Category Archives: Secession

Awakening the Sleeping Giant 9

by • Activism, Secession, Strategy

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. More…

Libertarian Opposes Secession Reply

by • Activism, Secession, Strategy

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but the growth of pan-secessionism will definitely create some interesting dividing lines. The question of secession is my litmus test. I believe it is what separates true radicals from non-radicals (at least in the USA). The bottom line is that there are those who want to see the system survive and those who don’t.

Austin Petersen

Libertarian Republic

A new Reuters poll which asks Americans if they would want their state to secede from the UNION of the United States has found that 1 in 4 Americans would say “yes.”

Reuters reported that secession was supported mostly from the usual suspects such as Republicans over Democrats, right leaners, lower income brackets, high school over college grads, etc. However, there was also a surprising amount of support in almost every group and region overall.

From Reuters:

Secession got more support from Republicans than Democrats, more from right- than left-leaning independents, more from younger than older people, more from lower- than higher-income brackets, more from high school than college grads. But there was a surprising amount of support in every group and region, especially the Rocky Mountain states, the Southwest and the old Confederacy, but also in places like Illinois and Kansas. And of the people who said they identified with the Tea Party, supporters of secession were actually in the majority, with 53 percent.

Libertarians generally support the idea of secession in principle. The right of self determination for individuals and states is a commonly accepted belief for those who are skeptical of big government. However, not every historic attempt at secession is seen as legitimate in libertarian circles, and many who are such individualists can still believe in this perpetual UNION of states, while holding the principle of secession as a right.

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1 In 4 Americans Want Their State To Secede From The US Reply

by • Activism, Secession, Strategy

We advocates of pan-secessionism do not need to grow or cultivate a constituency of our own. We already have what might be called a “sleeping constituency” of 80 million people. The only question we face is the issue of how to awake this sleeping giant, and get this army of 80 million to start marching. What others have done for gay marriage and marijuana legalization, we need to do for secession.

ZeroHedge.Com

With all eyes firmly fixed on Europe’s secessionist movements (most notably Scotland and Catalan), the growing tensions in America took a back seat for a moment. But, as Reuters reports, a recent poll found one-in-four Americans want their state to secede from The US with men more secessionist than women and the Southwest most aggrieved. By the evidence of the poll data as well as these anecdotal conversations, the sense of aggrievement is comprehensive, bipartisan, somewhat incoherent, but deeply felt.  

Europe’s secessionist movements have garnered all the attention recently…

But in the US, ‘aggrievement’ is on the rise…

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The City-States of America Reply

by • Activism, Secession, Strategy

By Samuel Arbesman

We do not really think much about city-states anymore. With the exceptions of such places as Singapore and Hong Kong, the term “city-state” often conjures up the image of Athens or Sparta.

However, through a bit of number-crunching of data from the United States Census, I have found a new way to think of city-states when it comes the United States: those states where the majority of their populations lie within a single metropolitan area. For example, the state of Illinois is a city-state because, despite its large physical area, two-thirds of its population lies within the counties that make up the Chicago metropolitan area.

With that, I present The City-States of America:

downloadable as a high-resolution PDF

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Time to Entertain Secession? Reply

by • Activism, Secession, Strategy

Triad Conservative

Last month, a highly publicized vote took place in Scotland to decide whether to secede from the United Kingdom.  This vote resulted in some sentiments being exposed in the United States that are also sympathetic to the concept of secession.

Newsmax first reported that there is some degree of support in various states for secession.  Then Reuters reported the results of a poll that suggested 24% of Americans support the idea of their state breaking away.

It also turns out that Ron Paul published an essay recently that is highly supportive of the individual states’ trying to secede.

The United States has descended into democratic socialism– or even worse, a form of fascism similar to that which was espoused by Mussolini in Italy.  Now, the central government is in the process of forcing same sex marriage on the individual states.  This is quite similar to what occurred four decades ago when the central government forced legalized abortion on all of the individual states.  The nation is effectively requiring the states to undermine the family; and to affirm and protect sexual immorality.

The United States has become unmoored from its constitutional and historical foundation that was based upon a republican form of government and representative democracy; and that was informed by a distinctly Judeo-Christian heritage.

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Southern states ‘dumbing down’ country, should secede, secretive progressive journalist group members say Reply

by • Activism, Left and Right, Secession, Strategy

It is somewhat difficult to understand why more liberals, leftists, and progressives do not take this eminently sensible and self-interested position.

EagNews.Org

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The nation would be better off if Southern states seceded from the union, and Republicans pushing for right-to-work, voter ID laws and other reforms are “neo-Confederates” according to a candid exchange between a major Democratic donor and liberal organizers on Gamechanger Salon.

The forum, a secretive and exclusive digital gathering of over 1,000 leftwing leaders, activists and journalists, was recently made public by Media Trackers, and email exchanges between members offer fascinating insights into the group’s inner deliberations.

Gamechanger Salon participant Jon Stahl sparked a conversation last October about the role of the South in American politics when he posted a link to Michael Lind’s piece for Salon magazine entitled The South is Holding America Hostage. “I thought this was an impressive (if tough) piece of big-picture political strategy and prescription,” Stahl explained before remarking, “Would be interested to hear others’ opinions of whether he is on target or way off…and if so what that might imply.”

First to respond was Guy Saperstein, a wealthy California mega-donor to Democratic candidates and leftwing causes. “In the alternative, could we just let the South secede?” the part owner of the Oakland Athletics baseball team queried.

He was serious.

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The Birth of the American City-state Reply

by • Activism, Secession, Strategy

By Greg Penglis

American Thinker

Mark Levin has proposed a series of “Liberty Amendments” to the Constitution through an Article 5 state convention. I have my own set of amendments which I hope to share here and add to the proposed Liberty Amendments. The first involves the resurrection of the city-state. This plan would take our largest cities, governed primarily by socialist Democrats, and separate them out as independent, self-governing, self-funding political units, with no connection to the states, but within the exclusive oversight of the federal government, just as the states are.

There is a huge separation in this country right now between the socialist big cities and the conservative countrysides. Many times, especially in California where I live, the socialist cities have enough people, and votes, to edge out the conservative countryside in every major state and federal election, despite the fact that the countryside constitutes a vastly larger area, and includes millions of people. Conservatives within that vast area are completely disenfranchised from true representation, even up to the president.

If you took San Francisco, Sacramento, and Los Angeles out of the state of California, and left the rest of the state alone to govern itself, the world of electoral politics, and every other issue, would completely change. Therefore I propose that cities over a certain size and metropolitan character be designated as city-states, that their legislators and officers be recalled from the state governments, that the city-states have no connection or ties with the surrounding states, that no person residing in a city-state may hold any government position in a state, and vice-versa, that crossing a city-state line is the equivalent of crossing a state line, and that the city-states become completely independent political, legal, and financial entities.

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As Globalists Centralize, Secession Fever Grows Worldwide Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Secession

By Alex Newman

New American

As Globalists Centralize, Secession Fever Grows Worldwide

Much has been written about the ongoing efforts by globalists and the international establishment to centralize political and economic power. From the European Union, the African Union, and the Union of South American States all the way to the United Nations, would-be transnational authorities are fervently seeking to consolidate and expand their power over increasingly large swaths of humanity. At the same time, though, with citizens becoming increasingly weary of being ruled by far-away, unaccountable forces, secession movements around the world are exploding.

Nowhere are independence movements more numerous and more vocal at the moment than in Europe. As the emerging Brussels-based super-state seeks to finalize its smashing of national sovereignty and self-government across the bloc, whole nations are increasingly in open revolt. In the United Kingdom, for example — itself facing the increasingly likely prospect of Scottish secession — polls show the public is ready to peacefully extricate the nation from the EU as soon as possible. The political class has done its best to contain the anti-EU fervor, but to little avail.

“In much of the world, small countries are hoping to retain their independence, whilst portions of larger countries are trying to establish their independence,” wrote economist Jeff Thomas in International Man, a finance-oriented publication. “Understandably, they’re meeting with resistance, as it’s usually the areas that are the net-contributors to the larger economy that seek independence, whilst the areas that are the net-recipients wish to take the conglomerate approach (and to continue to eat their neighbor’s lunch).”

Moves to break away from central governments, Thomas continued, are “invariably a bottom-up effort — created by the people.” Efforts to create “a conglomerate state,” on the other hand, tend to be “top-down — created by the political class,” he said, adding that while in the past that was often done through warfare, today, it often happens via treaties. “Political leaders invariably have an insatiable appetite for gobbling up as much real estate as possible,” Thomas observed.

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Stormin’ Norman, Decentralist Reply

by • Activism, Left and Right, Secession, Strategy

Norman Mailer’s decentralized, left-conservatism is a lot like what the electoral wing of the ARV-ATS program would be. We need to cultivate an alliance of third parties (and perhaps some maverick Democrats and Republicans) who will begin pursing the Mailer model and strategy in cities all across the United States with the goal of an eventual conversion to the city-state system.

By Bill Kauffman

Front Porch Republic
BURNED-OVER DISTRICT, NY–One of the precious and few political campaigns in recent years to embody Front Porch (or, rather, front stoop) principles was Norman Mailer’s 1969 candidacy for mayor of New York City. John Buffalo Mailer, his son, has a fine essay on the old man’s run in the American Conservative (www.amconmag.com/article/2009/may/04/00014). Herewith, via First Principles, my piece on Brooklyn’s favorite fugging son:

In 1969, Norman Mailer, the dukes-up bard of Brooklyn and a self-proclaimed “left conservative,” undertook a campaign for mayor of the city that had, seven decades earlier, swallowed his borough of homes and churches. Competing in the Democratic primary against a quartet of machine hacks and standard-brand liberals, the novelist-pugilist got clobbered. What do you expect of an electorate that has filled Gracie Mansion with the likes of Abe Beame, Ed Koch, and Rudy Giuliani? But Mailer ran a race that carved out a path that we would do well to follow today. I don’t believe that any municipal campaign of the last century has been packed with such radical spirit and reactionary sense.

Mailer averred that he was to the left of the liberals and to the right of the conservatives: wisdom’s place! He diagnosed the modern malady: “The style of New York life has shifted since the Second World War (along with the rest of American cities) from a scene of local neighborhoods and personalities to a large dull impersonal style of life which deadens us with its architecture, its highways, its abstract welfare, and its bureaucratic reflex to look for government solutions which come into the city from without (and do not work)…Our authority has been handed over to the federal power. More…

America’s Slumbering Secession Obsession Reply

by • Activism, American Decline, Secession, Strategy

We’re getting there.

By James Poulos

The Daily Beast

As the United States becomes more and more disjointed, an increasing number of Americans favors abandoning the Union altogether.

In his underrated classic The Cousins’ Wars, Kevin Phillips proves something most Americans would not like to contemplate. Rather than just a one-off conflict over slavery, the Civil War was actually the third phase of a massive conflict among British people and their descendants. The English Civil War laid the groundwork for the American Revolution—which, in most states, was a civil war of its own, played out county by county—and the American Revolution laid the groundwork for the U.S. Civil War.

The patterns of thought shaped through centuries of this ethnic and religious conflict live on, as Scotland’s recent bid for independence reminds us. And here in America, the spirit of secession is gaining strength too. As modern social and cultural forces continue to make most of us more interchangeable, interest in leaving the Union has spread out from coast to coast with remarkable regularity.

As a rigorous new Reuters poll reveals, at least 19 percent of respondents in America’s eight major regions support the idea of their state “peacefully withdrawing from the United States of America and the federal government.” In the Great Lakes, Mid-Atlantic, Plains, and Far West, secession sympathizers top out at 22 percent of the population. In the Southeast, the group counts 1 of every 4 respondents. In the Rockies, the number climbs to 26 percent, and in the Southwest, fully a third are on board.

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The Pan-Anarchist 12-Step Program 2

by • Activism, American Decline, Anarchism/Anti-State, Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Law/Justice, Left and Right, Police State/Civil Liberties, Political Correctness/Totalitarian Humanism, Secession, Strategy

1. Continue to attack all mainstream institutions across the board, until all of the system’s institutions have a single digit approval rating, just as Congress presently does.

2. Continue all dissident movements everywhere, and grow these to the point that they collectively become a majority, and then a super-majority.

3. Promote the idea of secession until a substantive majority of Americans wishes for their state, region, or locality to secede, thereby effectively breaking up the USA.

4. Continue to build support for military non-intervention, which is at an all-time low, across the political spectrum.

5. Continue to build support for anti-police state protests until these become an Eastern Europe circa 1989 moment.

6. Continue to attack the war on drugs which is the foundation of the modern American police state.

7. Continue to grow the libertarian grey tribe as an anti-state opposition force in U.S. politics.

8. Advocate for the city-state system as a practical means of implementing decentralist ideas.

9. Advocate for the repeal of consensual crimes and the surveillance state, the definitive social issues for the grey tribe.

10. Continue to critique red state fascism.

11. Continue to critique blue state totalitarian humanism.

12. Continue to build the pan-anarchist philosophy as the leading revolutionary ideology of the 21st century, comparable to Marxist in the 20th century, and classical liberalism in the 19th century.

Poll: Nearly one in four in America would favor secession 3

by • Activism, American Decline, Anarchism/Anti-State, Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Electoralism/Democratism, Secession, Strategy

Grey Tribe becomes a de facto political majority + Support for secession becomes a de facto majority=We Win!!

This is the most up to date data on secessionist sympathy I can find, and it looks like secessionist sympathy is up by a few percentage point. My guess is that secessionist sympathy is highest in the Southwest due to the prevalent of “reconquista” sentiments among Hispanics. Here’s hoping the folk in D.C. keeping screwing up and fueling secessionist sympathies.

Things are now moving along a lot faster than I would have ever thought.

Los Angeles Times

One in four americans in favor of state secession

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The State: Its Rise and Decline Reply

by • Activism, American Decline, Anarchism/Anti-State, Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Electoralism/Democratism, Fourth Generation Warfare, Immigration, Law/Justice, Left and Right, Military, Police State/Civil Liberties, Political Correctness/Totalitarian Humanism, Race and Ethnicity, Religion and Philosophy, Science and Technology, Secession, Sexuality and the State, Strategy, Therapeutic State

Read this classic lecture from 2000 by Professor Van Creveld, and then read my “Philosophical Anarchism and the Death of Empire” from 2003. Van Creveld’s lecture describes the emerging world order, and my essay outlines a new paradigm for the “worldwide Grey Tribe” as it might be called.

By Martin Van Creveld

October 16, 2000

This is an excerpt from the keynote lecture given at the Mises Institute conference on the themes in Professor van Creveld’s talk.

The background of the state as we know it today is formed by civil war, although at that time, of course, it was not yet called civil. The endless wars between the various principalities, some of them Christian and others Moslem, that took place in the Iberian Peninsula during the fifteenth century; the English Wars of the Roses; the French guerres de religion; and the Thirty Years War which devastated much of Germany and Central Europe–all these resulted in so much death and destruction that, to end them, people were even prepared to have their appetites controlled. As figures such as Jean Bodin and Thomas Hobbes argued, the only way to bring about peace and quiet was absolute government invested in a single person. And peace and quiet, more than anything else, was what people wanted and what history seemed to demand.

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The Rise of the Grey Tribe 19

by • Activism, Anarchism/Anti-State, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Left and Right, Secession, Strategy

Right now, the most important thing that anarchists, libertarians, anti-state radicals, decentralists, anti-authoritarians, paleos, communitarians, and allied others can be doing is growing the Grey Tribe as a third force in U.S. politics beyond the Red Tribe/Blue Tribe dichotomy.

Read the blog post below and then read Scott Alexander’s analysis of present day mainstream politics. Then read my article “Liberty and Populism” from nearly nine years ago, and you will see that the emerging Grey Tribe is more or less what I predicted a libertarian-oriented third force in U.S. politics would be.

Growing the Grey Tribe is one of the primary steps that needs to be taken towards the application of the ARV-ATS paradigm and strategy (along with continuing to increase popular support for the idea of secession).

Also, notice how this writer describes how the Red Tribe is increasingly being marginalized from the mainstream of U.S. politics, and is instead developing its own regional strongholds, while an emerging Blue Tribe/Grey Tribe conflict is taking place. That fits perfectly with my past predictions as well, i.e. that the Red Tribe would become increasingly irrelevant over time, and that the Blue Tribe would become the de facto norm, with the Grey Tribe emerging as the de facto “real Left” opposition to the totalitarian humanism of the Blue Tribe with the left-libertarian/anarcho-leftoids being caught in the middle.

Pax Vobiscum

Everyone knows America has two cultures. Ever since the bitterly contested 2000 Bush v. Gore election we’ve referred to “Red States” and “Blue States”. The states in question of course aren’t monolithically “Red” or “Blue” but the color describes the dominant culture of the population of those states. Red and Blue are more clearly thought of as tribes. Scott Alexander describes the American Red & Blue tribes in one tiny bit of his terrific #longread about outgroups:

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Far Rightist Says “Death To America!” 6

by • Activism, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Left and Right, Race and Ethnicity, Religion and Philosophy, Secession, Strategy

On that at least, we can agree.

This is a really interesting talk. This fellow’s worldview and ideology are very much in the vein of classical, eighteenth century, “throne and altar” conservatism. If you were a “conservative” in the late 1700s and early 1800s, this is how you would have seen the world.

While I obviously disagree with most of this, and in many ways my own ideology is the polar opposite of what is being expressed here. He’s a Russian Orthodox, monarchist, anti-Masonic, white nationalist anit-modernist counterrevolutionary and I’m a far left (historically speaking) revolutionary anarchist. HOWEVER, what is interesting is the direction in which he takes his cultural and political criticisms by advocating essentially withdrawing from the system and urging his fellow reactionaries to “reject constitutionalism, capitalism, and conservation of American ‘founding principles’, embracing smaller and more manageable organic identities centered around their faith, their families, and their folk communities.” In other words, he’s advocating something akin to the national anarchist position (which is in turn compatible with the wider pan-anarchist/anarcho-pluralist paradigm) in practice if not in theory.

If a comparable perspective were to become prevalent among the entire spectrum of the American right-wing, from the Tea Parties to the fascists, then entirely sections of “red state” America would be walking away from the system. The Empire would be hollowed out from within and defeated, and the Left and the demographic groups it claims to champion would achieve self determination as well (https://attackthesystem.com/why-the-radical-left-should-consider-secession/) Of course, the Left can’t see this, given the Left’s usual myopia.

Catalonian Secession and ‘Pure’ Motives Reply

by • Secession, Strategy

By Ryan McMaken

LewRockwell.Com

686px-Localización_de_Cataluña.svgThe Catalonian regional government has signaled that it plans to go ahead with a vote on secession from Spain on Sunday, November 9. The Spanish central government insists that the vote is illegal and the Spanish state will not recognize any vote for secession. Such a blatantly anti-democratic move from a European government will prove to be interesting the next time the Spanish government waxes philosophical about the need to impose democracy in some foreign land.

It is fitting that the vote be scheduled on the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall since that event, of course, began a process that led to the de facto secession of numerous states from what was in practice a Soviet megastate built on a system of client states throughout Eastern Europe. Hungary and Poland, et al were de jure independent states, but we all saw the reality behind that claim in 1956 in Hungary and 1968 in Prague.

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Imagine…. Reply

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

Imagine in the year 2044 a poll is taken showing the following results:

10% of Americans consider themselves to be anarchists.

20% consider themselves to be “hard-core” libertarians.

20% consider themselves to be “moderate” libertarians.

20% consider themselves to be “libertarian-leaning.”

55% say that would prefer decentralizing the USA into a city-state system.

55% say they favor amnesty for all non-violent prisoners.

60% say they favor the right of regions and localities to secede from the central government.

60% say they favor repeal of all consensual crime laws.

65% say they favor limiting police power to investigating crimes against persons and their property.

75% say they oppose military intervention in other societies for any reason.

80% say they favor legalizing marijuana.

What would this mean?

It would mean WE WIN!!!

It’s our job to make it happen.

Free Lingít Aaní! Reply

by • Anarchism/Anti-State, Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Secession, Strategy

From Lingit Latseen

Today is Free Nations Day.

Free Nations Day is an opportunity to reclaim the idea that nations are voluntary groupings of free individuals, not externally imposed political borders or states. Both geographic localities and identities that transcend space are legitimate entities with the right to decide their own ways of life.

Courtesy of Tlingit Readers Inc.; produced by the late Andrew Hope III

Courtesy of Tlingit Readers Inc.; produced by the late Andrew Hope III


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Secession Growing—Here? Reply

by • Secession, Strategy

By Kirkpatrick Sale

In the wake of the Scottish “no” vote on secession last month, former presidential contender Ron Paul has declared that this was inspirational for the cause of secession not only around the world but right here in the United States.  It is here,  he said, that there is a “growing movement” for secession that is “deeply American:” “Americans who embrace secession are acting in the grand American tradition,” most especially the original departure from Great Britain that Scotland failed to emulate.

This has of course upset the usual crowd of knee-jerk patriots who always argue that secession is illegal or unconstitutional or anti-American, and anyway the Civil War settled all that.  But Paul is supported by a new survey by Reuters/Ipsos that shows that 24 per cent of Americans believe that secession is not only legal but something they would support in their own states.  That’s a quarter of the land—80 million people, almost 15 million more than voted for Obama in the last election.

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The Case for the City-State System 4

by • Activism, Anarchism/Anti-State, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Left and Right, Secession, Strategy

By Keith Preston

I recently suggested that the next necessary step in the cultivation of the pan-anarchist movement will be the coalescence of the many scattered factions and tendencies within anarchism and overlapping philosophies into a new “Gray” anarchist macro-tribe that maintains its own political and cultural identity in a way that is distinctively independent of the Left and Right or, perhaps more important for domestic U.S. politics, independent of the Red tribe and Blue tribe. At present, far too many anarchists, libertarians, and anti-state radicals retain too great a loyalty to either the Red or Blue, or the Left and Right. While we will continue to draw from both sides of the conventional political and cultural spectrum as our movement continues to grow, the eventually establishment of our own independent identity is a long-term necessity.

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