After a brief hiatus, I’ve returned to discuss various topics with the content creators and contributors of our little blog, one with its continuing mission to instigate liberal pearl-clutching, as well as, champion Southern Nationalism and other “isms.” I had the fortune (or misfortune, depending on your perspective) to visit the inhospitable frontier of the Southwest and have several drinks with one of our very own desperados. While that designation might be uncharitable to some, I consider him Identity Dixie’s unofficial liaison to the Southwest. Sonora Jack’s writing can be found here – or, at least some of it, prior to our great deplatforming a few years ago.
BSB: Sonora Jack, welcome to the Boat Shoe Beat. Please introduce yourself and tell us a little about the Comanchero.
Sonora Jack: Howdy, I’m Jack and I’ve lived across the American West all my life. From snowcapped peaks and misty forests to sun scorched badlands and urban jungle. I have seen or lived most of the West, how we are alike, how we differ, among ourselves and outsiders. I have been interested in the autonomy and conservation of the American West since my youth, in matters of history, identity, culture, and the land itself.
BSB: That sounds great, and a far cry from the Tidewater. How did you get associated with Identity Dixie? And, can you explain the Western connection to the Old Confederacy?
Sonora Jack: My road to association with Identity Dixie was rather obtuse, frankly. My time in college resulted with me having a firm core of paleocon-type ideas and a thorough vestment in secession (though my original vein of thought was more bioregionalism and cultural, rather than something more historical like Southern Nationalism). Due to that, I fell in with right-libertarian types for a few years, which culminated in association with the Dissident Right. Those were turbulent times, and I found myself in an odd position. Though I am not a Southerner nor a Christian, I found in Identity Dixie a group of men with similar values, outlooks, and a general way of the world close to my own. I spent a lot of my youth being the “redneck kid,” and befriending folks in ID turned an already simmering sentiment into a boil, that sentiment being that: a) Dixie had longer reaching cultural and ethnic tendrils than many would think, and b) secessionists, despite region, have a great deal in common, and would do well to work together as a set of confederations rather than antagonistic enemies or supporters of a federal imperialized system.
As to the connection of the West with the Confederacy, there are several elements to it that could occupy several books, so I’ll keep it relatively brief. To begin, much of the “early Western period” (1820-1845) was Southern dominated, as it was the Appalachian mountain folk and farmers/homesteaders of the lower Midwest who did much of the pioneering and settling. Furthermore, in the wake of the Mexican-American War, many veterans of Southern extraction ended up settling on the newly owned lands; for many of them, it was much more realistic than men from the Northeast or upper Midwest transplanting their entire family or clan group to the frontier, typically far to the south and west of themselves. Politically, there was the spirit of not wanting masters in the form of bureaucracy, the desire for economic freedom and liberty of choice to make one’s living as they wanted. Compounded with a population who were perpetually on guard against either Mexican bandits, Indian raiders, or their own countrymen turned to outlawry, you had the conditions ripe for a self-sovereign region and population, with the muscle to back it up.
When the Civil War began, much of the Southwest followed Dixie’s lead. The people of the New Mexico and Arizona territories, outside of the railroad industry and its sphere, were typically firmly in support of the Confederacy, as previous years saw the Federals turn a blind eye to the plight and suffering of the frontier. Much of Southern California voted to secede and sent a delegation to DC in order to proclaim the “State of Colorado” (as in the river) and joined with the Confederacy. They even raised several regiments, such as the “Los Angeles Mounted Rifles.” However, this delegation was imprisoned upon arrival, and most of the California-raised Confederate units ended up fighting in the New Mexico campaign and later Texas and Louisiana. Oregon and Colorado also had heavy secessionist movements for similar reasons, which to this day fuels the terror fantasies in the blogs of Denver and Portland liberals, forever ruing the day that their mountain man, cowboy predecessors were dirty violent men who wanted to join the South in her struggle for independence.
In the modern day, the Pacific Northwest (PNW) and Mountain West join Dixie in being the areas of the United States most eager to venture out on their own. The Cascadia movement (while ranging from hardcore leftist to White Nationalist separatists) does serve as a beacon of PNW mentality and outlook, in the sense of their wanting to be left alone to their personal liberties and the care of their forests. In the Mountain states, it almost takes the form of a sort of clannish “New World” highlander mindset: centralized authority can piss off, violently so, and the general stubborn tenacity that rules the dispositions of the people of the Rockies and other nearby ranges, from the individual homesteader to the communal township.
BSB: That part of the country is so alien to me, mostly because I’m so uninformed on it. Let’s start with the Western territories – culturally, what’s it like? The real culture, not suburban or urban Homo Americanus creatures found everywhere in the Empire.
Sonora Jack: That can vary rather wildly based on the community in question, although there are overarching themes. I would say the most important factor in the subcultures of the West are religious and ethnic demographics. Anglo-Mormon communities are typically very involved and localized, with a lot of “farmers market” type events and personality, very much the stereotype of Utah in many ways. Much of the Protestant population is similar, though they tend to have a more xenophobic and suspicious attitude in general, regarding outsiders as potential threats to the sanctity of their homes. Often not even in a conscious way, more just a general wariness of strangers (although, folks in trouble are more than likely to find a plethora of helping hands should they find themselves trapped on the side of the road or something like that).
The Mexican communities are about what you’d expect from the Southwest, but they differ from a lot of the more recent arrivals in the sense that they have more of a history to their communities and culture (such as the Hispanos of New Mexico and Colorado), and the fact that they tend to work in many of the same fields that blue-collar Anglo Protestants do, so there tends to be some overlap with a growing Protestant population due to Hispanic converts.
Finally, the Catholic elements of the region are interesting because they are something of a Mexican-Irish synthesis. The historically memed “Castizo Futurism” really does come to life in the Catholics of the Mountain West states, because they overlap a lot like the Protestants do, but they also tend to become one congregation in more ways than one; most of the Catholics, I know personally, have both Mexican and Irish ancestry. The overarching culture is one of self-reliance, ruggedness and durability, communal identity (often on county or township lines), and pride in being “tamers” of the land. Gun ownership and support for the blue-collar and agrarian living is expected.
The spirit of the Old West and the frontier is alive and well in many of the old stock of this land, and it now manifests in a stubborn, wild people who have little patience for the dictates of the State. The only drawback to this, in my estimation, is that Mountain state communities are often hyper individualized, to the point that they find it hard to compromise and work together even when the overarching goal is the same. Secession, for example, is a decently popular sentiment in the region, yet due to the simultaneous values of loyalty and patriotism, there is a strange dialogue about whether those who want to leave are the “True Americans,” loyal to their concept of Heritage America, and the “outlaw” types, who more or less want their mountains and valleys to serve as a redoubt from an increasingly darkening world. I sympathize with both, but firmly am on the side of the latter. Be it an American-Canadian breakaway state in Cascadia or a bilingual Four Corners secession, the peoples of the West can and should rule themselves.
BSB: I’ve never really been in that part of the country. Although, I’ve been to California – specifically, Orange County. It wasn’t like the teenie-bopper television show from years ago. What is the urbanite versus ruralite situation like out in the Southwest? I’d assume just as antagonistic as it is in the Upper South.
Sonora Jack: So, the thing to keep in mind with a question like that is that, much like the South, it more or less correlates to people from here and people not from here. Sure, a lot of us have moved into the suburbs or urban sprawl over the past few decades as an economic necessity. Outsiders buy up land, turn it into strip malls and condos, and the native folks of the area can’t afford the cost of living. Meanwhile, Californians and transplants from the North and East come in and push us out of our own communities. Urban dwelling folks used to retain a degree of that “Wild West” vibe, and some still do. When I was a kid, cowboy hats and guns on hips were extremely common in the Phoenix metro area, but it has become more rare as the demographics change. Urban people of the Mountain West are typically fond of the outdoors, at least in a recreational sense, which unites them with ruralites less than you’d think, as there are often disputes about “right” to land use and things of that nature.
BSB: For us, it’s Northern Virginians (not really Virginians in the first place) that commute or visit the area. You can immediately tell they’re foreign, and they’re usually rude and annoying people – essentially, Yankee behavior. Is it the Californians causing the most damage by invading the area? And, how do non-dissident natives feel about it?
Sonora Jack: One thing I am perpetually encouraged by is that the xenophobia is growing. Any local media article about housing or land development is full of “go home, we’re full” type comments, although it can get spicy even on (mostly) unrelated issues. Water and land are in short supply and newcomers want to use it to turn my state into a Big Tech, military industry-oriented economy – one that drains our natural resources so the Empire can make microchips and missiles in order to better incinerate people half a world away. But to bring it back, Californians aren’t alone in doing the damage, but their effect is mostly felt in property and economic affairs. The real cultural shift is all the “McBurger Americans” from the upper Midwest and the East Coast snobs. Midwesterners bring their spineless fat guy routine of “Do whatever you want, as long as I have football and beer” attitude, which allows politicians here to operate with an increasing level of immunity from their constituents.
As annoying as they are, the Coastals are worse because they see themselves as saviors, very much pinnacle Yankee behavior. The Yankee moves here and acts like importing their radical Left, openly pro-commie and anti-heritage attitude is doing us all a big favor. I, for one, don’t know how us mountain and desert yokels would be able to survive without a grade school art teacher from Massachusetts telling us that we are uneducated and need to modernize to be more like them. As an aside, Wyoming’s highways are lined by pro-LGBT billboards; you can guess that the LGBT community of Wyoming isn’t very large or notable, so someone is trying real damn hard and putting a lot of money into rainbowing up Wyoming. And it ain’t people from Wyoming.
BSB: I know we give you some good-natured ribbing on this, but what’s your take on Kyrsten Sinema? And, how did she get elected in the first place?
Sonora Jack: She’s kind of an odd one to figure out. She’s from southern Arizona and got her start politically with the Arizona Green Party, and being critical of the War on Terror and corporate pollution. As she’s risen higher, she seems to become more grounded rather than extremely ideological, and is now known for being something of a “purple” senator. I can’t say I’m a fan of hers, but I do appreciate that she doesn’t forget she represents a lot of red state voters. As a result, she got a lot of flak during the end of the Trump presidency for her perceived status as being a traitor to the Democrats (what some might call common sense on her part). Ironically, Arizona Republicans don’t mind her too much, but the Democrats have been running ads against her and smearing her for months. I laugh whenever I hear radio ads saying she “turned her back on Arizonans” because she isn’t shilling for radical policies or things like that.
BSB: Is the Arizona GOP just as worthless as its counterparts across the Empire? The Virginia GOP, despite winning statewide election, couldn’t pour piss out of a boot with instructions written under the heel.
Sonora Jack: The politicians themselves are the same do nothing-ists from elsewhere, but Republican voters here are typically farther on the Right than a Republican from Ohio or Iowa.
BSB: I know conservation and stewardship is important to you. Sadly, the Mainstream Right seems to care more about GDP and Israel than our land and natural resources. From a conservationist perspective, how is the Southwest faring?
Sonora Jack: Not good. Water resources are increasingly scant and yet, federal and state entities/politicians are more than happy to continue to build suburbs and tech parks/data storage facilities (which are water intensive) all over the Southwest. The short term “boom” to the economy, which really only benefits white-collar workers and most of whom are outsiders who come here for the jobs to begin with, is not worth the skyrocketing price of land and renting, and the environmental impact it has. The great irony, in a disgusting kind of way, is that they destroy things and then name the strip malls or clone houses after what was once there. In my neck of the woods, they’ll clear out brush forest and decades old cacti to build a suburban housing unit and call it “Buena Vista.” The view isn’t very beautiful when it consists of ugly houses and the cars dotting the streets where trees and animals once were.
Speaking of animals, the Southwest is also not faring well in terms of its ecological health, as a result of the comingled forces of government mismanagement and human activity. “Human activity” is a term that largely means poaching, trapping, poisoning, land clearing, and desertification of land due to herds grazing on it. Predator species, like the lobos that I champion, aren’t doing too great mostly due to this “human activity.” A young Mexican wolf, or lobo, was recently poached near Flagstaff despite the fact he was wearing a bright pink tracking collar and the species is protected. Many huntsmen and agricultural champions will endorse the extermination and poaching of predators due to some misguided egotism or knee jerk reaction to what they see as a leftwing or “tree hugger” point of view. But the simple fact is that healthy ecosystems require balance and “human activity,” combined with gross mismanagement on the state and federal level, has resulted in an increasingly dire situation from deforestation and wildfires to the health of wild herds and food chains. This generation is going to have to put in serious work to conserve our wild spaces, or we will lose them.
BSB: How is immigration across the border impacting the Southwest? Is it just as disastrous as the situation in Texas?
Sonora Jack: Immigration has been as disastrous here as it has elsewhere across the United States, with our culture, ethnic identities, and natural resources being both taken and appropriated by outsiders. I am also including immigration from within the country, too; transplants and carpetbaggers are as cancerous, if not more so, than folks from Mexico. Granted, for a few years now it is not even mostly Mexicans who are coming over the border into my area, rather, it is Central Americans (who are very obviously different from Mexicans to those familiar with the latter) and, perhaps surprisingly, Africans and Arabs. These lands are already arid and overpopulated, and now our lakes and rivers are drained to expand urban sprawl to play host to parasites like these.
Culturally, many traces of Hispano identity are dead, or have been ground into the greater Mexican-American/Chicano identity, which is thoroughly detestable. Tejanos in Texas still have some bearing of themselves, in my estimation largely due to the connections to the Texas Revolution and service in the Confederate military, along with the fact that Texas is more or less its own country. But, Nuevomexicanos and Californios are largely erased, with only the stray old timer paying any heed to the terms. The legacy of the conquistadors who traversed a wasteland and tamed it has been handed over to urban slums and Indio migrants who couldn’t give a damn about such things, and likely do not even comprehend what they are. I fear that if the southern Mountain states and Texas don’t get tough and quick, we are doomed to fracture into shards while outsiders milk us dry.
BSB: I attended a George Strait concert in Las Vegas a few years ago. I was surprised by the number of Hispanics in the crowd that wore cowboy hats, boots, and were legitimate fans of his music (classic country music). They had a “Western” accent and were “high caste” (for lack of a better phrase). I suppose they are part of this remnant culture, correct? I’m largely ignorant of their ways, but I certainly felt more comfortable around them than Boston Yankees or drunk Mexicans loitering around Walmart.
Sonora Jack: They are, and there is the simple fact that a lot of Americanized Latinos are going to seem much more familiar to our sensibilities than one would assume. Something that has always amused me is how Nortenos are stereotyped in Mexico in many of the same ways Southerners are here. They are seen as rowdy, rough, passionate (even about their vices), and as cowboy-obsessed rednecks by Mexican standards. They are also regarded as being more White and “racist” than the rest of Mexico. It could be the predominance of European heritage in the region or something else altogether, but their stereotyping and generalization has always been an amusing and amiable one.
BSB: Just a few more questions and we’ll wrap this up. I know a lot of people are prone to swallowing blackpills. What would you say to them, considering the constant negativity that dominates the news and social media?
Sonora Jack: Rise to the challenge. Your ancestors didn’t endure war, famine, plague, and scores of other catastrophes so you could be a coward and defeatist now. Oh, and to learn to laugh and enjoy things a little. Not everything is doom and gloom, go outside, take a hike.
BSB: Totally agree, especially the last part about doom and gloom. To button this up, what would you say to the folks in the Dissident Right regarding the Southwest – specifically, as a unique area, its future, and where your people belong in a rightwing movement?
Sonora Jack: Well, I suppose I would start by saying that I don’t even necessarily see the goals and objectives for the future of the region as “rightwing” necessarily, since in many cases, especially on ecological and economic levels, they are simple necessities for the continued existence and prosperity of a people (neoliberals and the modern Left are detrimental to human existence in my opinion, so make of that what you will). But, in regard to the fact that we are a unique area, I would point to our frontier ethno-cultural genesis which is both a strength and a point of exploitation, with our Anglo-Castilian roots being globohomo’d into some kind of libertarian abomination.
From that narrative, we as a people and a place must extract what is true from what is fiction, and look to ourselves and our own lineage, both in family and deed, to carve out a future where we are no longer exploited by this rotting husk of an empire for our mineral resources and agricultural production. The Four Corners states, who are all largely dependent on the Colorado River basin, for the sake of their existence, must secede and cease diverting so much of our much-needed water into California. There is no reason we should stand for the needs of urban cesspits turning our canyons and river valleys into arid wastelands, our forests into tinder and lumber, and our mountains into shaft mines without our say so, and if it is to be done, then it better damn well be for our benefit, and with sustainable and renewable capabilities in mind.
The future belongs to those who claim it, and it is time to awaken and seize the day.
Sonora Jack is an occasional contributor to Identity Dixie. His articles can be found here.
Universally hated by feminists, wine-moms, Yankees, hipsters, and weirdos. Last known whereabouts: the Tidewater. Dissident support here: Rick Dirtwater is The Boat Shoe Beat (buymeacoffee.com)
the So. Cal rifles also fought under this flag: http://ep.yimg.com/ay/gdhs/army-of-trans-mississippi-3-x5-polyester-flag-3.gif
Trans-Mississippi titles … In addition to being the first substantial biographical treatment of Showalter, the book promises insights into the wider spheres of secession politics in California and the domestic military situation in Texas during the Civil War. https://cwba.blogspot.com/2018/07/booknotes-arch-rebel-like-myself.html
The last time I drove, 20 years ago or so I remember all the adopt a crack baby billboards strewn across the mostly uninhabited inland west.
The west coast is one big yankee Shit Stain. The best of outcomes here would be akin to Calcutta.
Spent some time throughout my life (older Xer) in Arizona, thought I’d leave the NW winter for Flagstaff Arizona a few winters ago, I got there and it was 0 degrees and 7200 ft. Elevation! With a blizzard coming! I had no idea.
One thing that really sucks out west is how all the Blm public lands are being turned into federal type parks, camp hosts and boulders corralling you. Fees. You’d need a 4×4 to get away from it all anymore. I’m hip about leaving a light footprint, but in reality who are you preserving it for, chairman mao?