From here, individual reactions to war there can lead to active military involvement in international militias or generous patronage. After the surge of interest in domestic bunkers, this series on the ultrapessimistic outlook concludes with an examination of survivalism, including and especially as a variant of conspiracy theories.
Survivalists prepare for the worst, and the worst really threatens. Survivalism, or the art of preparing for localized or globalized disasters, has developed thanks to the repeated crises of recent decades. The new war in Europe, with the possibility of a nuclear apocalypse in the background, further stimulates the followers of this active reaction to a destructive cataclysm.
The media have been multiplying sensationalist portraits of these providents of the Apocalypse for several weeks. The Sun, in Great Britain, has even unearthed a lady who has been waiting for the end of the world for ten years with her minimal means, stuffing her small car with camping equipment, including a bow and arrows to hunt squirrels, cats or rabbits…
“Vegetarians are going to have it hard,” she announced, saying she was ready. if Vladimir Putin nukes London “. Another, an Irishman, explained that he had access to an anti-atomic room and food “for at least three months”, accumulated in his residence.
Is it really that ridiculous? The XXIand century begun by the attacks of September 11 continues to be one of great astonishment. One crisis drives out the other, the climate worsens, and the war replaces the health catastrophe in the governmental and popular concerns, with once again the obligation to envisage the unimaginable. FEMA, the US Federal Emergency Measures Agency, resumed updating its citizens’ advice page in the event of a nuclear explosion on February 25, the day after the invasion of Ukraine.
Amazon.ca is already out of stock for at least one brand of potassium iodine tablets for use in the event of atomic radiation. On the site, a guide to survival of the American army in the event of a biological, chemical or atomic attack, sits at the top of the best-selling books on the subject of nuclear war. The fourth position explains how to build a shelter.
The threat is obviously no longer theoretical in Ukraine, where millions of people have to adopt survival techniques. Ukrainians have continued to scour the web in recent days for videos explaining different emergency measures. The most instructive would be Israeli. Even before the invasion, an explanation by the young Ukrainian Anastasia Bezpalko broadcast on TikTok on the art of preparing an evacuation bag (a knife, bandages, identity papers…) had been viewed 180,000 times, and some of the comments accused the pessimistic influencer of being very alarmist. A quarter of Ukraine’s population, more than 10 million people, has been displaced inside or outside the country since the start of the Russian invasion war.
It’s one thing to worry and another to prepare for the worst while wishing for the best or not the worst, and why not. It is another matter to wallow in survivalism as a conspiratorial ideology to the point of wishing for the end of the world, at least of postindustrial, postmodern and democratic civilization.
The pandemic has fueled colapsist beliefs that the Great Collapse is brewing. The war in turn stimulates theories about the existence of a great conspiracy to prepare a new great world disorder.
“The conspiracy theorists changed the subject with the war”, explains Martin Geoffroy, director of the Center of expertise and training on religious fundamentalisms, political ideologies and radicalization (CEFIR) attached to Cégep Édouard-Montpetit. “The very real possibility of nuclear war comforts survivalists. They have been preparing for this for a long time. This is what they call a break in normality. » The Center has just published Typology of conspiracy discourse in Quebec during the pandemic. The researchers distinguish two matrices: the spiritual-religious and that of the extreme right. In the latter case, they speak of three movements: that of sovereign citizens, the identity movement and the survivalist movement.
This current criticizes the modern world, technology, urbanity, overconsumption while promoting a return to a traditional life. “With this in mind, their actions consist mainly of acquiring and securing shelter, hoarding supplies, medicine, fuel and weapons, as well as developing skills with which they hope to survive the impending collapse,” the report said.
Poutine and combos
“We put survivalism in the far-right conspiratorial matrix because many of its advocates are against liberal democracy,” says Geoffroy. “We had a good example of this in Ottawa recently with the occupation of truckers. Basically, survivalists are hoping for a tabula rasa, the great collapse of society to build a new one in their image. »
This position even leads to support for Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the aggressor of democratic Ukraine. Quebec’s most famous survivalist, Vic Survivalist, has retired from social media (except from Twitter) during the pandemic, ostensibly to shelter in its “sustainable self-contained base”. His tweets relay Russian propaganda and wholeheartedly support the military invasion. “It’s all the same paradoxical, points out the director Geoffroy. Many of the survivalists are racist and neo-Nazis and they support Putin in the name of his denazification of Ukraine. I constantly get sent [par les complotistes] photos of the Azov regiment. »
Investigative journalist The Press Tristan Péloquin has spent the last few years drawing a group portrait with conspirators. He has just made a book out of it (Do your researchs, Quebec America) as unique and exciting as it is disturbing. “Survivalists are quite rare in the conspiracy movement,” he explains in an interview. We see them in the demonstrations. There are a few. They dress in combat jackets. But it’s really a minority fringe in Quebec. »
His followers would be more present in Western Canada, according to Tristan Péloquin, in particular because of the American influence and the common passion for firearms. He himself met conspiratorial survivalists by following courses in the handling of weapons, undertaken precisely to rub shoulders with them.
“The idea of a nuclear catastrophe is recurrent in their perspective,” he says. For them, it is the supreme event that can bring about a total break in normality. There, we would be closer than ever to this possibility. It is certain that, for them, it is like hearing an extremely powerful cry of alarm. »