NAmerican Secessionist Movement Asleep-At-The-Wheel

It took just about a month for the mainstream media to catch up to a story on the disintegration of NAmerica that first broke on November 25, 2008. I refer, of course, to the WSJ article which ran on December 29: As if Things Weren't Bad Enough, Russian Professor Predicts End of U.S. The WSJ article is getting a lot of play in the blogosphere. The original Izvestia story, as was covered by Global Futures, was touched on with a post in this blog and can be jumped to here (link to the original Global Futures article inclusive).

The motives for such an esteemed gatekeeper as the WSJ to run with this story is left to individual imaginations. It is safe to say that the determination of motive will vary to the degree of one's political smarts and where one sits within the conspiracy cosmos, i.e. alternative interpretation of "news." The acknowledged role of the corporate media within such "conspiracy cosmos" goes without saying.

More to the point, the issue for the NAmerican secessionist movement (NASM) around this story is not if Prof. Panarin is a nut job or to the degree, if any, that his theories on the break-up of the United States serve Russian propaganda purposes. The issue for the NASM here is the degree to which it has been caught with its pants down. By all rights, the NASM should be all over this story and the wide public attention it is receiving like a dirty shirt; it should be collecting PR premiums, via the positioning of the NASM in the public psyche, hand-over-fist.

Unfortunately, the NASM is asleep-at-the-wheel because it is currently structured to be asleep-at-the-wheel, i.e. there is no structure. Within a context of political organization, the movement is straddled with a non-organized gaggle of non-affiliated state/provincial and regional secessionist initiatives ranging from the politically astute and professional (Quebec, Vermont, The South, Texas, Alaska), to fledgling start-ups, to the competition amongst Cascadian organizations as to who can design the prettiest web site.

The Middlebury Institute, widely recognized as being the clearing house for secessionist news and information, makes no mention of the Panarin story. The American Secession Project is likewise out of the loop, which stands to reason as it has been dormant since 2007.

After the major international media breakthroughs accomplished at the Second NAmerican Secessionist Convention held in Chattanooga, TN in 2007, the NASM took a step backwards with the poorly organized Third NAmerican Secessionist Convention held this past November in Manchester, NH. For the media it was a non-event, likely due to a combination of Obamamania, lack of interest, and poorly executed press releases.