- New book makes convincing case that the South should secede once again to save what’s left of itself
By John Friend
As America’s political landscape continues to crumble, with vehement division and disagreement dominating our political discourse, the inevitable rise of identity politics gains more traction and prominence. Identity politics, generally understood, is a political philosophy and strategy where a broad collective of people of a certain race, ethnicity, religion, gender orientation, or other shared identifying factor organize politically to advance their particular political interests as well as champion their unique identity.
Identity politics has a long history in the United States, most prominently featuring minority groups organizing to develop political strategies and agendas to advance their interests, often at the expense of America’s traditional ethnic demographic: White Christian European peoples who settled, explored, and established the former American republic, which has devolved into a tyrannical, multiracial empire whose political leadership is openly hostile towards that founding stock of heritage Americans (particularly Southerners and those sympathetic to the Confederacy).
In modern American society, we have witnessed political movements dedicated to championing the interests of Black Americans in the form of the Civil Rights movement and, more contemporarily, the Black Lives Matter movement. The women’s suffrage movement and the feminist movement championed the rights of women, first to gain the right to vote and, later, to end women’s “oppression” by the “patriarchy” and gain their political and sexual independence.
Other recent examples of identity politics manifesting in American political culture include the LGBTQ+ movement, which advocates for homosexual and transgender “rights” and “liberation,” as well as political organizations and advocacy groups fighting for the rights and political interests of Hispanics, Asians, Jews, and virtually every other minority group present in America in any substantial numbers.
Indeed, minority political advocacy organizations wield tremendous sway in American politics. Groups like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the American Israel Public Affairs Committe (AIPAC), for example, influence the world’s top social media platforms and American political candidates of both parties, while the NAACP and UnidosUS (formerly known as The National Council of La Raza), among literally hundreds of others, champion the interests of Black Americans, Hispanic Americans, and every other minority group in the country.
A list of the official caucuses in the U.S. Congress openly championing identity politics for non-White minority groups includes the Asian Pacific American Caucus, the Black-Jewish Relations Caucus, the Commission on the Social Status of Black Men and Boys Caucus, the Hispanic Caucus, the Latino-Jewish Caucus, the LGBT Equity Caucus, the Native American Caucus, and the Pacific Islands Caucus, among others focusing on advancing the political interests of non-White minorities.
All of these movements and organizations, their political agendas and talking points, their overall strategy, and their (often exaggerated or false) grievances in modern society can be critiqued, dissected, and disputed by critics and dissidents. What cannot be disputed, however, is their fundamental basis in the practice of identity politics, which is regularly championed and celebrated in mainstream American society and largely justified and praised by the American political and media establishment. That is, when these political movements based on identity politics are practiced by non-Whites and other minorities.
These tactics are, however, universally condemned when they are practiced by people of European extraction. If White Americans – whatever their political affiliations – engage in identity politics, or even hint in that direction, then the typical defamatory, weaponized slanders are invoked, and the groups or individuals are denounced as “racist” and “White supremacist.”
According to mainstream American political discourse and the media and academic establishment covering it, identity politics are perfectly acceptable – even morally necessary – for non-Whites and other minorities, but completely unacceptable – not to mention morally reprehensible – for White Americans.
There are, however, bold and courageous White Americans who are in fact proud of their racial and national identity, and who do engage in positive, healthy identity politics and advocacy. The Southern nationalist movement, for example, is perhaps one of the oldest and most defined examples of such a political advocacy project.
Recently, a group of Southern activists and intellectual leaders, including James Edwards, the popular talk radio host, and Michael Hill, the founder and president of the League of the South, united to produce a 21st century version of a Southern nationalist manifesto. The Honorable Cause: A Free South is dedicated to the Southern people and includes powerful essays from twelve different contributors, all proud Southerners and champions of the Southern cause.
Co-edited by Padraig Martin, who also authored the book’s introduction and final chapter titled “Making Secession a Reality: A Strategy,” the book is an open celebration and articulation of a unique Southern identity centered around the Christian faith, the history and culture of the Southern people, and the distinctive geography and landscape of the Southern states comprising the United States of America.
The Honorable Cause, currently available from TBR Book Club for $25, features chapters from proud Southerners who advocate for a free and independent South while explaining Southern identity and ideology, a distinct, unique “nation within a nation” in the United States of America. The book also advocates for a bold political solution to the myriad problems facing America and the Southern people: political separation in the form of secession. Strategies are laid out in order to accomplish such an ambitious and controversial goal.
The book, published independently earlier this year, comes at a particularly critical moment in American politics. According to a Rasmussen public opinion poll conducted in late February, roughly 34% of Americans support the concept of a “national divorce,” or a splitting of the country along ideological lines. The firebrand GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), among other pundits, has suggested a “national divorce” is in America’s near future, given the seemingly insurmountable and irreconcilable differences on display across the country.
We need a national divorce.
We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government.
Everyone I talk to says this.
From the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrat’s traitorous America Last policies, we are…
— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) February 20, 2023
“It is precisely because of such polls that this book is so timely,” James Edwards, host of The Political Cesspool radio program and contributor to the book, told this writer in an exclusive interview. “There is an appetite for consideration of this issue that wasn’t there a decade ago. For too long, our political and cultural enemies have been able to drive and define that conversation. This book serves as a vital tool in taking the communications mantle back from those who seek our destruction and ruin.”
Edwards continued:
It has become increasingly clear that we cannot vote ourselves out of this terminal decline. Blue State America has just arrested the president of Red State America and may very well put him in prison. Conservative state legislatures routinely pass laws only to have them be overturned by rogue federal judges from other parts of the country. The time has come to consider a serious alternative solution.
And that “serious alternative solution,” the book and its contributors argue, is secession for the Southern nation.
Padraig Martin, the co-editor of the book, argued that the book’s release is perfect timing considering “that the United States is falling apart in real time.”
“Next year is a presidential election and we need to show the South that an alternative exists,” Martin told this reporter.
Martin holds a Masters in Islamic Law and Studies, an MBA in International Finance, and has traveled to 78 countries on behalf of the American Empire before it turned on him. Today, he and his wife own four companies on two continents that employ “doxxed” dissidents in several states and countries.
Michael Hill, a former history professor at the University of Alabama and the aforementioned founder and president of the League of the South, also spoke with this reporter.
“The book comes at a time when the American imperial regime is being finally unmasked as the international bully and swindler that we Southerners have long known it to be,” Hill explained. “By contrasting the godless American Empire with the traditionally Christian South, this book gives Southerners the intellectual and moral foundation necessary to make the case for a free and independent South.”
A key aspect of the book and the Southern cause more generally is the unique Southern identity, history, and experience in America, a uniqueness that distinguishes the Southern people as a specific ethno-group within the broader United States. The uniqueness of the Southern people was emphasized by all contributors who spoke with this reporter for this review.
“One of the most basic prerequisites for being a separate nation is to have a culture that is different and uniquely distinct from that of the surrounding geographical areas,” Edwards noted. “In terms of political beliefs, faith, folkways, and more, the South and many places in the heartland and even the mountain West have nothing other than a failing economy in common with the D.C.-New York-Los Angeles regime. This is not a sustainable model. A true nation is bound by blood and soil, not consumerism and degeneracy.”
Hill underscored that Southern identity “is based on historic Christianity and on a visceral understanding of blood and soil nationhood.”
“A reverence for place and kin not only links us as Southerners from generation to generation, but also allows us to know our proper place in God’s created order,” Hill explained.
Martin, meanwhile, emphasized that Southern identity is a huge topic, one that dates back to the settling of the American south.
The origins of the Southern people “date back to before the American Revolution with two sets of refugees converging in the Southern colonies: post-Jacobite Irish and Scottish settlers (Celtic) and post-English Revolution Cavaliers (Anglo),” Martin told this writer. “These early settlers laid the groundwork for a unique Anglo-Celtic society predicated on traditions and values that are distinct from the rest of the United States.”
Anyone who has ever visited the South will recognize the unique, distinctive nature of the Souther people and their culture, which is made all the more clear in the pages of The Honorable Cause. One chapter in particular, authored by Dixie O’Hara and titled “Aprons of Resistance: The Role of Southern Women in Modern Dissidence,” is especially revealing in this regard. Commenting on Southern food, for example, O’Hara argues that while the fare is certainly influenced by European heritage generally, “it stands on its own.” Southern food and cuisine are “an expression of Southern nationalism,” O’Hara avers.
Martin and the other contributors to the book insist that secession is the answer, resulting in a peaceful breakup of the increasingly unrecognizable, chaotic, degenerate mess that is modern America.
“Secession is the answer for the simple reason that it would empower the more traditional and Christian conservative South to pursue social and political policies that are more in line with their values and philosophical outlooks,” Martin noted. “Ideally, this would be a peaceful divorce – the parties agreeing to part ways amicably. The United States began as a voluntary union – not unlike the European Union – with each state serving as an independent country. Just as entrants to the EU can depart if it no longer serves the needs of the independent country’s citizenry, for example the BREXIT movement and referendum, there is a mechanism available for a state to leave the union. That mechanism was overruled by military force in 1861 in the form of the American ‘Civil War,’ but it still exists and should be executed.”
Hill echoed that sentiment, arguing that secession is “the original American political ideal.”
“Without the ability to determine the nature of the polity under which they live, a people is not free,” Hill explained to this reporter. “That freedom is in large part predicated on the ability to choose whether to remain in a political union or to leave it if conditions become oppressive. Conditions have indeed become oppressive in the early 21st century for us traditional Southerners. Many of us have long advocated leaving this corrupt and corrupting American union. We hope this book will help convince other Southerners of the rectitude of our cause. Under the current U.S. system, meaningful reform is neither possible nor desirable.”
The Honorable Cause indeed presents an honorable message, one of healthy, positive ethnonationalism and a thorough articulation of the Southern cause, its unique history and people, and their legitimate and reasonable desire for self-determination and independence. With identity politics dominating the larger political conversation in American society, it is time all of us participate in the conversation and engage in political advocacy – including White Americans and, perhaps especially considering their unique identity and history, Southerns.
This book is certainly a step in that direction, and will surely open eyes, hearts, and minds to the righteous Southern cause. The book should be required reading for any Southern nationalist and anyone serious about the future of the crumbling American Empire.
NB: This book review was originally published in the July/August 2023 edition of The Barnes Review history magazine. Subscribe today to one of the world’s last revisionist history magazines!