FEAR IN THE CITY by Kurt Saxon copyright 1981
Since I've been promoting survivalism I've been visited by
dozens of TV crews, talked on dozens of radio shows and made
several in-person TV talk and news programs. I've also given
numerous newspaper and magazine interviews. All the others
prominent in our field have likewise been interviewed by all
segments of the media. Many journalists write us up with no
contact except what they read about us.
A recurring theme runs through this media coverage. Fear.
But the funny thing is that, according to the media, we
survivalists are the ones who are afraid. We are portrayed as
terrified, kill-crazy psychotics, unable to cope with city life.
The hustle and bustle of urban life have somehow unhinged us.
We've fled Heaven and each has sought his own rural Hell.
We are literally holed up in our primitive wildernesses. We
are armed to the teeth against city people who would never leave
paradise to threaten our poor homesteads. We all preach doom and
threaten all those who would share our wretchedness.
Almost without exception, interviewers belabor the idea that
we would shoot to defend ourselves. No media representative visits
me without insisting on seeing my arsenal. Many of my
non-survivalist neighbors have more weapons than I. But they are
collectors and hunters and I'm just a murderous fiend.
One might ask; since most survivalists have left the cities
and so are no danger to city folk, why the media blitz against
urban dropouts? Also, if city folk are right in believing they
live in the best of all possible worlds, why don't they just ignore
us? Besides, it's unkind to make fun of us poor crazies afflicted
with various forms of anxiety neuroses.
It simply makes no sense for the media to be obsessed with
urban dropouts unless the mere fact that we have withdrawn is a
threat to the cities. But, you see, we are a threat to the
cities. Brain drain. White flight. Eroding urban tax bases.
Plain, gut-level jealousy towards those able to leave their
respective Disneylands for dummies for cleaner, safer areas. I
could go on and on.
A big factor in painting us as vicious lunatics is to use us
as an example of the kind of people who refuse to share the fate of
those who stay behind. We are the rats leaving the sinking ship.
We are the non-supportive. We can't stand the gaff. We lack
compassion for the social dependents we abandon on the doorsteps of
those with a stake in the cities. All this is simply because we
refuse to be the victims of demanding parasites, muggers, burglars,
etc. Every one who leaves makes city folk more heavily taxed and
more likely to be criminally assaulted, due to the decrease in
potential victims.
So the fear is not with us; it is with them. The hostility is
not from us; it is from them. So it stands to reason that if they
can convince others that we are degenerate goofs, less city folk
will be inclined to imitate us.
The following is a reprint of an example of naked fear. Lynda
Hurst is afraid and hostile. So terrified, in fact that she has
lost control and so writes like an addled hysteric.
Although she had access to enough of my material to know that
most of it is non-violent, she singled out that dealing with
defense. This was expected. But to attack VICTORIA shows she is
irrational. The most telling line is, "Women who find uses for
stale bread and are able to recognize alfalfa should be the first
ones Kurt and the boys blow away".
There's your key. A hatred of competence and independence
from the collective. We "boys" might well blow away those who
would loot us, but Lynda and her ilk would rather those of her own
sex who are thrifty and self-reliant be destroyed.
So let the Lynda Hursts rage against the competent on behalf
of the parasitic. Let them soil themselves while calling us
fear-crazed. Let them infer that survivalism is some sort of
social treason. They are the collective against the individual.
The have-nots against the haves. The doomed against the
survivalists. So when they criticize your morality, your courage,
your patriotism, just consider the source.