Northwest Territorial Imperative

Not to be confused with Northwest Territory, North-Western Territory, or Northwest Territories.
Northwest Territorial Imperative
Flag of Northwest Territorial Imperative
The proposed flag of the Northwest American Republic.[1]
A map that shows the suggested boundaries of The Northwest Territorial Imperative in red.
A map that shows the suggested boundaries of The Northwest Territorial Imperative in red.

The Northwest Territorial Imperative (often shortened to the Northwest Imperative) was a white separatist idea put forward in the 1970s–80s by white nationalist, white supremacist, white separatist and neo-Nazi groups within the United States.[2] According to it, members of these groups were encouraged to relocate to a region of the Northwestern United States—Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Western Montana—with the intention to eventually turn the region into an Aryan ethnostate.[3] Some definitions of the project include the entire states of Montana and Wyoming, plus Northern California.[4][3]

From this idea, Harold Covington founded the organization the Northwest Front in the 1990s, which is now inactive.[5] Harold Covington died at the age of 68 on July 14, 2018, and his death marked the end of the Northwest Front organization and website.[6]

Several reasons have been given as to why activists have chosen to turn this area into a future white homeland: it is farther removed from Black, Jewish and other minority locations than other areas of the United States are; it is geographically remote, making it harder for the federal government to uproot activists; its "wide open spaces" appeal to those who believe in the right to hunt and fish without any government regulations; and it would also give them access to seaports and Canada.[7]

The formation of such a "White homeland" also involves the expulsion, euphemized as the "repatriation", of all non-Whites from the territory.[8] The project is variously called "Northwest Imperative", "White American Bastion",[9] "White Aryan Republic",[7] "White Aryan Bastion",[10][11] "White Christian Republic", or the "10% solution" by its promoters.[12] White supremacist leaders Robert E. Miles, Robert Jay Mathews and Richard Butler were originally the main promoters of the idea.[4][8][9]

The territory which is proposed by the Northwest Territorial Imperative overlaps with the territory which is proposed by the Cascadia independence movement,[13] and the two movements share similar flags,[14] but they claim to have no ties to each other.[13]

  1. ^ "Northwest American Republic". Anti-Defamation League. Archived from the original on 2020-06-13. Retrieved 2020-06-18.
  2. ^ Crawford, Robert; Gardner, S. L.; Mozzochi, Jonathan; Taylor, R. L. (1994). The Northwest Imperative: Documenting A Decade of Hate. Portland, OR; Seattle, WA: Coalition for Human Dignity; Northwest Coalition against Malicious Harassment.
  3. ^ a b Medina et al. 2018, p. 1011.
  4. ^ a b Gardell 2003, pp. 112–113.
  5. ^ Michel, Casey (2015-07-07). "Want to Meet America's Worst Racists? Come to the Northwest". POLITICO Magazine. Retrieved 2023-12-18.
  6. ^ "Harold Covington, founder of white separatist group, dies at 64". Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved 2023-12-18.
  7. ^ a b Marks 1996, p. 164.
  8. ^ a b Buck 2009, pp. 114–115.
  9. ^ a b Balleck 2014, pp. 122–123.
  10. ^ McFarland & Gottfried 2002, pp. 128–129.
  11. ^ Aho 2015, p. 138.
  12. ^ Marks 1996, p. 205.
  13. ^ a b Taylor, Blair (2019). "Alt-Right Ecology: Ecofascism and far-right environmentalism in the United States". The Far Right and the Environment. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781351104043-16. ISBN 978-1-351-10404-3. S2CID 213586588; "... a strategy called the Northwest Territorial Imperative (Durham 2007). This same geographic area is also known by environmentalists as the Cascadia bioregion, which spans from Northern California to Southern British Columbia."{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  14. ^ Shobe, Hunter; Gibson, Geoff (2017-11-10). "Cascadia rising: soccer, region, and identity". Soccer & Society. 18 (7): 953–971. doi:10.1080/14660970.2015.1067790. ISSN 1466-0970. S2CID 146719801.