Whether it was over slavery,
the first Black president
or the worst white president,
it turns out the only thing more American than apple pie
is the desire to divide that pie
into smaller warring slices of pie.
I’m Francesca Fiorentini, and in this episode of Newsbroke,
we’re talking about the bizarre and bloody history
of secessionist movements in the U.S.,
who’s behind some of them
and if secession has any real chance
...of secess.
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Whether Joe Biden or Donald Trump wins the presidency,
Americans on both sides of the political spectrum
have levied threats.
If Trump wins,
Biden voter Bruce Springsteen
is vowing to move to Australia.
And if Biden wins,
Trump voters are saying this:
But if Biden wins...
...we coming.
And we coming strong.
If I feel I need to go overturn a fraudulent election,
then nobody on Earth is gonna hold me back.
The original Civil War has nothing on what’s coming.
You see?
It’s the same threat.
But there is another threat that’s inevitable no matter who wins:
secession,
calling for independence from the U.S. altogether.
Secession is basically the
“you can’t fire me, I quit” of political movements.
Americans have a long and unsuccessful history of seceding
when things don’t go our way.
It might have something to do with our founding
that glamorizes our secession from England,
or because the slogan “love it or leave it”
sounds less like a threat
and more like a suggestion.
But it doesn’t help that after every election,
our winner-take-all two-party system
gives us visuals that reinforce the idea
that we are divided.
When in fact, we aren’t all that different.
More on that later.
But secessionist movements have
kind of been key to the creation of the country itself.
Beginning in 1776,
when the colony of Delaware
broke from Pennsylvania.
Maine was once part of Massachusetts.
West Virginia and Kentucky
were once part of Virginia.
Wow, I had no idea that Kentucky was a part of Virginia
and then decided to go solo.
Kentucky thought it was Beyoncé but
turned out to be a Michelle.
Of course, then came the biggie in the 1860s
that resulted in the Civil War.
And what do you know,
it began with a presidential candidate
named Abraham Lincoln
and 10 slaveholding states
who refused to put him on their ballots.
When he won and there was talk of this out-of-touch,
city-dwelling northerner outlawing slavery,
11 states seceded.
And once more for the people in the back
and in the comments section:
THEY LOST.
After the defeat of the Confederacy,
the Supreme Court ruled that secession from the U.S.
is unconstitutional.
Which is why now,
seceding is incredibly difficult to do.
If a state wanted to secede,
it would likely have to amend the Constitution.
And that would take either approval from two-thirds of each branch of Congress
or approval at a special Constitutional Convention
and then further approval from three-fourths of the states.
Basically, seceding is incredibly hard.
Like, we’d have better luck changing the flag
to the sickos meme.
Not a bad change.
But that hasn’t stopped Americans since the Civil War from trying.
There've been many other movements in the United States for independence,
coming either from entire states,
from states within states
or from former colonies
that never wanted to be states in the first place.
And recent secessionist movements continue to gain steam
as our country seemingly becomes more polarized politically,
and our patchwork response to the coronavirus means
we need kinda a new Green Book,
just of all the states that believe in science.
It’s a super roundabout trip, but...
...it's safer.
Secessionist movements basically fall into two categories:
liberal and urban initiatives,
and conservative and rural ones.
Do you want a borderless ecological utopia,
or do you want more fracking sinkholes than immigrants?
It’s the Toby Keith versus Kendrick Lamar American divide,
a wound I thought was healed by Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road.”
Even that didn’t last.
Take the binational proposal by crunchy coast dwellers
in a region that will surprise no one.
From Vancouver through Seattle,
all the way down to Portland, Oregon,
regional similarities have some dreaming
of breaking away and forming
a brand-new country
— a place they call...
...Cascadia.
Ahh, I can smell the Tom’s natural deodorant
not working from here.
All right hippies,
to the barricades!
Arm thyselves to fight to the death for
CASCADIA!
I'd say it's more a state of mind
than a real regional construct.
It doesn't have economic legs.
It doesn't have political legs.
It vaguely has environmental
and spirituality-type of legs.
That’s — that's basically what’s left.
Aw, man.
Spiritual legs!?
Oh, come on libs,
you can’t tarot your way to a new nation!
But the dream of Cascadia runs in direct opposition
to their conservative counterpart in the same region.
Well, some frustrated Oregon conservatives
who find their state too liberal
are now looking to ... leave it.
The group called
Move Oregon’s Border for a Greater Idaho.
Yes, the Greater Idaho Movement,
made up of the only people who’ve been to Idaho and thought,
"We need more of this."
The Move Oregon’s Border for a Greater Idaho movement
actually got their measure onto three Oregon county ballots this year.
Of course, there’s probably zero chance that it’ll actually happen,
but it’s like that old saying,
“Shoot for the moon.
And even if you miss,
Idaho police won’t care that you
literally took out a gun and shot
at the moon.
‘Cause
gun laws there are...
...pretty lax.”
There’s even a secessionist movement in northern Colorado,
which in 2013 was on the ballot in some of the state’s counties
and actually passed in five.
One farmer explained the urge to secede,
even though his family’s lived there since 1869:
Now he lives in a Colorado with legalized marijuana,
new gun control regulations
and civil unions...
...for gays.
In my job that I had,
I had many people of
different sexual preferences,
and some of them were like
sons and daughters to me,
but it is defined by God in the Bible
that marriage is between a man and woman.
Yes, they were like sons and daughters to me.
And if my sons and daughters wanted to marry each other,
well, that’s fine.
But, same-sex marriage
— that’s against God.
Lemme get this straight:
Colorado allows you to legally get high,
marry who you love
and protects you from being gunned down in a movie theater,
and you’re mad about that?
Maybe our differences are bigger than I thought.
Of course, a lot of secession comes down to
political and cultural discontent.
Anybody who’s a hardened secessionist,
in the end, you’re gonna find,
just doesn’t like the other.
And the other tends to be
people with different colored skin
or different cultural values
than the ones they grew up with.
That’s a real diplomatic way of saying,
“They’re racist.”
Look, I don’t wanna pull an “OK Boomer” here,
but there truly is a generational divide
between those who were and were not raised
on Sesame Street.
Everyone’s a different color there!
There’s a homeless gentleman,
an addict,
an immigrant
and a gay couple up the street!
They all live together in harmony!
As fringe as most of these movements are,
some scholars say that the U.S. is closer to breaking apart today
than it was at any time since the 1860s.
I think that
our odds of staying together
over the next 20-30 years are...
...50/50 at best.
I think that this is a
growing trend in American politics
as it gets more and more dysfunctional.
Yeah, but America puts the “fun” in “dysfunctional.”
And...
“fundamentalist.”
And “funeral.”
A lot of the divide stems from how toxic our national politics
and the national conversation have become.
And much of that has to do with the reaction to the election
and reelection of the first Black president,
after which the White House received petitions from all 50 states
to secede.
One of the groups that lost it when Obama was elected
was the Texas Nationalist Movement.
We want freedom!
Total and complete freedom.
Secession!
We are aware
that stepping off
into secession may in fact
be a bloody war.
We understand
that the tree of freedom is occasionally watered
with the blood of tyrants and patriots.
[cheers]
They seem chill.
In 2009, even then- Governor Rick Perry
backed a resolution that affirmed Texas’ sovereignty,
giving the movement legitimacy.
Then in 2018, a Texas gubernatorial candidate
one-upped that move
by changing his middle name
to “Secede”
— all caps.
Man, that shows real commitment to a cause.
I should just change my name to
Francesca “Reshoot Season 8 of Game of Thrones” Fiorentini.
The Texas Nationalist Movement basically springs up
every time it looks like a Democratic president might win.
In 2016, it saw a surge in interest
with what felt like the imminent victory of Hillary Clinton.
And this October, it launched
Texit: A Guide to Texas Independence.
Super cute.
One's got to wonder, though, what’ll happen when Texas
eventually does go blue?
Will Texas have to secede from itself?
“Welcome to Li’l Texas!
Same old Tex,
faaar less Mex.”
On the other side of the aisle, the election of Donald Trump
piqued liberal interest in a state like California
seceding from the union.
And Trump’s all-out war on California
hasn’t helped dampen the intrigue.
California is the biggest economy in the U.S.
and the fifth biggest in the world thanks to agriculture,
movies,
tech and
the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
It contributes the most individual taxes to the federal budget of any state
and yet,
as we’ve talked about on this show before,
it’s vastly underrepresented in Washington.
Something even a conservative secessionist scholar acknowledges:
California gives a lot more to the feds
than it gets back.
And were it a separate country,
and didn’t have to contribute towards
the American military,
it would save enough money to
fund its own form of national health.
Well, I am sold.
[laughter]
We should secede.
Bye!
[end theme jingle]
OK, I guess we should look into it
a little more.
There have been a number of liberal California secessionist groups.
In 2015, organizers formed the California National Party
with the slogan “Free the Bear,”
which is a perfect slogan for a secessionist movement
because it sounds rad
until you realize there’s a f*cking bear on the loose.
In the wake of Donald Trump’s election,
the Yes California or CalExit organization
also began to gain traction.
Fun fact: Its founder is a former Republican
who voted for Trump and now lives in Russia.
Why Russia?
Well, this was a fun and also a somehow very predictable
discovery in our research.
It turns out that
— just like its role in Brexit —
Russia plays a role in fostering secessionist movements
in the U.S. too.
It’s part of Russia’s efforts to sow discord within countries
and at your Thanksgiving dinner table.
Over the past few years, it’s hosted The Dialogue of Nations Conference
that featured representatives of YesCalifornia,
the Texas Nationalist Movement,
the self-proclaimed King of Hawaii,
separatist movements from Spain, Ireland and Italy
and Jon Hamm.
Give it a rest, Jon.
Jon Hammistan is not going to happen.
Yes, I would visit if it ever did.
But besides if it’s even possible,
or would result in massive bloodshed
or is secretly being funded by the Russians,
what’s really wrong with secession?
I mean, maybe there should be two Americas
— one that’s gay and fabulous, and...
Greater Idaho.
If you start indulging
one secessionist movement,
then you’ll have to indulge another,
and there would be
no United States.
OK, I get it.
Basically it’s the “if you give a mouse a cookie” theory.
You know how it goes, if you give a mouse a cookie,
he’s going to want a glass of milk.
If you form Greater Idaho,
they’re going to want Greatest Idaho,
and then Greatest-est Idaho,
and then Greatest-est Idaho to Infinity,
which is actually
just Iowa.
The real problem with secession is that it misunderstands the country
and overstates our divisions.
After all, our states aren’t solidly blue or red,
we’re purple.
Remember, “red” Michigan only went to Trump by about 10,000 votes
— or the same amount of people who downloaded Quibi.
Nor are states homogenous in terms of race, religion and ethnicity.
More than half of African Americans live in red states, for example.
All rural people aren’t conservative and not all citydwellers are liberal
— look at our Upper East Side president.
We actually agree on way more than we think.
90% of us believe in background checks for gun sales,
two-thirds of us believe in gay marriage
and that we shouldn’t overturn Roe v. Wade.
60% of us think the minimum wage should be $15 an hour,
and a majority of us believe in Medicare for All.
What I’m saying is:
Bernie would’ve won!
So while some of our divisions might feel insurmountable
— left versus right,
tacos versus potatoes,
Toby Keith versus Kendrick Lamar —
one of our biggest differences is between the powerful
and the rest of us.
In fact, that’s why we’re never reminded of our similarities by those in power.
Because if the real majority of us ever did all pull together,
united, in the same direction,
we might start running this country.
And I for one,
can’t wait.
Thanks for watching Newsbroke. Make sure you're subscribed to AJ+ right now,
and also stay tuned to our post-election live episode
that we will be doing Nov. 4 with a bunch of different experts and organizers.
And also if you want to hear more from me,
I have a podcast called “The Bitchuation Room.” You should check it out,
and we will see you after Election Day.
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