These preppers have go bags, guns and a fear of global disaster.
Theyre also left-wing
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The day after President Donald Trump was elected in 2016, Eric
Shonkwiler looked at his hiking bag to figure out what supplies he
had. I began to look at that as a resource for escape, should that
need to happen, he said.
He didnt have the terminology for it
at the time, but this backpack was his bug-out bag essential
supplies for short-term survival. It marked the start of his journey
into prepping. In his Ohio home, which he shares with his wife and a
Pomeranian dog, Rosemary, he now has a six-month supply of food and
water, a couple of firearms and a brood of chickens. Resources to
bridge the gap across a disaster, he said.
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Margaret Killjoys entry point was a bleak warning in
2016 from a scientist friend, who told her climate change was pushing
the global food system closer than ever to collapse. Killjoy started
collecting food, water and generators. She bought a gun and learned
how to use it. She started a prepping podcast, Live Like the World is
Dying, and grew a community.
Prepping has long been dominated by
those on the political right. The classic stereotype, albeit not
always accurate, is of the lone wolf with a basement full of Spam, a
wall full of guns, and a mind full of conspiracy theories.
Shonkwiler and Killjoy belong to a much smaller part of the
subculture: They are left-wing preppers. This group is also preparing
for a doom-filled future, and many also have guns, but they say their
prepping emphasizes community and mutual aid over bunkers and
isolationism.
In an era of barreling crises from wars to
climate change some say prepping is becoming increasingly appealing
to those on the left.
The roots of modern-day prepping in the United
States go back to the 1950s, when fears of nuclear war reached a fever
pitch.
The 1970s saw the emergence of the survivalist movement,
which dwindled in the 1990s as it became increasingly associated with
an extreme-right subculture steeped in racist ideology.
A third
wave followed in the early 2000s, when the term prepper began to be
adopted more widely, said Michael Mills, a social scientist at Anglia
Ruskin University, who specializes in survivalism and doomsday
prepping cultures. Numbers swelled following big disasters such as
9/11, Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the 2008 financial crisis.
A
watershed moment for right-wing preppers was the election of Barack
Obama in 2008, Mills said. For those on the left, it was Trumps 2016
election.
Preppers of all political stripes are usually motivated
by a foggy cloud of fear rather than a belief in one specific
doomsday scenario playing out, Mills said. Broad anxieties tend to
swirl around the possibility of economic crises, pandemics, natural
disasters, war and terrorism.
Weve hit every one of those
since the start of this century, said Anna Maria Bounds, a sociology
professor at Queens College, who has written a book about New Yorks
prepper subculture. These events have solidified many preppers fears
that, in times of crisis, the government would be overwhelmed,
under-prepared and unwilling to help, she said.
