Secession Is Going Mainstream
by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,
ZeroHedge.com
Fri, 03/30/2018
If it seems like secession is become a more frequent topic in the global media, it’s not just your imagination.
In recent years, talk of political separatist movements have become not only more commonplace, but are increasingly discussed as reasonable alternatives to the status quo.
Historically, of course, established states have long sought to portray secession movements as unsavory forms of agitation pushed only by extremists.
In the US, of course, secession has long been portrayed as strictly the realm of right-wing zealots motivated by racism, or even something worse.
In 2014, however, it became increasingly clear that this strategy’s days were numbered. 2014, of course, was the year that 45 percent of Scottish voters voted to secede from the United Kingdom. Less than two years later, a majority of British voters voted for secession from the European Union — in spite of a hysterical scare campaign waged by pro-EU activists.
These British secession movements were immune from the usual “arguments” against secession made in the United States. After all, were we to believe that British secessionists were pushing secession so they could impose slavery within their borders?
Had it been used, such a charge would have been laughed at, so this new type of secession was generally ignored, or described as something other than secession.
Moreover, the Scottish secession was problematic for the global left in general. Secession movements had often been portrayed by global elites as reactionary or at least the sort of thing that conservative malcontents would indulge in. But in Scotland, the secession movement was largely a product of the mainstream leftist parties. In the wake of the Scottish referendum, we were to believe that 45 percent of Scottish voters were extremist malcontents? Again, such a charge would have rightly been viewed as ludicrous.
Since Brexit, two of the most notable secession movements — California and Catalonia — have also been products of the left. Given the mainstream media’s fondness for the left, the effect of this has been to push secession out of the “extremist” shadows and into the realm of allowable — if eccentric — political discourse.
Thus, it’s not shocking that The Washington Post has now featured a study of secession movements which shows that they are proliferating. There really are more of them now than in the past:
The new in vogue term, apparently, is “sovereignty referendums”:
Since Massachusetts kicked off the trend in 1776, more than 630 sovereignty referendums have been held. There has been a surge in recent years, as you can see in the figure below. The 1990s alone saw a record 110 sovereignty referendums, largely because of the numerous autonomy and independence referendums triggered as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia broke up. The 2000s saw 88 more sovereignty referendums, many related to whether the European Union should continue expanding eastward…
Why the surge? Although each referendum has its own history, we can find some general reasons. Perhaps most important, conflicts over sovereignty have proliferated. According to a recent study, since 1945 the number of ethnic movements demanding greater self-determination has increased more than tenfold. Many former colonies voted on their independence…
What’s more, when international actors intervene in nationalist conflicts they increasingly promote sovereignty referendums. For instance, in 1999 Portugal brokered a referendum in East Timor, which was administered by the United Nations. Some observers have even suggested that there is a new international norm emerging requiring referendums to legitimate territorial realignments.
The Rest…HERE
