2012-10-09

Secession goes mainstream

Quebec, a Belgian fracture, Spanish regions and Northern Italy were areas of concern before, but now independence movements are springing up everywhere. The latest case is Venice.

Venetian protesters demand independence from Rome
“The situation here is almost explosive, so today we have thousands of people who have gathered in front of the regional government and we’re going to present to them a resolution signed by thousands of participants to have a referendum for independence,” Chairman of the separatist Indipendenza Veneta Party, Lodovico Pizzati, told RT.

The territory would be known as the "Repubblica Veneta," and would consist of around five million people. It’s a move that an overwhelming 70 per cent of local residents support, according to a poll conducted by local newspaper Il Gazzettino.

“The main reason is economic. We are in a situation worse than a colony because the tax rate in Italy is the highest the world and our services are extremely poor. We have 20 billion euros missing from our regional resources each year and that’s unbearable,” Pizzati said.

The push for independence shouldn’t come as a total surprise – Venice has only been part of Italy for 146 years.
Not only are independence movements growing, they no longer should come as a "total surprise" according to the report from RT. While RT is a more open-minded news outlet, it still reflects the current social mood for this type of comment to find its way into an article about secession. Consider than once could just as easily write, "it shouldn't come as a total surprise—the Confederacy declared independence only 151 years ago." Most modern states in the world today have a lifespan under 150 years, therefore secession anywhere is unsurprising by this metric.

If 10 years ago someone said that Venice would want independence, they would have been laughed at, but this is in line with socionomic forecasts. If social mood remains negative and one region or city can break the ice, we may see a flurry of secession and the dissolution of states along national lines, the same way it occurred during the post-Soviet breakup. U.S. secession is also on the table as the economic situation deteriorates.

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