‘Texit’? British vote revives a Texas secession dream, and spawns a hashtag

HOUSTON — "Brexit," meet "Texit."

The stunning vote by Britain to exit the European Union has inspired a flurry of chatter on social media about what it might mean for Texas, that former nation where a devoted fringe element has long advocated for secession from the United States.

Many of the state's residents may have flirted with the idea, but the news out of Britain revived the debate, inspired a Texit hashtag and raised the hopes of the Texas secession movement.

On Twitter, there were Texas-less maps of America, videos of head-shaking Jedis and calls for Gov. Greg Abbott to take action. Oddly, the Texan who staked his name on the cause — the former Larry Scott Kilgore, who legally changed his name to Larry Secede Kilgore and plans to run for governor in 2018 — has not tweeted a word.

Reached on his cellphone last week, Kilgore, 51, said Britain's vote had uplifted the Texas movement.

"It was a form of secession," he said. "I think the people of Texas will look at that and say: 'Man, we can have freedom; we can make our own decisions. We don't have to have the U.S. empire tell us what to do.'"

And it's not just Texas. Brexit has given a nudge to modest pre-existing secession movements in New England, as well. On Sunday, a small group of demonstrators gathered in Manchester, New Hampshire, to support "NHexit."

And in Vermont, a secession movement, the Second Vermont Republic, wrote that it had received a surge of inquiries in the days after the Brexit referendum.

Daniel Miller, president of the Texas Nationalist Movement,an organization that says it has gathered more than 250,000 pledged votes in favor of secession by that state, has been tirelessly tweeting on behalf of the idea, directing many of his posts at Abbott.

Jesse Kelly, who ran for Congress in Arizona in 2010 and 2012, has also been an enthusiastic proponent.

All of this, of course, could be tied back to Donald Trump, by none other than Trump himself, who told reporters in Scotland on Saturday that the state would never secede "because Texas loves me."

Despite the excitement online, there is no formal legal means under federal law that would allow Texas to secede. In 2013, the director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, Jon Carson, said as much in a written response to an online secession petition.

"Our founding fathers established the Constitution of the United States 'in order to form a more perfect union' through the hard and frustrating but necessary work of self-government," Carson wrote.

"They enshrined in that document the right to change our national government through the power of the ballot — a right that generations of Americans have fought to secure for all. But they did not provide a right to walk away from it."