Northwest Territorial Imperative
Northwest Territorial Imperative | |
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The proposed flag of the Northwest American Republic. | |
A map that shows the suggested boundaries of The Northwest Territorial Imperative in red. |
The Northwest Territorial Imperative (often shortened to the Northwest Imperative) is a white separatist idea put forward in the 1970s–1980s by white nationalist, white supremacist, white separatist and neo-Nazi groups within the United States. According to it, members of these groups are 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 a white ethnostate. Some definitions of the project include the entire states of Montana and Wyoming, plus Northern California.
From this idea, Harold Covington founded the organization. Harold Covington died at the age of 68 on July 14, 2018, and his death threw into question the continued existence of the Northwest Front.
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.
The formation of such a "White homeland" also involves the expulsion, euphemized as the "repatriation", of all non-Whites from the territory. The project is variously called "Northwest Imperative", "White American Bastion", "White Aryan Republic", "White Aryan Bastion", "White Christian Republic", or the "10% solution" by its promoters. White supremacist leaders Robert E. Miles, Robert Jay Mathews and Richard Butler were originally the main promoters of the idea.
The territory which is proposed by the Northwest Territorial Imperative overlaps with the territory which is proposed by the Cascadia independence movement, and the two movements share similar flags, however they have no ties to each other as the Cascadia movement is based in bioregionalism.