Johnson’s blog has a discussion going on right now about the “Northwest Imperative” that is advocated in Covington’s fantasy novels. A big part of Covington’s argument for the Pacific Northwest as a breakaway all-White republic is the fact that it has been, relatively speaking, a hotbed of White racial separatism. The inland Pacific Northwest has had somewhat more than its share of famous White Separatists, most prominently Robert Mathews, whose group of several dozen revolutionaries known as “The Order” made news for a year or so in the 1980s before being crushed.
I just relistened to Robert Mathews’ speech that he gave at a National Alliance function in 1983. Mathews explained that the Pacific Northwest had many distressed farmers that were receptive to radical ideas because of the farm-mortgage crisis that was going on at the time. If you do a Google News search on farm mortgage foreclosure you find a peak of stories containing those terms in the early 1980s. The only other comparable peak is around 1930, and it’s twice as high.
So this Northwest Republic idea is in a way a kind of nostalgia for an effect of the early 80s farm crisis, combined with the wish that it had been a lot more significant than it was. There has been an increase in stories about farm foreclosures in the past few years but not on the magnitude of the early 80s. Farmers are actually doing pretty well these days even while the economy in general is very sick. I think if Bob Mathews were alive today and trying to recruit a revolutionary cadre he would be more likely to find them among the unemployed and grossly underemployed men of the deindustrialized regions of the country, than in the Pacific Northwest.
I sent this to Tom Metzger, who was among the original advocates of a Northwest homeland. His response appears below.
Tom Metzger Comments:
Bob Mathews gravitated toward the plight of White family farmers early on, back in the eighties, and this happened to dovetail with right wing conservative lip service of that era. After Mathews was murdered, Louis Beam continued the fight, and began promoting the ‘leaderless resistance’ strategy.
Boots on the ground White leaders then were Bob Miles, Richard Butler, Tom Metzger and a few others. They fought for the best interests of ALL White working class folks… including the farmers. Unfortunately, they had little chance of success, primarily because the Racial right fought them tooth & nail! Most Racial right leaders are not populist, socialist or working class oriented people. They cling to failed Republican-type upper middle class fantasies, and they willfully throw White working class folks under the bus, rather than ally with us ‘Racists’. There is a history of this going back to at least the early thirties.
AWOL Racial right leaders — made worse by the northern invasion of non-Whites and vast numbers of California social Marxists, plus their rich degenerate camp followers — turned the Northwest Republic idea into nothing more than the fading hope of dreamers, or worse. That’s when the three of us agreed: “It’s too late for the Northwest idea!” — working class young White people should hunker down in those areas they know best, maintaining their social and economic networks in place.
The entire subject was moot until Harold Covington, on the run, fled northwest to avoid paying a slander case judgment to Will Williams. ‘Rabbi’ Covington, close enough to beleaguered remnants of Aryan Nations (and anyone else he could suck in), then started his current good ship lolly pop scam. Had he not been on the lam, and apparently safe from the judgment, his Northwest scheme would never have occurred to him. He would have remained back east where the pickings were easier. Now, rather than living in some backwoods log cabin among the folks who fly his Northwest Scam flag high, Covington is comfortably ensconced in urban headquarters, near non-whites who reside around there wall to wall.
If Harold Covington could force march to the city limits from his hideout, without sustaining a heart attack, I would be greatly surprised.
Tom Metzger
