North American Union

The North American Union (NAU) is an incredibly cool idea a theoretical (specifically, conspiracy-theoretical) union of Canada, the United States, and Mexico in an oppressive Satanic theocracy as a precursor to One world government and the New World Order. Gay marriage will[note 1] abound, dogs and cats will live together, and Real True Patriots will be thrown into FEMA concentration camps.

Some dare call it
Conspiracy
What THEY don't want
you to know!
Sheeple wakers
v - t - e

The NAU will allegedly come into existence with the assistance of unusually wide highways and badly-named currencies.[1]

Claims

Amero
See the main article on this topic: Amero

There is just about zero evidence for the proposed Union, but believers in the theory love to talk about the Amero, a fictional currency designed to be an eventual currency for such a union. One proposal for the Amero comes from a speculative paper written by an economist for the Fraser Institute, a libertarian Canadian think tank, in 1999.[2] However, it currently exists only as an artist's rendition.

NAFTA Superhighway
See the main article on this topic: NAFTA Superhighway

This is the supposed superhighway that will connect the countries. It's non-existent unless by NAFTA Superhighway, you mean I-29, I-35, I-5 and I-94.

CFR paper

Another big piece of evidence is a Council on Foreign Relations report calling for increased economic cooperation and intelligence sharing among the three countries, but as the CFR is a non-governmental organization, this has no bearing on US policy.[3] Conspiracy theorists often claim that this paper proposes a blueprint for a total political union between the three countries, but if you actually look at the proposal, it doesn't say anything about an NAU. It would essentially be similar to a customs union--no tariffs between members, common tariffs for goods coming from outside the union. Curiously, another recommendation in the paper is updated and tighter border security, which should make the wingnuts happy in theory. Also, how it never seems to occur to a NAU believer that such a union would be dominated culturally, politically, and economically by the United States is something of a mystery.

SPP

The Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) was an initiative to hold more diplomatic meetings between the US, Canada, and Mexico to work on economic, security, and environmental issues. Its recommendations were non-binding. The SPP, while held up as evidence for the NAU, can't be evidence since it no longer exists as of 2009.[4]

Proponents

In spite of the fact that it's an incredibly unrealistic idea that would never be agreed to by any of the proposed member countries, the NAU is a popular far-right boogeyman, and the theory is a favorite of several Fox News commentators, including noted anti-Hispanic ideologue Lou Dobbs[5][6] and general wingnut Glenn Beck[7] as well as occasional guest Jerome Corsi.[8] It was also promoted by none other than Phyllis Schlafly.[9] G. Gordon Liddy is not an NAU fan either. The occasional mention of the NAU will get tossed around fringe moonbat anti-NAFTA blogs and it's also something of a staple on general conspiracy sites promoting NWO, Illuminati, or international Jewish conspiracy theories.

Thirteen state legislatures have actually passed anti-NAU or anti-NAFTA superhighway declarations and a bill against the NAU was proposed in Congress but never passed.[10]

Much of the theorizing seems to be driven by anti-immigration and xenophobic sentiment. The rhetoric is reminiscent of communist world government and anti-United Nations conspiracy theories peddled by the John Birch Society.[note 2]

gollark: Or hardware ID locking.
gollark: If you implement license keys, that is more work and will be mildly annoying to people.
gollark: Is it a significant amount worth the annoyance to users?
gollark: And will probably break if I change computer or something.
gollark: I refuse to use programs which try and analyze my CPU via exotic side-channels as that's basically malware.

See also
  • Zeitgeist, which pushes this idea along with many other conspiracy theories.

Notes
  1. Which happened in the US, Canada and parts of Mexico... Finally!
  2. In fact, the JBS also runs a "Stop the NAU" campaign.

References
  1. NAU Fact Sheet (PDF)
  2. The Case for the Amero, Herbert G. Grubel
  3. Building a North American Community, CFR
  4. See the SPP's old fact sheet at the Internet Archive and its Wikipedia pageFile:Wikipedia's W.svg.
  5. Lou Dobbs slams NAU, August Review
  6. Lou Dobbs Tonight Nov. 29, 2006 transcript
  7. http://blatherwatch.blogs.com/talk_radio/2007/06/glenn-beck-stin.html
  8. NAU to replace USA?, Jerome Corsi
  9. Eagle Forum's NAU page
  10. The North American Union: Right-Wing Populist Conspiracism Rebounds, Chip Berlet
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