Southern Culture and History

Politics, Resistance, and Nationalism:
Address to the Abbeville Conference

by Robert Salyer

I come to talk to you today as something of an outsider to all this. I hope that a Jacobite Catholic such as myself can offer some new insights today and a slightly different perspective.

The topic that I’m going to address here is the definition of the Southern Movement. It’s a very grandiose-sounding topic, no doubt.

But the Southern Movement, from one perspective, is very easy to define. It is three things at the same time: It is a political movement. It is a resistance movement. It is a nationalist movement.

As a political movement the Southern Movement exists to be the voice of Southerners when Southerners have no voice. The Movement realizes that the Southern people, as a people, are disenfranchised. They have no voice. They have no vote. When have the powers that be cared about anything anyone in your State and my State ever did or said in the past, unless it was to apologize?

The political regime which exists today in America is really designed only to do one thing-to exclude dissent. It is designed to exclude the idea of the South, to exclude the very notion of the South’s existence. It is designed to exclude dissent from the political paradigm at hand. It was constructed to do so in order to protect its core interest, the so-called American Proposition.

One need only think of the dynamics of voting today for proof. The voter’s only option today is to cast his vote in terms of results, meaning the results possible under the system as it exists. Voters do not have the option of voting their minds, their values, their loyalties. Such an option would permit the system, the proposition, to be questioned, and perhaps replaced. The paradigm of the regime exists to prevent this from happening. The paradigm of the regime is that here, there is a proposition-- the American Proposition-- not a people, not a union of peoples, a proposition. Therefore, the only permitted political choices are interpretations of that proposition. The voter picks the interpretation that gives him the best results.

And at this point in time, this results-oriented dynamic is the only thing that voters expect, or can recognize. How is this? Why is there never vote for principle, no vote for dissent? Well part of the explanation is electoral. In any electoral system where 49% of the vote is entitled to absolutely nothing, and 51% of the vote is entitled to everything, voters cannot risk throwing away their votes by experimenting with their own principles. Furthermore, in the South we must not forget the demographics which could easily make up 51% in any election.

Another reason for this results-oriented dynamic is the very natures of the two major political parties. The two parties do not represent people, nor do they represent ideas. They don’t represent at all. They sell. They are businesses. They sell programs to voters who have been taught to behave like consumers. Not principle, but products and marketing decide elections today. Ford and Chevy. Pepsi and Coke. Republicans and Democrats. Not a dime’s worth of difference. In the South, the two parties are no different than any other foreign investor. They just invest in electoral share instead of market share. And they control what the local franchises sell.

So the Movement was born, in part to be a political movement, to exist to be the voice of Southerners when Southerners, as Southerners, had no voice. The voice of Southerners who want to dissent, to vote against the system, to throw down the regime, to declare that Southerners are a people, not a proposition.

The Movement exists to expose the lie of choice, the lie of elections, the lie of legitimacy, the lie of ballots bawling out only Liberty Equality Fraternity. The Movement, here, in this room, is the voice of the disenfranchised South.

The Southern Movement is also a resistance movement. It is a resistance movement because the South is an occupied country. It is not occupied in the sense that it was occupied in 1865. It is not occupied by a foreign army. It is not occupied by an alien race. In the sense of any physical occupation, it is to some degree occupied by itself. Most fundamentally however, it is occupied in a novel way, in the way of continuing revolution and never-ending reconstruction. Fundamentally, the South is occupied by an ideology.

What ideology?

The ideology in question is a particular interpretation of the idea of freedom. One hears the word, freedom, chanted as a cure-all, chanted as a prayer, every day from a variety of quarters.

Yet, freedom to do what? Freedom to be what?

There are really two different versions of freedom which are the concern for us here, now. There is the Southern version, and the version of our masters and occupation.

When one speaks of the concept of freedom, one means freedom within a rational human order. And it is the words, rational human order, which cause the distinction, and make all the difference.

When that version of freedom that is natural to the South speaks of a rational order, it refers to true human Reason, Reason that is native to the South, native to the soil of a European Civilization rooted in this continent. It refers to the genius of an indigenous people, a flourishing moral and cultural whole.

Most importantly, the Southern version of freedom intends the rational mind, the spirit of the community, to be aspiration. The South is greater than the sum of its parts, just as Man is greater than the sum of his guts and bile.

The version of freedom which is imbedded in the iron heel of our masters, intends a rational order quite different. It intends a rational order, but with rationality as a mere tool, a tool for the animal in Man. It, as John Gould Fletcher pointed out, intends simple gratification. Gratification for the animal in Man.

As wolves have fangs, Man is to have Reason.

As giraffes have necks, Man is to have Reason.

As skunks have their stank, Man is to have his Reason.

No inherited order of a living whole. No Providentially-created, immortal nation. No moral independence. No right or wrong, only the paradigm of pleasure without pain. Every ideology has revelation, and this revelation aims to reveal nothing.

Nothing but the Republic of Gratification.

This version of freedom is the South’s oppressive foreign invader. And the Movement exists to unmask its unholy revelation.

This invading ideology invades our consciousness. It finds collaborators. It indoctrinates our children. It determines our law. It conquers all before it.

And the Movement exists to resist this ideology. The Movement says that we are more than our guts and bile, that the South is more than Coca-Cola, sexual liberation, the consumer price index, and cotton grown elsewhere. The South is resistance today, sovereignty tomorrow, aspiration forever.

And the Southern Movement is that resistance, today. You are the resistance today, by merely being in this room.

Now to the third prong, finally, the Southern Movement as a nationalist movement. As a nationalist movement, it is premised on the notion that constitutions are founded on people; people are not founded on constitutions.

Constitutions are founded on people; people are not founded on constitutions.

There are two views of the constitutional state of affairs existing in the world today, and both of them have merit. There is the short view and the long view. The short view realizes that the Constitution has been violated, thrown over. The Constitution has indeed been violated. The Movement, along with countless other American political groups and causes, recognizes the truth of the short view.

Yet, the Movement realizes that this is only the short view; half the horse. The Movement realizes also the long view. The long view is that, in truth, the Southern States existed before the Constitution, before the Articles of Confederation. The Southern people existed, in fact, before independence from Britain itself.

Let us be clear. There are, in truth, really two different types of “constitutions” that exist in the political universe. There are constitutions for governments, and there are constitutions for nations, for people. The constitutions of government may be written on paper-like the U.S. Constitution-- or written in precedent and legal tradition-like the British Constitution.

The “constitutions” of nation on the other hand, are written into the people, into their hearts, into the fabric of the culture and community itself. What makes a German, a German. What makes a Frenchman, a Frenchman. What makes a Virginian, a Virginian.

Natural Law would proscribe a constitution for government that accords with the constitution of the nation. It would merge the two, from the bottom up. Yet, here in the so-called American Proposition, the two have been merged, from the top down. According to the Proposition, the American peoples, the citizens, are defined by their political constitution. The political constitution as defined by those who have mastery over it. This is not what was intended, but it has happened.

Because of this, one can say that the Movement’s view is the long view, the whole horse, the recognition that, as brilliant as its drafting and its drafters were, the U.S. Constitution has in some sense been a failure. A failure. The flaw with it, like all written constitutions, is that they are not self-executing. They must always rely upon the faith of men.

And this faith must be written upon the soul of an existing, living community, upon the hearts of real men and women. The South is a nation, not a proposition, and constitutions are founded upon people; people are not founded upon constitutions.

For the Movement, it is not the state of the U. S. Constitution, but the state of the Southern nation, which is the point. Whether the peoples of the States who are the South survive and prosper, this is the point. For the Movement is about life, the life of the arisen South, not the corpse of a murdered document. A document murdered by Lincoln. Murdered by Roosevelt. Murdered by greed and blood lust. Murdered by false prophets chanting prayers to a civic religion and a revelation that reveals nothing.

So these are the Movement, politics, resistance, and nationalism.

I won’t attempt to give any extensive advice to the people in this room on politics because I know that there are much more knowledgeable heads here on that subject than myself. I might suggest however that you at least consider pushing for some proportional elections. Or if you want to stick with the 2 party system you might want to consider serious campaign reform, reform to stop the big parties from saying, “take it or leave it.”

For the Southern Movement as a resistance movement to continue to flourish however, the Movement must move to the Youth, and go to the universities.

The Youth are the future. And they are the now. They are the ones that have the fire in their bellies, the reckless will to change things. They are intelligent, but they are also very impressionable. And, one day, they will have the power. Where have revolts begun in the 20th Century? The universities. I can tell you that they receive revolutionary indoctrination every day, but thousands yearn for a way to dissent. If it could just be given to them.

Now for the Movement to survive and flourish as a nationalist movement, it must begin to think of itself in nationalist terms. It must begin to take its cues from abroad. It should study the examples of Ireland. It should study the example, more recently of Northern Ireland, both Sein Fenn and the Ulster Union. Study also the example of Spain, Spain in the 1930s. It must look to them all for both motivations and organization. And it should please stop apologizing.

These things the Movement must do; but more importantly, it must above all else have a sense of itself. For the Southern Movement is the longing of a Southern nation, a nation that top to bottom has no sense of itself. The Movement must find that sense.

You who are in this room must look for it, and find it. For if you don’t find it for them, who will? The martyred dead? They cannot. Roy Barnes and the collaborators of the New South? Yale, Harvard, or Capitol Hill?

It must be you.

For the Southern People have known baron’s boot and Puritan’s perjury. Like unto a plate of iron, our ancestors’ tartans and language, their churches and spears, their hopes and their dreams, were hammered into this land, to protect the land and to protect their seed. By Providence. Like unto a plate of iron they were hammered into the lowlands of the Carolinas, the valleys of Virginia, the hills of Kentucky, and the broad delta of the Louisianne. Hammered there, by Providence.

So that when we hear that hammer ring out this day, when we hear it ring from past to present, from potential to reality, from the Old South to this South, we will be able to truly realize the day and sing Non nobis and Te Deum. Not us Lord, but You.

The Movement is defined as those who carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, a truly New South, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the Old.

Thank you. Dixie Go Bragh.