Memetic Warfare: The Competition Between Bioregionalists and Secessionists
There is this idea, Cascadia as we know it, which evolved throughout the late 1900s into the idea we know it as now. Cascadia first gained its name when Bates McKee described it in his 1972 geology textbook Cascadia; the geologic evolution of the Pacific Northwest. David McCloskey then later used the name to describe whats called a Bioregion, a term coined by Allen Van Newkirk in 1975 based on Peter Berg and Raymond F. Dasmann's work. McCloskey defined Cascadia as the entirety of the Columbia River's watershed, and the watersheds of rivers stretching from the Alaskan Panhandle all the way down to Cape Mendocino, California. McCloskey saw Cascadian identity as something trancending political or geographic definitions, instead being a more cultural or simply ideological identity. Self described "guerrilla teacher" Alexander Baretich created the Doug Flag, the unofficial flag of Cascadia in 1994, and has since become an active voice within the community, advocating for Cascadian Bioregionalism.
Sometime in the mid 2000s to early 2010s Cascadia began to seep into the mainstream conciousness. Cascadia was slowly becoming a popular idea among everyday Washingtonians, Oregonians, and British Columbians, who could begin to call themselves "Cascadians". However, with Cascadia now entering the mainstream, its ideas were open to the appropiation of the general populace. No where else is this more evident than after the election of Donald Trump in 2016, when the solid democrat cities of Portland and Seattle and its residents within began to support a hypothetical seccesion of their states from the union. According to John Zogby Strategies, between 2017 and 2018 roughly 40% of all people in "The West" supported the idea of seccession, as well as 40% of all democrats in the United States.
Since then, Cascadia's ideological identity has began to shift away from its creators intentions of a bioregional movement to one of a seccessionist movement. Alexander Baretich has even responded to these claims in his Youtube video posted in 2022 titled Is Cascadia a Secessionist Movement? where he states matter-of-factly, "No. No, some people try to push it to be, but its not." He continues, stating "Cascadia is a bioregional movement, means conciousness of your ecosystem, your water. Secessionist movements believe in the state, and even to secede from a state means you have to be recognized by a state, which I think is pointless. ...Cascadia exists, first of all, and we do have a bioregion." In other videos he discusses ideas such as dual power and decolonization, as well as the history of the San Francisco Diggers, ideological precursors to bioregionalism.
What is Cascadia then? It appears that there are two different ideas of Cascadia running alongside eachother, these two camps being the Bioregionalists, who I have seen among academics, who make up a majority among the multiple Cascadian discord servers, and are also among the more frequent users of the Cascadia Subreddit despite being significantly outnumbered, and the Secessionists, who in all likelyhood constitue the majority of Cascadia supporters, even if its just passively. In a way this is akin to the idea of leftism, where many democrats will claim to be "on the left", while studied marxists and anti-capitalists will say, "you are not on the left, because you support capitalism".
There are two Cascadias. They are competing without realizing it. This is what could be called a "Meme War" or "Memetic Warfare". Don't laugh. A meme, as described by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene is any unit of information, such as a practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another in a comparable way to the transmission of genes. These genes, the bioregionalist genes and secessionist genes, are competing for the same resources, being people. Its likely that eventually, either both will die, or one will come out on top.
Cascadia was concieved on a bioregionalist basis, that is true. But ultimately, as ideas grow and encompass new people, that idea must be critiqued and analyzed based on how its holders view the idea and how they treat it and express it. Ideas are nothing on their own. Baretich is right to say Cascadia is not a secessionist movement, atleast right now, but who knows for how long that will be true.