Northwest Territorial Imperative

Northwest Territorial Imperative
The proposed flag of the Northwest American Republic.[1]
A map that shows the suggested boundaries of The Northwest Territorial Imperative in red.

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

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

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

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

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