Appalachiastan: Culture of Resistance by John Meyers

Publisher’s Note: The usual suspects among the communist chattering classes are now pivoting to a new mass advertisement campaign to attract apparatchiks to their serial killer ideology by painting every white human a white supremacist. While I think that government supremacists have done far more damage to earthlings, I look forward to seeing the unintended consequences and a mirror image of the very radicalization they so admire in their Antifa pets.

Keep pushing, collectivists.

Newton’s Third Law is a motherfucker.

They say the collectivists can’t meme and one reason is their complete blindness to the irony of their creed. Individualism is the enemy of government supremacist creeds because the individual isn’t valued in the hive mind. It is merely mortar for the foundations and walls of the leviathan state. A human competent to be bent to the will of the violence broker class and its sycophants on pain of death depending on the resistance to state authority.

H/T to WRSA: “Western Civilization is not dying. It is being killed. And the people who are killing it have names and addresses.” — “Sam Hyde”, via Gab

John has penned another terrific travelogue in the brave notions of resistance to tyranny in the mountain Southrons. -BB

“You OK out there?” read the text message. “There is a guy with a rifle running around [redacted] mountain…”

When I pulled into the area, the local constabulary was staged. I had my EDC and typical vehicle load out already in place, which I didn’t even need to check. I had information from another local friend on where the guy was last seen. As I drove up the creek, the deputies were at the major lines of drift with radios. Most were in less than stellar physical shape and older in age.

The “man with a gun” was arrested several hours later.

The next day I heard several version of the same story, that involved a guy pulling a gun on another man.  He then pulled a rifle on another totally unrelated bystander shortly after. Someone at some point called the law as the bystander is a well-known harmless and upstanding man in the community. When law enforcement responded the assailant apparently brandished the rifle while executing a poorly conceived escape plan.

The local constabulary didn’t waste any time in trotting out the dogs and the Special Response Team. In reality the show of force was kind of reminiscent of the famous and hilarious third episode of The Andy Griffith Show, The Manhunt that detailed a bureaucratic over the top reaction to a situation that Andy solved with out much effort.

One thing was unanimous; the residents of the community didn’t want law enforcement there. “We don’t call the sheriff out here, we handle our own business” was a common refrain.  “Them deputies never waste a chance to show off do they?” said another. “Hell, that first guy might have deserved to have that gun pulled on him…”

In the Mountain South in particular, many disputes are settled even to this day in a private manner, if at all possible. The clannish nature of the residents, mostly descended from the Borderers of the English/Scottish border or of Germanic extraction, is still alive today in many ways.

Max Weber defines the state as has having a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence over a geographical area. To people historically and many still today in Occupied Appalachiastan, the state-only authority to dispense justice is a travesty of the highest proportions. Some do not want to outsource the dispensation of justice. Many do not want anyone mingling in the business of their community. Traditionally, the derbfine, the clan or even the community at large handled matters of justice. This goes back to lex talionis, which is the idea that if you are a righteous man and you are wronged, it is your duty to punish the offender, yourself.

A product of the clannish nature of the Southern Highlander is an unofficial intelligence network of sorts. News travels fast. Rural Appalachia has one of the most effective Underground’s in existence and it doesn’t even know it.  If you want to see how it operates, let an incident like above happen, or hang around the bear hunters in the southern mountains around mid October. They will tell you every single detail about the game warden, his habits down to what he eats for breakfast and what flavor toothpaste he uses.

Nationalism and the American Founding

Nationalism: “A malignant ideology that causes the ignorant masses to believe that political kingpins who are deceiving, manipulating, and leading them to destruction are their friends, protectors, and benefactors.” – Robert Higgs

I’ve written previously that it is largely a fiction of bad revisionist history (usually to serve a modern political end) to believe that the Founding of this country was by an ethnically, racially and politically united and homogenous people.  America was always divided despite the rants of the usual statist suspects when they espouse the mythology of the Founding. There were 13 separate nations that came together under an agreement not the opposite. (As espoused by folks such as Harry Jaffa)

Nationalism as is understood today by most people is largely a product of the French Revolution to push the French speaking peoples into a mode of hyper-statism and away from decentralization. It is ironic that the modern Right embraces the leftist notion to such a degree.

Many today declare themselves civic nationalists while laying claim to the intellectual thought of the conservative movement, which ironically always critiqued nationalism from a traditionalist perspective.

Traditional American conservatives such as Robert Nisbet or Russell Kirk were extremely critical of nationalism and identified it with social engineering and consolidated federal power vs. localism. Today it is seen as bedrock of a hard right, statist movement, which often tends toward fascism.

I have written elsewhere:

“Professor Clyde Wilson, staunch traditionalist and someone the SPLC would label a ‘neo confederate’ famously stated, ‘Patriotism is the wholesome, constructive love of one’s land and people. Nationalism is the unhealthy love of one’s government, accompanied by the aggressive desire to put down others—which becomes in deracinated modern men a substitute for religious faith. Patriotism is an appropriate, indeed necessary, sentiment for people who wish to preserve their freedom; nationalism is not.’

In the classical American understanding of the concept of republican virtue, we see a devotion to localism and a fiendish quest for decentralization at all costs. When Thomas Jefferson referred to his “country” he was referring to Virginia. John Randolph of Roanoke was cut from the same cloth. “When I speak of my Nation, I mean the Commonwealth of Virginia,” he stated.

It is no coincidence you’ll commonly see among Zerogov.com writings the use of “these united States” vs. “the United States.” This is not a typo.

Nationalism means consolidation. Centralization was the chief fear of all those who favored liberty in the American founding mythos and a chief grievance in AMREV1.

The Constitutional Coup was an invention of the Nationalists. The Hamiltonian wing was the group that favored the Tariff, the National Bank, Crony Capitalism/Mercantilism, and all power vested in the Central government. The republicans were the decentralists who kept true to the values of the American Revolution and fought it all.

The framing of the cultural divide can be seen in the politics of the War Between the States. Most conservatives of the ‘radical’ type today, particularly in the South, have little problem with laying claim to the intellectual tradition of Confederate Secession. Yet, the Nationalists were the Northerners. Their devotion and cause was preservation of the Union at the expense of 650K and 50K Southern Civilians killed, dead, dead dead. The Southern soldier rallied around their sense of place, kinship and community to defend from the invading horde. Which is it, Gents, the concepts of liberty of your ancestors or nationalism?”

I reject nationalism on its face as a ghost of the mind that holds no substance. It’s an article of faith and nothing more. It could be a useful heuristic if it were used as a bulwark against a greater power as it has been done elsewhere. The problem in our context is that FedGov is the default world government and any attempt to employ nationalism in the American context today further consolidates power in the central government. Gold flag fringe and apple pie do not represent freedom or a culture of resistance.

I am told by everyone from the Alt Lite frat boy to the Racial Nationalist that I must be loyal to Bob next door, who lives on welfare, votes Democrat, smokes dope, and beats his wife rather than to the black guy who shows up at every firearms training course that comes to town, goes to Church, carries a 9mm, works 10 hour days and makes hellacious bbq. Why? Their response: “Western Identity” or “only white people value freedom.”

If one values culture in the eternal struggle for freedom, they must reject collectivism and focus on specific cultural values that are important and they must embrace and live by those values while leading from the front, rejecting top down approaches to preserve them. Preservation of whatever your conception of noble culture is won’t happen at the barrel of a politician’s gun.

Appalachiastan: A Culture Apart

 Appalachian culture is largely a culture all of its own in America. Yet, it is still not a monolith. There are several variations and I tend to focus on the things most applicable to me in my life. The culture of which I’m speaking has always been at odds with the rest of the lowland South and Yankeedom in general.

We can see anti-authoritarian traits throughout the world in the mountain peoples of Zomia to the Basques to the Scots and Celts. They remain resilient even though they have been harassed throughout their existence. These peoples have long histories of avoiding the state, evading taxation and slavery, and attempting to practice the art of not being governed to the best of their ability, largely in the manner of the quiet insurrectionist.

Buppert’s Law of Military Topography rings true; “Mountainous terrain held by riflemen who know what they are about cannot be militarily defeated.”

Generally seen as backwoods and Neanderthal by lowland town folks, urbanites and Northerners, this culture still retains some very important aspects that are useful in cultivating liberty in todays world.

I was talking to a friend recently who reminded me that there is more to class analysis than a simple State vs. Us analysis offered by the typical hardline libertarian. While I reject Marxism, there actually is a traditional libertarian and individualist anarchist analysis of rich and poor. There are also divides, which are even more useful to us, with the urban and the rural dweller. Class conflict was a very large part of American history.

David Hackett Fischer relates in Albion’s Seed, that the frontier idea of “natural freedom” was created by a “complex interaction between the American environment and a European folk culture. It derived in large part from the British border country, where anarchic violence had long been a condition. The natural liberty of the borderers was an idea at once more radically libertarian, more strenuously hostile to ordering institutions than were the other cultures in British America.” (777)

James Webb in Born Fighting does a pretty good job of detailing the Scots-Irish border culture.

“It reaches back to the distinctions in ancient Scotland that encouraged strong family pride and even patriotism while at the same time dismissing notions that nationalism needed to be wrapped up in a specific racial identity…or even in a larger loyalty to king and crown…. On the whole they an embracive people who have tended to focus more on shared concepts such as family loyalty and personal honor than on simple ethnic similarities” (124)

Controversial author Jack Donovan talks about how Barbarians were outside of the empire and their loyalty to their own kin, rather than a distant king or government took precedence. We see this trait alive today. You are much more likely to see a mountain person be in the corner of another mountain person than in the corner of an outsider even if they might agree with the outsider on a certain issue for instance.  And the ties are often extremely local. It’s not uncommon to this day to hear men of one county refer to a man from another as a “furriner.”

The modern conception of nationalism is entirely to collectivist to be useful. What on earth could a life long Kentucky coal miner who never left his home county and a gender fluid “man,” that is a democratic socialist that lives in Manhattan and wears skinny jeans possibly have in shared cultural values and customs?

I posed this to a cultural justice warrior once and he replied with “a love of country.” Golly bum, that sure clears it up. What he really meant was they live under the same central government and that is to be celebrated above all else. Anne Frank and Adolf Hitler found themselves in similar circumstances.

Buppert eloquently points out that cities are incubators of collectivism. The backcountry was always at odds with the Eastern cities. They were even more at odds with the Southern Gentry with their conservatism and a fondness of the Thrown, Altar and Aristocracy. The borderers on the early frontier were known as Cohee’s. The Tidewater peoples were known as Tuckahoe’s. John Shane, a famous source for information on the early Kentucky settlement detailed “Irish mostly from the Pennsylvania country and Carolina were called Cohees. Mostly Presbyterians. Virginians were called Tuckahoes. You could tell where a man was from, on first seeing him.” (Perkins, 85)

These terms were often used as slurs. The mountain peoples of early America were small holders in nature. They were prone to violent action and held to a rugged individualism with strong reliance on family, kin and community.  The Hatfield-McCoy or the Watson-Hooper feuds are examples of an attempt to settle disputes outside of the state. In general these people held an allergy to authority that cannot be bred out of them. They had relatively little in common at all with the slave holding Tidewater Gentry that were the beneficiaries of government privilege and protection.

In the North Carolina backcountry in particular we see that the backwoodsmen around the time of the Revolution were more worried about targeting the oppressors du jour, the lowland Gentry, rather than unifying its efforts against the farther away tyrant in England. The Regulation is the culmination of this and we saw that in essence the people in a quasi-stateless manner were running the area until the Battle of Alamance, which then resulted in many of the radicals retreating into the mountains. They were a bottom-up coalition of folks of differing opinions, but they vehemently agreed that the Tidewater ruling class should be expelled. To further illustrate non-universal American values from the time, we had near Anarchist folks in the Regulation, to men like Herman Husband, who was a pacifist and was an early class warrior advocating a hard, progressive taxation on the rich and fiat money. He went on to fight in the Whiskey Rebellion.

The Regulators operated from Virginia to Georgia taking care of private criminals and government criminals the same. They beat lawyers, hung tax collectors, and urinated inside courthouses. They protested lowland rule of their communities.

American nationalists of today spend most of their time talking about immigration and instituting fascism in order to save freedom. They seek to make government greater again. It struck me as ironic as the tradition of Appalachian Anti-Statism, was founded by a patchwork of different peoples, religions and settled by first generation immigrants. They sought refuge from a devastated homeland or were trying in affect to escape the tyranny of the place they left.  The Scots-Irish arrived in massive numbers, in waves, from 1700 to the 1770’s almost all due to some sort of upheaval in their native lands, mostly from government sanctioned absentee landlords enforcing ungodly rents and taxation on the tenants.

These peoples hit the hills as quick as they could. It was essentially anarchical in practice.  They hit their first lick of lawlessness by the mere act of settling past the King’s Proclamation line of 1763.

Horace Kephart describes the backwoods people very well in his seminal work, Our Southern Highlanders:

The Western piedmont and the mountains were settled neither by Cavaliers nor by poor whites, but by a radically distinct and even antagonistic people who are appropriately called the Roundheads of the South. These Roundheads had little or nothing to do with slavery, detested the state church, loathed tithes, and distrusted all authority save that of conspicuous merit and natural justice.” (Kephart, 439)

 Our Highlanders have neither memory nor tradition of ever having been herded together, lorded over, persecuted or denied the privileges of freemen… they recognize no social compact.” (Kephart, 382-383)

While the modern proponents of the European Ethno-State calls for a “peaceful ethnic cleansing,” they whistle past the graveyards of their forefathers who were anything but ethnically homogenous. The Germans (“Dutch” in the Dixie Highlander lexicon) were seen as culturally odd folks to their Ulster counterparts as were the French Huguenots.

On an ironic note, some of the lines in my ancestry were some variation of; a German married a Scots Borderer whose daughter married an Irishman and their militia records were all found in a French bible from the Revolution. Michael Stoner, a German and notable early Kentucky settler spoke in broken English and contemporary first person accounts of the same period detail this being common place for these types of people. German settler George Plott and his descendants were responsible for bringing the Plott hound, the North Carolina state dog, to the Smoky’s and creating the tradition of running bear with dogs.

The far western colonial era frontiersman was more often than not culturally mixed with the Native population. Nearly all war fighters, hunters, militiamen, scouts or spies were wearing Indian dress and fighting in Indian ways. They adopted Indian customs, sometimes had Indian wives. Mixed race children were not uncommon. Large pluralities of Southern Appalachian residents today claim some type of Indian ancestry. (I could bore you to death with citations for a hundred pages detailing all of this, but this is not a doctoral dissertation.)  Maj George Hanger of the British Army, as detailed by Webb, talked of the backwoodsman being

“More savage than the Indians, and possessing every one of their vices and not one of their virtues.  I have known these fellows to travel two hundred miles through the woods never keeping any road or path, guided by the sun by day and the stars by night, to kill a particular person.” (Fischer, 168)

 

We tend to see the hill folk of Appalachiastan tend to focus their resistance efforts amongst the most likely threat to their livelihood. It was not uncommon to see in areas like the backwoods of NC leading up to the Revolutionary War more focused at fighting the local Colonial government than the British Army.

Most of the Southern Gentry didn’t care for secession from Britian anyway. They got their power and wealth from the Empire’s cronyism.

The American Revolution, as well as the War Between the States was generally seen as “lowlander problems.”  It wasn’t until later in the Revolution that we saw a more united backcountry on the quest to expel the Army of a distant king. Namely after Ferguson threated to lay waste to their country. Webb continues:

“Ferguson called them mongrels, but they should have known better. Certainly new settlers, while retaining their own identities, had begun to mix their blood with German, French, Welsh, Irish and English, not to mention Cherokee. But that had always been the case. Mountain culture was Celtic culture, and Celtic culture had always been assimilative… The Celts assimilated first into families and then into tribes, and the concept of duty, kinship and personal loyalty always trumped any fanciful notion of racial purity.” (Webb, 168)

 The Overmountain Men rallied at Sycamore Shoals and crossed the divide at Roan Mountain, dressed more as Indians than white colonials, they set out to destroy Ferguson. The militias were a patchwork of free men, on their own account, with arms they privately owned and supplies they bankrolled themselves.

They largely operated on an unconventional mission-type order framework. Isaac Shelby, a commander at the battle of Kings Mountain was known for telling his men to not wait for orders, but to “be your own officers…availing yourselves to every advantage that change might throw your way.” (Webb, 169) The Overmountain Men fought like Indians. They took the field and there was no more British advance into their country.

Many like to wax poetic about the universal Christian nature of the colonial frontier folk. Actual backwoods travelers and preachers, detail something totally different; A culture of backwoods heathens that do not know law or God.  Others were hardly the White Anglo Saxon Protestants we imagine as the American ideal. Folks like Joseph Doddridge discuss dissenting Religious sects in depth.

The Tidewater Elite often characterized the hill folks as “white Indians” and thought them of the same ilk; worthless.

The hill people of the backwoods of what would become Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina and Virginia all had their own smaller secession movements away from the Crown and even away from their own mother colonies.

Despite this, their first mistake was allowing the counties to be formed. We also see that at this same time, many settlers still headed west. One could argue they were heading west to stay away from the new government set up in Mordor on the Potomac.

The Founding mythology presented by some today is that the nation was wholly united at the time of the Revolution and the time the Constitution was drafted.

The truth is the nation was as divided as it is today, if not more so.

Anti-federalists duked it out with Federalists. Whiskey Rebels who fought under Washington to free themselves from oppressive British mercantilism, taxation and infringements on their natural liberties, were now fighting Washington when he was taxing them and infringing on their natural liberties. A quasi-civil war was eminent around 1800 when French Revolutionaries animated many Americans. John Adams ended signing the Alien and Sedition Acts and was locking up suspected terrorists and limiting free speech. He locked up one man for calling him fat.

The Thermidor of most Revolutions turn this way and detail the usual Pyrrhic victory for liberty. The new boss is usually just the same as the old boss.

The War Between the States brought yet another interesting conflict to the mountains. Brother against brother and county against county. East Tennessee was part of a confederate state but in a region with a Union majority. West Virginia seceded from Virginia and rejoined the Union.  The Mountains were refuge to draft dodgers, deserters and renegades throughout the war from both sides.

It is my view that again the Mountain South took up arms to the most direct threat they saw to their own lives, liberty and sacred honor. Some saw it as the Union. Some saw it as the Confederacy. An interesting unit in the war from Western NC was William Holland Thomas’s Legion of Highlanders and Cherokee composed of roughly 1000 highlanders and half as many Cherokee at any given time, they were an irregular confederate force that was mainly tasked with protecting the lines of drift through the Smoky Mountain corridor.  Thomas also helped purchase land for what would become the Cherokee Reservation in Western North Carolina, to get around the fact that the Cherokee’s couldn’t buy property. These were the same Cherokee that evaded Andrew Jackson’s Slave Patrols to forcefully evacuate these people on the Trail of Tears.

When the war was over, we saw the different sides united again against the outlander in the Revenue Wars. This period was a time of nearly open guerrilla rebellion against the federal government. The unionists must have had to take some hard to swallow pills after the Feds betrayed them during Reconstruction and began assaulting their natural liberties to distill whiskey unhindered by the apparatchiks from Washington Town. It wasn’t much different than the Revolution and Whisky Rebellion correlation.  Every county in the mountains probably has a tale or ten of various Revenue Agents coming in to bust up distilling operations and never leaving. Even Tennessee’s state song, Rocky Top details this.

One can easily argue that parts of Appalachia weren’t totally reconstructed until the 1970s. These hills house the renegades, outlaws and folks of a fairly libertarian disposition. This is not universal but it’s a common trait among many.

In certain areas you will encounter people who still vote Democrat because by God, their Daddy, and his Daddy before that, and his Daddy before that voted Democrat and they are not changing now. Yet when you talk to them on a personal level, you see the local Dem and Rep voters agreeing that we don’t need another foreign war. They damn sure don’t want to pay a dime in taxes if they can get away with it. They are completely against giving up any guns. Are we really going to say these democratic voters are less “American” because they do not support the MAGAt in office?

Individualism gets a bad wrap in some circles but I think it is semantics. People think of Ayn Rand type cults when the word gets thrown around in some circles. Lets not forget that individual autonomy grants one the ability to form communal, tribal or operate in kinship bonds.

Except as kinsman or partisans they cannot pull together. Speak to them of a community of interests, try to show them the advantages of co-operation and you might as well be profiteering the North Star…. Labor chiefs fail to organize unions or granges among them because they simply will not stick together… There is no such thing as a community of mountaineers. They are knit together, man to man, as friends, but not as a body of men. ” (Kephart, 383-384)

Cultural as a Tactic: A Bulwark Against the State

I strongly suggest if your goal is to use liberty culture as a bulwark against the infringing outside cults of statism, you must seek distinct nuances and traits, not something so broad as Western Culture or Americanism. These lack descriptive value, legitimate definitions and are a spook of the mind. Ask 10 different people what those terms mean and you’ll 30 different answers. These united States may still maintain a history of a culture that contain traits that we see benefit in, but let us not forget Americans as a group do not want liberty. If they did, we’d be living in a free country right now.

Dr. Ron Paul in the 2007 Republican primaries got 1% of the vote. The Libertarian Party has never garnered more than a few percentage points of the vote throughout its history in Presidential elections.

Let us not forget it is predominately white Americans of European extraction that have given us the largest states in history, the biggest debts, a US world empire and a domestic police state that is unrivaled anywhere else. Europe has gone socialist. A quick analysis of the historical Anarchist movements from Europe we can see they tended more toward collectivism. Everything we say and do is recorded and it is estimated that the average person commits 3 felonies a day just by existing in these united States.

A leftist democratic socialist is just as “American” as a Trump voter. Antifa and the Proud Boys, both “Americans” are just 2 different wings of preferences of the ruling class. There is no challenge to the status quo. This is why a focus on specific subsets of cultural values is of utmost importance.

The human terrain of Appalachiastan, though largely modernized in many ways, still retain useful characteristics that are beneficial in ones journey to live free on their own hook. Focus on the specific cultural values you hold dear not broad abstractions, because they are not universal across the billions of peoples of the West.

There is a reason why shows such as Moonshiners are extremely popular. Illicit liquor in the hills is viewed by most as a normal part of life. I’ve even heard uniformed members of the local constabulary state “Aw, if I pulled a guy over and he had a jar on him, I could care less.”  Popcorn Sutton, on several occasions distilled alcohol, illegally, at public events for a public exhibit. Nothing happened to him. (For those offenses at least)

Folks with an interest in the mechanics of insurgency know that the human terrain, legitimacy, and support in the mass base are vital components. This culture often nullifies bad laws by means of social norms. This speaks further to the notions of thinkers that put forth the idea that a revolution is not needed if people can arrange themselves where the state has no affect on them.

Appalachian peoples have also had a long history of resisting the great object of libertarian scorn; the roads.  Historically in many locales, roads were maintained by means of conscription instead of fuel taxes. Instead of paying fuel taxes as we do in modern times, men were conscripted for a time each year to work the roads.  Quill Rose of Eagle Creek in what is now the Great Smoky Mountain National Park famously dodged the roadwork crew. He even purposefully lived without any sort of road within miles of his house. Roads bring in outsiders, who not long after bring their politics. Its still fairly common place for residents along state controlled single lane gravel roads to resist their expansion and paving.

The ruling class is not a class in which you are part of. Its going to be an interesting dynamic down at the Uprising when the patriot militias who back the Republican government, show up to whoop the armies of Hillary and they are both wearing the same flag on their shoulders. Some of these militia people hold mutually exclusive belief sets. If you claim you are going to go to war over a gun grab (Trump has done more harm to gun rights in the last 20 years than any other President in the same time) or take on the regime over identify politics, but you are getting butt hurt when a flag is burned by a lefty, you are going to have a hard mental challenge ahead. You cannot dream of balkanization and wave the Federal flag while remaining consistent.

If the cultural justice warrior thinks that masculinity is in decline, what are you doing in your personal life to ensure it isn’t lost? Instead of complaining about millenials and their lack of manners, are you leading from the front? Instead of complaining about America being De-Christianized or prayers not being in schools, are you living the teachings of that religion daily? Instead of complaining about how modern men can’t protect their woman, are you training for that mission? Are you actually doing something to live and preserve those cherished “western” values or are you just drinking with your frat boy buddies at the weekly western chauvinist get-together, acting like high school kids?

Lots of people yammer on about “getting active.” You cannot preserve culture by going to a rally or building a wall. Peter Schiff just pointed out on the Twitter-verse recently that FEDGOV is going to start revoking passports of those they suspect of owing back taxes. He related that if the wall were built, it would effectively turn the country into a giant debtors prison and keep Americans in instead of keeping Mexicans out.

Many on the Right understand that a gun free zone will not keep guns out or stop crime. Some might even understand that a drug war will not stop drug use. They may also understand that from an irregular warfare context when the government declares war on something, like “terror” or “insurgents” you get more of it/them. Yet some how they also think that if they give the government more money, power, control and bureaucracy, they will create a more effective immigration police state and stop the ‘invaders’ and preserve their culture. News flash: American culture has been dead since long before any illegals started coming in. It’s not the guy with an expired visa that is taxing you, raiding your house and killing your dogs, giving you speeding tickets, confiscating your house if you do not pay property tax, spying on you, eroding every right you have, marching your kids off to war, governing you with 76,000 pages of federal regulations and 19,000 police agencies across the country, or instituting gun control.

I’m sure the usual suspects will try to call me a globalist or some other pejorative.  Which always struck me as odd considering the statists were calling us “isolationists” back during Ron Paul 2007/08.

You must understand your span of control. Top down approaches never turn out good for the freedomista. If you criticize the death of the West, you must recognize that you have no control over what other people do from a cultural perspective.  And I’d argue that letting people live how they want, is one of the utmost cultural traits we should be preserving.

You are whom you surround yourself with. If you are spending your time complaining about the cultural shift in America, you should realize you could mitigate a lot of it by hanging around like-minded people. If you are complaining about X or Y culture issue while living in an area that is dominated by the thing you are railing against, vote with your feet.

Bill Buppert wrote recently on the concept of Irish Democracy here.

I first heard James C Scott use the term in his several works on the history of stateless peoples several years ago. He writes in Two Cheers for Anarchism:

Quiet, anonymous, and often complicitous law-breaking and disobedience may well be the historically preferred mode of political action for peasant and subaltern classes, for whom open defiance is too dangerous…. One need not have an actual conspiracy to achieve the practical effects of a conspiracy. More regimes have been brought, piecemeal, to their knees by what was once called “Irish Democracy”—the silent, dogged resistance, withdrawal, and truculence of millions of ordinary people—than by revolutionary vanguards or rioting mobs.”

The concept is no different than the quiet insurrection of people like Quill Rose. With his half Indian wife, he lived a life as an outlaw, rebel and man on his own hook defying every outlet of authority he encountered. “Never Get Ketched!” was his motto. More on Quill here.

You can’t change what the apparatchiks are doing in DC any more than you can change what cultural preferences your neighbor has, especially if it’s an urban or suburban hellhole. The national level is done. It’s a sinking ship and its time to get off. The only viable option that is available is to build alternate ways of life or infrastructures and networks. Arguing over tastes and decorum (aka partisan politics) is pointless. Why fight the culture war in your idiotic padded Game of Thrones suits and shields at the local Alt-Right/Antifa bash when you could be building your own world? It used to be the liberty community didn’t want to inflict ‘good’ government on others, now its their sole focus, all in the name of an undefined and meaningless crusade of the cultural justice warrior.

I’ve written extensively about Etienne De la Boetie and his eloquent defense of the right of refusal and non-compliance. Revolution, as detailed by the German philosopher, Johann Kaspar Schmidt, is the wish for new arrangements. While Insurrection is not allowing you to ever be arranged again. Make the choice. Many people of Appalachiastan did. The culture still lives. Go Live it.

“No such thing as spare time, no such thing as free time, no such thing as down time. All you got is lifetime. Go.”

–Henry Rollins

 

Works Cited:

Kephart, Horace. Our Southern Highlanders. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. 1983.

Webb, James. Born Fighting. New York: Broadway Books. 2004

Perkins, Elizabeth. Border Life. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 1998

Fischer, David Hackett. Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America. New York: Oxford Press. 1989

 

30 thoughts on “Appalachiastan: Culture of Resistance by John Meyers”

  1. Most excellent !. How our continent became America is amusing. The United States ARE the people, not a place on a map. Concerned citizens share the majority of talking points, ideology across the board, the nation.

    We use to identify simply as Americans. Seems now we want to be recognized for our geological locations, As noted our family lines back to inception of this nation. Problem is most of us don’t know if we’re Okies or Arkies, battle born or prune pickers. I admire you mountain folks ability to identify lineage.

    It has been suggested by folks with PHd after their names that the issue is and has been the white guys have no right of passage, as do the Jews, the Mexicans and other nationalities. Initially thought this amusing but after serious Frank thought think is a possibility. In English us OG’s acknowledging our young men as ” one of us”. Takes the guess work out of it.

    This I know, while we appear to be a nation of couch potatos, we citizens will fight over anything, it’s the nature of the species, don’t believe me, read the paper for a week. It’s like a fucking soap opera, only real people are dying daily.

    Great article hopefully people will take the time to confirm, re define their ideology! Depth and direction. How we each get to the other side is as personalized as it gets. Isn’t my place to tell folk in mountain Kentucky etc etc how to. As it’s not their business as to how we in Southern Oregon achieve same.

    Meyers, I appriciate you being a thinking man, a rare quality in this day and age. Well done. I’ll be passing this one aroumd to my people. Hopefully they will come to their own conclusions or simlar.

    Cheers,
    Dirk Williams

    1. Michael Benefield

      Scots -Irish are not “Irish” They are a large minority with English-Scottish ancestry. Scots-Irish were not Gaelic, didn’t speak Gaelic and neither was their music. They were northern English and lowland Scot. Not the Gaelic highlander nor the Gaelic Irish variety. I was born and raised in Appalachia and am of English-German descent, raised among many “Scots-Irish with many as kith and kin……..

      1. Scots -Irish are not “Irish” They are a large minority with English-Scottish ancestry. Scots-Irish were not Gaelic, didn’t speak Gaelic and neither was their music. They were northern English and lowland Scot. Not the Gaelic highlander nor the Gaelic Irish variety. I was born and raised in Appalachia and am of English-German descent, raised among many “Scots-Irish” with many as kith and kin……..

  2. Pingback: Culture Of Resistance | Western Rifle Shooters Association

  3. Had to smile. I’m 70 years old and one generation removed from that stilt house seen in the movie “Deliverance”. My father, Ben was born in the Virginia “apps” in 1920. His brother Joe, was 2 years older than he. They had a sister, Madge that came along a few years later, ’24 if I recall correctly. My grandfather died and my grandmom took up with a “railroad man” which was blue collar top ‘o the line in those days.

    In ’36 Madge came to Joe and said the railroad man had been making improper advances. Joe told him ” you bother my sister again I’ll kill you”.. I guess the railroad fella didn’t listen and before Sunday supper Joe stuck a double barreled 12 gauge in his stomach and made good on his promise. He then told my father Ben to go and fetch the sheriff. Upshot: Uncle Joe spent 5 years on a Va. chain gang.

    Moral: Don’t fuck with people you don’t know.

  4. Simply the best thing I’ve read in quite a while. Thank you for putting it much more succinctly than I am able. I’ll be referring to this one for a good, long time. As an aside it not just the Southern Highlands, we Northern Appalachians don’t care for someone telling us what to do either. Our local District Attorney told the state government she wasn’t prosecuting any gun cases caused by their citified laws and the sheriff has refused to cooperate with state/fed in regards to same. Good folks both, local born and bred.

  5. Pretty outstanding essay. Also, in an interesting way, addresses the downstream effect of the way Scots (later Scots-Irish) may have formed their views. Lineage done by a relative awhile back discussed the genesis of this “Scots-Irish” thing. Feuding Scots, clans, were at the time offered 3 choices:

    a. Renounce & abandon the clan, including all its traditions & heraldry.
    b, Move away from Scotland..
    c. Be killed.

    Most found the first & last unpalatable, hence a migration to Ireland and, finding those folks unpalatable in the extreme, made their way to England and subsequently the Colonies. A pretty dramatic implementation of “we’ll settle our own differences, leave us alone, be gone & don’t come back.” It goes to an understanding of that culture if true to its origins.

    Thanks for sharing – damned fine piece of writing.

  6. downeasthillbilly

    Great analysis, and thanks for the reading list. Passing this on to my nephew, who is starting to feel his roots. At least half of which draw water from the French Broad.

  7. Thank you John Myers for an awesome lesson.

    This old coot took the long way to Liberty. Growing up on the NE coast all of us kids had small boats. We naturally gravitated to islands. There was something about them. Now I know it was the taste of liberty.

    Island folk often unceremoniously ignored laws as if they were governing themselves. We took to that like ducks to water. We felt like ‘outlaws’ bypassing government age restrictions and other bullshit We did some foolish things and took risks but we physically harmed no one. And we learned much.

    Eventually the love of liberty led to the mountains. I sure wish that my grandchildren were growing up here.

  8. Control should always emanate from the bottom up. We should be outright communistic in the way we conduct our own lives, socialist dictatorship in the way we run our family and bring up our kids, socialist in the way we interact with our business partners through contract, democratic socialist in the way we deal with our city councils (small to mid-sized cities only); representative democratic when we deal with larger cities and state-levels, and finally, original constitutionalist in the way we as individuals deal with the federal government, in which international defense / diplomacy and interstate commerce is its only major function. In extension, we reciprocate with other countries that have the same principles around the world.

    Of course, this is VERY general, and exceptions occur, though they shouldn’t even in a non-perfect world.

  9. Barry O'Bamaugh

    The right’s balkanization fantasy needs to die and it needs to die now. If our union is successfully fractured – along urban / rural, racial, north/south, or whatever lines you concoct – the pieces can only expect to trade the imperial capital in Washington for one in Mexico City, Beijing, or maybe even New Delhi. At best, we can hope for a frog/jump relationship with whoever has managed to maintain enough national unity to project power here. While our federal government has, 250 years after the revolution, become an imperial ruler, that does not mean that the people of Appalachia – or any in this country – would have somehow had more freedom under the boot of an imperial government based in London instead. How are your “anti-authoritarian” Scottish mountain people back in the British Isles enjoying their prison terms for saying mean things about Muslims on the internet? They keep voting for more of it, so evidently it’s quite a lot.

    I am not defending the federal government, or even the rotten culture that has allowed it to fluorish. I am merely stating that balkanization will solve those problems for a couple of generations at best, but at the cost of putting you under an imperial boot that fits your values even less forever. I’d be fine with that except that I’ll end up under the same boot as you will, and my Mandarin isn’t very good. We cannot afford to write off the union. Like it or not, we are one nation – do you seriously mean to tell me that your cultural values, whatever they may be, would be better preserved if you threw in your lot with the people of, say, Guatemala, Japan, or India than with North Dakota, Idaho, and Maine? On the note of Guatemala – they, too fought for their freedom from a European empire (Spain), and even succeeded in shattering the resulting empire – the Federation of Central America – into several small, truly independent states. How did their independence turn out? Their government is chosen for them by the CIA. Before the CIA, it was chosen by the United Fruit Corporation – their “independent” republic was ruled by a goddamn banana company. Is that the future your rebellious mountain people want? A government chosen in Beijing and administered by a Chinese coal conglomerate? Right now that’s the future you’re aiming at.

    None of this is to say that I disagree with the need to build up and support your neighbors, your region, and your state. The people closest to you should be your highest priority, but the people of your region, your state, and your nation are still kinsmen and countrymen, if farther removed. And we must all hang together, or we shall most assuredly all hang separately.

    1. There is no us, you can’t make a stable country out of what we have now. Someone has to go.

      Even ignoring race and religion which is foolish , the political differences are far too great.

      No country can have Intersectionalism , Corporate Stooge Republicans, BFYTW types ,Latin Americanism , Neo Cons and Libs , Libertarians Paleo Cons and Classic Liberals in it. Each compromise eats away at the foundation of the identity of the other groups.

      The solution we’ve been using mirrors Singapore , a single party state made of Neo Cons and Neo Libs. ours is a disaster

      This invade the world, invite the world or cheap labor philosophy the use is suicide and killing the US off

      Historically the solution to this and to the invasion problem is to build stronger more homogenous nations

      This means an ethnic mix that discourages strife, religious commonality and an ideology that is uniform enough to prevent paralysis and large scale dissent

      This would be enough strength to eliminate multinationals from operating and enough power , probably using nukes to deter other nations . I

      Nothing on that says the old failed USA has to exists and a Midwestern Commonwealth say could manage to do this just fine,

      Don’t get me wrong, it’s better for the US to remain unified but it’s probably not possible so a smart split is the way to go .

  10. I reside fairly close to the geographical center of this mountain redoubt of BFYTW.

    That hillbilly grapevine works better and quicker than you wrote about. when your working in the mines, you are part of Appalachia Comms Central. At least for an area encompassing a large portion of the territory reaching out about 100 miles, sometimes further, depends on whats going down. There are no comms or intelligence operations like it. It goes beyond comms and being a grapevine, it is a complex rich cultural system. A true grass roots open source system in every sense of the words.
    I pity the fools who try to conquer us.

    This is a great post and piece of critical thinking. It reminds me of something I’ve wanted to say for a long time but never could quite figure out the words. Still not there yet, but this is close. Nothing like enlightened insights and inspiring thoughts, words, and deeds of others to inspire oneself:

    There is only power.

    Yeah I have unalienable right to arm and defend myself.
    It is not a right per say, it is called power.
    With power I have right to do things.
    Plain and simple.
    It is mine. This power.
    It is everyones. Who chooses so.
    My power gets me property, like weapons.
    I intend to use my power whenever necessary within that construct.
    It is not complicated.
    Things like Liberty are what you do after you use your power to defend yourself.
    This is complicated.
    To have power and to obtain Liberty, the two are linked in a unique way.
    Where others would use their power to enslave me, kill me, force me to do something they want,
    I use my power for the exact opposite reason and cause.

    The question here before all others is who wins.

    Who has not the right, but the power to win.

    That question, being the underlying question of the day, must be decided before anything else is possible.

    Until I decide this question I have no things such as rights.

    Yet, it is right for me to choose to use power for those things I choose to have.

    Nothing, no one, can force me or coerce me to do anything. I have a special power in this respect. No one, or nothing has this power of the individual who chooses to be free to choose, anything.
    It is a very special kind of power unlike any power. It is the most powerful power which exists.

    It is special in that only I can choose to use this special power, or not to use it. Only I can make this choice. Even with a gun to my head put there to force me to choose, I still, have to choose.

    It is a power only I can have.
    It is about choice.
    It all boils down to choice.
    It all has to do with choice.
    What it is I will do.
    When you grok this power this power comes to you, it is indomitable, nobody or nothing can take it from you, only you can give it up, surrender it.
    This is the tyrants dilemma, the States conundrum, it must convince you to choose, willingly, tacitly, it does not mater, to give up this special power, it is then the tyrant, the State has power, but only power over those who give up their special power. And even then, this special power can be taken back in a heart beat, the blink of an eye.

    My power is easy. I only have to choose to hold this special power and I am complete, I am a Free Man. The rest is not so easy, but it is not too complicated either. It just is.
    To arm myself, and to defend myself, that is hard, but it is not too hard, in fact it is as basic as my condition gets, which simplifies things rather nicely, this, is not complicated.
    Yet it is complex, in that defending myself, having property, my weapons, using them well, effectively, winning, is complex in that it requires diligence, courage, fortitude, physical ability, foresight and fast critical thinking and decision making, perseverance, maintaining precious virtues, yet adopting barbarian ways, it requires great faith in certain things, and it may involve belief in something better, maybe larger, grander.

    With this special power, a good rifle, the courage to make hard complex choices, I am free. I am a Free Man. I can even be killed, but I will die to the last Free.
    Nothing nor anyone can take this from me. It is mine.
    And I see no reason to give it up.

    No tyrant or State is this powerful.

    Multiply my special power by how many times?
    Then, we are talking about power tyrants can only dream of.

  11. Thanks. Good article. Brought back some hope after being told, everywhere, that white nationalism or National Socialism, and trump the chump will save us.

  12. A wise man once said the largest political party in America is “Leave Me Alone”. I think that is dividing into “Leave Me the F*#k Alone” as a the second largest party.

    Sooner or later a bunch of both are going to join together and form a smaller, but meaner, “Leave Me Alone Or I’ll Kill You” Party and they’ll mean it.

    GOV.ORG will be looking for “leaders” and “central command” but the truth is they’ll just be killing the nearest person they can reach and think is a “statist”. That sort of thing will never stop.

    Brutal repression will anger and send people over to the anti-government side. They’ll lose eventually. In between it will be really ugly.

  13. What you have written is a bunch of drivel. I could not even get through it all. . You say Nationalism is bad yet the smallest form of Nationalism revolves around family, then tribe. It is contradictory. No Civilization has ever been created under tribalism. Tribalism leads to anarchy.

    While the South and the Colonies were a loose confederation they still had nationalistic governments, of the various states. I’m a Virginian is Nationalism, I’m a Georgian is
    Nationalism. You play into the hands of the Globalists who are not “Nationalist” either.

    You say you have more in common with the black guy than the white doper liberal.

    So your daughter marries the black guy’s son and your grandchildren do not even look like you and 5000 years of your genetic inheritance is gone, poof. (Watch the Muhammad Ali interview
    with Dick Cavett)

    The White race vanishes from the planet, the group of people who created the modern world but hey, at least you get good barbecue.

    Your assertion that a group of rifleman can defend a mountain area is delusional. In 1865 yea, in 2019 no way. Not with the weapons and technology available today. Trust me when the Globalists have finished consolidating power and then turn their attention back to your little band of rifleman they will poison, gas, and do whatever else is necessary to destroy you. Menachem Begin became Prime Minister of Israel. His and other bands of “freedom fighters” killed every man, women and child in one Arab village. Let that sink in there, skippy. One internet writer wrote “It takes a government to fight a government”. For White People, White Nationalism and White Southern Nationalism is our only hope for the survival of White People. “They” want to Genocide us out of existence. If that is not apparent from viewing practically every advertisement on television, well, enjoy your barbecue. If you do not wake up to that truth and if we White People do not find a way to band together and save ourselves, your grandchildren and great grandchildren will curse your name.

    1. Dr. Mitty,

      I honored your plea for anonymity but it doesn’t mean the wrongheadedness of your comment should be left dangling like a lopsided string of rhetorical corpses rotting on the blades of the windmill you’re tilting at.

      You claim: Your assertion that a group of rifleman can defend a mountain area is delusional.

      History both ancient and recent puts the lie to your weak claim; eighteen years into pacifying Afghanistan and the vaunted hyper-military first world forces of the US have to take 45-second helicopter rides in Kabul because the roads are too dangerous in the green zone. Outside of Kabul, no road is secure day or night.

      I spent almost two years there. Clusterfuck on a galactic scale.

      I am always amused by the notion that the US must remain intact otherwise, muh freedoms!

      The logic (I am trying to be charitable) means that centralization is the optimization for freedom hence the advocates for an intact USSA are ultimately one world government adherents if we follow their “logic” train. The inference means that every time the USSR calves off 15 states or the Yugoslavian basket-case fell apart, foreign nations rush in to scoop up the components.

      Didn’t happen.

      I leave this comment here as Exhibit A of what collectivist consolidation looks like to its apologists. The amusing part of the white supremacist narrative is that it begs the question of what is worse: white or government supremacism and it turns out that most of the architects of the leviathan state in the USSA are Caucasian. Someone needs to send a memo to Occasional Cortex and the Bombastic Squad that their ablest allies in communism are the very whites they vilify.

      Whatever the hell whites are…

      1. Bill:

        At least In Walters “ethno-state” it will be a White socialist ruling class, for the White race, instead of the…. oh wait…White Socialist ruling class we have now…

  14. This essay appears to have touched some nerves!

    My take on the racialist rhetoric in the Dissident Right; If it’s not deliberately designed to make sure the right loses, it might as well have been. It already divides the right more than it divides everyone else. Think that through. It also alienates many potential allies and converts.

    It’s not so much immoral as it is stupid.

    Aside from the fact that the racial fixation is a direct repudiation of the most basic Christian doctrines, which doctrines many of this sort claim to hold in high regard.

  15. Pingback: Appalachiastan: Culture Of Resistance By John Meyers | John C. Carleton

  16. Thanks John for putting into words how many of us hillbillies feel and think and act . And as usual uouve touched some nerves must mean hoir on to something again . I feel pity for those haters who think theyre changing the world by uniting a certain race or political party . I could care less about any of them sure I don’t like the socialist gun grabbing idiots on the left but I hate the over taxing gun grabbing idiots on the right as equally so . I’ll just take those I love and care about and cast those firrners into hell. They’ll never understand were already a very mixed up race of heatherns already and damd proud of it .

    1. Norse:

      You got that right.

      See you soon

      PS. Gents…and I’m particular to the Racial nationalists commenting here.

      I hosted and attended a nationally renowned firearms instructors class this past weekend in the heart of Appalachia. Nearly half of the class was non-white. I guarantee everyone of them can out-shoot you.

  17. Riflemen on the mountain undefeatable is bullshit. If you have enough money, drones , and satellites anybody can be wiped out. You are using the US model which is lose the war, not kill the perps, and keep the weapon sales moving. If you don’t see that your meds need to be backed off, cause you are living in the 20th century.

    1. Lame and old. Right on cue too, the real and the true bigotry shows up. It is patently clear you and your human extinction movement pal’s are terrified of Appalachian people and their culture & history. And I know why.

      It has to do with the truth John speaks to here, the real talking truth to power. The motive power and audacity of a free and indomitable people, who indeed reside in the most tactically advantageous and strategically located small unit infantry combat, 4th Generation Warfare territory in the USofA. And we own it. You and your military have to not only come and take it, you have to hold it. As long as we hold territory we are the most legitimate people possible.

      Your agent provocateur operations and procedures handbook is showing.

      By the way, what is the pay rate for subversive trolls and shit stirrers spreading lies, doubt, and discontent these days? Or are you a real gamma patriot, who troll’s the alt-media for free, virtue signaling the neo-bolshevik talking points resistance is futile?

      Did you and your sycophants consider because you infest everything with your hate you are totally obvious and only the delusions you spread are your own?

      Resistance is futile for you and your scalawags, but Resistance is Fertile for me and my people. Not only this, our resistance to tyranny and operative generational natural born Scotts-Irish secession from tyranny is the most legitimate thing possible.

      I know what really irks you and your fellow useful idiots, it is our natural propensity of not withdrawal of our consent for your marxian tyranny, it is we have never culturally and philosophically, nor politically ever granted your Fabian yankee masters our consent to begin with.
      And that really scares the shit out of you all.

      And we got guns as Andrew Breitbart sublimely pointed out. Us mouth breathing bitter clinging deplorable white christian trailer trash, we are born with a Cat joystick, a tractor steering wheel in one hand, and a rifle in the other.

      We are born naturally as Freemen. And we are armed to the fucking teeth. There is nothing you can do about it. For decades you have attempted to turn us into a government plantation dependent culture in order so you can then destroy us. Yet as your forebears underestimated us in 1860, you failed.

      So come on motherfucker, you talk a big story, Lets see how cocky you and your fellow scalawags are with your tanks and missiles, your hi tech weaponry systems, your 3rd generation tactics and strategy. Your big green machine. Let your human extinction movement fly high.

      Genocide is your goal, why put off what you claim is so easy to do?

      Come and take us out if our resistance is so futile. Come on.

      Because I’ll tell you, all that big military scary hi tech weaponry applied as you say will undoubtedly be our hopeless demise, sure has made a great impression in the mid east theater of projecting of power of your Police State. What with 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan against goat herders in tire sandals, an AK with a couple mags, and a bag of sandy rice, splendid job of defeating such patriotic people, their religious ideology not withstanding, they are indomitable and possess generational motive power, they live in mountain terrain, but have only a tiny percentage of the resources us Appalachian’s possess.

      Go ahead JoeBob, ( “JoeBob”, what an obvious NPC dickhead you are), lets see you prove how militarily intelligent you are. Come on boy, go ahead, if your already got us beat you got nothing to fear from us, stick your dick right where your mouth is, stick it in the mountain hillbilly meat grinder we got special for you.

      As I politely informed your organizing for amerika thugs who came to my house to intimidate me to shut me up, “Make sure you bring tanks, lots of tanks, your gonna need every one you got”.

  18. Pingback: From ZeroGov | The Southron Sentinel

  19. Collectivists learned from their Messiahs – Lenin and Stalin. And are VERY happy with the results. 50 million broken eggs is no problem for them…

  20. The problem with your take on race not mattering is that urban people can’t have the kind of individual bonds and community knowledge you write about here. Urban people have to go off heuristics and racial stereotypes are among the most useful. You might not have been told this before because if the Apparatchiks find out anyone knows this or verbally admits to it they’ll unperson them.

  21. Pingback: ZeroGov | Book Review: The Guerrilla Gunfighter Volume 2: Preparedness Rifle and Carbine (With Notes on the Virginia Gun Festivities) by John Meyers

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