What damage to democracy?
Pro-Trump Republican secession rhetoric in Texas and elsewhere is more than a punchlineThis kind of seditious rhetoric would spell disaster for the supposedly United States of America.https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/pro-trump-republican-secession-rhetoric-texas-elsewhereSelected excerpts from full article linked aboveFor the past few months, a long-buried idea has been creeping from the fringe into mainstream Republican discourse: secession. Following President Joe Biden’s victory in November, GOP officials from Wyoming to Florida to Mississippi have floated the idea, claiming that the time for a national fracturing may be near. While there’s something of a seasonal flavor to this injection of rhetoric — Republican honchos like former Texas Gov. Rick Perry openly discussed secession following Barack Obama’s rise to the presidency, for instance — the recent rounds feel qualitatively different. As journalist and author Richard Kreitner, an expert on American secessionism, recently wrote, it’s time to “take secessionist talk seriously.”
And it’s not difficult to see why. In the wake of the failed pro-Trump insurrection in Washington, far-right American militias, buoyed by former President Donald Trump’s empty claims that the election was “stolen,” have increasingly agitated for the break-up of the U.S. As the head of one paramilitary group that has worked closely with conspiratorial Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., recently revealed, they’d “formed alliances with other far-right groups to advocate for Georgia’s secession.” One of the primary Facebook pages promoting the rally-turned-riot was also called “Red-State Secession.” Meanwhile, mainstream outlets like Fox News joke approvingly about secessionist movements in places like northern California — despite the movement’s clear comfort with political violence — while a range of employees at Glenn Beck’s outlet continue to call for the break-up of the U.S.
And it’s not just a tiny fringe that’s thinking about these concepts anymore. As the Bright Line Watch, a group of researchers from places like Dartmouth University, the University of Rochester, and University of Chicago, noted in a study released earlier in February, one-third of Republicans said they support secession. Disturbingly, half of Republicans across the former Confederacy (plus Kentucky and Oklahoma) are now willing to break off to form a newly independent country.
