CALIFORNIA’S ANTILIBERAL MOVEMENT

THE GUARDIAN

Aux Etats-Unis, l’état de Californie a toujours été à l’avant-garde du combat progressiste. Mais, depuis l’élection de Donald Trump, la Californie est divisée. Beaucoup de comtés ruraux soutiennent le président américain, et un mouvement conservateur séparatiste est même en train de s’organiser. Retour sur une guerre politique intraétatique.

In California’s Central Valley an unexpected item is popping up for sale in souvenir stores: Confederate flags. There’s a growing market for the hate symbol. “There’s been an atmosphere of comfort for folks that were holding these very extreme conservative views,” said Angel Garcia, an activist in Tulare County, an agricultural region where Confederate imagery has become commonplace in immigrant communities.

WARS BETWEEN RIGHT AND LEFT

2. While California is seen as the national leader of the liberal resistance to Donald Trump, it has also become increasingly polar- ized, with wars between the right and the left breaking out from the scenic coast to the rural farming communities that produce the nation’s food.

3. The widening divides in the US have played out in stark ways in California, where clashes between Trump supporters and those threatened by his agenda have led to violent conflicts, battles between neighbors and dueling campaigns to draw new borders that tear apart the country’s most populous state.

THE “NEW CALIFORNIA” MOVEMENT

4. The latest incarnation is the so-called “New California” movement, a far-fetched initiative to have rural conservative counties declare independence from the rest of the state, which is run by Democrats and has passed a series of policies intended to undo Trump’s agenda. New California is a kind of resistance to the resistance, channeling the rightwing rage directed at the liberal havens of San Francisco and Los Angeles.

5. “I’m just waiting for the day the federal government comes in and takes the state over,” said Ross Patterson, a New California backer from Yuba County, a northern jurisdiction that voted for Trump.