<p>Scholars have examined the discourses of violent nationalist groups to illustrate their justification of violence models of national identity and depiction of danger. Drawing on Nancy Fraser’s critical theory of social justice, we argue that the justice-based claims of these groups are fundamentally undermined by the twin problems of reification and displacement. We operationalize Fraser’s concepts into a clear set of transferable criteria for analyzing the discourse of violent separatist movements by taking separatist militias that emerged in Cameroon’s Anglophone crisis after 2016 as a case study. Moving beyond a simple catalog of grievances, the study develops a novel analytical framework to scrutinize the discourses of these groups to demonstrate the framework’s utility. The analysis shows how the Anglophone separatist discourse reifies the Anglophone identity and displaces other structural causes. It also shows that the militia pushes the blame from the state onto internal “enemies” and “enablers” within the Anglophone community, thereby replicating the very patterns of marginalization the movement purports to solve. We conclude that this nationalist rhetoric, while effective for mobilization, ultimately enforces a flawed, exclusionary, and self-defeating vision of justice. .The proposed framework offers a valuable tool for scholars and analysts to dissect the logic of other separatist movements globally.</p>