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The news that Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin and her husband have ties to the secessionist Alaska Independence Party has sparked derision
from her critics and provoked tons of questions.
As strange as the AKIP might seem to those of us who reside in the lower 48 or elsewhere, there is no question that the organization has had a lot of clout in
Alaska, including its fielding of a successful gubernatorial candidate in 1990.
Here is Palin's greeting to the 2008 Party convention:
Palin's husband, Todd, was registered as an AKIP member from 1995-2002.
That led me to wonder, just what is the AKIP? According to an investigative story currently running at Salon magazine, it's a far-right fringe movement, allied with the neo-Confederate movement, whose leader boasts that he helped launch Palin's career, and that he has been able to influence her on key policy issues.
First, a little history. As you may recall from history class, in
1867, Secretary of State William Henry Seward cut a deal with Russia to
buy the land that came to be known as Alaska for $7.2 million, or $.02 an acre. Critics
called it"Seward's folly," but their tune changed when it became clear that the region was rich in oil, gas, minerals and wildlife. According to this historical account, by the turn of the century, a
group of wealthy industrialists known as the Syndicate moved in to take
over mining and other industries.Reportedly, these industrialists and absentee landlords undermined the residents' efforts toward political autonomy. Alaska became an official US territory in 1912.
The first statehood bill was introduced in Congress in 1916; it was promptly defeated. It took nearly four decades of lobbying and organizing to get to the 1955 convention at which a state constition was draftd. At that meeting, territorial governor Ernest Gruening was pleading, Let us now end American colonialism. Congress passed the Alaska Statehood Act in July, 1958. On August 26 of that year, Alaskans voted for statehood by a five-fold margin.
However, not everyone was happy. By the early 1970s, as the US tried to solve its energy crisis construction of the $8 billion Alaska pipeline, AKIP founder Joe Vogler was ready to push the cause of Alaskan secession.
The AKIP contends that the 1958 statehood vote was illegal, because, among other things, the US military personnel in Alaska were allowed to vote.
According to this independent legal analysis, while there were irregularities with the 1958 constitution and vote, the statehood election and its results should be respected.
Here's what a few bloggers had to say about the Alaskan Independence Party:
1. Libby Shaw wants to know:
If Obama is guilty by association b/c he knows someone who participated in domestic terrorism when Obama was eight years old, what does that make Sarah Palin whose husband was,until very recently, a member of the Alaska Independent Party? The extremist Party wants to secede from the U.S. and its leader said he hated America and its flag. Sarah Palin apparently approves his message b/c she addressed the Party's Convention in 2008.
2. SuzieQ noted journalist Max Blumenthal's observation that the AIP was:
“a haven for anti-government extremists, anti-government militia members, and conspiratorial figures who believe that the United States government plans to implement a New World Order.”
