Leftwing Survivalism

Desert is better for hiding from the population. Really easy to see from the air though.

Forest is better for hiding from the government. But any stranger can walk right up to you or watch you without being detected.

You know, this is one of the most polite conversations I have seen about political orientation I have seen in years. Who says we can't all get along?

Anyway, I see the desert like I see the prairies in terms of survival. If you know how to live there, you'll be fine. If you don't learn your environment before, you'll be meat for the birds.

I think part of where my left lean comes from is my homesteader grandparents on the Northern Great Plains. Their lifestyle was fascinating and very, very collectivist. As machinery entered the market, the need for collective farming became less and less, but the ethic never left them all up there. I hope no one gets me wrong, To really get into the weeds, I am fall into the libertarian socialist ( yes, I know, it sounds strange, but such political philosophy does in fact exists) rather than traditional liberalism.

I don't get to interact with folks who would consider themselves survivalists or preppers very often, mostly because most of the ones I encounter here are really right and really not tolerant of other ideas. Anyone ever look at the homesteaders for lessons to learn, or do people just consider their experience to be too fundamentally different from what we may be facing in the future?

reply to post by EarthEvolves


Not a lefty here, sorry broheim. Yet I have a few friends that are
I am an old-school libertarian, leaning towards a benevolent conquistador-cum-wanderer though.
Upper centre right wing I guess it would look like on a chart?

I think the more folks that are like you, the better the survivalist world will be. Sensible, smart, when their hand is raised it shoots to subdue more than destroy etc.

You need the hardcore folks in a brave new world (collapse one that is) to get things happening just as much as the softcore folks. It kinda even's things out in the long run.

They are the guys you can mediate with and come to meeting of minds with. It's a bit buzzy but basically I think this whole collapse thing has happened before and well, guys like you did your thing and other guys (and gals etc) did theirs.

It'll sort itself out is what I'm trying to say and I think there are areas out there for like-minded folks you'd really vibe with in the US....

Originally posted by cowboy762
Hi there, I would consider myself very much the same. I am a westerner and a screaming liberal, and as such, I have always believed in the second amendment. You will find that among liberals in the Rocky Mountain West, this is normally the case. And for the record, I know quite a few other folks that are of the same mind. Its interesting, but a lot of people forget that there are a heck of a lot of farmers and ranchers that lean left instead of right, especially independent producers like myself. Whats that have to do with survivalism? Well, if you go wandering off into the country, many of the people with food, land, guns, and who are going to need help are leaning left. We might not all vote democrat, but you find leftist principles in the way we work. Neighbors all get together for brandings, gatherings, trailing etc. and help each other out. And one interesting side not, the real independents, the ones who "don't need help from anyone" and won't show up to do the same...they don't make it in this world. I don't know how they'd do if it all came crashing down.

I think my odds are pretty good. I have a group of friends that know where to go should the sky come falling down. We're well armed and well provisioned, and I think our political philosophy encourages people to share the load more so than the right wing ethic of individual accomplishment. Also, I don't have to go to firing ranges to use my guns, I get practice in the real world all the time on coyotes and other pests.

This is exactly one of the best survivalist 'frequency's', although some may disagree.
When you have a harmony of hard, ruggedly individualist values married up with with symmetry of the 'left-wing' vibration then you have a near-unshakeable synthasis.
It's probably why the US has such a strong survivalist way that's been going for so long imo.

Although I do think that the 'don't need help from anyone' has it's place though, some niche is always there I say for that vibe. Afterall there's still tribes in the world that haven't had contact with the outside world so if they can do it....

I think the right wingers see cooperation as a task for a team or freinds or aquaintances, keeping strangers out is a security measure, whatever the cost.

Leftwingers see persons as a potentially priceless resource and the risk or work of dealing with strangers as the price required for a payoff of bigger and better civic life. I guess.

Originally posted by SaturnFX

Originally posted by jibeho
Just don't tell me its wrong to eat something that I kill.

edit on 23-3-2012 by jibeho because: (no reason given)

Even if you killed a person?

Depends on the quality of the meat. When its TEOWAWKI we're all going to be rather scrawny with little meat on our bones anyway. I'll have to hunt down a well stocked chubby prepper. Stay gaunt my friend and you'll be alright when the SHTF.

Originally posted by cowboy762
You know, this is one of the most polite conversations I have seen about political orientation I have seen in years. Who says we can't all get along?

If there is one thing that I've noticed about dedicated Survivalists, it's that irrespective of their political orientation, they tend to be very intelligent. That being the case, they're able to identify the positive characteristics of a given approach to something, even if it differs from their own.

In terms of the sort of "leftism," being described here, I'm not really so sure it is, at least not in Marxist terms. I personally have always mentally associated Survivalism with the proverbial Old Right; a very similar outlook to what the authors of the American Constitution had; and they had farms. So I definitely don't think it's the case that family farmsteading makes you a Communist. If that is the case, then some of us are in fairly serious trouble.

Anyway, I see the desert like I see the prairies in terms of survival. If you know how to live there, you'll be fine. If you don't learn your environment before, you'll be meat for the birds.

To really get into the weeds, I am fall into the libertarian socialist ( yes, I know, it sounds strange, but such political philosophy does in fact exists) rather than traditional liberalism.

I generally get placed in that category as well. To me, what it means is acknowledging that there is nothing wrong with government for a very small number of limited functions, but at the same time understanding that government can never guarantee either the happiness or the wellbeing of the average man. That has to be his own responsibility.

I don't get to interact with folks who would consider themselves survivalists or preppers very often, mostly because most of the ones I encounter here are really right and really not tolerant of other ideas. Anyone ever look at the homesteaders for lessons to learn, or do people just consider their experience to be too fundamentally different from what we may be facing in the future?

I think the future is going to be very similar to what they experienced in some ways; but at the same time, technology is going to play more of a role, simply because the environment isn't as strong now as it used to be. I think we are going to go back to a scenario of people making do for themselves, though; in terms of electricity and such, that being managed and produced on the basis of individual households. The grid won't be around to anywhere near the same extent as in the past.

We definitely need to take a lot of what was learned in terms of the old practice of homesteading and re-apply it, but there is going to be a very odd sort of technology being used as well, in the sense that it will be makeshift and feel fairly old fashioned, but it will still get the job done very well. Have you heard of a movement called Steampunk? I think that is where I can see things going.

reply to post by EarthEvolves
Left-wing survivalist.

Does that mean you'll be in Birkenstocks and calling for chinese take-out after the SHTF?


I kid. Survivalism isn't about partisan beliefs.

It's about surviving.

Just remember Maslow's hierarchy of needs

And stay safe!

reply to post by EarthEvolves


No

reply to post by Semicollegiate


I kind of prefer the desert in that way. I prefer to survive by causing as little trouble as possible! With governments you can generally stay off their radar (provided they are semi-reasonable). With mobs there tends to be a hunting and homing mechanism. But, then again, I love the forest also. Just put out the camp fires.

reply to post by Bullypulpit


Does that mean "maybe" or just plain no? (Not even a little?)

reply to post by beezzer


No, it means seeing the world as it is and not how the System conditions us to see it.

Chinese takeout has too much MSG in it anyway (I still eat it, but knowingly). Birkenstocks might be comfortable but not good for outrunning genetic chimera's let loose by secret labs. Not unless those chimera's enjoy a good game of Frisbee, which I doubt.

this thread is kind of freaky lol.. honestly makes it feel like in the future, democrat and republican are like two warring factions.. red vs blue. got a weird vibe from it, and I don't get vibes.

before you start thinking left wing vs anything just remember you're all Americans, and beyond that, all homosapiens on a planet.

reply to post by yourmaker


The problem then is that my position, a minority position within the survival preparations community, is effectively silenced in the name of "we are all Americans." I notice that those who have taken me to task don't say "we are all Americans." I am supposed to be the one to say it in the interests of unity. (And I am supposedly a "collectivist"?)

The thread was respectful and I think I am entitled to post it.

am an anarchist as have no need nor use for any damn governments or leaders... the lot of them can go to hell its my life I live it on my terms..

also am a cynical old bastard that trusts no one prefer my solitude out here in the jungle of s.e asia over the cesspool of "civilisation" and the idiocy that runs rampant in the world.

Originally posted by EarthEvolves
reply to post by yourmaker

 

The problem then is that my position, a minority position within the survival preparations community, is effectively silenced in the name of "we are all Americans." I notice that those who have taken me to task don't say "we are all Americans." I am supposed to be the one to say it in the interests of unity. (And I am supposedly a "collectivist"?)

The thread was respectful and I think I am entitled to post it.

The only real problem with collectivism is that it leaves you open to being sodomised by whichever psychopath who happens to decide that he wants to play Borg Queen.

Small scale collectivism can be an incredibly awesome thing; but it has to be among people who are on the same page in terms of interests and how they think, and who also display high levels of personal integrity, and are sometimes willing to put the group's wellbeing ahead of their own. Not all the time, mind you; just occasionally. If you get that, it can work; look up the Jewish Kibbutz sometime.

reply to post by petrus4


I am aware of the Kibbutz. As I stated before, I do not define myself as a collectivist. I never used that term. It was in quotes, hence the irony.

reply to post by Expat888


I prefer the same solitude. Maybe we can both interrupt our solitudes for tea should we ever bump in to one another out in the vastness of ecological space and geological time!

reply to post by EarthEvolves


I am a pro-second amendment, left wing radical with socialist-capitalist leaning's. It is good, that we meet in this form of space-time communication. My major quest's for survivalism, is to somehow find a way off-planet--- if I'm not going to have success with that endeavor ---- I would prefer to live on an island, in a big lake, in Northern Ontario, Canada. Complete.... with a cabin, icehouse, canoe's, sailboat's, pontoon/ski plane's, snowmobile's and yes.... plenty of gun's n ammo!!!

A person of the Jewish faith, would probably not survive, in right-wing SHTF post-apocalyptic society. It could be possible.... that a left-wing based society could form a base in an enviroment, that all people could live in harmony, in a post-apocalyptic scenaro in order to create a utopia. A right-wing society --- would only create a distopia in a post-apocalyptic world.

reply to post by Erno86


For those of you who doubt somehow that Jews are real men equal to any other men in the testosterone department, let me put it this way. It is rather crude, but it makes the point.

Jacob had four women with him. Two of them were sisters. All of them were straight as far as we know. He lived well past a hundred years old.

In addition to those obvious confirmations of his manliness, he had as many sons as the constellations of the zodiac. Two of his sons took down a whole city. The ruler of Egypt addressed him as an equal.

I would stack the founder of Israel up with any "Aryan hero" any day.

Enough said.