Shuttersrock / Gallagher Photography
Trump supporters storm the U.S. Capitol during the January 6 insurrection.
The leader of the Texas Nationalist Movement (TNM) this week claimed the events in director Alex Garland’s new movieCivil Warare “highly plausible,” adding that Texans would have no choice but to take up arms if the federal government failed to recognize a legitimate ‘TEXIT’ vote.
The comments made by TNM President Daniel Miller came during a nearly hour-long YouTube video posted Wednesday. In it, Miller tried to present the hypothetical U.S. civil war depicted in Garland’s film as something tied to the his group’s fight to make Texas an independent nation.
“There is a clear nexus between what is portrayed in that movie and current political discourse around this issue of Texas independence,” Miller says at one point in his video.
In the movie, Texas and California, despite their real-world political differences, unite to overthrow what’s left of the federal government.
Many critics argue Garland tried to avoid depicting a scenario that’s too close to current political reality. Even so, Miller in his video clip argues that if the federal government continues down its path of “endless debt,” “collapsing borders” and “polarization,” then states will have no other choice than to succeed.
“I still have the poll numbers right here on my desk, and it’s amazing how many of those states that were talked about, as part of those various factions that withdrew from the union, show high polling numbers of support for wanting to leave the union,” Miller said.
He didn’t provide detail about the polls to which he referred.
Miller said the TNM wantsa a peaceful split from the United States via a democratic referendum, similar to the Brexit vote of 2016.
However, if Texas and California were to vote to leave the union, and if the U.S. government refused to recognize that vote and sent in the military to quash that rebellion, he argues in the clip that it’s “highly plausible” the two states would form a military alliance to fend off federal forces. That’s a situation similar to the one depicted in the film.
“When you start bombing people and killing and murdering civilians, particularly for their only crime being they voted wrong, you start getting repercussions,” Miller said.
He went on: “If Texas votes to leave the union, if there’s violence, it won’t be on our part. It’ll be on the part of the federal government.”
As with many things Miller says, his comparison of the real world and the Civil War are best taken with a grain of salt. There’s little to suggest Texans actually want to secede.
A study conducted this year by Newsweek along with UK-based Redfield and Wiltson Strategies found that 67% of likely Texan voters, if given the choice, would vote to remain part of the United States.
What’s more, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said this year in a 60 Minutes interview that despite his standoff with the feds in Eagle Pass, the notion that he wants to secede from the union is a “false narrative.”
Abbott’s comments came after TNM members marched to the governor’s office and demanded that he hold a referendum on secession. The governor still hasn’t responded to the TNM’s demands.
A study published this month in the academic journal Administration and Societyfound that although an armed civil conflict in the U.S. is “plausible.” However, the California State University-San Bernardino research team behind the report said the most likely cause would be a series of events similar to the Jan. 6 insurrection — not conflict over state secession movements.
“At least for the foreseeable future, more likely are trajectories moving toward other types of social unrest short of civil war — ongoing civil strife, additional insurrections, decades-long intraregional political gridlock causing widespread administrative dysfunction, and even a failure to relinquish power,” the researchers wrote.
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