The language seems strangely familiar, a nationalist movement that wants to return the “power of self-government and self-determination” to a once proudly-independent nation. Furthermore, its people are tired of having policies forced on them they didn’t vote for, and the clincher, “the people best suited to govern Texans are Texans themselves.”
But while the Texas Nationalist Movement (TNM) boasts of being the largest independence movement in the US, that has to be put in some context: it might have thousands of registered supporters, but it doesn’t have a single elected representative. It’s a bit like UKIP a few years ago, an extra-parliamentary “independence” movement that craves electoral success.
Daniel Miller, the TNM’s articulate president, is conscious of the parallels, not only with Brexit but also Scotland’s independence referendum, something he followed avidly. “We were excited that that referendum took place and especially the discussion leading up to it,” he told me via Skype. “And although people thought we’d be disappointed by the outcome I was like, absolutely not, the people of Scotland had their say and we were delighted about that.”
It’s an experience he hopes Texans will be able to repeat, but although – as the TNM website puts it – “all roads to a binding referendum lead through the Texas Legislature”, building majorities in the part-time State House and Senate won’t be easy. Miller is confident a majority of Republicans and even more than a third of Democrats believe Texas would be better off independent, but the issue lacks salience, particularly during a general election campaign.
I asked Miller if a Trump presidency would help or hinder his movement, and he joked that his only fear under that scenario would be that Vermont or another liberal State would secede first. There’s also the formal constitutional position: the founding fathers were silent on the matter of secession, while Miller stresses a passage from the 1845 Texas constitution about “all political power” being “inherent in the people”, an idea not so far removed from Scotland’s own myth of popular sovereignty.
At the Republican Party of Texas State Convention a few months ago the TNM came surprisingly close to winning formal GOP support for a Californian-style “proposition” or referendum, but Miller concedes that what works against the idea of the Lone Star State reclaiming its 1836 independence “is the idea that it can’t happen”.
So Texan independence also has a credibility issue, although Miller is heartened that at one point both Scottish and British independence looked similarly unattainable. His website, meanwhile, shows a map of Texas transposed over more than half a dozen Continental European countries together with the hopeful hashtag #Texit. As far as the TNM is concerned, contemporary history is on their side.
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