful; and society too politicized. But these are unhelpful truisms. Plenty of Americans abjectly support more government, more centralized political power, an omnipotent president and Supreme Court, and the sharp politicization of every facet of life.

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Salvaging Secession Reply

by • Activism, Secession, Strategy

By Bill Kauffman, Reason

Break It Up: Secession, Division, and the Secret History of America’s Imperfect Union, by Richard Kreitner, Little, Brown and Co., 496 pages, $30

The late Thomas Naylor, gentle godfather of the modern Vermont independence movement, used to sign off with “God bless the Disunited States of America.”

Naylor attracted a stalwart and colorful band to his project, ranging from the diplomat George Kennan (the author of the Cold War “containment” policy had come to view the United States as overly confining) to a delightful mélange of populist “woodchucks” (native Vermonters), organic-farming greens, Ethan Allen impersonators, and more. Naylor’s Second Vermont Republic had a merry, slap-happy, larkish feel, but Naylor, who died in 2012, was dead serious. And now, barely two decades since secession talk first scented the Green Mountain air, the entire country is getting an invigorating whiff.

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Why unarmed revolutions topple some dictators but not others Reply

by • Activism, Secession, Strategy

Most revolutions result in dictatorships that are more authoritarian and repressive than whatever they replaced. The partial exception is those revolutions that are merely about the dispersal of power. Revolutions that are about the far-reaching transformation of societies almost always produce horrific results. The models of a revolution that are appropriate for the United States would be the American Revolution, in which the 13 colonies simply seceded from Britain, or the overthrow of the Soviet Union/Warsaw Pact, in which the Soviet empire was dissolved into a collection of dozens of independent nations. Cheron, Mexico, which simply expelled political parties and cartels and took up self-management, is another example.

By Daniel P. Ritter, Washington Post

Over the last few decades, the world has witnessed the proliferation of a new type of revolution. Alternatively labeled “negotiated,” “democratic,” “electoral,” “color,” “nonviolent” or “unarmed,” these revolutions largely eschew violent tactics and have become a distinguishing feature of contemporary international politics. Since Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last shah of Iran, was toppled in January 1979 as the result of unrelenting protests and strikes, authoritarian leaders and regimes in the Philippines, Chile, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Indonesia, Serbia, Ukraine, Georgia, Tunisia and Egypt — to mention a few — have met their political ends in similar fashion.

Although the long-term gains achieved in the wake of these and other unarmed revolutions have often disappointed their protagonists, their ability to unseat autocrats through the use of nonviolent tactics — sometimes referred to as “civil resistance” — constitutes a formidable social science puzzle in itself. How can we explain that highly repressive and seemingly all-powerful regimes sometimes collapse at the hands of protesters armed with little more than slogans and resolve? And, in a related issue, why do some attempts at unarmed revolution fail to oust despots, even though such movements may initially appear identical to their successful counterparts?

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The State of What Passes for Radical Politics in America Reply

by • Activism, Anarchism/Anti-State, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Electoralism/Democratism, Secession, Strategy

A reader offers the following observations concerning “alternative” politics in the US at present.

I’ve been thinking recently about the state of what passes for radical politics in America, particularly in the context of third parties and the potential for pan-secessionism.

The handful of relevant third parties in the United States (and would-be third parties like Unity2020 or the Movement for a People’s Party) all speak, I think, to interesting if flawed attempts by more or less well-meaning people to reform a system they clearly grasp is broken. I am reminded of something you wrote earlier this year about how each of the various groups in the country trying to “fix” the system (both within and outside the mainstream) are all stuck in dated paradigms of their own, none of which by themselves has the answers.

Obviously, the mainstream Blue Tribe / Red Tribe conflict virtually monopolizes the conversation, pressuring and frightening people to “pick a side”, either as voters, or as street brawler LARPists on the extreme ends.

To my mind, the third parties currently relevant on a national level basically boil down to 4 (or 3) groups: the Greens, the Movement for a People’s Party, the Unity2020 gang, and the Libertarians. (Though, admittedly, calling any of them “relevant” is probably a stretch. But any other groups than these are even more on the fringe, like the PSL on the left—while those on the right, like the Reform or Constitution Parties, are probably largely Trumpists now.)

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Should the United States Stay United? Reply

by • Activism, Secession, Strategy

The Left always performs much better when a Republican administration is in power.

By Jessica Suriano

The Nation

The United States has never been an equal, peaceful, or functional nation, despite what the history textbooks say. It was built from genocide, slavery, and stolen land. This year, the Black Lives Matter protests and the abolition movement, coupled with a pandemic that preys most on people consistently excluded from the broken health care system, demonstrate the lie of our “more perfect union” even more. Will there ever come a time to abandon this myth and the 50 “united” states altogether? If so, is that moment already here?

These are just some of the questions Richard Kreitner invites with his new book, Break It Up: Secession, Division, and the Secret History of America’s Imperfect Union. While secessionism is probably most commonly associated with the Civil War, Kreitner shows that support for disbanding the union has always been present throughout the country’s history and among Americans with contrasting political beliefs, including abolitionists. As Kreitner notes in the book, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison considered the Constitution “a pact with the devil.” While opposition to the idea of a union existed even within the original colonies, Donald Trump has highlighted the fault lines and contradictions in federalism significantly over the past four years, causing many, including Kreitner, to reconsider the value in staying together.

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Unity2020 – Ballot access: Can you see it? Reply

by • Activism, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Electoralism/Democratism, Secession, Strategy

The main problem I see with Bret’s idea, aside from the technical issues and sectarian conflict, is that the elected officials are merely managers and the electoral system is merely a front for the oligarchy.  Unity 2020 is not entirely dissimilar to the “pan-secessionist meta-party” idea I’ve written about in the past but the PSMP would only be an afterthought once a dual power system has already been developed, which would require not only large scale organization but also much higher levels of political education than what currently exists by a huge margin. Nor would the PSMP be a means of taking state power but merely the political propaganda arm of a movement to abolish the state, which can only be achieved through dislodging the oligarchy.

The Boogaloo Movement Is Not What You Think 2

by • Activism, American Decline, Anarchism/Anti-State, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Fourth Generation Warfare, Left and Right, Secession, Strategy

This is a comment from an Antifa-oriented social media page:

“I have a comrade who was monitoring the Boogaloo pages before they got taken down and said they were very pro-gay, pro-black, etc, just very accelerationist and anti cop. I cant wrap my head around it. They had a very incel vibe IMHO.”

This is exactly what we need. Hardline anti-System extremism that fully rejects any last vestiges of “law and order” conservative statism while completing shedding any affinity for culture war/race war/tribal war/civil war politics. We need a Boogaloo right of the kind described above and a Bolo’bolo left of the kind described in the adjacent post, and for these tendencies to eventually bend toward each other. Build the Boogaloo-Bolo’bolo Axis!

The “Booglaoo” movement would at this point seem, at least in some ways, to be the most advanced of any “extremist” sector in US fringe politics in terms of their overall thinking. In order to build an authentically revolutionary movement in North America, two things have to happen. First, the revolutionaries must shed any last remaining attachments to the system. That rules out the archaic American patriotism of many on the far-right and the “anarcho-Democratic Partyism” of many on the far-left. Perhaps some of these folks will move toward an actual revolutionary perspective at some point in the future, but for now, they are still too much under the residual influence of “Systemism.” Second, the revolutionaries must shed any attachment to the idea of a racial, cultural, tribal, ideological civil war. There cannot be even a hint of this among the actual revolutionaries. Unfortunately, most supposed “extremists” have not abandoned this idea at all, and often enthusiastically endorse as much, thereby making themselves into nothing more than parodies and caricatures of the Red and Blue tribes.

More so than other far-right tendencies, and most far-left tendencies, the Boogaloos seem to understand this if their recent public pronouncements and actions are any indication.

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How Pan is your Pan-Secessionism? Reply

by • Activism, Anarchism/Anti-State, Secession, Strategy • Tags:

This post from Anarchist News (and the discussion thread that follows) from a few months back is worth checking out. It is illustrative of something that I have been thinking would eventually happen in the “left” anarchist milieu. While many left-anarchists are clearly oriented toward the Maoist-influenced Antifa, and others toward reformist tendencies like DSA, it appears that still others are gradually moving toward “pan-secession” or, roughly, the kinds of ideas discussed at ATS. The “Bolo’bolo” left-anarchist utopian book from the 1980s is very popular among left-anarchists, particularly Green types, and seems to have heavily influenced the thinking of some anarchists, a small number of whom have now embraced the “pan-secession” framework. Increasingly, I am coming across conflicts in the left-anarchist milieu between those who are primarily motivated by mere anti-rightism and those who are motivated by anti-systemism on a general level.

AnarchistNews.Org

A while ago I/we made a topic of the week discussing differences among anarchists. This topic is about how you engage with not-anarchist people and ideas, stemming from the recent debate about Bellamy’s new project Liberty and Logos in which he’s engaging with someone who’s a self-identified reactionary (and someone who apparently has some unpleasant yet unsurprising interests according to some recently deleted tweets).

The concept of anarchy that Bellamy is working with here is one where there’s no big happy ending where everyone agrees with us (never mind us agreeing with each other) – an idea that most readers on this site can probably get behind. Most people, even people we love and care for, don’t agree with us, and relationships with people who aren’t anarchists are inevitable in this world. The more complicated question is where do we go from there?

Agree with his approach or not, this is what Bellamy is attempting. My question for you is, what is your next step from that premise? What does it mean to look for allies in a world that’s generally hostile to us? How wide do you draw your circle, where and how do you draw the line, and what does that engagement mean?

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The Ten Core Demographics Revisited Ten Years Later Reply

by • Activism, American Decline, Anarchism/Anti-State, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Electoralism/Democratism, Environment, Fourth Generation Warfare, Left and Right, Political Correctness/Totalitarian Humanism, Race and Ethnicity, Secession, Strategy

Ten years ago, I identified what I considered to be the “ten core demographics” that proponents of the ideas we discuss here at ATS will have to reach in order to eventually find the Holy Grail. The original piece is available here. It is interesting to evaluate the status of each of these ten demographics (which are really collections of sub-demographics) a decade later in light of the current uprising. Here is where things seem to stand. The parts in italics are from the original piece.

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Sovereign Counties: Free Association through Local Autonomy Reply

by • Activism, Anarchism/Anti-State, Secession, Strategy

Sovereign Counties is a new project that has given its endorsement to Attack the System. The Foundation for Intentional Community is an interesting group as well, and seems to be a domestic parallel to the Startup Societies Foundation. Also, see my essay “The Case for the City-State System.”

The ideas of sovereign counties, intentional communities, and startup societies is really the only set of ideas that we non-world dominationist anarchists need to be promoting among the left, right, center, all religions and ethnic groups, all philosophical and ethical systems, and all subcultures, countercultures, and youth cultures. These ideas provide the framework for Anthony Sutton’s “voluntary associations, voluntary communes, or local rule and decentralized societies” as an alternative to imperialism, and Gene Roddenberry’s ideal of “infinite diversity in infinite combinations.” I even know Trumpists or Democratic Party voters who like the ideas we discuss at ATS but still vote for one of the major parties out of “fear of the other.”

Sovereign Counties

Sovereign Counties is a movement to create intentional communities governed by the consensus of county residents. Conventionally, members of an intentional community found the community, so all members accept its principles from the outset. In the longer run, new members are born into the community and remain into adulthood by choice while members falling outside of an evolving consensus leave. Counties can become intentional communities in the latter sense. Discuss conventional communities here.

Foundation for Intentional Community

The Foundation for Intentional Community (FIC) defines an intentional community as a group of people who have chosen to live together or share resources on the basis of common values. You may have heard of a commune, ecovillage, cohousing, coliving or student coop. These are all types of intentional communities – models for more cooperative, sustainable and just ways of life. FIC curates a directory of over 1,000 communities worldwide, as well as supplies resources, runs educational events and promotes community classifieds. Support our work by making a donation today!

Startup Societies Foundation

A startup society is typically a small territorial experiment in government. For centuries, innovators have created enclaves to escape institutional barriers. America itself was created to escape religious persecution in Europe. The startup societies of today are making the world into a more diverse and competitive place.

A Strategy for Forcing the State Back Reply

by • Activism, Anarchism/Anti-State, Secession, Strategy

By Per Bylund

LewRockwell. Com

As libertarians, we like to discuss two things: what could be and what is wrong with society today. Some of us are intrigued by the promises of a free society, no matter if we advocate the total abolishment of the State or wish to radically cut back on its powers. It kind of sets your mind free to dream of all the things that could be weren’t it for the welfare-warfare State.

Some libertarians feel the adrenaline flowing when talking about the injustice caused people by the State: about immigrants being forced back to torture because they are not the “legal” kind; about poor people kept out of the labor market by minimum wage laws; about small business owners forced into bankruptcy because of totally unnecessary regulations and restrictions; about average Joes being forced off their property for the “common good”; about people literally being taxed to death.

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Why Federalism Is The Way Foward Reply

by • Secession

By George Greig

The Point News

Since the creation of the first devolved assembly in 1999, there has been an undeniable growth in regional nationalism and separatism. This is due to the view that the current union gives England too much power over the other home nations.

While the government in Westminster is undoubtedly England-centric, it is hard to call the Union English controlled if you do not acknowledge that, as the largest nation England will have the most influence. A rhetoric similar to this is often employed by the likes of the SNP and Plaid Cymru in their efforts to ‘liberate’ their respective nations.

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