North Idaho has long been home to those seeking to escape the looming collapse of America. This is a region doused in frontier spirit; a land where people openly carry guns, and where bounty hunters still operate, tracking down fugitives hoping to bolt into Canada. It is here, on rugged fringes stalked by mountain lions, bears and wolves, that the American Redoubt was born.
The Redoubt is both a prophecy and a movement: a pre-emptive response to the anarchy on the horizon. Economic meltdown, nuclear war, the lawlessness that will follow the total defunding of the police — all, its followers warn, could bring an end to American civilisation. And so they have started to prepare. First, by relocating to easily defensible ranches in the wilderness; and second, by stocking up on food, firearms and fuel. While their country teeters on the brink of bedlam, they are building a fortress.
If the Redoubt has a Messiah, it is James Wesley, Rawles. (The comma is an affectation.) A former US Army intelligence officer, Rawles has spent decades preaching about America’s imminent implosion to thousands of Christian conservatives, and the importance of them retreating to the mountains. They first flocked to him in 1998, after his book Patriots, both a survivalist manifesto and a novel about the country’s descent into disorder, became a surprise bestseller. The Daily Beast called it “the most dangerous novel in America”; others claimed it “could one day mean the difference between life and death”. Such hyperbole only widened his appeal.
Every Redoubter has read Rawles — yet few have ever seen him in person. He disguises himself when he needs to emerge from his secret ranch to get supplies. Otherwise, he communicates through his blog to 320,000 readers a week. It’s a peculiar assortment of survivalist tips and Christian precepts: recent posts consider the benefits of stun guns, the southern border crisis, and a recipe for potato soup.
It was in 2011 that Rawles issued his definitive call to arms, informing his readers that America’s death spiral had reached its climax. Following a news report about a couple in Florida who were unable to pay for a road toll using cash, he decided the time had come for “good men to take action”— to “move to the mountains” and join the Redoubt.
Rawles’s inspiration was the Schweizer Reduit of the late-19th century, when the Swiss Government, faced with the increasing likelihood of a German invasion, proposed the construction of Alpine fortifications from where its army could make a final stand. This time, however, as Rawles explained in a clarion essay, the threats were far more profound. For decades, he wrote, secular capitalism had defiled the Christian-conservative values on which America had been built. Just as in Europe before the First World War, the forces of modernity could no longer be tamed. Instead, civilisation had become a “thin veneer”. The centre was not holding, and the United States of America was degenerating into a state of nature.
If it sounded like a programme for religious separatism, that’s because it was: “I am a separatist, but on religious lines, not racial ones,” Rawles wrote. The reason for his Christian criteria was as much pragmatic as it was theological: “In calamitous times, with a few exceptions, it will only be the God-fearing who will continue to be law-abiding.”
With low-density populations and abundant hydro-electric power, Rawles decided Idaho, Montana and the eastern sectors of Oregon and Washington were the perfect places to retreat. Neighbouring North and South Dakota, he explained, would not be as easy to defend: their vast plains and steppes would provide ample room for large armies to manoeuvre.
The American Redoubt
Once the call went out, the great migration started. Dedicated estates agents sprung up, offering to find plots of land or existing ranches that are sufficiently remote and easy to defend. One claims to help 3,000 fleeing Americans each year. “We do not service liberals,” boasts another. By 2015, an estimated 10,000 people had moved to the area.
And yet, as far as “community” goes, the Redoubt is a limited one. There is no official membership, and residents often live miles from civilisation. For Rawles, a “constitutionalist libertarian”, this is intentional: he sees Redoubters as neither sheep nor predatory wolves, but sheepdogs who think independently and protect their family when necessary.
But in recent years, this lack of organisational structure has allowed more inflammatory characters to gain prominence. Today, one of the Redoubt’s most notorious supporters is Matt Shea, a disgraced former Washington lawmaker who has distributed a manifesto for biblical warfare that proposed killing all males who “do not yield”. There is also John Jacob Schmidt, the host of Radio Free Redoubt, who recently warned that the rest of the country is “lucky we’re peaceful”.
Yet the wider Redoubter population can seem similarly aggressive as they police local councils and schools, making sure they don’t overstep their federal remits.Redoubt News offers a flavour of their bêtes noirs: “woke violence”, Big Pharma and government tyranny. Viewed as an offensive, rather than a defensive structure, it’s not hard to see why the Redoubt, and the man behind it, have become a threat to liberal America.
***
“He’s a huge deal. He’s the Godfather.” Eric Craig’s eyes light up when I ask him about Rawles. Eric is one of a number of specialist estate agents for fleeing Redoubters. Seven years ago, he was one of them: fed up with California’s liberal approach to drugs — “you could smell pot everywhere!” — he upped sticks to conservative Idaho. We meet at a coffee shop in Sandpoint, a former railroad town on Lake Pend Oreille.
Eric sits with his back to the wall, monitoring each customer as they come in — he’s ex-military. But for the most part, he wears his defence training lightly. One minute, he’s joking goofily with the kids behind the counter; the next, he’s explaining why military-grade bunkers are overrated (you’re a sitting duck).
For Eric, business really boomed after the 2020 election. “During the transition, between November and January, I sold more homes than I can count.” The main reason, he says, is because people were terrified that a Biden presidency could accelerate America’s downfall. Next summer, he’s expecting a wave of Redoubters to arrive for similar reasons. “What happens if Biden becomes President again? Or Kamala Harris? Many people think they’re going to try and steal the election. Will the US allow that to stand?”
His clients have bigger concerns, too. “The threats they cite are like a flavour of the month. Sometimes it’s a nuclear strike, or the Chinese invading, or government overreach.” He describes one customer who believes the poles are about to shift, causing tidal waves more than a thousand feet high. “So he bought a house on the top of a mountain,” Eric says, half-rolling his eyes.
A property on the Idaho-Montana border.
For the most part, though, Redoubter ranches are more modest affairs. Drive a mile down the private roads that disappear into Idaho’s forests, past the “NO ENTRY” signs, and you’re more likely to find a homestead flanked by giant solar panels. There, in its 20 acres of land, you’ll spot an off-grid generator, a purpose-built well, a few animals and a vegetable garden; inside, you’ll find a storage room lined with tins and a giant freezer filled to the brim. Everything, from the curved driveway to the sightlines through the trees, is designed with security in mind. “It’s best to bury your propane tanks underground,” Eric advises, so that an intruder can’t shoot them.
Yet he is keen to make clear that extreme isolation isn’t an absolute priority. “Less than 5% of Redoubters just want to be left the hell alone. People like and need to develop a community of neighbours and friends who can help them, especially when times get tough.”
Two of those friends are Brian Welch and Patrick Devine, who have separate ranches a few miles away near Athol. Both lived in Los Angeles when it was crippled by looting during the Rodney King riots in 1992. And both lived in the city when its social contract was fractured by a series of earthquakes in the same decade. Today, by contrast, the three of us are sitting outside a bar in Bayview, an empty village guarded by mountains on three sides and a lake on the other. The water doesn’t move, transfixed.
Brian, a devout Christian, describes himself as “a Redoubter before the Redoubt even started”, having escaped California with his family in 1993. He’s a God-fearing man whose life is centred on his ranch and family. “I’ve been married to the same woman for 40 years,” he says without me asking.
His journey to Idaho started in the high desert above Los Angeles. “I used to have to drive across the San Andreas fault line every day,” he says, describing his commute to work. “If another earthquake happened [as one did the following year], I could have been cut off from my family completely.” Los Angeles, he explains, was already a tinderbox. When the Rodney King riots erupted, Brian was caught in the city and surrounded by a gang of looters who only backed off after he pulled out his gun. He put his house for sale and waited for a sign from God — it came six days later, when someone bought it straightaway.
Why does he think so many have joined him? Brian quotes Rawles: “There is a very thin veneer of civilisation’, and its edges are starting to peel off. You can feel it.” Even in the Redoubt? Yes, he says, before describing a recent incident in nearby Coeur D’Alene, when a car thief attempted to run over its 74-year-old owner. Then comes the twist: “The owner jumped on the hood and shot him dead through the windshield!”
This would seem to be the Redoubter way of dealing with crime: to take matters into your own hands. He goes on to describe the tense months after George Floyd’s death, when it was rumoured that busloads of Antifa activists were travelling to Coeur D’Alene to hold a Black Lives Matter protest. In response, groups of vigilantes armed with semi-automatic weapons patrolled the streets on successive evenings. “If you guys are thinking of coming to Coeur D’Alene, to riot or loot, you’d better think again,” said one of those involved. “Because we ain’t having it in our town.” The Antifa threat never materialised.
Patrick knows all about such threats. As a former emergency medical technician in LA, he’s seen it all: three earthquakes, one well-known riot, and the heyday of the city’s gang wars in the Nineties. “We’d walk into the middle of full-on shootouts,” he says casually. “We were always getting shot at…” A marriage, a financial crash and a few attempts to relocate later, he discovered Rawles’s work and decided to get out of Dodge. “I never want to be a victim,” he adds.
Patrick Devine: “So far, nobody has missed.”
Instead, Patrick now teaches emergency first aid and firearms skills to fellow Redoubters. One of the tasks he sets them is to shoot a cardboard assailant standing behind a hostage with a loved one’s face stuck on it. “So far, nobody has missed.”
He also regularly meets friends to train them with their firearms and coordinate strategies in case their ranches are attacked. “There’s not much police around here,” he explains. “Perhaps two officers covering 50 square miles.” And, he adds, “they’re pretty relaxed if you need to shoot someone to defend yourself”.
It’s not all about guns. Patrick, like many Redoubters, has several dogs who can be “somewhat aggressive”. He clarifies: “If you’re dumb enough to walk into my house, it’s going to be an ugly moment in your life. You might not get out alive.”
***
James Wesley, Rawles wouldn’t let me walk anywhere near his house: he doesn’t trust the media. His only previous face-to-face interview was with a friend who worked for a now-defunct electronics magazine. Since then, “any time that mainstream American journalists interview me or write about the American Redoubt movement, they try to mischaracterise me and the movement as racist”. He sends me a link to a blog post that makes it “abundantly clear that I reject racism”.
Sitting across from me in a diner off Route 95 somewhere between Coeur D’Alene, Idaho, and the Canadian border, neither Rawles nor his wife Lily come across as far-Right Rambos: they have the air of geography teachers who have retired to their local church group. “Jim”, with a white wispy beard and a pair of hearing aids; and wide-eyed Lily, with a tanned, expressive face that dances gleefully from one eccentricity to another. She orders a burger patty; he drinks a glass of lemonade mixed with huckleberry syrup.
Rawles’s apocalyptic fears, he tells me, were born of a childhood spent in Livermore, California, home to the National Laboratory that designed atomic weapons during the Cold War. “I grew up in the shadow of the nuclear bomb,” he says. Unable to follow his father into the Air Force because of his poor eyesight, Rawles became a Military Intelligence Officer, where he served in Cold War Germany and saw “how fragile the world is, how close it is to systemic collapse”.
He arrived in Idaho in 1993 after resigning his commission on the day Clinton became President:“I didn’t like the idea of him as Commander-in-chief.” There he focused on writing his books and survivalist tips; it was his first, late wife, “the Memsahib”, who suggested in 2005 he start a blog.
And so his gospel was handed down via SurvivalBlog, the daily posts uninterrupted until one was published by the Memsahib in 2009. In it, she revealed she had two months to live and wanted to find “a new wife for my husband”, describing him as “extremely devoted”; “punctual and neat”; “a worrier”. She issued a checklist of qualifications: “Be a devout, church-going Christian”; “Willing to live at the Rawles Ranch”; “Willing to put up with Jim’s eccentricities”. Applicants were instructed to write in.
Of the six women who did, one was Lily, a widow and avid reader of the blog. Six months passed before Rawles replied. They spoke on the phone, hit it off, and Rawles travelled to meet her at her home “somewhere in New England”. Weeks later, they married and returned to Idaho with Lily’s daughters.
Ten years on, they run the ranch and the blog, breaking only for the Saturday Messianic Sabbath, when they attend a Bible study group. The whereabouts of their fastness — with its chickens, sheep, cows, horses and orchards — remains a closely guarded secret, to protect them when society eventually collapses and intruders seek them out. The only people they frequently meet belong to their Bible group or are neighbours with whom they semi-regularly trade produce: hay, meat and preserved goods. “Mostly we just want to be left alone by the Government,” says Lily. “We just want to take care of ourselves: to raise our families and enjoy them and be healthy.”
But the Redoubt isn’t just an idyll — it is also a militarised fortification to fall back on and defend. And it’s in discussing this that Rawles shows what the Memsahib called his “eccentricities”. When I ask about impending cataclysms, he describes how the microcircuits in all modern devices could be destroyed by an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) caused by a nuclear explosion in the earth’s atmosphere. It is a common fear among the Redoubters I meet; they invariably point to the nuclear capacity of Russia and China, as well as the US Government task force dedicated to preparing citizens for the inevitable EMP.
Rawles’s greatest concern, however, is economic collapse brought on by the size of America’s national debt — and the lawlessness that would follow. “My fear is that we’re just a few meals away from anarchy,” he says. “Inflation is massively underreported. People are not keeping up. Tent cities are appearing everywhere. I think that’s where we’re headed…”
A road sign off Route 95.
And what of the Redoubt’s political and religious criteria? The flags and signs I saw on rural ranch paths — “Fuck Biden”; “Trump 2024: Fuck your feelings” — suggest it is little more than a sanctuary for disillusioned Christian nationalists, or a case of “Donald Trump voters building a new state”. Lily fiercely corrects me. While she voted for him in 2020, “Trump is now part of the whole system… Then there was the vaccine. He used to be against them, but now he’s not. He lied.” She looks away in disgust.
Rawles didn’t vote in the last election either; in fact, he hasn’t voted for 15 years “because of the privacy issues involved in registering”. He probably would have voted for Trump in 2020, but now doesn’t trust him. “I don’t like his associations and business connections.” “Epstein!” Lily clarifies. Neither will vote next year.
But many Redoubters clearly are embittered Trump supporters. Twenty miles up the road, a giant sign — “Welcome to Trump County” — watches over the highway, while Radio Free Redoubt dedicates its show on Tuesdays to praising America’s true “commander-in-chief”. And then there are those such as Matt Shea, who called for people to prepare for “total war” after the 2020 election was “stolen”.
“You can pick friends but not your family,” Rawles responds, not entirely convincingly. “I did worry about neo-Nazis when I started the movement… But the Redoubt is a philosophy, not a political party or a club. It is a form of leaderless resistance. All I did was wind up a toy and let it go…”
After lunch, Rawles suggests we drive into the mountains to see the amber-autumn splendour of Idaho’s tamarack trees up close. It’s another of his eccentricities; he giddily points them out as if they are magical creatures, his apocalyptic disquiet briefly forgotten.
But it’s impossible to shake it off completely: the oppressive sense of doom, and the pessimism that underscores his movement. On one level, the Redoubt appears to be little more than “political alienation with more forest and guns”. But its tragedy also runs deeper.
The idea of alienation carries the hope that one day the alienated will find a voice — that they are the product of circumstances that can be reversed. Rawles’s Redoubt, by contrast, seems an acceptance of defeat. After all, it is premised on the belief that America can’t be saved. That its people and their representatives are the cause, rather than the solution, to its very real crises. That the nation, along with its citizens, is Fallen.
When I raise this, Rawles is adamant. “God said we’re not of this world.” He pauses. “I’m not looking forward to things falling apart, but I’m ready for it when it happens.”
This article is overwhelmingly, relentlessly clichéd. I’m afraid someone will read this and think it’s an accurate description of all but a few of the residents of what’s sometimes called The Inland Empire (north Idaho, parts of Washington and Montana). It is not even representative of what the author refers to as Redoubters.
I lived in north Idaho in the late 1980s, and am very familiar with Coeur d’Alene and the Lake Pend Oreille region. Mr. Furedi’s article is of a type that was frequently written back then describing all the “eccentric” characters escaping the madness of American life and imminent societal collapse.
Yes, there are some sketchy characters in north Idaho. Some of them are very serious in their beliefs and best left alone. But there are also many decent people who are alienated from modern America and want to raise a family according to a firm set of standards rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Yes, they might listen to the opinions of the likes of James Rawles and I realize it’s very easy (even fashionable) to mock such people and their alleged “eccentricities”.
Here’s a story I haven’t yet seen written. It doesn’t have the headline-grabbing qualities of “R*dnecks Awaiting Armageddon” but here it is: ordinary people of limited means create a new life in rural Idaho and Montana. The article would describe how they build those rather impressive ranches in the middle of nowhere, how they learn the necessary skills or trade labor with neighbors, how they learn the State rules for homeschooling their children then proceed to homeschool them, including teaching them, in some instances, advanced placement science classes (equivalent to first year college classes), how they learn to do basic veterinary procedures for their animals, how to blacksmith, how to preserve canned goods, how to…you get the idea.
Maybe if the author had made an honest attempt to get to know the people who choose the lifestyle he reports, how accomplished many of them are, instead of just reporting on the eccentrics among them, I could take this article more seriously. And if he’s not convinced he’s just rehashing tired clichés I advise him to google Ruby Ridge and related stories from thirty years ago.
I didn’t get the impression the author was mocking them. No doubt he thinks they’re eccentric, but not a threat or anything like that. He emphasized that they just want to be left alone.
I’ve visited the Inland Empire. It’s spectacular down there. Coeur d’Alene, on the other hand, is a ridiculously expensive tourist trap.
In the decades ago I lived in the area; Coeur d’Alene had a chapter of ‘Dikes on Bikes’. Rugged women on big Harleys – maybe not a ‘Biker Gang’, I do not think they are ‘MC’ patched, but they look the part, and one can be sure messing with them would be a very bad idea. It also reflected on the citizens – not small minded; a ‘do what you want as long as it does not bother others’ mindset.
I always thought they were a great example of the cosmology there – quite a different set than the London LGBTQIA+, haha…..
Both Coeur d’Alene and its counterpart city, Spokane, across the Washington border have become refuges for fairly affluent people escaping the coastal cities. That area is, as you say, breathtakingly beautiful although the harsh winters are challenging.
I was just up in Nanton, AB for a family event and people were thrilled that the highs were around 5 Celsius (low 40s F). But the Chinook almost overtook the Remembrance Day at the Bomber Command Museum, blowing hard at flags and people as the ceremony ended.
The irony of these guys is that the extreme libertarian individualism in the US (the devil take the hind most philosophy) that they advocate is what’s lead to the chaos they want to escape from.
Really? Far from a ‘devil take the hindmost’ philosophy, I’ve yet to meet an “extreme” US libertarian, and I’ve met quite a few, who doesn’t believe in the importance of social networks and/or Christian charity when things go wrong for people.
The now deeply unfashionable Victorian concept of “deserving poor vs. undeserving poor” is alive and well in such circles. i.e. if you won’t work, feel free to starve; but if you can’t work, there is an abundance of charity in the kind of communities the article writes about.
I totally agree with you. It is reminiscent of similar pieces in the New York Times (when I used to read them a long time ago) – an attempt to be open-minded yet dripping with pre-conceptions. As one commenter below said, it shows more of the writer than the subject he’s writing about. I feel such an immense distance between them that he might just as well be reporting on aliens.
You are not paying attention. They have harmed the entire State, including State government and State laws, county government and laws, city government and laws, and virtually everyone that lives in the region. You are likely not aware of what they have done.
Well put. News flash: there are cranks. There are evangelical Christian cranks. Some of them put forth apocalyptic scenarios. Some of them devoutly hope for their apocalypse. But: be scared, be very scared?
While I was at university, on a work placement in Calgary, a group of us set off on a road trip “to the town in Idaho with the silliest name, to get a potato”.
We chose Cocolalla, which turned out to be tiny, and passed through Coeur d’Alene before looping back through Montana. At that point the speed limit was there was still “Reasonable and Prudent”.
This is where leaders on the Left have lost the plot.
Such events as the one covered by the author are typical in the history of our species, whether it’s a sect that establishes a settlement at Qumran or these folks who establish a settlement in the backwoods of Idaho – each quietly awaiting the end of days or a messiah – and rarely mingling with others.
Such historical events are too numerous to count.
But the settlement at Qumran would never achieve the critical mass to become another Jerusalem. And the backwoods of Idaho will never have the critical mass to rival Washington DC.
Therefore, I don’t care about such groups whether on the Left or Right as long as they mind their own business and follow the law of the land.
And yet leaders on the Left have spent an inordinate amount of time and treasure navel-gazing on people such as this and other completely-disconnected folks in the US.
And because their focus was on something that doesn’t matter, these leaders on the Left didn’t notice the serpents they were shaking hands with and mingling with on a daily basis. The serpents that took over their (and the nation’s) interests within key national US institutions and societies.
Witness the anti-semite movement at University, within business, and within government that dwarfs anything seen as a threat from Idaho. Anti-semites have been legitimized for years by the leaders on the Left. Furthermore, these anti-semites have acquired massive societal influence, have been positioned as leaders within key national institutions, and are educating the next generation of anti-semites who have no interest in a balanced read of history.
My father-in-law is Jewish. He has had a very successful life in the US, and his family had escaped Poland around the time of WWII. He pulled me aside at a family event in October and whispered to me about something we never talk about…the holocaust. He whispered the word – first time he uttered the word to me – in a way that communicated his dread and incomprehension. He was successful in the US because we have lived in a pluralistic society. One that celebrated or at least ignored group differences.
Now we live in a society dominated by the Left’s obsession with group guilt and that outright persecutes “The Other” with a smug self-righteous air of superiority.
These people are those who have been conditioned to think in terms of group intersectionality grids – to cheer or use sophistry and whataboutism when they hear that innocent Jewish babies were slow-roasted in their own parent’s oven by happy Palestinian forces that were sent into the sovereign nation of Israel during a peaceful ceasefire in a surprise act of war by the Palestinian Government of the Gaza Strip.
How did the social acceptance of anti-semites happen?
By leaders placing group identification above the individual.
For how do pathological tyrants rise?
They focus on emphasizing group guilt. This disconnects their fellow travelers (the overwhelming majority who feel empathy) from the pain they are inflicting upon individuals and families – it dehumanizes the individual. As atrocities mount, so does cognitive dissonance within many of the persecutors who have a conscience. But the power structure and critical mass is already established by then so the psychopaths who have no empathy continue to rise as they purge their fellow travelers who start having doubts. Doubts about pursuing group guilt because they see the pain and death they are inflicting upon individuals due to some arbitrary group identification.
It’s the psychopaths that inevitably rise to the top when group guilt is the guiding ideological light of a movement. They are the only ones who value power and feel no empathy to the point that slow-roasting babies in an oven is a joyous event as long as it gives them more power.
The Left’s obsession with groups and intersectionality grids identified by their High Priests at prestigious Universities is the most likely event to lead to the next ‘Hitler’ if left unchecked.
With this in mind, a story about some backwoods Idahoans seems distant…because it is.
There is another story that was failed to mention. How false ideology and religious indoctrination embracing complete fiction resulted in thousands of people withdrawing to remote regions of America. This narrative is real, and very advanced, and would need to include how dangerously deluded such people are, having refused to educate and examine their own belief systems and the problems this causes for a community, a family, and a region, even a State and a Nation.
I know these people, I live in the idiotic Redoubt, and I’ve studied their ideology and religion at great length. They are a delusional people who pose circular arguments and specious reasoning to justify their hatred, distrust, anger and preparations for civil war. It is all based in religious indoctrination and misapplication.
In America, it is ok to be both stupid and wrong, but it is not okay to go any further with this when it deeply impacts everyone else. The harm these people cause is enormous, infecting the local schools and school boards, city council, county government and even State laws. They feel entirely justified to force their ideology and religious indoctrination upon everyone else, even to the point of removing the rights of others (look at Idaho’s abortion laws and actions for current examples), but see no contradiction to the objections to their interference and actions raised by anyone else.
It’s also ok in America to be ignorant and blind, but their actions are now causing harm, even death to others.
Do I know these people? Intimately. I’ve lived here for decades. Their delusions are monumental, dangerous and deeply misguided because of rampant propaganda and misinformation. It is generally all rooted in Christian fiction and end-times mythology, where they have embraced endless false representations and outright lies, and seek to force this worldview on everyone else. This is what makes them all dangerous because they are acting out their fantasies.
Delusions have consequences and they have no excuse but refuse all efforts at accountability and responsibility for the harm their actions have caused the entire region.
Ironically, they are not serving “God” or “Christ” as they are entirely contradictory to the biblical message, while pretending that they alone are the “true servants of truth”. Nothing could be further from the truth. They do not at all represent Christianity, faithfulness, integrity, honesty or obedience, all characteristics found within true Christians.
I am not mocking them either, but I am appalled at their ignorance of facts, history, and their shocking willingness to embrace outright fiction. It is evident always. If you live here, you know this. Their anger and mistrust and rhetoric is utterly ridiculous and nearly inescapable. They proudly post their delusions in local papers, at meetings and public forums.
They do not really “want to be left alone” as many claim, they want to force their ideology and religious indoctrination upon everyone else, this is why they are attempting to take over the Legislature, city councils and school boards. Their every action is to not be left alone or respect the rights of other, but to take away the rights of others and to force their ideology and religion on us all.
And worst of all, they are preparing to engage in violence against other Americans, especially those that they dislike or do not agree with. They are training, buying, practicing and preparing on a massive scale. I know a lot about Rawles, Shea and all of these so-called “leaders” in this movement and anyone who does not realize how dangerous they have become is simply delusional. Local businesses know that you don’t publically oppose these people because they have influence in the region. You will be ostracized, even assaulted, certainly verbally so. They preach and practice fear, paranoia, distrust and anger all the time. It’s thick, overpowering and pervasive. Those of us who understand their delusional worldview and mindset avoid them at all costs. Attempts to educate them to a balanced worldview based upon facts vs fiction have failed. They’re not interested in truth, and prefer their own echo-chambers of hostility and distrust.
They are not sitting “quietly on the side lines minding their own business” either. This is a complete lie. This movement is part of numerous other movements all around the country that seek to isolate themselves from reality while embracing the fiction of “patriotism” and Christian “nationalism”.
Anyone who has studied knows there is no such thing as a Christian nationalist. They are not patriots either, they are actually traitors to America and the Constitution (compare their actions and beliefs and what they are doing to what the Constitution actually says), a “lawless” people who demand their “rights” be protected while denying the rights (and laws) that govern others, all the while providing the illusion and pretense that they “support America”. No, they don’t support “America” at all, they only support their own warped ideology and demands ON America. They want to withdraw from the real America, even with violence if they must. Given the chance, they will, they are all quite literally waiting for their “trigger” event that take action.
If you have not attended their private meetings, gathering, exhibits, gun shows and the like, you will not fully understand what is unfolding in the Redoubt region. But this is not unique to “here”, and is very much expanding throughout the entire country. Hotbeds of unrest, rebellion, delusions and Christian nationalism. Rural families are scared at the changes they are forcing upon these areas. These are not “rebels”, but lawless people who do not respect anyone else’s rights. They do not represent the real America, only themselves and the false ideology they have embraced. This is the real danger to the country and to the region.
They don’t respect the right to vote, or have equal representation or even the right for other people to be left alone – from them. They are actually enemies to America and seek to return this country to an oppressive age where only their ideology can be embraced. Forget about woman’s rights, or the rights of children, or the rights of anyone who disagrees with them, including the media, State government or any other institution. Minorities have no place in their worldview. Immigrants are enemies. Everything they do is filtered through their ideology and gross misunderstanding of religion.
If you believe in God and the Bible, God is not on their side as they suppose, they are reprobates, having embraced a strong delusion and believed endless lies. But if you are a non-believer, it is very evident that these people are increasingly dangerous, delusional and deeply misguided. They need truth, not falsehoods, not paranoia, not knee-jerk reactionary hatred and anger and “leaders” who lie and falsely misrepresent, but they have shown no willingness whatsoever to self-examine their own ideology and mischaracterizations.
You cannot separate their religion from their movement either. It’s all wrapped up together in a tightly bound paranoia-filled worldview, which is why they are isolationists and distrustful. Their prophets are frauds, their indoctriction and brainwashing very evident, they are in a cult and don’t even know it. This is not America and never has been.
So interesting. This is where we are today. Each “side” accuses the other of exactly the same things. The left excoriates their unbelievers in exactly the same language, accusations and exhortations. Apostates, ignorant, selfish, backward, bitter clingers…. Instead of retreating, the left attacks, destroys, libels, cancels. Two sides, one of distrust and disillusion, the other of race based hatred for the other. They are geographically opposite as well. Urban, collective dwelling vs. Rural, independent living. It used to be okay until academia and government decided differently.
“…false ideology and religious indoctrination embracing complete fiction resulted in thousands of people withdrawing to remote regions of America.”
Fascinating observation, Mr Henry.
As a quick nod to evolution placing religious tendencies and ‘false doctrine’ deep within the genes of our species regardless of whether one follows a specific disfavored religion…are you a Boston Red Sox or New York Yankees fan?
Tread carefully with your answer and depending on which ballpark you visit. True believers and their rites of worship are everywhere!
Okay, back to the discussion.
If one studies these disassociation movements from the beginning of history to today, one can see that a lack of physical critical mass overwhelmingly causes them to die out. Every few years they get replaced by the ‘next shiny thing’ that new believers think is the next End-of-Day sign or another Messiah. Whether at Qumron or the backwoods of Idaho.
I remember when people were moving to remote places of the US because Russia was going to nuke America…then when the USSR fell they moved to remote places because of ‘zombies’ and infectious diseases. Now we’re back to nukes.
Isolated false ideology alone doesn’t lead to catastrophe when the followers isolate themselves and die out or get disillusioned with time.
Now for a history lesson…
The first thing the Khmer Rouge did in Cambodia when they took over Phnom Penh was to have all of the people leave the city for the villages of their ancestry for a ‘census’ and to await further instructions.
Why?
Because Pol Pot and his henchmen knew that any possible challenge to their power would come not just from a competing unifying ideology (whether false or not) but also from where there’s a physical critical mass of people to quickly learn and follow the new ideology before Pol Pot could muster a response. Once the people were disbursed across the countryside, they were easily controlled by merely a few Khmer Rouge soldiers in each village.
Again, when people choose to leave the critical mass of cities and their quick-distribution centers for ideology (universities and think tanks), they take their infectious ideas with them as they self-isolate. So their ideas die with them.
Which is why I don’t care. As long as they follow the law.
Instead, I worry about movements that (a) have a pernicious false ideology that disassociates the followers from empathy concerning the worth of individuals in society (e.g. the pernicious intersectionality grids that are used to punish arbitrary group guilt regardless of the value and qualities of an individual arbitrarily assigned to said group), (b) the physical critical mass of people (in cities and mega-regions), and (c) a very efficient ideology distribution network to this physically-located critical mass of people so they are quickly infected with such delusions (e.g. radical anti-semites that hold powerful professorships at prestigious universities and in think tanks and that follow the false ideologies of group-guilt intersectionality grids to persecute The Other).
The components of a physical critical mass of followers, a unifying false ideology that focuses on group guilt (thereby disassociating followers from their feelings of empathy for The Other), and the efficient distribution of said ideology is what leads to the psychopaths sensing an opportunity to lead. They don’t care whether the ideology is on the Left or Right. They care about power and have no empathy to curtail their domination.
Within the last month, the unification of these three components in the US has led to what could be, arguably, the largest and most public anti-semite demonstrations and approval of the torture and death of innocent Jews in the history of the United States.
We’re at the point that it’s merely a competition between the psychopath leaders of various anti-semite groups who are jockeying to be the next Hitler.
There is another story that was failed to mention. How false ideology and religious indoctrination embracing complete fiction resulted in thousands of people withdrawing to remote regions of America. This narrative is real, and very advanced, and would need to include how dangerously deluded such people are, having refused to educate and examine their own belief systems and the problems this causes for a community, a family, and a region, even a State and a Nation.
I know these people, I live in the idiotic Redoubt, and I’ve studied their ideology and religion at great length. They are a delusional people who pose circular arguments and specious reasoning to justify their hatred, distrust, anger and preparations for civil war. It is all based in religious indoctrination and misapplication.
In America, it is ok to be both stupid and wrong, but it is not okay to go any further with this when it deeply impacts everyone else. The harm these people cause is enormous, infecting the local schools and school boards, city council, county government and even State laws. They feel entirely justified to force their ideology and religious indoctrination upon everyone else, even to the point of removing the rights of others (look at Idaho’s abortion laws and actions for current examples), but see no contradiction to the objections to their interference and actions raised by anyone else.
It’s also ok in America to be ignorant and blind, but their actions are now causing harm, even death to others.
Do I know these people? Intimately. I’ve lived here for decades. Their delusions are monumental, dangerous and deeply misguided because of rampant propaganda and misinformation. It is generally all rooted in Christian fiction and end-times mythology, where they have embraced endless false representations and outright lies, and seek to force this worldview on everyone else. This is what makes them all dangerous because they are acting out their fantasies.
Delusions have consequences and they have no excuse but refuse all efforts at accountability and responsibility for the harm their actions have caused the entire region.
Ironically, they are not serving “God” or “Christ” as they are entirely contradictory to the biblical message, while pretending that they alone are the “true servants of truth”. Nothing could be further from the truth. They do not at all represent Christianity, faithfulness, integrity, honesty or obedience, all characteristics found within true Christians.
I am not mocking them either, but I am appalled at their ignorance of facts, history, and their shocking willingness to embrace outright fiction. It is evident always. If you live here, you know this. Their anger and mistrust and rhetoric is utterly ridiculous and nearly inescapable. They proudly post their delusions in local papers, at meetings and public forums.
They do not really “want to be left alone” as many claim, they want to force their ideology and religious indoctrination upon everyone else, this is why they are attempting to take over the Legislature, city councils and school boards. Their every action is to not be left alone or respect the rights of other, but to take away the rights of others and to force their ideology and religion on us all.
And worst of all, they are preparing to engage in violence against other Americans, especially those that they dislike or do not agree with. They are training, buying, practicing and preparing on a massive scale. I know a lot about Rawles, Shea and all of these so-called “leaders” in this movement and anyone who does not realize how dangerous they have become is simply delusional. Local businesses know that you don’t publically oppose these people because they have influence in the region. You will be ostracized, even assaulted, certainly verbally so. They preach and practice fear, paranoia, distrust and anger all the time. It’s thick, overpowering and pervasive. Those of us who understand their delusional worldview and mindset avoid them at all costs. Attempts to educate them to a balanced worldview based upon facts vs fiction have failed. They’re not interested in truth, and prefer their own echo-chambers of hostility and distrust.
They are not sitting “quietly on the side lines minding their own business” either. This is a complete lie. This movement is part of numerous other movements all around the country that seek to isolate themselves from reality while embracing the fiction of “patriotism” and Christian “nationalism”.
Anyone who has studied knows there is no such thing as a Christian nationalist. They are not patriots either, they are actually traitors to America and the Constitution (compare their actions and beliefs and what they are doing to what the Constitution actually says), a “lawless” people who demand their “rights” be protected while denying the rights (and laws) that govern others, all the while providing the illusion and pretense that they “support America”. No, they don’t support “America” at all, they only support their own warped ideology and demands ON America. They want to withdraw from the real America, even with violence if they must. Given the chance, they will, they are all quite literally waiting for their “trigger” event that take action.
If you have not attended their private meetings, gathering, exhibits, gun shows and the like, you will not fully understand what is unfolding in the Redoubt region. But this is not unique to “here”, and is very much expanding throughout the entire country. Hotbeds of unrest, rebellion, delusions and Christian nationalism. Rural families are scared at the changes they are forcing upon these areas. These are not “rebels”, but lawless people who do not respect anyone else’s rights. They do not represent the real America, only themselves and the false ideology they have embraced. This is the real danger to the country and to the region.
They don’t respect the right to vote, or have equal representation or even the right for other people to be left alone – from them. They are actually enemies to America and seek to return this country to an oppressive age where only their ideology can be embraced. Forget about woman’s rights, or the rights of children, or the rights of anyone who disagrees with them, including the media, State government or any other institution. Minorities have no place in their worldview. Immigrants are enemies. Everything they do is filtered through their ideology and gross misunderstanding of religion.
If you believe in God and the Bible, God is not on their side as they suppose, they are reprobates, having embraced a strong delusion and believed endless lies. But if you are a non-believer, it is very evident that these people are increasingly dangerous, delusional and deeply misguided. They need truth, not falsehoods, not paranoia, not knee-jerk reactionary hatred and anger and “leaders” who lie and falsely misrepresent, but they have shown no willingness whatsoever to self-examine their own ideology and mischaracterizations.
You cannot separate their religion from their movement either. It’s all wrapped up together in a tightly bound paranoia-filled worldview, which is why they are isolationists and distrustful. Their prophets are frauds, their indoctriction and brainwashing very evident, they are in a cult and don’t even know it. This is not America and never has been.
Thank you for this passionate, informative pushback against both those who defend these folks, and people like me who’d prefer not to worry about them much. According to your long, believable denunciation, I’ve underestimated their dangerousness.
I picked up one word from this diatribe – “mischaracterization”!
Look, America is a vast country. If you no longer like the eccentrics moving into remote Idaho, I’m sure there are other places. Massachusetts might suit you better?
So, “Rawles wouldn’t let me walk anywhere near his house: he doesn’t trust the media.” Hmm, I am not sure he is mistaken given the writers take above. I would trust J. Bryant a lot further.
R Wright
1 year ago
“the Redoubt, and the man behind it, have become a threat to liberal America”
The author says this but then I couldn’t find any evidence in the text itself.
Perhaps the threat to liberal America is that they show that it is possible to live apart from the destructive progressivism now running rampant in some large cities run by Democrats’?
I don’t know much about the author, but suspect he’s British, hence incurably prejudiced. My evidence is: “The owner jumped on the bonnet and shot him dead through the windshield!” We don’t have ‘bonnets’, we have hoods.
He sounds British, and while trying to also sound unprejudiced, he cites what must be a fake quote: “The owner jumped on the bonnet and shot him dead through the windshield!”
Americans don’t have bonnets. They have hoods. But I’ve no doubt that in England the shooter would have been charged with murder — for defending his property.
Whoa: “people don’t need guns to feel safe” and so ipso facto they actually must be safe? BECAUSE no English subject is permitted to defend themselves by means of deadly force, no other English subject would dare to steal their car or run them over in the process?
Of course you’re permitted to use lethal force in Britain during the course of self defence, it’s written in law you simply have to prove it was justified to do so which to us is just common sense. That’s why we don’t have kids getting shot simply for pressing the wrong doorbell or reversing up the wrong driveway
You are permitted to use lethal force but denied the means. What sort of lethal force can a little old lady use against the brute who has decided to beat her up?
If she had a firearm she could defend herself but Plod won’t allow it.
I live in England. people mostly feel safe from being murdered, less so in bigger cities. They don’t feel safe from lesser crimes. They hope it won’t happen to them but if it does, they won’t bother calling the police because the police are too busy policing “hate crimes”. If someone were to see some kids handling a bible in a reckless or disrespectful manner, they would be hesitant to intervene because they might be subjected to at the least, verbal abuse. But when a school child dropped a copy of the Quran and it got scuffed, the police were called in. That’s why they are too busy to deal with property crime. The continual erosion of basic civility and security is why it gets harder and harder to dismiss the “Redoubt “ as a bunch of eccentrics. Not to mention a fiscal reality that defies common sense.
The police are useless, always have been. You’ve always had to keep your wits about you in the rougher areas, the housing schemes in the bigger cities have never been any kind of utopia irrelevant of whether the police spend too much time nabbing people on Twitter in a lazy attempt to increase their arrest numbers.
I was chased around numerous estates at the football during my younger years. However I knew the worst I’d ever receive is a kicking, no power crazed Rambo was going to pull a gun on me
The biggest threat to liberal America is liberal America. All those nutty ideas, selfish grasping, missing self awareness, gender, race, identity, hypocrisy, etc will blow up in their faces one day. I just hope I’m still around to enjoy it before the redoubters roll in from Montana to administer the last rights.
Even “selfish grasping” is now monopolized by liberals? And self-awareness thrives on one side of a socio-political divide? I thought it was in more general short supply.
The Victim-Identity Industrial Complex you refer to is far to the left of what is properly called “liberal”. The term is no more fitting for that crowd than “conservative” is for burn-it-all-down or sky-is-falling types.
The so call progressive left and the republican gun guys are both committed to the same unworkable individualism which is the cause of the whole problem- although they can’t actually see it. Taking the Christian message seriously might be a start. Because these guys don’t seem Christian to me.
There’s an imbedded hyperlink at the word threat, which goes to a alarm piece titled “Far Right Survivalist and Icon of ‘Patriot’ Movement Predicts Religious Civil War”, from the Southern Poverty Law Center (too far left in my opinion to be called “liberal”).
That article is even less neutral than Mr. Furedi’s above, but it does include these corroborating words from Rawles: “I’m predicting a Third Gulf War, but it won’t be fought in the Middle East. It will be the Second Civil War, here in America and caused by the gulf between the right and left — or between the godly and the godless — or between the libertarians and the statists — or between the individualists and the collectivists”.
I think the sentence you take issue with is meant in the sense of “perceived threat”. It should have be worded more carefully if so. I find it hard to see these Redoubters as much of a threat to my consensus-seeking moderate-liberal-incrementalist, cultural-tradition-minded views (hedgy enough for ya?). For now at least, short of some actual Second Civil War that has become all too possible.
The fact that their leader champions the Law Abiding–at least those among them who are ultra-right Christians too–is re-assuring in the context of doomsday-prep communities. They seem far more threatened–i.e. fearful–than any immediate threat.
The Southern Poverty Law Center is a bunch of money-grabbing leftists forever looking to cash in on societal discontent. Don’t give them the time of day.
I agree and I don’t*. They were always quite radical but l think they had once integrity and a worthwhile mission. Decades ago that is.
*Give them the time of time of day
That’s because they are not. They don’t even vote, for heaven’s sake. How much of a threat can you be to anyone whilst living in absolute obscurity? Unlike those who infest academia, the media and the corporate ranks and work feverishly to undermine our culture and way of life. Which side is truly the threat here?
You must have missed the part (well known) that the stockpile of guns, ammunition and training has nothing to do with “voting”. They intend to engage in civil war. Voting has been abandoned because they don’t support the Constitution or the rule of law anymore, so violence is their proposed (and sometimes enacted) “answer”. Yes, they are a clear threat, and a major one. The rest of your screed is just your ignorance and bias. It is not “your culture” you nitwit. It is American culture and it belongs to all of us. It is obvious to all but the obtuse “who” is the real “threat” here.
Who is John Galt?
I like to imagine Amazon not delivering to NYC for 24 hrs. New Yorkers are utterly helpless and would go nuts. I like the Redoubters if for no other reason than their self sufficiency.
Up to a point, Lord Copper. They don’t make their own electrical generators or cars – or the guns and ammunition many of them seem to be fond of.
What struck me the most was the estate agent who’s making money out of them.
Actually, and I have lived amongst these people, many would make their own generators if needed. An electrical motor spun by a waterwheel is a generator. You can be sure they have pre-chip autos somewhere they can keep running; for the EMP and to avoid tracking…Sure they need industrial products, but not that many. A scrap-yard would supply much to them, they are remarkably competent and ingenious..
What they have is Law and Order, and with that they have what it takes to thrive, when loss of that will doom wherever loses it.
Fair enough, but my post was based on items actually mentioned in the article, which they’re using.
I think the guns and ammunition are the most interesting case. And the pre-chip cars will need petrol.
Amazon delivers to these ranches, in the early fall, my husband did the Main Salmon (river of no return) 6 day river run, ranches completely cut off by road get Prime deliveries via jetboat and aircraft. My bro, off the grid, in Marble Colorado (look it up) got deliveries in the dead of winter, driver even walked the unplowed section.
And once their bullets run out, or they need parts for their weapons, tools or vehicles they’ll be just as stuck as anybody else. They may have a bit more stuff stored but if the fuel runs dry they don’t last any longer than the rest of us
Or perhaps they will use their guns to go take those parts and supplies they need from defenseless Oregonians and Californians.
Walter Lantz
1 year ago
“He goes on to describe the tense months after George Floyd’s death, when it was rumoured that busloads of Antifa activists were travelling to Coeur D’Alene to hold a Black Lives Matter protest. In response, groups of vigilantes armed with semi-automatic weapons patrolled the streets on successive evenings. “If you guys are thinking of coming to Coeur D’Alene, to riot or loot, you’d better think again,” said one of those involved. “Because we ain’t having it in our town.” The Antifa threat never materialised.”
So how are supposed to read that? A warning about those backwoods nutters? “See, these are the kind of people we’re dealing with”. Personally, I read it as an indictment of the failure of government and law enforcement in cities like Seattle and Portland. The “It’s just a street party” gaslighting was a bit too much.
And then there’s the nub of it.
“The idea of alienation carries the hope that one day the alienated will find a voice — that they are the product of circumstances that can be reversed. Rawles’s Redoubt, by contrast, seems an acceptance of defeat. After all, it is premised on the belief that America can’t be saved. That its people and their representatives are the cause, rather than the solution, to its very real crises. That the nation, along with its citizens, is Fallen”
The claim is that these folks have given up and checked out. Well, to each his own and there have always been/will always be people on the ‘lunatic fringe’ (a common if not entirely accurate term), Right or Left. Unless fringe movements pose an active physical threat they are politically irrelevant. They can be ignored, disparaged and mocked with impunity. The key is in the numbers. It is problematic when the numbers of citizens that share common attitudes, feelings and views clearly exceed fringe level yet the People’s representatives -usually through their own ‘know better’ hubris – continue to ignore, disparage and mock instead of listening. They wallpaper over this failure by selling themselves as the bulwark against what they themselves created.
Irrelevant fringes didn’t carry the vote on Brexit or Trump. Many millions of people that were tired of being ignored, disparaged and mocked did.
The trouble is the alienated and the ignored – as far as I can see – don’t actually have a coherent, consistent and positive answer. They define themselves by what they are not. Brexit was like this – ‘not the EU’ but as we are discovering the alternative was never seriously thought through, or different groups have wildly and often directly contradictory visions. Look at Trump, we know what he hates but really he doesn’t have a coherent positive vision
The point I was trying to make (and didn’t do a very good job of it) is that Brexit and Trump (in my view at least) were very much protest votes.
I’m from the other side of the pond but my understanding is that one of key issues (of many issues) of the Brexit debate was control over borders and the belief by many that the EU was overriding Britain’s sovereignty. If that was indeed true it would have seemed prudent for Remainers to caution their EU friends to back off and de-fuse that issue. Maybe mocking “Little Britain” wasn’t the best response.
The Dems openly scorned Trump from the minute he registered for the GOP nomination. They were warned early on by some of their own fellow Lefties that people were angry, Trump’s message was being well-received and you had better wake up. The Dems lost and blamed everything and everybody except themselves. It didn’t help that their dire predictions of disaster never materialized. Eight years later and they’re still doing it squealing. Even after the legal problems polls indicate that Trump could still win. That’s on the Dems – not the voters. How bad do you have to be if people choose Trump – again?
The Democrats have only themselves to blame for the Trump presidency. Their power brokers steam-rollered all other candidates to put up Ms Clinton, a woman who was widely distrusted and disliked.
I was living in England during the Brexit vote. For many it was an anti-government vote, people were so sick of and angry about austerity and Cameron’s elitism. If Cameron had put out his seven million leaflets urging people to vote for instead of against Brexit it would never have happened.
That is a stupid and idiotic thing to say. The Democrats are not responsible for the millions of voters, mostly Republicans, that voted for Trump. They alone are “responsible” for the Trump Presidency. Deflecting responsibility like this shows a shocking lack of comprehension and understanding how America operates in it’s elections. Doesn’t even matter who the other opponent even was. That’s irrelevant. Nobody held a gun to anyone’s head and made them vote “Trump”. They brought this upon themselves and to the entire rest of the country (mass delusions).
Any American pretending they can take the law into their own hands, especially on “rumors” is a clueless fool. You are a clueless fool. These people have given up on America and the Constitution and Bill of Rights and are actively seeking to ensure that nobody else has any “rights” either. They are self-serving “faketriots” who do not respect the rights of others (including protests). They are not law enforcement, are not authorized to oppress or deny the rights of anyone else, but take it upon themselves that only their “rights” can be permitted (or to hell with the law). They lie, deflect, fabricate and assume based on a false ideology and Christian nationalism / indoctrination. They seek to force their demands on everyone else while adhering to no demands or laws upon themselves. That is not American.
Kellen
1 year ago
The author should visit the Dakotas, just for giggles. Then Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. Then, the South. Texas. Florida. “Redoubters” are everywhere.
Whenever the old topic of “If you could, where would you like to live?” bobs up, I’ve always said Montana or Wyoming. I’ve never been there, but on film (possibly through a Vaseline lens) they look spectacular, green (the colour, not the politics), mountains, not over-run and it wouldn’t take me long to learn the language. I will now add Idaho. Stephen King scared me off Maine; too many monsters.
Funnily enough, before I moved to the States I was told to watch out for those kind of people, but since living here, I’ve noticed I have more fun with them than I do with left-wing academics. I think it’s because they are less rigid and dogmatic in their thinking, which probably goes to show how thoroughly wretched academia has become.
Which says a lot about your situational ethics and intellect. If “fun” is all you are about, you’re not a neighbor I would want or respect or trust. And if you have not come to understand just how dogmatic and indoctrinated this crowd actually is, you are definitely not paying attention. You bias is showing, as is your ignorance.
That’s genuinely interesting. So you’ve interacted with left wing academics–as well as far-right preppers–on a regular basis. Are you a visiting professor?
I’m just trying to figure out what context would make your claim plausible.
It’s what life looks like outside the Bay Area bubble. You should try it sometime.
Ewen Mac
1 year ago
Whatever floats your boat. Some people need a sense of impending doom/liberation to feel a sense of purpose – hardcore left-wingers spent years banging-on about how “the revolution” was about to kick off at any minute.
This lot sound pretty harmless and are probably just looking for a quiet agrarian life (albeit one with the romantic appeal of a spot of doomsday cosplay). Given the state of many US cities I can see the appeal of getting ‘back to the land.’
Indeed. Just don’t let yourself miss any “No Trespassing” or “Keep Out” signs when sightseeing, or maybe lost for lack of accurate GPS (dead phone battery?).
A half-million firearms is not “harmless” in the hands of one small region. They’re neither “quiet” or “agrarian” but heavily armed and training all the time. Don’t deflect from reality.
And how many corpses have piled up as a result? Fewer than in an average weekend in Oakland.
Christopher Chantrill
1 year ago
Lighting out for the Territory is a good old American tradition. And not just for Huck Finn. In real life Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale would have headed out west instead of submitting to The Scarlet Letter. Of course in Adam Bede George Eliot has Hetty Sorrel run away when she gets preggers. And Arthur Donnithorne just wimps out. I wonder what Georgie Porgie meant by that.
We ‘Muricans are different from you Brits. We never know when we’ll need the rifle in the gun rack of the old pickup truck to take out a varmint that’s botherin’ the steers in the back 40.
The term “:troublemakers” is not a search-term that the FBI recognizes. Go have a gander.
Gary Wood
1 year ago
I feel there is a general migration from urban areas that is the bigger story. This article focuses on the tail of the curve. And there is a general lack of confidence in the ruling intelligence that has created the migration.
White conservative narrative? Maybe the author should interview the Malaysian doctor next to my farm.
Douglas Hainline
1 year ago
These silly people! Can’t they see that the world is evolving smoothly into a peaceful concert of nations, as liberal democracy proceeds to blossom in one formerly autocratic country after another? If they think that war among the great powers is possible, let them read why this is most unlikely, just a great illusion, in a book by that name: [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion ]
Can’t they see that the United States is on the road of ever-upward widespread prosperity for all its contented citizens? Don’t they know they should share the majority’s inbuilt optimism, even though wicked academics disparage it: [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias ]
And … abandoning America’s beautiful, peaceful cities, with their wonderful cultural enrichment! A walk down the main streets of San Francisco or Los Angeles should convince anyone of the vibrancy of big city life, with their recent creative additions to urban architecture as thousands of people embrace the pleasures of open-air living.
Even some otherwise sensible Britons have caught this disease: https://www.uk-preppers.co.uk/forum/index.php
All will be for the best, in the best of all possible worlds!
You remain your insistent, optimistic self, Dr. Pangloss.
“Even so, we must cultivate our garden(s)”.
Mike Downing
1 year ago
This strikes me as of a piece with the one yesterday about Oxford; overlong, short in new insights or information and ultimately tells you more about the writer than anything else.
I disagree – I think it is a peek into a fascinating sub-set of Western Society.
Allison Barrows
1 year ago
“The owner jumped on the bonnet . . .” Brian obviously didn’t say that. We call what the 74-year-old purportedly jumped on a hood.
Has the author had a look around American cities? They are filthy, crime-ridden, violent dystopias utterly dependent on capable outsiders to provide for them. Who the h*ll would want to live in such places? They are J. G. Ballard’s High-Rise, not some figment of survivalist fantasies.
Self-sufficient people minding their own business are models, not figures of fun or threats to society. What we have now is the collapse of society. Oh, maybe not in pretty pockets of affluent America (bad elements get booted from the Martha’s Vineyards here). But every city run by Democrats is a hellhole.
I live on the beautiful southwest Gulf Coast of Florida, but if my area devolves into what, say, Baltimore or Chicago have become, I’d seriously consider a Redoubt move. I already know how to fire a gun, but I could definitely use some lessons in canning.
It’s not as bad as all that. You should go over and visit sometime.
mike otter
1 year ago
Sadly we never learned what turned this nepo-journos father from bile filled leftism to a more thought based approach, and he clearly hasn’t passed his later incarnation on. The trouble with patrimonio is the kids often lack the drive of the parents but usually retain the prejudices and hubris – clans from the Gettys and Fords to the Mafia and current US/UK politicians are proof of this. Furedi Jnr’s failure to realise that what drives a christian in Idaho to protect his own also drives gang leaders in LA or jihadis in the Middle East makes the article more like Louis Theroux than anything likely to educate or entertain.
Interesting comment. I didn’t make the connection between the author and Frank Furedi. Over time I’ve learned that one Unherd employee comes from a famous literary family, another is the child of a chemistry professor, another is the child of a peer. When they divulge their university it’s almost always Oxbridge. So is this an Unherd phenomenon or is modern UK journalism an almost exclusively upper middle class activity?
Since the demise of the local newspapers, the only way to get into journalism now for youngsters is often an unpaid internship at the bigger players, which obviously prevents those from poorer backgrounds joining the industry as they don’t have the family able to financially support them through it. Therefore nearly all come from wealthy backgrounds
Journalism used to be looked down upon because it was usually carried out by rough, boisterous working class men who had no problem ruffling the feathers of those in power.
Now, instead reporting the news or exposing corruption, it tends to cover up the truth and sermonize its readers on their various ‘isms’.
Thankfully, Unherd isn’t too bad for that.
Penny NG
1 year ago
Really, Unheard, your headline writers cannot do better than this? Redoubter ≠ Christian Conservative. There are many more of the later here, and most are not arming up for war. To the extent they do arm up it is usually for defense. Though, conservative, I am neither a Christian nor a gun owner, just someone who wish our British friends had more perspective as far as we and our 2nd Amendment were concerned.
Eric Mowery
1 year ago
Great Article! Yes, it’s showing one perspective of some people – but it’s spot on for that group. I’m from just west, a farm in eastern Washington state.
But like guy posted, it can seem inflammatory. I agree to a point, but in that inland area, the Christianity practiced still believes in a spiritual war, not just the Jesus is a good example of a peaceful hippy.
I grew up in a sane family, father educated mechanical engineer at the nuclear reactor.
BB gun at 8, had a 22 long rifle by 10, 20 gauge shotgun by 12, 30.06 deer hunting rifle by 14, bow at 16. No, we did not wear a pistol on our hips, but I knew where dad hid the 45 pistol under the front seat of our van when camping.
It’s always been fun for city folk – of which I’ve now been for 30 years – watching Seattle die a liberal death that is accelerating recently, but for city folk to gawk at guns in rural areas, when they really are needed on farms and in the forest, but nothing is said about gangbangers (young men and boys) with pistols they have had no trading with, shooting themselves and everyone around them, and no father figure to raise them properly.
But that said, northern Idaho and Montana have lots of fun pockets of crazy:
Butler and his neo nazi compound in the 1980s they like to try to forget. I used to hear them shooting in the night while camping near by outside Hayden Lake
Ruby Ridge – a tragedy brought on that everyone taking a breath and waiting would have avoided. They weren’t going any where.
The Sovereign Citizen movement. I worked with crazies from that group in college while landscaping. Just tear up your social security card and tell the feds your are now you’re own sovereign country lol
And let’s not forget the church, universal and triumphant, led by Elizabeth Clare Prophet over in Montana and theirbomb shelters and crazy end of the world crap.
Lots of space, for people to do their own thing, which is actually great. The only unfortunate thing, is now some of the more dangerous crazy is now getting networked via the inter-webs. Lol.
Oh, and all those rural areas used to be so unaffected by drugs, but the evolution of meth has tainted even small towns in America.
Great article.
UnHerd Reader
1 year ago
As one of the subjects in this article, Brian, I want to thank Jacob for for trying to be ‘fair’ but he “missed the bullseye” so to speak, and as others pointed out, his ‘Britishness’ (bonnet? LOL) did come through. He also did not quote Patrick or myself accurately or let us see an advance copy for corrections before releasing it to the world. For clarity, the ‘looters’ did Not ‘slink off after I pulled my gun’. A dozen or so black gang bangers set on beating some white boy ass like truck driver Reginald Denny’s, froze in place like a proverbial ‘Mexican standoff’ when my carpool buddy, Mike, pushed the Remington 12 gauge shotgun out the passenger door window and jacked a round in the chamber, We escaped with our lives when the light turned green and the cross traffic stopped and made no mo more stops for anyone/anything until we were home and ensured our families were safe. But I guess it made fir good prose with artistic license.As far as the police up here being ‘easy going’ if, God forbid, we would have to shoot someone to neutralize the treat – there Would be a full criminal investigation to ascertain if the shooting/killing was justified and one could be arrested & tried. It’s not like “oh, we’ll just take the body away for you, it’s all good.” That Idaho has a ‘Stand Your Ground” provision & ‘Castle doctrine” will play in one’s favor. Another point of matter -Patrick was Not just “an EMT” in LA – he was a full blown Paramedic with medical privileges just below that of a factual doctor. Since then, he’s been in some of the crappiest places on Earth, like the ‘A-Stan sandbox’ and protected some of the richest people in the world. His real world knowledge of how shitty people can be to each other is enormous and part of the reason he moved to Idaho.
“Eccentricities” is obviously a subjective term and for someone who self-admittedly never shot a firearm prior to his visit (which he DID get to with multiple guns – thank you Patrick!) cannot be expected to have a full comprehension of someone he just met and spoke to for 3 hours.Jacob was SHOCKED when we didn’t have to have a license to even buy a gun, much less carry one daily and didn’t have a good answer “why” he should have to beg permission from a king or queen in order to protect his life or those he cares for when They have 24/7 protection. THAT is a fundamental difference between being a Citizen and a subject. I kneel to no one but God & my Savior, Jesus Christ.
That we don’t trust the government reaches back to our first president, George Washington who warned us that “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence – it is force. And force, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.” Remember ‘How’ we got our independence from the King & his Brit thugs – we shot them, with guns, because tyrants Never give up power willingly. I learn from history, like how the People are Always disarmed before a slaughter. Even the Jews in present day Israel, turned a blind eye to the past Nazi horrors against their people and let themselves be disarmed yet AGAIN before the Hamas invasion and dearly paid the price for trusting the government to protect/save them which took HOURS. Remember, when seconds count, the cops are minutes (at best) away. That’s why “I” am my/family’s First Responder. My God has granted me the tools, training & temperament to be a ‘sheepdog’ and I will not forfeit His goodness & blessings.
Y’all can have in your ‘rat cage’ big cities – stacked on top of each of & elbow to elbow with each other in the Tube, hearing everything your cell mate next to you says through paper thin walls as he sits & shits on the loo. Where you can’t even see the stars because of the light pollution and have to go to a park to see some green grass. I refuse to live in modern day hellholes that echo Beirut & Sarajevo, that’s not how we were designed to live.I choose to make my home in the glory of my Creator’s work, where I can still marvel at the Milky Way at night, but not see my closest neighbor through the pines & firs, enjoying privacy and wildlife like elk & turkeys walking through my front yard & eating my rose bushes back at the end of the year.If that’s ‘eccentric’, well so be it.
May the good Lord bless all of you reading this and if you ever choose to visit the Redoubt, look me up.I’ll be here where I belong.
Last edited 1 year ago by UnHerd Reader
Simon Neale
1 year ago
It’s a peculiar assortment of survivalist tips and Christian precepts: recent posts consider the benefits of stun guns, the southern border crisis, and a recipe for potato soup.
Yeah. Well…
Today I got up.
Tried to get the creases out of my suit. Worked out timing the charging of my ev vis a vis my solar panels (true)
and sterilised some glass containers to receive some home made passata …
I’d hate to think how this author could have mocked me!!!
if he’d known I am a rock solid conservative!!!
Is Christianity little lambs and fluffy kittens and ickle pickle yellow easter chickies then. Didn’t the man it’s named after say,or make the true of life observation that,”of you’ve got nothing,even what little you have will be taken from you’. That’s not very nicey-nicey is it. Shouldn’t he have said ‘if you have nothing,I will personally instruct my father in Heaven to shower you with gold and sunshine. If you think faith/Christianity (+ other faiths) should be all honey,all flowers,all LURVE.
As you probably know: The verse you cite was spoken directly to the disciples, in explanation of the veiled-to-the-masses Parable of the Talents, and has a primarily non-material meaning about hearing the Message of the Founder.
The prevailing message in the four Gospels is one of compassion, forgiveness, service, and courageous sacrifice. I don’t pretend that those four values capture the teachings, but I’d not be easily persuaded that those are not central, and triumphantly-affirmed therein. What is your overall reading of the character of Jesus of Nazareth as a human being?
Not weak or namby-pamby, but not mean, cruel, or given to conclusive condemnation. “For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you” (Matthew 7:2 NIV).
A stark prospect for all of us–certainly for me. And I believe that’s true in this world, according to a kind of rule of action and reaction.
*Discernment and sound moral judgment are not, of course, the same as judgmentalness.
Christianity is quite war-like. Christ did not say soldiers were sinners, he held law and order as being necessary for Christianity, and the people, and supported those who upheld it. Most of the great historical conversions of kingdoms were warrior Kings and peoples. Christianity was so remarkably successful because the Fierce fit into it as well as the meek. Recall Christ and the Centurion
”When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking for help.6 “Lord,” he said, “my servant lies at home paralyzed, suffering terribly.”7 Jesus said to him, “Shall I come and heal him?” 8 The centurion replied, “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. 9 For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”
”10 When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, “Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith.” ”Then Jesus said to the centurion, “Go! Let it be done just as you believed it would.” And his servant was healed at that moment.”
Anarchy at the border is not being Christian, and potato soup is not a problem.
No, but the KJV has several references to pottage, and three to broth (I admit that I had to search for the latter in an online version).
Penny NG
1 year ago
Why is the Telegraph headline writer(s) perpetuating a false image of Americans? Redoubter ≠ Christian Conservative. There are many more Christian Conservatives than there are Redoubters here, and most are not arming up for war. When they do arm up it is usually for defense. Though conservative, I am neither Christian nor a gun owner, by the way.
You just couldn’t have a cult like that in England, there simply isn’t the space. You’re never more than 10 minutes from civilisation unless you go and hide in the woods
Actually, Findhorn in Scotland was a thriving alternative community. It became well known for being able to grow incredibly large plants and vegetables using positive energy. RD Laing sent many of his mentally ill patients up there to heal and many different kinds of healers stayed there. It was an interesting open-minded place that wasn’t “god-fearing,” on the contrary it focused on love.
Actually Findhorn isn’t and never was a cult in the sense being discussed.
T. A. SPENCER
1 year ago
Jacob Furedi Ukraine article was a bunch of hooey according to my wife’s family in the Ukraine!!!!! They are ethnic Lithuanian/Ukraine mix. Her GRET GREAT Grandfather served as an office in the Tsar’s Army and was given land in the Ukraine because of ther need for farmers there!!!! This guy NEVER did ANY background work and the he gets an award for going along with the Leftists there???? His editorials are NOT to be trusted!!!!!
Peter Joy
1 year ago
Hmm.’Yet the wider Redoubter population can seem similarly aggressive as they police local councils and schools, making sure they don’t overstep their federal remits.’ Seem? There’s a weasel word. Where’s the aggression in making sure local apparatchiks stay within their lawful powers? ‘Redoubt Newsoffers a flavour of their bêtes noirs’: “woke violence”, Big Pharma and government tyranny. Oh horror! Imagine people who are AGAINST Woke violence (no sneer-mars required) by BLM looting mobs and LGBTQPZ++?? men in dresses, meted out to Main Street America and to non-compliant women; AGAINST Purdue and Pfizer, their control of Washington and the FDA and their murderous addictive opioids and useless, needless, dangerous Covid ‘vaccines’; worst of all, AGAINST Government tyranny!!
What right-minded person could possibly be against Government tyranny?
And what makes Mr Furedi think Mr Rawles is wrong on the EMP question? AFAIK, it’s a perfectly plausible eventuality.
Last edited 1 year ago by Peter Joy
James Kirk
1 year ago
The film / movie “The Village” describes an extreme example of Americans selling up to get away from a cruel modern America with the luxury of space to do so. The average Englishman in the mortgage paid age group is usually a bit late to up sticks and start such a new life. Such a move would need a lottery win. Even then our offspring, with their careers and tech reliance, I doubt would follow, at least for long, The European herd creature young seem predisposed to the Left at first in life, atheist in itself and our Church has abandoned its faithful in the folly of supporting the woke LGBQT trends of an already atheist minority. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, at least here.
Jerry Carroll
1 year ago
I doubt he said “bonnet,” which is called a hood in America. Otherwise, a pretty good article about the people who see a shit storm coming.
Last edited 1 year ago by Jerry Carroll
Noel Chiappa
11 months ago
I wonder what Rawles made of this story. Did he find it fair, and even-handed? And I wonder why he agreed to be interviewed.
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
I believe we have come to the point where such terms as “Liberal”, “Conservative”, “Extremism” etc have to be defined article by article. Too often we’re left with the distinct impression these terms mean the direct opposite of their original meaning..
Liberal = free to screw the gullible unwary.
Conservative = reverting back to old, long defunct (in all but a tiny minority) narrow, self-righteous values.
Extremism = any opposition to Neocon greed, self-righteous elitism and its disregard for human life (especially brown/Muslim).
I seem to remember when..
Liberal = respect for the rights of Others!
Conservative = preserving Current laudable values (generally Christian et al based).
Extremism = disregard for the rights of ordinary, uninvolved people in favour of a tiny minority of ruthless, brutal, inhumane thugs; eg the IDF.
Me too. Didn’t think I was being at all unpleasant/controversial but I’ve vanished. More contentious comments remain and are added. Perhaps it’s a technical glitch? Otherwise, makes one disinclined to bother in future.
Me too. So when I noticed mine had vanished, I cancelled my subscription. But now they’ve been resurrected. Why bury them in the first place? Do UnHerd’s disinformation Nazis have too much time on their hands?
The article describes these people as “Christian conservatives” having “Christian precepts”, who are “devout church going Christians”, believe in “separation … on religious lines” and subscribe to “biblical warfare”.
This is distortion to the point of abomination. A Christian is a follower of Christ who believes in, and tries to live by, his values. These include being peace makers, humble, loving your neighbour, and being salt and light to the world (look it up if you will). The “church” which these people attend is run by untrained power seekers who teach anti-Christian false values by emotional manipulation and herd behaviour.
There is much wrong with the Church and many of us Christians, but please do not be taken in by the propaganda of unpleasant and dangerous weirdos.
Judy Johnson
1 year ago
Rawles and his followers seem to play ‘pick and mix’ with the Bible.
0 0
1 year ago
Except America was founded as a Liberal Democracy free from religion.
Funny how few Jews there are in this “Judeo-christian” enclave. Also, anyone of color.
Just a new confederacy of dunces.
Modern America was largely founded by Puritans who England was glad to see the back of. Their whole point of going was so they live out their miserable pious existence away from the English peasantry who just wanted to get drunk and feast on holy days
They couldn’t keep those types out of the good ol’ USA though, even before the waves of Irish that included some of my ancestors. Some came over on the very Mayflower. How else would you get mechanicks and indentured servaunts (period spelling)?
Imagine spending your whole life that paranoid that society is going to collapse imminently and you’ll be stuck fighting gangs of marauding criminals, it must be exhausting. At least if these people are hiding away in the mountains they’re not bothering the rest of society.
If I did that and got to 80 years old and society was still functioning I’d think I’d wasted my life
It’s a very big IF though. They don’t even know who they’d be fighting against anyway, or how many if it all does go belly up. A few handguns wouldn’t be much use if their enemies had tanks and planes or vastly outnumbered them. It’s a very specific future they’re preparing for, that in my opinion has very little chance of coming to pass
In farming (ranching) so much attention has to be devoted to keeping the wild, including disease, out of the crops and the kine that the additional worry of a few ‘marauders’ will probably be no great burden. As Mr Bryant says, most of the folk under discussion will just be living lives of industrious self-sufficiency. There was a huge wave in favour of it in UK after the publication of John Seymour’s ‘The Fat of The Land’ in the early seventies. And people found it a hugely satisfying way of life. The route to fulfilment is not the same for everyone.
And – a note to Mr Chantrill – we have land rovers and shotguns here. They don’t have the Wild West romance of trucks and rifles but big estates still have their gun rooms. Our house, modest in comparison to the grand ones, was built by a wool merchant in the same year as the American revolution. It has a surprisingly sizeable gun room – much bigger than a lot of kitchens and with iron bars on the windows like an old fashioned jail cell. The ‘estate’ was mostly dissipated before we bought the property but the remaining few acres, the gun room ( just one shotgun now) and the extensive full height cellars have lately become a peculiar source of comfort. At our age, I doubt we’d ever need them for extreme usage but, in darker moments, I do take a strange solace from the fact that our sons and their families could ‘hole up’ here against whatever the future may hold.
Yes that is my takeaway. They’re that anxious that society is on the brink of collapse that they’ve upped sticks and moved miles away to cosplay at being survivalists because some bloke told them to. Unfortunately for them if society did collapse they’d have no fuel for the generators, no way of buying more ammunition or parts for their weapons, the water and sanitation would fail and they’d have no way of fixing it etc. There’s much more to survival than a gun and storing a few tins of food.
At best they’d eek out a few more weeks than the rest of us, although us living in society would likely receive the aid drops more quickly
Between the total collapse of society, on the one hand, and the lovely prosperous harmonious utopia of current-day America on the other, there is wide spectrum of social possibilities.
And along a large part of that spectrum, living away from a big city, among like-minded people, with sufficiently stockpiled means of life to live out a few months of serious social/economic/legal disruption, is not a crazy idea, whether or not ‘aid drops’ (from whom?) eventually materialize.
No one knows the future. The French upper classes in 1788, the Russian upper classes in 1916, were confident that their societies, having survived upheavals in the past, would continue forever.
Of course, this time it’s different.
Douglas Redmayne
1 year ago
Its good news there are very few awful people like this in the UK
Main Edition
US
FR
This article is overwhelmingly, relentlessly clichéd. I’m afraid someone will read this and think it’s an accurate description of all but a few of the residents of what’s sometimes called The Inland Empire (north Idaho, parts of Washington and Montana). It is not even representative of what the author refers to as Redoubters.
I lived in north Idaho in the late 1980s, and am very familiar with Coeur d’Alene and the Lake Pend Oreille region. Mr. Furedi’s article is of a type that was frequently written back then describing all the “eccentric” characters escaping the madness of American life and imminent societal collapse.
Yes, there are some sketchy characters in north Idaho. Some of them are very serious in their beliefs and best left alone. But there are also many decent people who are alienated from modern America and want to raise a family according to a firm set of standards rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Yes, they might listen to the opinions of the likes of James Rawles and I realize it’s very easy (even fashionable) to mock such people and their alleged “eccentricities”.
Here’s a story I haven’t yet seen written. It doesn’t have the headline-grabbing qualities of “R*dnecks Awaiting Armageddon” but here it is: ordinary people of limited means create a new life in rural Idaho and Montana. The article would describe how they build those rather impressive ranches in the middle of nowhere, how they learn the necessary skills or trade labor with neighbors, how they learn the State rules for homeschooling their children then proceed to homeschool them, including teaching them, in some instances, advanced placement science classes (equivalent to first year college classes), how they learn to do basic veterinary procedures for their animals, how to blacksmith, how to preserve canned goods, how to…you get the idea.
Maybe if the author had made an honest attempt to get to know the people who choose the lifestyle he reports, how accomplished many of them are, instead of just reporting on the eccentrics among them, I could take this article more seriously. And if he’s not convinced he’s just rehashing tired clichés I advise him to google Ruby Ridge and related stories from thirty years ago.
I didn’t get the impression the author was mocking them. No doubt he thinks they’re eccentric, but not a threat or anything like that. He emphasized that they just want to be left alone.
I’ve visited the Inland Empire. It’s spectacular down there. Coeur d’Alene, on the other hand, is a ridiculously expensive tourist trap.
In the decades ago I lived in the area; Coeur d’Alene had a chapter of ‘Dikes on Bikes’. Rugged women on big Harleys – maybe not a ‘Biker Gang’, I do not think they are ‘MC’ patched, but they look the part, and one can be sure messing with them would be a very bad idea. It also reflected on the citizens – not small minded; a ‘do what you want as long as it does not bother others’ mindset.
I always thought they were a great example of the cosmology there – quite a different set than the London LGBTQIA+, haha…..
Both Coeur d’Alene and its counterpart city, Spokane, across the Washington border have become refuges for fairly affluent people escaping the coastal cities. That area is, as you say, breathtakingly beautiful although the harsh winters are challenging.
Lol. I’m from Alberta so we know harsh winters. Mind ya, I’ve never been down there in the winter.
I was just up in Nanton, AB for a family event and people were thrilled that the highs were around 5 Celsius (low 40s F). But the Chinook almost overtook the Remembrance Day at the Bomber Command Museum, blowing hard at flags and people as the ceremony ended.
10 degrees in Edmonton yesterday. WooHoo!! If this is global warming, I’m in.
The irony of these guys is that the extreme libertarian individualism in the US (the devil take the hind most philosophy) that they advocate is what’s lead to the chaos they want to escape from.
Really? Far from a ‘devil take the hindmost’ philosophy, I’ve yet to meet an “extreme” US libertarian, and I’ve met quite a few, who doesn’t believe in the importance of social networks and/or Christian charity when things go wrong for people.
The now deeply unfashionable Victorian concept of “deserving poor vs. undeserving poor” is alive and well in such circles. i.e. if you won’t work, feel free to starve; but if you can’t work, there is an abundance of charity in the kind of communities the article writes about.
touché.
“Led” not “lead”.
Look it up if you know what a dictionary is.
Very nice comment.
I totally agree with you. It is reminiscent of similar pieces in the New York Times (when I used to read them a long time ago) – an attempt to be open-minded yet dripping with pre-conceptions. As one commenter below said, it shows more of the writer than the subject he’s writing about. I feel such an immense distance between them that he might just as well be reporting on aliens.
I agree – these people aren’t harming anyone. Defining all of them by their kookiest neighbours is like defining all Democrats by describing antifa.
You are not paying attention. They have harmed the entire State, including State government and State laws, county government and laws, city government and laws, and virtually everyone that lives in the region. You are likely not aware of what they have done.
You say that like it’s a bad thing
Where do I join up?
Are these the Judeo-Christian standards represented by Donald Trump?
Well put. News flash: there are cranks. There are evangelical Christian cranks. Some of them put forth apocalyptic scenarios. Some of them devoutly hope for their apocalypse. But: be scared, be very scared?
While I was at university, on a work placement in Calgary, a group of us set off on a road trip “to the town in Idaho with the silliest name, to get a potato”.
We chose Cocolalla, which turned out to be tiny, and passed through Coeur d’Alene before looping back through Montana. At that point the speed limit was there was still “Reasonable and Prudent”.
Memorable trip; beautiful country.
This is where leaders on the Left have lost the plot.
Such events as the one covered by the author are typical in the history of our species, whether it’s a sect that establishes a settlement at Qumran or these folks who establish a settlement in the backwoods of Idaho – each quietly awaiting the end of days or a messiah – and rarely mingling with others.
Such historical events are too numerous to count.
But the settlement at Qumran would never achieve the critical mass to become another Jerusalem. And the backwoods of Idaho will never have the critical mass to rival Washington DC.
Therefore, I don’t care about such groups whether on the Left or Right as long as they mind their own business and follow the law of the land.
And yet leaders on the Left have spent an inordinate amount of time and treasure navel-gazing on people such as this and other completely-disconnected folks in the US.
And because their focus was on something that doesn’t matter, these leaders on the Left didn’t notice the serpents they were shaking hands with and mingling with on a daily basis. The serpents that took over their (and the nation’s) interests within key national US institutions and societies.
Witness the anti-semite movement at University, within business, and within government that dwarfs anything seen as a threat from Idaho. Anti-semites have been legitimized for years by the leaders on the Left. Furthermore, these anti-semites have acquired massive societal influence, have been positioned as leaders within key national institutions, and are educating the next generation of anti-semites who have no interest in a balanced read of history.
My father-in-law is Jewish. He has had a very successful life in the US, and his family had escaped Poland around the time of WWII. He pulled me aside at a family event in October and whispered to me about something we never talk about…the holocaust. He whispered the word – first time he uttered the word to me – in a way that communicated his dread and incomprehension. He was successful in the US because we have lived in a pluralistic society. One that celebrated or at least ignored group differences.
Now we live in a society dominated by the Left’s obsession with group guilt and that outright persecutes “The Other” with a smug self-righteous air of superiority.
These people are those who have been conditioned to think in terms of group intersectionality grids – to cheer or use sophistry and whataboutism when they hear that innocent Jewish babies were slow-roasted in their own parent’s oven by happy Palestinian forces that were sent into the sovereign nation of Israel during a peaceful ceasefire in a surprise act of war by the Palestinian Government of the Gaza Strip.
How did the social acceptance of anti-semites happen?
By leaders placing group identification above the individual.
For how do pathological tyrants rise?
They focus on emphasizing group guilt. This disconnects their fellow travelers (the overwhelming majority who feel empathy) from the pain they are inflicting upon individuals and families – it dehumanizes the individual. As atrocities mount, so does cognitive dissonance within many of the persecutors who have a conscience. But the power structure and critical mass is already established by then so the psychopaths who have no empathy continue to rise as they purge their fellow travelers who start having doubts. Doubts about pursuing group guilt because they see the pain and death they are inflicting upon individuals due to some arbitrary group identification.
It’s the psychopaths that inevitably rise to the top when group guilt is the guiding ideological light of a movement. They are the only ones who value power and feel no empathy to the point that slow-roasting babies in an oven is a joyous event as long as it gives them more power.
The Left’s obsession with groups and intersectionality grids identified by their High Priests at prestigious Universities is the most likely event to lead to the next ‘Hitler’ if left unchecked.
With this in mind, a story about some backwoods Idahoans seems distant…because it is.
And, understandable. Because, it is.
There is another story that was failed to mention. How false ideology and religious indoctrination embracing complete fiction resulted in thousands of people withdrawing to remote regions of America. This narrative is real, and very advanced, and would need to include how dangerously deluded such people are, having refused to educate and examine their own belief systems and the problems this causes for a community, a family, and a region, even a State and a Nation.
I know these people, I live in the idiotic Redoubt, and I’ve studied their ideology and religion at great length. They are a delusional people who pose circular arguments and specious reasoning to justify their hatred, distrust, anger and preparations for civil war. It is all based in religious indoctrination and misapplication.
In America, it is ok to be both stupid and wrong, but it is not okay to go any further with this when it deeply impacts everyone else. The harm these people cause is enormous, infecting the local schools and school boards, city council, county government and even State laws. They feel entirely justified to force their ideology and religious indoctrination upon everyone else, even to the point of removing the rights of others (look at Idaho’s abortion laws and actions for current examples), but see no contradiction to the objections to their interference and actions raised by anyone else.
It’s also ok in America to be ignorant and blind, but their actions are now causing harm, even death to others.
Do I know these people? Intimately. I’ve lived here for decades. Their delusions are monumental, dangerous and deeply misguided because of rampant propaganda and misinformation. It is generally all rooted in Christian fiction and end-times mythology, where they have embraced endless false representations and outright lies, and seek to force this worldview on everyone else. This is what makes them all dangerous because they are acting out their fantasies.
Delusions have consequences and they have no excuse but refuse all efforts at accountability and responsibility for the harm their actions have caused the entire region.
Ironically, they are not serving “God” or “Christ” as they are entirely contradictory to the biblical message, while pretending that they alone are the “true servants of truth”. Nothing could be further from the truth. They do not at all represent Christianity, faithfulness, integrity, honesty or obedience, all characteristics found within true Christians.
I am not mocking them either, but I am appalled at their ignorance of facts, history, and their shocking willingness to embrace outright fiction. It is evident always. If you live here, you know this. Their anger and mistrust and rhetoric is utterly ridiculous and nearly inescapable. They proudly post their delusions in local papers, at meetings and public forums.
They do not really “want to be left alone” as many claim, they want to force their ideology and religious indoctrination upon everyone else, this is why they are attempting to take over the Legislature, city councils and school boards. Their every action is to not be left alone or respect the rights of other, but to take away the rights of others and to force their ideology and religion on us all.
And worst of all, they are preparing to engage in violence against other Americans, especially those that they dislike or do not agree with. They are training, buying, practicing and preparing on a massive scale. I know a lot about Rawles, Shea and all of these so-called “leaders” in this movement and anyone who does not realize how dangerous they have become is simply delusional. Local businesses know that you don’t publically oppose these people because they have influence in the region. You will be ostracized, even assaulted, certainly verbally so. They preach and practice fear, paranoia, distrust and anger all the time. It’s thick, overpowering and pervasive. Those of us who understand their delusional worldview and mindset avoid them at all costs. Attempts to educate them to a balanced worldview based upon facts vs fiction have failed. They’re not interested in truth, and prefer their own echo-chambers of hostility and distrust.
They are not sitting “quietly on the side lines minding their own business” either. This is a complete lie. This movement is part of numerous other movements all around the country that seek to isolate themselves from reality while embracing the fiction of “patriotism” and Christian “nationalism”.
Anyone who has studied knows there is no such thing as a Christian nationalist. They are not patriots either, they are actually traitors to America and the Constitution (compare their actions and beliefs and what they are doing to what the Constitution actually says), a “lawless” people who demand their “rights” be protected while denying the rights (and laws) that govern others, all the while providing the illusion and pretense that they “support America”. No, they don’t support “America” at all, they only support their own warped ideology and demands ON America. They want to withdraw from the real America, even with violence if they must. Given the chance, they will, they are all quite literally waiting for their “trigger” event that take action.
If you have not attended their private meetings, gathering, exhibits, gun shows and the like, you will not fully understand what is unfolding in the Redoubt region. But this is not unique to “here”, and is very much expanding throughout the entire country. Hotbeds of unrest, rebellion, delusions and Christian nationalism. Rural families are scared at the changes they are forcing upon these areas. These are not “rebels”, but lawless people who do not respect anyone else’s rights. They do not represent the real America, only themselves and the false ideology they have embraced. This is the real danger to the country and to the region.
They don’t respect the right to vote, or have equal representation or even the right for other people to be left alone – from them. They are actually enemies to America and seek to return this country to an oppressive age where only their ideology can be embraced. Forget about woman’s rights, or the rights of children, or the rights of anyone who disagrees with them, including the media, State government or any other institution. Minorities have no place in their worldview. Immigrants are enemies. Everything they do is filtered through their ideology and gross misunderstanding of religion.
If you believe in God and the Bible, God is not on their side as they suppose, they are reprobates, having embraced a strong delusion and believed endless lies. But if you are a non-believer, it is very evident that these people are increasingly dangerous, delusional and deeply misguided. They need truth, not falsehoods, not paranoia, not knee-jerk reactionary hatred and anger and “leaders” who lie and falsely misrepresent, but they have shown no willingness whatsoever to self-examine their own ideology and mischaracterizations.
You cannot separate their religion from their movement either. It’s all wrapped up together in a tightly bound paranoia-filled worldview, which is why they are isolationists and distrustful. Their prophets are frauds, their indoctriction and brainwashing very evident, they are in a cult and don’t even know it. This is not America and never has been.
So interesting. This is where we are today. Each “side” accuses the other of exactly the same things. The left excoriates their unbelievers in exactly the same language, accusations and exhortations. Apostates, ignorant, selfish, backward, bitter clingers…. Instead of retreating, the left attacks, destroys, libels, cancels. Two sides, one of distrust and disillusion, the other of race based hatred for the other. They are geographically opposite as well. Urban, collective dwelling vs. Rural, independent living. It used to be okay until academia and government decided differently.
“…false ideology and religious indoctrination embracing complete fiction resulted in thousands of people withdrawing to remote regions of America.”
Fascinating observation, Mr Henry.
As a quick nod to evolution placing religious tendencies and ‘false doctrine’ deep within the genes of our species regardless of whether one follows a specific disfavored religion…are you a Boston Red Sox or New York Yankees fan?
Tread carefully with your answer and depending on which ballpark you visit. True believers and their rites of worship are everywhere!
Okay, back to the discussion.
If one studies these disassociation movements from the beginning of history to today, one can see that a lack of physical critical mass overwhelmingly causes them to die out. Every few years they get replaced by the ‘next shiny thing’ that new believers think is the next End-of-Day sign or another Messiah. Whether at Qumron or the backwoods of Idaho.
I remember when people were moving to remote places of the US because Russia was going to nuke America…then when the USSR fell they moved to remote places because of ‘zombies’ and infectious diseases. Now we’re back to nukes.
Isolated false ideology alone doesn’t lead to catastrophe when the followers isolate themselves and die out or get disillusioned with time.
Now for a history lesson…
The first thing the Khmer Rouge did in Cambodia when they took over Phnom Penh was to have all of the people leave the city for the villages of their ancestry for a ‘census’ and to await further instructions.
Why?
Because Pol Pot and his henchmen knew that any possible challenge to their power would come not just from a competing unifying ideology (whether false or not) but also from where there’s a physical critical mass of people to quickly learn and follow the new ideology before Pol Pot could muster a response. Once the people were disbursed across the countryside, they were easily controlled by merely a few Khmer Rouge soldiers in each village.
Again, when people choose to leave the critical mass of cities and their quick-distribution centers for ideology (universities and think tanks), they take their infectious ideas with them as they self-isolate. So their ideas die with them.
Which is why I don’t care. As long as they follow the law.
Instead, I worry about movements that (a) have a pernicious false ideology that disassociates the followers from empathy concerning the worth of individuals in society (e.g. the pernicious intersectionality grids that are used to punish arbitrary group guilt regardless of the value and qualities of an individual arbitrarily assigned to said group), (b) the physical critical mass of people (in cities and mega-regions), and (c) a very efficient ideology distribution network to this physically-located critical mass of people so they are quickly infected with such delusions (e.g. radical anti-semites that hold powerful professorships at prestigious universities and in think tanks and that follow the false ideologies of group-guilt intersectionality grids to persecute The Other).
The components of a physical critical mass of followers, a unifying false ideology that focuses on group guilt (thereby disassociating followers from their feelings of empathy for The Other), and the efficient distribution of said ideology is what leads to the psychopaths sensing an opportunity to lead. They don’t care whether the ideology is on the Left or Right. They care about power and have no empathy to curtail their domination.
Within the last month, the unification of these three components in the US has led to what could be, arguably, the largest and most public anti-semite demonstrations and approval of the torture and death of innocent Jews in the history of the United States.
We’re at the point that it’s merely a competition between the psychopath leaders of various anti-semite groups who are jockeying to be the next Hitler.
There is another story that was failed to mention. How false ideology and religious indoctrination embracing complete fiction resulted in thousands of people withdrawing to remote regions of America. This narrative is real, and very advanced, and would need to include how dangerously deluded such people are, having refused to educate and examine their own belief systems and the problems this causes for a community, a family, and a region, even a State and a Nation.
I know these people, I live in the idiotic Redoubt, and I’ve studied their ideology and religion at great length. They are a delusional people who pose circular arguments and specious reasoning to justify their hatred, distrust, anger and preparations for civil war. It is all based in religious indoctrination and misapplication.
In America, it is ok to be both stupid and wrong, but it is not okay to go any further with this when it deeply impacts everyone else. The harm these people cause is enormous, infecting the local schools and school boards, city council, county government and even State laws. They feel entirely justified to force their ideology and religious indoctrination upon everyone else, even to the point of removing the rights of others (look at Idaho’s abortion laws and actions for current examples), but see no contradiction to the objections to their interference and actions raised by anyone else.
It’s also ok in America to be ignorant and blind, but their actions are now causing harm, even death to others.
Do I know these people? Intimately. I’ve lived here for decades. Their delusions are monumental, dangerous and deeply misguided because of rampant propaganda and misinformation. It is generally all rooted in Christian fiction and end-times mythology, where they have embraced endless false representations and outright lies, and seek to force this worldview on everyone else. This is what makes them all dangerous because they are acting out their fantasies.
Delusions have consequences and they have no excuse but refuse all efforts at accountability and responsibility for the harm their actions have caused the entire region.
Ironically, they are not serving “God” or “Christ” as they are entirely contradictory to the biblical message, while pretending that they alone are the “true servants of truth”. Nothing could be further from the truth. They do not at all represent Christianity, faithfulness, integrity, honesty or obedience, all characteristics found within true Christians.
I am not mocking them either, but I am appalled at their ignorance of facts, history, and their shocking willingness to embrace outright fiction. It is evident always. If you live here, you know this. Their anger and mistrust and rhetoric is utterly ridiculous and nearly inescapable. They proudly post their delusions in local papers, at meetings and public forums.
They do not really “want to be left alone” as many claim, they want to force their ideology and religious indoctrination upon everyone else, this is why they are attempting to take over the Legislature, city councils and school boards. Their every action is to not be left alone or respect the rights of other, but to take away the rights of others and to force their ideology and religion on us all.
And worst of all, they are preparing to engage in violence against other Americans, especially those that they dislike or do not agree with. They are training, buying, practicing and preparing on a massive scale. I know a lot about Rawles, Shea and all of these so-called “leaders” in this movement and anyone who does not realize how dangerous they have become is simply delusional. Local businesses know that you don’t publically oppose these people because they have influence in the region. You will be ostracized, even assaulted, certainly verbally so. They preach and practice fear, paranoia, distrust and anger all the time. It’s thick, overpowering and pervasive. Those of us who understand their delusional worldview and mindset avoid them at all costs. Attempts to educate them to a balanced worldview based upon facts vs fiction have failed. They’re not interested in truth, and prefer their own echo-chambers of hostility and distrust.
They are not sitting “quietly on the side lines minding their own business” either. This is a complete lie. This movement is part of numerous other movements all around the country that seek to isolate themselves from reality while embracing the fiction of “patriotism” and Christian “nationalism”.
Anyone who has studied knows there is no such thing as a Christian nationalist. They are not patriots either, they are actually traitors to America and the Constitution (compare their actions and beliefs and what they are doing to what the Constitution actually says), a “lawless” people who demand their “rights” be protected while denying the rights (and laws) that govern others, all the while providing the illusion and pretense that they “support America”. No, they don’t support “America” at all, they only support their own warped ideology and demands ON America. They want to withdraw from the real America, even with violence if they must. Given the chance, they will, they are all quite literally waiting for their “trigger” event that take action.
If you have not attended their private meetings, gathering, exhibits, gun shows and the like, you will not fully understand what is unfolding in the Redoubt region. But this is not unique to “here”, and is very much expanding throughout the entire country. Hotbeds of unrest, rebellion, delusions and Christian nationalism. Rural families are scared at the changes they are forcing upon these areas. These are not “rebels”, but lawless people who do not respect anyone else’s rights. They do not represent the real America, only themselves and the false ideology they have embraced. This is the real danger to the country and to the region.
They don’t respect the right to vote, or have equal representation or even the right for other people to be left alone – from them. They are actually enemies to America and seek to return this country to an oppressive age where only their ideology can be embraced. Forget about woman’s rights, or the rights of children, or the rights of anyone who disagrees with them, including the media, State government or any other institution. Minorities have no place in their worldview. Immigrants are enemies. Everything they do is filtered through their ideology and gross misunderstanding of religion.
If you believe in God and the Bible, God is not on their side as they suppose, they are reprobates, having embraced a strong delusion and believed endless lies. But if you are a non-believer, it is very evident that these people are increasingly dangerous, delusional and deeply misguided. They need truth, not falsehoods, not paranoia, not knee-jerk reactionary hatred and anger and “leaders” who lie and falsely misrepresent, but they have shown no willingness whatsoever to self-examine their own ideology and mischaracterizations.
You cannot separate their religion from their movement either. It’s all wrapped up together in a tightly bound paranoia-filled worldview, which is why they are isolationists and distrustful. Their prophets are frauds, their indoctriction and brainwashing very evident, they are in a cult and don’t even know it. This is not America and never has been.
Thank you for this passionate, informative pushback against both those who defend these folks, and people like me who’d prefer not to worry about them much. According to your long, believable denunciation, I’ve underestimated their dangerousness.
Or even their danger.
But outside of their scary words, is there any real life physical “harm” they’re causing, as you claim? Can you provide some evidence?
I picked up one word from this diatribe – “mischaracterization”!
Look, America is a vast country. If you no longer like the eccentrics moving into remote Idaho, I’m sure there are other places. Massachusetts might suit you better?
Wow, they sure sound a lot like the settlers in the West Bank. Pretty abhorrent people in some respects, and not libertarian at all.
UnHerd should allow J Bryant to rewrite this article.
So, “Rawles wouldn’t let me walk anywhere near his house: he doesn’t trust the media.” Hmm, I am not sure he is mistaken given the writers take above. I would trust J. Bryant a lot further.
“the Redoubt, and the man behind it, have become a threat to liberal America”
The author says this but then I couldn’t find any evidence in the text itself.
Perhaps the threat to liberal America is that they show that it is possible to live apart from the destructive progressivism now running rampant in some large cities run by Democrats’?
Yes, I think you’ve nailed it there.
I don’t know much about the author, but suspect he’s British, hence incurably prejudiced. My evidence is: “The owner jumped on the bonnet and shot him dead through the windshield!” We don’t have ‘bonnets’, we have hoods.
Well, they do have bonnets; just not on cars!
I believe that Mr Furedi is from Kent. If so, I’m surprised that he didn’t say “windscreen.”
He sounds British, and while trying to also sound unprejudiced, he cites what must be a fake quote: “The owner jumped on the bonnet and shot him dead through the windshield!”
Americans don’t have bonnets. They have hoods. But I’ve no doubt that in England the shooter would have been charged with murder — for defending his property.
Well, they do have bonnets; just not on cars!
There’s no such thing as American English, there is English and there are mistakes!
In England people don’t need guns to feel safe so the whole incident would likely never have happened
Whoa: “people don’t need guns to feel safe” and so ipso facto they actually must be safe? BECAUSE no English subject is permitted to defend themselves by means of deadly force, no other English subject would dare to steal their car or run them over in the process?
Of course you’re permitted to use lethal force in Britain during the course of self defence, it’s written in law you simply have to prove it was justified to do so which to us is just common sense. That’s why we don’t have kids getting shot simply for pressing the wrong doorbell or reversing up the wrong driveway
You are permitted to use lethal force but denied the means. What sort of lethal force can a little old lady use against the brute who has decided to beat her up?
If she had a firearm she could defend herself but Plod won’t allow it.
BB, in the UK car thieves often run or try to run down the owners trying to stop them.
And in America they’d be armed and just shoot you. I’d fancy my chances of avoiding the car easier than a bullet
I live in England. people mostly feel safe from being murdered, less so in bigger cities. They don’t feel safe from lesser crimes. They hope it won’t happen to them but if it does, they won’t bother calling the police because the police are too busy policing “hate crimes”. If someone were to see some kids handling a bible in a reckless or disrespectful manner, they would be hesitant to intervene because they might be subjected to at the least, verbal abuse. But when a school child dropped a copy of the Quran and it got scuffed, the police were called in. That’s why they are too busy to deal with property crime. The continual erosion of basic civility and security is why it gets harder and harder to dismiss the “Redoubt “ as a bunch of eccentrics. Not to mention a fiscal reality that defies common sense.
The police are useless, always have been. You’ve always had to keep your wits about you in the rougher areas, the housing schemes in the bigger cities have never been any kind of utopia irrelevant of whether the police spend too much time nabbing people on Twitter in a lazy attempt to increase their arrest numbers.
I was chased around numerous estates at the football during my younger years. However I knew the worst I’d ever receive is a kicking, no power crazed Rambo was going to pull a gun on me
You’ve obviously never been to an Ariana Grande concert or walked across Westminster Bridge at the wrong time.
That vould be because in England life is valued more highly than property.
Evidence to support that statement?
The fact that we cannot carry guns!
The denial of the means of self-defence is evidence that the life of innocent people is not valued.
The biggest threat to liberal America is liberal America. All those nutty ideas, selfish grasping, missing self awareness, gender, race, identity, hypocrisy, etc will blow up in their faces one day. I just hope I’m still around to enjoy it before the redoubters roll in from Montana to administer the last rights.
Even “selfish grasping” is now monopolized by liberals? And self-awareness thrives on one side of a socio-political divide? I thought it was in more general short supply.
The Victim-Identity Industrial Complex you refer to is far to the left of what is properly called “liberal”. The term is no more fitting for that crowd than “conservative” is for burn-it-all-down or sky-is-falling types.
The so call progressive left and the republican gun guys are both committed to the same unworkable individualism which is the cause of the whole problem- although they can’t actually see it. Taking the Christian message seriously might be a start. Because these guys don’t seem Christian to me.
I agree; it is a need to be their own authority and not acknowledge authority outside themselves.
Rites.
You’re write. I’d better find some to blame.
Indeed, methinks the editor who chose the title didn’t actually read the article 😀
He can only work within the mental framework inherited from his father, apples and trees sadly applies.
There’s an imbedded hyperlink at the word threat, which goes to a alarm piece titled “Far Right Survivalist and Icon of ‘Patriot’ Movement Predicts Religious Civil War”, from the Southern Poverty Law Center (too far left in my opinion to be called “liberal”).
That article is even less neutral than Mr. Furedi’s above, but it does include these corroborating words from Rawles: “I’m predicting a Third Gulf War, but it won’t be fought in the Middle East. It will be the Second Civil War, here in America and caused by the gulf between the right and left — or between the godly and the godless — or between the libertarians and the statists — or between the individualists and the collectivists”.
I think the sentence you take issue with is meant in the sense of “perceived threat”. It should have be worded more carefully if so. I find it hard to see these Redoubters as much of a threat to my consensus-seeking moderate-liberal-incrementalist, cultural-tradition-minded views (hedgy enough for ya?). For now at least, short of some actual Second Civil War that has become all too possible.
The fact that their leader champions the Law Abiding–at least those among them who are ultra-right Christians too–is re-assuring in the context of doomsday-prep communities. They seem far more threatened–i.e. fearful–than any immediate threat.
The Southern Poverty Law Center is a bunch of money-grabbing leftists forever looking to cash in on societal discontent. Don’t give them the time of day.
Uh-oh. You’ve just become another dot on the SPLC Hate Map . . .
I agree and I don’t*. They were always quite radical but l think they had once integrity and a worthwhile mission. Decades ago that is.
*Give them the time of time of day
Rawles is not “godly”, neither is his wife. I live here.
That’s because they are not. They don’t even vote, for heaven’s sake. How much of a threat can you be to anyone whilst living in absolute obscurity? Unlike those who infest academia, the media and the corporate ranks and work feverishly to undermine our culture and way of life. Which side is truly the threat here?
You must have missed the part (well known) that the stockpile of guns, ammunition and training has nothing to do with “voting”. They intend to engage in civil war. Voting has been abandoned because they don’t support the Constitution or the rule of law anymore, so violence is their proposed (and sometimes enacted) “answer”. Yes, they are a clear threat, and a major one. The rest of your screed is just your ignorance and bias. It is not “your culture” you nitwit. It is American culture and it belongs to all of us. It is obvious to all but the obtuse “who” is the real “threat” here.
The “best” part of passionate “comments” on the “Internet” are the unnecessary “scare” quotes.
The best part (…) *are* ???
Who is John Galt?
I like to imagine Amazon not delivering to NYC for 24 hrs. New Yorkers are utterly helpless and would go nuts. I like the Redoubters if for no other reason than their self sufficiency.
Up to a point, Lord Copper. They don’t make their own electrical generators or cars – or the guns and ammunition many of them seem to be fond of.
What struck me the most was the estate agent who’s making money out of them.
Actually, and I have lived amongst these people, many would make their own generators if needed. An electrical motor spun by a waterwheel is a generator. You can be sure they have pre-chip autos somewhere they can keep running; for the EMP and to avoid tracking…Sure they need industrial products, but not that many. A scrap-yard would supply much to them, they are remarkably competent and ingenious..
What they have is Law and Order, and with that they have what it takes to thrive, when loss of that will doom wherever loses it.
Fair enough, but my post was based on items actually mentioned in the article, which they’re using.
I think the guns and ammunition are the most interesting case. And the pre-chip cars will need petrol.
Amazon delivers to these ranches, in the early fall, my husband did the Main Salmon (river of no return) 6 day river run, ranches completely cut off by road get Prime deliveries via jetboat and aircraft. My bro, off the grid, in Marble Colorado (look it up) got deliveries in the dead of winter, driver even walked the unplowed section.
And once their bullets run out, or they need parts for their weapons, tools or vehicles they’ll be just as stuck as anybody else. They may have a bit more stuff stored but if the fuel runs dry they don’t last any longer than the rest of us
Or perhaps they will use their guns to go take those parts and supplies they need from defenseless Oregonians and Californians.
“He goes on to describe the tense months after George Floyd’s death, when it was rumoured that busloads of Antifa activists were travelling to Coeur D’Alene to hold a Black Lives Matter protest. In response, groups of vigilantes armed with semi-automatic weapons patrolled the streets on successive evenings. “If you guys are thinking of coming to Coeur D’Alene, to riot or loot, you’d better think again,” said one of those involved. “Because we ain’t having it in our town.” The Antifa threat never materialised.”
So how are supposed to read that? A warning about those backwoods nutters? “See, these are the kind of people we’re dealing with”. Personally, I read it as an indictment of the failure of government and law enforcement in cities like Seattle and Portland. The “It’s just a street party” gaslighting was a bit too much.
And then there’s the nub of it.
“The idea of alienation carries the hope that one day the alienated will find a voice — that they are the product of circumstances that can be reversed. Rawles’s Redoubt, by contrast, seems an acceptance of defeat. After all, it is premised on the belief that America can’t be saved. That its people and their representatives are the cause, rather than the solution, to its very real crises. That the nation, along with its citizens, is Fallen”
The claim is that these folks have given up and checked out. Well, to each his own and there have always been/will always be people on the ‘lunatic fringe’ (a common if not entirely accurate term), Right or Left. Unless fringe movements pose an active physical threat they are politically irrelevant. They can be ignored, disparaged and mocked with impunity. The key is in the numbers. It is problematic when the numbers of citizens that share common attitudes, feelings and views clearly exceed fringe level yet the People’s representatives -usually through their own ‘know better’ hubris – continue to ignore, disparage and mock instead of listening. They wallpaper over this failure by selling themselves as the bulwark against what they themselves created.
Irrelevant fringes didn’t carry the vote on Brexit or Trump. Many millions of people that were tired of being ignored, disparaged and mocked did.
The trouble is the alienated and the ignored – as far as I can see – don’t actually have a coherent, consistent and positive answer. They define themselves by what they are not. Brexit was like this – ‘not the EU’ but as we are discovering the alternative was never seriously thought through, or different groups have wildly and often directly contradictory visions. Look at Trump, we know what he hates but really he doesn’t have a coherent positive vision
The point I was trying to make (and didn’t do a very good job of it) is that Brexit and Trump (in my view at least) were very much protest votes.
I’m from the other side of the pond but my understanding is that one of key issues (of many issues) of the Brexit debate was control over borders and the belief by many that the EU was overriding Britain’s sovereignty. If that was indeed true it would have seemed prudent for Remainers to caution their EU friends to back off and de-fuse that issue. Maybe mocking “Little Britain” wasn’t the best response.
The Dems openly scorned Trump from the minute he registered for the GOP nomination. They were warned early on by some of their own fellow Lefties that people were angry, Trump’s message was being well-received and you had better wake up. The Dems lost and blamed everything and everybody except themselves. It didn’t help that their dire predictions of disaster never materialized. Eight years later and they’re still doing it squealing. Even after the legal problems polls indicate that Trump could still win. That’s on the Dems – not the voters. How bad do you have to be if people choose Trump – again?
The Democrats have only themselves to blame for the Trump presidency. Their power brokers steam-rollered all other candidates to put up Ms Clinton, a woman who was widely distrusted and disliked.
I was living in England during the Brexit vote. For many it was an anti-government vote, people were so sick of and angry about austerity and Cameron’s elitism. If Cameron had put out his seven million leaflets urging people to vote for instead of against Brexit it would never have happened.
That is a stupid and idiotic thing to say. The Democrats are not responsible for the millions of voters, mostly Republicans, that voted for Trump. They alone are “responsible” for the Trump Presidency. Deflecting responsibility like this shows a shocking lack of comprehension and understanding how America operates in it’s elections. Doesn’t even matter who the other opponent even was. That’s irrelevant. Nobody held a gun to anyone’s head and made them vote “Trump”. They brought this upon themselves and to the entire rest of the country (mass delusions).
What or who he hates changes from day to day.
Any American pretending they can take the law into their own hands, especially on “rumors” is a clueless fool. You are a clueless fool. These people have given up on America and the Constitution and Bill of Rights and are actively seeking to ensure that nobody else has any “rights” either. They are self-serving “faketriots” who do not respect the rights of others (including protests). They are not law enforcement, are not authorized to oppress or deny the rights of anyone else, but take it upon themselves that only their “rights” can be permitted (or to hell with the law). They lie, deflect, fabricate and assume based on a false ideology and Christian nationalism / indoctrination. They seek to force their demands on everyone else while adhering to no demands or laws upon themselves. That is not American.
The author should visit the Dakotas, just for giggles. Then Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. Then, the South. Texas. Florida. “Redoubters” are everywhere.
Agreed. The idiocy and delusions and end-time fantasies are everywhere now in America.
Nowhere more so than Berkeley and Mill Valley.
Whenever the old topic of “If you could, where would you like to live?” bobs up, I’ve always said Montana or Wyoming. I’ve never been there, but on film (possibly through a Vaseline lens) they look spectacular, green (the colour, not the politics), mountains, not over-run and it wouldn’t take me long to learn the language. I will now add Idaho. Stephen King scared me off Maine; too many monsters.
As long as you’re “god-fearing” carry a gun and the American flag you’ll be welcome.
Funnily enough, before I moved to the States I was told to watch out for those kind of people, but since living here, I’ve noticed I have more fun with them than I do with left-wing academics. I think it’s because they are less rigid and dogmatic in their thinking, which probably goes to show how thoroughly wretched academia has become.
Which says a lot about your situational ethics and intellect. If “fun” is all you are about, you’re not a neighbor I would want or respect or trust. And if you have not come to understand just how dogmatic and indoctrinated this crowd actually is, you are definitely not paying attention. You bias is showing, as is your ignorance.
You consistently make my point! Take out your epithets and your brilliance is a bunch of ” a, the, you, and lots of I “. Amusing.
That’s genuinely interesting. So you’ve interacted with left wing academics–as well as far-right preppers–on a regular basis. Are you a visiting professor?
I’m just trying to figure out what context would make your claim plausible.
It’s what life looks like outside the Bay Area bubble. You should try it sometime.
Whatever floats your boat. Some people need a sense of impending doom/liberation to feel a sense of purpose – hardcore left-wingers spent years banging-on about how “the revolution” was about to kick off at any minute.
This lot sound pretty harmless and are probably just looking for a quiet agrarian life (albeit one with the romantic appeal of a spot of doomsday cosplay). Given the state of many US cities I can see the appeal of getting ‘back to the land.’
Indeed. Just don’t let yourself miss any “No Trespassing” or “Keep Out” signs when sightseeing, or maybe lost for lack of accurate GPS (dead phone battery?).
But don’t forget the “god-fearing” aspect.
A half-million firearms is not “harmless” in the hands of one small region. They’re neither “quiet” or “agrarian” but heavily armed and training all the time. Don’t deflect from reality.
And how many corpses have piled up as a result? Fewer than in an average weekend in Oakland.
Lighting out for the Territory is a good old American tradition. And not just for Huck Finn. In real life Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale would have headed out west instead of submitting to The Scarlet Letter. Of course in Adam Bede George Eliot has Hetty Sorrel run away when she gets preggers. And Arthur Donnithorne just wimps out. I wonder what Georgie Porgie meant by that.
We ‘Muricans are different from you Brits. We never know when we’ll need the rifle in the gun rack of the old pickup truck to take out a varmint that’s botherin’ the steers in the back 40.
Unfortunately the rifle in the gun rack tends to get used against family members or school children much more regularly than any trouble makers
Well said.
Evidence?
A quick peek at the American gun statistics. You’ve clearly got access to the internet go and have a gander
The term “:troublemakers” is not a search-term that the FBI recognizes. Go have a gander.
I feel there is a general migration from urban areas that is the bigger story. This article focuses on the tail of the curve. And there is a general lack of confidence in the ruling intelligence that has created the migration.
White conservative narrative? Maybe the author should interview the Malaysian doctor next to my farm.
These silly people! Can’t they see that the world is evolving smoothly into a peaceful concert of nations, as liberal democracy proceeds to blossom in one formerly autocratic country after another? If they think that war among the great powers is possible, let them read why this is most unlikely, just a great illusion, in a book by that name: [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion ]
Can’t they see that the United States is on the road of ever-upward widespread prosperity for all its contented citizens? Don’t they know they should share the majority’s inbuilt optimism, even though wicked academics disparage it: [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias ]
And … abandoning America’s beautiful, peaceful cities, with their wonderful cultural enrichment! A walk down the main streets of San Francisco or Los Angeles should convince anyone of the vibrancy of big city life, with their recent creative additions to urban architecture as thousands of people embrace the pleasures of open-air living.
Even some otherwise sensible Britons have caught this disease: https://www.uk-preppers.co.uk/forum/index.php
All will be for the best, in the best of all possible worlds!
You remain your insistent, optimistic self, Dr. Pangloss.
“Even so, we must cultivate our garden(s)”.
This strikes me as of a piece with the one yesterday about Oxford; overlong, short in new insights or information and ultimately tells you more about the writer than anything else.
I disagree – I think it is a peek into a fascinating sub-set of Western Society.
“The owner jumped on the bonnet . . .” Brian obviously didn’t say that. We call what the 74-year-old purportedly jumped on a hood.
Has the author had a look around American cities? They are filthy, crime-ridden, violent dystopias utterly dependent on capable outsiders to provide for them. Who the h*ll would want to live in such places? They are J. G. Ballard’s High-Rise, not some figment of survivalist fantasies.
Self-sufficient people minding their own business are models, not figures of fun or threats to society. What we have now is the collapse of society. Oh, maybe not in pretty pockets of affluent America (bad elements get booted from the Martha’s Vineyards here). But every city run by Democrats is a hellhole.
I live on the beautiful southwest Gulf Coast of Florida, but if my area devolves into what, say, Baltimore or Chicago have become, I’d seriously consider a Redoubt move. I already know how to fire a gun, but I could definitely use some lessons in canning.
You have to be “god-fearing”.
It’s not as bad as all that. You should go over and visit sometime.
Sadly we never learned what turned this nepo-journos father from bile filled leftism to a more thought based approach, and he clearly hasn’t passed his later incarnation on. The trouble with patrimonio is the kids often lack the drive of the parents but usually retain the prejudices and hubris – clans from the Gettys and Fords to the Mafia and current US/UK politicians are proof of this. Furedi Jnr’s failure to realise that what drives a christian in Idaho to protect his own also drives gang leaders in LA or jihadis in the Middle East makes the article more like Louis Theroux than anything likely to educate or entertain.
Very, very perceptive comment.
Interesting comment. I didn’t make the connection between the author and Frank Furedi. Over time I’ve learned that one Unherd employee comes from a famous literary family, another is the child of a chemistry professor, another is the child of a peer. When they divulge their university it’s almost always Oxbridge. So is this an Unherd phenomenon or is modern UK journalism an almost exclusively upper middle class activity?
Since the demise of the local newspapers, the only way to get into journalism now for youngsters is often an unpaid internship at the bigger players, which obviously prevents those from poorer backgrounds joining the industry as they don’t have the family able to financially support them through it. Therefore nearly all come from wealthy backgrounds
Journalism used to be looked down upon because it was usually carried out by rough, boisterous working class men who had no problem ruffling the feathers of those in power.
Now, instead reporting the news or exposing corruption, it tends to cover up the truth and sermonize its readers on their various ‘isms’.
Thankfully, Unherd isn’t too bad for that.
Really, Unheard, your headline writers cannot do better than this? Redoubter ≠ Christian Conservative. There are many more of the later here, and most are not arming up for war. To the extent they do arm up it is usually for defense. Though, conservative, I am neither a Christian nor a gun owner, just someone who wish our British friends had more perspective as far as we and our 2nd Amendment were concerned.
Great Article! Yes, it’s showing one perspective of some people – but it’s spot on for that group. I’m from just west, a farm in eastern Washington state.
But like guy posted, it can seem inflammatory. I agree to a point, but in that inland area, the Christianity practiced still believes in a spiritual war, not just the Jesus is a good example of a peaceful hippy.
I grew up in a sane family, father educated mechanical engineer at the nuclear reactor.
BB gun at 8, had a 22 long rifle by 10, 20 gauge shotgun by 12, 30.06 deer hunting rifle by 14, bow at 16. No, we did not wear a pistol on our hips, but I knew where dad hid the 45 pistol under the front seat of our van when camping.
It’s always been fun for city folk – of which I’ve now been for 30 years – watching Seattle die a liberal death that is accelerating recently, but for city folk to gawk at guns in rural areas, when they really are needed on farms and in the forest, but nothing is said about gangbangers (young men and boys) with pistols they have had no trading with, shooting themselves and everyone around them, and no father figure to raise them properly.
But that said, northern Idaho and Montana have lots of fun pockets of crazy:
Butler and his neo nazi compound in the 1980s they like to try to forget. I used to hear them shooting in the night while camping near by outside Hayden Lake
Ruby Ridge – a tragedy brought on that everyone taking a breath and waiting would have avoided. They weren’t going any where.
The Sovereign Citizen movement. I worked with crazies from that group in college while landscaping. Just tear up your social security card and tell the feds your are now you’re own sovereign country lol
And let’s not forget the church, universal and triumphant, led by Elizabeth Clare Prophet over in Montana and theirbomb shelters and crazy end of the world crap.
Lots of space, for people to do their own thing, which is actually great. The only unfortunate thing, is now some of the more dangerous crazy is now getting networked via the inter-webs. Lol.
Oh, and all those rural areas used to be so unaffected by drugs, but the evolution of meth has tainted even small towns in America.
Great article.
As one of the subjects in this article, Brian, I want to thank Jacob for for trying to be ‘fair’ but he “missed the bullseye” so to speak, and as others pointed out, his ‘Britishness’ (bonnet? LOL) did come through. He also did not quote Patrick or myself accurately or let us see an advance copy for corrections before releasing it to the world. For clarity, the ‘looters’ did Not ‘slink off after I pulled my gun’. A dozen or so black gang bangers set on beating some white boy ass like truck driver Reginald Denny’s, froze in place like a proverbial ‘Mexican standoff’ when my carpool buddy, Mike, pushed the Remington 12 gauge shotgun out the passenger door window and jacked a round in the chamber, We escaped with our lives when the light turned green and the cross traffic stopped and made no mo more stops for anyone/anything until we were home and ensured our families were safe. But I guess it made fir good prose with artistic license.As far as the police up here being ‘easy going’ if, God forbid, we would have to shoot someone to neutralize the treat – there Would be a full criminal investigation to ascertain if the shooting/killing was justified and one could be arrested & tried. It’s not like “oh, we’ll just take the body away for you, it’s all good.” That Idaho has a ‘Stand Your Ground” provision & ‘Castle doctrine” will play in one’s favor. Another point of matter -Patrick was Not just “an EMT” in LA – he was a full blown Paramedic with medical privileges just below that of a factual doctor. Since then, he’s been in some of the crappiest places on Earth, like the ‘A-Stan sandbox’ and protected some of the richest people in the world. His real world knowledge of how shitty people can be to each other is enormous and part of the reason he moved to Idaho.
“Eccentricities” is obviously a subjective term and for someone who self-admittedly never shot a firearm prior to his visit (which he DID get to with multiple guns – thank you Patrick!) cannot be expected to have a full comprehension of someone he just met and spoke to for 3 hours.Jacob was SHOCKED when we didn’t have to have a license to even buy a gun, much less carry one daily and didn’t have a good answer “why” he should have to beg permission from a king or queen in order to protect his life or those he cares for when They have 24/7 protection. THAT is a fundamental difference between being a Citizen and a subject. I kneel to no one but God & my Savior, Jesus Christ.
That we don’t trust the government reaches back to our first president, George Washington who warned us that “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence – it is force. And force, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.” Remember ‘How’ we got our independence from the King & his Brit thugs – we shot them, with guns, because tyrants Never give up power willingly. I learn from history, like how the People are Always disarmed before a slaughter. Even the Jews in present day Israel, turned a blind eye to the past Nazi horrors against their people and let themselves be disarmed yet AGAIN before the Hamas invasion and dearly paid the price for trusting the government to protect/save them which took HOURS. Remember, when seconds count, the cops are minutes (at best) away. That’s why “I” am my/family’s First Responder. My God has granted me the tools, training & temperament to be a ‘sheepdog’ and I will not forfeit His goodness & blessings.
Y’all can have in your ‘rat cage’ big cities – stacked on top of each of & elbow to elbow with each other in the Tube, hearing everything your cell mate next to you says through paper thin walls as he sits & shits on the loo. Where you can’t even see the stars because of the light pollution and have to go to a park to see some green grass. I refuse to live in modern day hellholes that echo Beirut & Sarajevo, that’s not how we were designed to live.I choose to make my home in the glory of my Creator’s work, where I can still marvel at the Milky Way at night, but not see my closest neighbor through the pines & firs, enjoying privacy and wildlife like elk & turkeys walking through my front yard & eating my rose bushes back at the end of the year.If that’s ‘eccentric’, well so be it.
May the good Lord bless all of you reading this and if you ever choose to visit the Redoubt, look me up.I’ll be here where I belong.
I don’t see much Christianity in there, so far…
Yeah. Well…
Today I got up.
Tried to get the creases out of my suit. Worked out timing the charging of my ev vis a vis my solar panels (true)
and sterilised some glass containers to receive some home made passata …
I’d hate to think how this author could have mocked me!!!
if he’d known I am a rock solid conservative!!!
Is Christianity little lambs and fluffy kittens and ickle pickle yellow easter chickies then. Didn’t the man it’s named after say,or make the true of life observation that,”of you’ve got nothing,even what little you have will be taken from you’. That’s not very nicey-nicey is it. Shouldn’t he have said ‘if you have nothing,I will personally instruct my father in Heaven to shower you with gold and sunshine. If you think faith/Christianity (+ other faiths) should be all honey,all flowers,all LURVE.
As you probably know: The verse you cite was spoken directly to the disciples, in explanation of the veiled-to-the-masses Parable of the Talents, and has a primarily non-material meaning about hearing the Message of the Founder.
The prevailing message in the four Gospels is one of compassion, forgiveness, service, and courageous sacrifice. I don’t pretend that those four values capture the teachings, but I’d not be easily persuaded that those are not central, and triumphantly-affirmed therein. What is your overall reading of the character of Jesus of Nazareth as a human being?
Not weak or namby-pamby, but not mean, cruel, or given to conclusive condemnation. “For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you” (Matthew 7:2 NIV).
A stark prospect for all of us–certainly for me. And I believe that’s true in this world, according to a kind of rule of action and reaction.
*Discernment and sound moral judgment are not, of course, the same as judgmentalness.
No, just that the Gospels say very little about stun guns, Southern border crises, and potato soup.
I suppose it’s a bit easier to love your neighbors if they self-elect for the same hatreds–easy in the abstract.
As anyone in Mill Valley will attest.
Christianity is quite war-like. Christ did not say soldiers were sinners, he held law and order as being necessary for Christianity, and the people, and supported those who upheld it. Most of the great historical conversions of kingdoms were warrior Kings and peoples. Christianity was so remarkably successful because the Fierce fit into it as well as the meek. Recall Christ and the Centurion
”When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking for help.6 “Lord,” he said, “my servant lies at home paralyzed, suffering terribly.”7 Jesus said to him, “Shall I come and heal him?”
8 The centurion replied, “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. 9 For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”
”10 When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, “Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith.”
”Then Jesus said to the centurion, “Go! Let it be done just as you believed it would.” And his servant was healed at that moment.”
Anarchy at the border is not being Christian, and potato soup is not a problem.
I don’t think any type of soup was mentioned by Jesus.
No, but the KJV has several references to pottage, and three to broth (I admit that I had to search for the latter in an online version).
Why is the Telegraph headline writer(s) perpetuating a false image of Americans? Redoubter ≠ Christian Conservative. There are many more Christian Conservatives than there are Redoubters here, and most are not arming up for war. When they do arm up it is usually for defense. Though conservative, I am neither Christian nor a gun owner, by the way.
Good to know, Penny.
One of the great things about the States is that there are so many places, beautiful, remote places, for misfits to build bespoke asylums.
You just couldn’t have a cult like that in England, there simply isn’t the space. You’re never more than 10 minutes from civilisation unless you go and hide in the woods
Actually, Findhorn in Scotland was a thriving alternative community. It became well known for being able to grow incredibly large plants and vegetables using positive energy. RD Laing sent many of his mentally ill patients up there to heal and many different kinds of healers stayed there. It was an interesting open-minded place that wasn’t “god-fearing,” on the contrary it focused on love.
Actually Findhorn isn’t and never was a cult in the sense being discussed.
Jacob Furedi Ukraine article was a bunch of hooey according to my wife’s family in the Ukraine!!!!! They are ethnic Lithuanian/Ukraine mix. Her GRET GREAT Grandfather served as an office in the Tsar’s Army and was given land in the Ukraine because of ther need for farmers there!!!! This guy NEVER did ANY background work and the he gets an award for going along with the Leftists there???? His editorials are NOT to be trusted!!!!!
Hmm.’Yet the wider Redoubter population can seem similarly aggressive as they police local councils and schools, making sure they don’t overstep their federal remits.’ Seem? There’s a weasel word. Where’s the aggression in making sure local apparatchiks stay within their lawful powers?
‘Redoubt News offers a flavour of their bêtes noirs’: “woke violence”, Big Pharma and government tyranny. Oh horror! Imagine people who are AGAINST Woke violence (no sneer-mars required) by BLM looting mobs and LGBTQPZ++?? men in dresses, meted out to Main Street America and to non-compliant women; AGAINST Purdue and Pfizer, their control of Washington and the FDA and their murderous addictive opioids and useless, needless, dangerous Covid ‘vaccines’; worst of all, AGAINST Government tyranny!!
What right-minded person could possibly be against Government tyranny?
And what makes Mr Furedi think Mr Rawles is wrong on the EMP question? AFAIK, it’s a perfectly plausible eventuality.
The film / movie “The Village” describes an extreme example of Americans selling up to get away from a cruel modern America with the luxury of space to do so. The average Englishman in the mortgage paid age group is usually a bit late to up sticks and start such a new life. Such a move would need a lottery win. Even then our offspring, with their careers and tech reliance, I doubt would follow, at least for long, The European herd creature young seem predisposed to the Left at first in life, atheist in itself and our Church has abandoned its faithful in the folly of supporting the woke LGBQT trends of an already atheist minority. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, at least here.
I doubt he said “bonnet,” which is called a hood in America. Otherwise, a pretty good article about the people who see a shit storm coming.
I wonder what Rawles made of this story. Did he find it fair, and even-handed? And I wonder why he agreed to be interviewed.
I believe we have come to the point where such terms as “Liberal”, “Conservative”, “Extremism” etc have to be defined article by article. Too often we’re left with the distinct impression these terms mean the direct opposite of their original meaning..
Liberal = free to screw the gullible unwary.
Conservative = reverting back to old, long defunct (in all but a tiny minority) narrow, self-righteous values.
Extremism = any opposition to Neocon greed, self-righteous elitism and its disregard for human life (especially brown/Muslim).
I seem to remember when..
Liberal = respect for the rights of Others!
Conservative = preserving Current laudable values (generally Christian et al based).
Extremism = disregard for the rights of ordinary, uninvolved people in favour of a tiny minority of ruthless, brutal, inhumane thugs; eg the IDF.
Amen. One of your best posts.
I don’t quite understand why whoever is moderating this thread is deleting innocuous comments.
Me too. Didn’t think I was being at all unpleasant/controversial but I’ve vanished. More contentious comments remain and are added. Perhaps it’s a technical glitch? Otherwise, makes one disinclined to bother in future.
Me too. So when I noticed mine had vanished, I cancelled my subscription. But now they’ve been resurrected. Why bury them in the first place? Do UnHerd’s disinformation Nazis have too much time on their hands?
They might get automatically moved into moderation, until a human can approve them, or something.
[deleted]
There are loonie toons on both sides of the political divide. Try this for size:
Far more intentional violence here than in the UnHerd essay:
https://www.thefp.com/p/hes-got-250-million-to-spend-on-communist?utm_campaign=email-post&r=gt8i7&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
The article describes these people as “Christian conservatives” having “Christian precepts”, who are “devout church going Christians”, believe in “separation … on religious lines” and subscribe to “biblical warfare”.
This is distortion to the point of abomination. A Christian is a follower of Christ who believes in, and tries to live by, his values. These include being peace makers, humble, loving your neighbour, and being salt and light to the world (look it up if you will). The “church” which these people attend is run by untrained power seekers who teach anti-Christian false values by emotional manipulation and herd behaviour.
There is much wrong with the Church and many of us Christians, but please do not be taken in by the propaganda of unpleasant and dangerous weirdos.
Rawles and his followers seem to play ‘pick and mix’ with the Bible.
Except America was founded as a Liberal Democracy free from religion.
Funny how few Jews there are in this “Judeo-christian” enclave. Also, anyone of color.
Just a new confederacy of dunces.
Free from religion? You couldn’t be more incorrect. Reread the 1st Amendment.
Except America was founded as a Liberal Democracy free from religion.
Talk about dunces…
Modern America was largely founded by Puritans who England was glad to see the back of. Their whole point of going was so they live out their miserable pious existence away from the English peasantry who just wanted to get drunk and feast on holy days
They couldn’t keep those types out of the good ol’ USA though, even before the waves of Irish that included some of my ancestors. Some came over on the very Mayflower. How else would you get mechanicks and indentured servaunts (period spelling)?
You really are clueless.
How do you know that?
Imagine spending your whole life that paranoid that society is going to collapse imminently and you’ll be stuck fighting gangs of marauding criminals, it must be exhausting. At least if these people are hiding away in the mountains they’re not bothering the rest of society.
If I did that and got to 80 years old and society was still functioning I’d think I’d wasted my life
Well if it turns out they’re right you’d be the one with egg on your face.
It’s a very big IF though. They don’t even know who they’d be fighting against anyway, or how many if it all does go belly up. A few handguns wouldn’t be much use if their enemies had tanks and planes or vastly outnumbered them. It’s a very specific future they’re preparing for, that in my opinion has very little chance of coming to pass
With the recent looting and burning of so many American cities,it seems to me it is already coming to pass.
And if an armed mob that size descended on their farm how long do you think they could fight them off for?
Despite what most news sources claim, there are far more Christians in America than atheists. They just don’t tend to answer polls or fill in surveys.
Christianity is also making a huge comeback with young people too: https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/education/3777468/are-young-people-turning-to-faith-teens-more-likely-to-believe-in-god/
If they don’t answer polls or fill in surveys, how do you know how many of them there are?
In farming (ranching) so much attention has to be devoted to keeping the wild, including disease, out of the crops and the kine that the additional worry of a few ‘marauders’ will probably be no great burden. As Mr Bryant says, most of the folk under discussion will just be living lives of industrious self-sufficiency. There was a huge wave in favour of it in UK after the publication of John Seymour’s ‘The Fat of The Land’ in the early seventies. And people found it a hugely satisfying way of life. The route to fulfilment is not the same for everyone.
And – a note to Mr Chantrill – we have land rovers and shotguns here. They don’t have the Wild West romance of trucks and rifles but big estates still have their gun rooms. Our house, modest in comparison to the grand ones, was built by a wool merchant in the same year as the American revolution. It has a surprisingly sizeable gun room – much bigger than a lot of kitchens and with iron bars on the windows like an old fashioned jail cell. The ‘estate’ was mostly dissipated before we bought the property but the remaining few acres, the gun room ( just one shotgun now) and the extensive full height cellars have lately become a peculiar source of comfort. At our age, I doubt we’d ever need them for extreme usage but, in darker moments, I do take a strange solace from the fact that our sons and their families could ‘hole up’ here against whatever the future may hold.
Is this honestly your takeaway? These are people living the life they want on their terms. Where do you live?
The liberal elite hate to be ignored.
Yes that is my takeaway. They’re that anxious that society is on the brink of collapse that they’ve upped sticks and moved miles away to cosplay at being survivalists because some bloke told them to. Unfortunately for them if society did collapse they’d have no fuel for the generators, no way of buying more ammunition or parts for their weapons, the water and sanitation would fail and they’d have no way of fixing it etc. There’s much more to survival than a gun and storing a few tins of food.
At best they’d eek out a few more weeks than the rest of us, although us living in society would likely receive the aid drops more quickly
Between the total collapse of society, on the one hand, and the lovely prosperous harmonious utopia of current-day America on the other, there is wide spectrum of social possibilities.
And along a large part of that spectrum, living away from a big city, among like-minded people, with sufficiently stockpiled means of life to live out a few months of serious social/economic/legal disruption, is not a crazy idea, whether or not ‘aid drops’ (from whom?) eventually materialize.
No one knows the future. The French upper classes in 1788, the Russian upper classes in 1916, were confident that their societies, having survived upheavals in the past, would continue forever.
Of course, this time it’s different.
Its good news there are very few awful people like this in the UK
As a US Citizen, that’s why I celebrate the 4th of July ;O}
What relevance does an 18th century conflict have to a few fruitcakes believing the end is nigh and stockpiling weapons?
Why are these people awful? What’s their sin? Not wanting to live in some hellhole like LA, Portland or Seattle? Is that it?
Doesn’t being “god-fearing” say it all?
If you don’t like the Christian right, wait until you meet the non-Christian right.