Thomas Naylor, founder of the secessionist Second Vermont Republic, died this week after suffering a stroke on Sunday. He was 76. Naylor’s friend and ally Rob Williams delivered the news via email on Friday afternoon.
Naylor, a Charlotte resident, founded SVR in 2003. In his Vermont Manifesto, which he self-published the same year, he declared that, “Our nation has truly lost its way. America is no longer a sustainable nation-state economically, politically, socially, militarily or environmentally.”
His solution? Secede from the union and create a second Vermont Republic; the first existed from 1777-1791, before Vermont joined the Union.
Secession sounded nuts — until George W. Bush won a second term in 2004. Suddenly, Naylor’s quixotic quest began making headlines, and disgruntled liberals started slapping SVR bumper stickers on their cars.
Some of those supporters abandoned the group, however, after an anonymous blogger raised questions about SVR’s ties to secessionist groups such as the League of the South, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has deemed a racist hate group. Williams, who founded Vermont Commons, a journal devoted to Vermont independence, was one of them. For his part, Naylor disputed the suggestion that SVR was in any way racist.
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I knew Tom in the early 80s and was a neighbor for more than a decade. He was an interesting guy, but I think very insecure. For a long time he was fixated on getting a Nobel Prize in Peace or Economics, thought he could be a cabinet member in a future Democratic administration, and once talked about moving to Montana because he thought he could be elected governor there. I do miss Tom and wish I could still talk to him.
In fact, Naylor went to get lengths to silence those who disagreed; those few Vermonters who were on his advisory board got sacked; he sought the job dismissal of at least one person that I know who’d criticized his many longstanding ties to the racists of the League of the South and the Lega Nord; he expelled so many members that he eventually disbanded formal membership in SVR.; “payback” was an integral part of his character – just ask Bill McKibben or, hell, Rob Williams. Naylor was an exceptionally spiteful person.
Since you’re a Texas secessionist (and how’s that workin’ out for you, pardner?) you’re probably unaware that he had no meaningful impact on the body politic here and his public events amounted to little than theatre and stunts. I do agree with what you were trying to find the words to say; he was renown for his mean spiritedness and intolerance to those who would not do his bidding. For instance, when Bernie Sanders declined to resign his congressional seat to then run as his secesher candidate for governor, since Naylor lacked the personal charisma or background to do so himself, Naylor then waged a years long campaign at his website savaging Bernie at every opportunity he could.
You are right about one thing though; I’m sure to quote Naylor or cite what he’d actually done in years to come when speaking truth to someone who’d pay false tribute him.
“Facts are stubborn things” – John Adams
I am his first cousin from MS. He was both indefatigable and irascible, as previously stated: both genetic inclinations. He is the off spring of two very strong willed families. He was, however, very kind, caring, and family oriented: all attributes from his extremely southern upbringing. He will be missed by his family who continues to reside in the south, in spite its many faults and sins of the fathers.