Today’s links The far right grows through “disaster fantasies”: Armageddon tired of this bullshit. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2009, 2014, 2019, 2023. Upcoming appearances: Where to find me. Recent appearances: Where I’ve been. Latest books: You keep readin’ em, I’ll keep writin’ ’em. Upcoming books: Like I said, I’ll keep writin’ ’em. Colophon: All the rest. The far right grows through “disaster fantasies” (permalink) The core of the prepper fantasy: “What if the world ended in the precise way that made me the most important person?” The ultra-rich fantasize about emerging from luxury bunkers with an army of mercs and thumbdrives full of bitcoin to a world in ruins that they restructure using their “leadership skills.” The ethnographer Rich Miller spent his career embedding with preppers, eventually writing the canonical book of the fantasies that power their obsessions, Dancing at Armageddon: Survivalism and Chaos in Modern Times: https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo3637295.html Miller recounts how the disasters that preppers prepare for are the disasters that will call upon their skills, like the water chemist who’s devoted his life to preparing to help his community recover from a terrorist attack on its water supply; and who, when pressed, has no theory as to why any terrorist would stage such an attack: https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/22/preppers-are-larpers/#preppers-unprepared Prepping is what happens when you are consumed by the fantasy of a terrible omnicrisis that you can solve, personally. It’s an individualistic fantasy, and that makes it inherently neoliberal. Neoliberalism’s mind-zap is to convince us…Pluralistic: The far right grows through "disaster fantasies" (25 Nov 2024)