Dangers of Extremists

I was watching a documentary of the Nazi party of America and one about the KKK and all the groups that it spawned. Some of them label themselves as survivalists, not like us, or even the paranoids, but extremely militant ones, even beyond your average nationalistis patriotic survivalist, or even the Rambo type. (Wow, theres quite a few flavors of survivalist, isn't there) Basicly they said that one day soon the (scapegoats here) would rise up and attack the (whoever here). Boy did they have fowl mouths. So they trained in some militaristic fasion.Theres a kind of a moral here, every movement has some unwanted extremests, and the survival movement is no exception, so, be careful of how far you go into the great being of survival, you may cross over into the (to be cliche) dark side of survival.

I don't think anyone of us here is in danger of crossing over. Most of those people that you've seen in the documentary are uneducated and ignorant. They are blinded by hate which usually means that all reasoning and logic gets thrown out of the window. Yes they are dangerous and by using term "survival" they give us, guys who are interested in making it out of dangerous situations a bad name. But most of the people here on this board are smart, hard working, educated, respected, intelligent and hungry for knowledge and Mr. Ritter made it plain and simple at the header of his webpage what we are all about. For some of use it merely means a fish hook, band aid and a flashlight in out pockets, for others it's little more sophisticated. In the end there are always going to be extremists out there and topic of survival is going to be a touchy one. I personally don’t use term survival but term “being prepared” for life’s many twists and unpredictable terms. My friends, coworkers got used to the idea that I always have pockets full of interesting and useful stuff. People that I meet for the first time don’t find it weird at all because I’m not out there preaching. Just keep the positive attitude and do what you have to do. You may go your entire life without need for anything you learned but this one time when something happens you will be prepared and do all right. This is my 2 cents.

Yea, you are right. But, an occasional warning will keep us sharp. I must argue one thing though, most of them are ignorant, but a few of the leaders seem to be cunning and educated, often by college, and are directing the hate. But, fortunatly, they cant bring their offensive ideas to this sight.

They may be cunning but not the well educated. History is a funny subject and objectivism of the past events depends on the person who reports it. There is very few books out there that show both side of the story. Educated people go out there and research what interest them. They learn the facts, opinions and try to understand given situation/event. It's easy to be ignorant because you don't have to do much. You can just gather few facts that suit your ideology and repeat it over and over again. I saw some of those shows and also I worked on the case studies of different hate crimes. These people (leaders) make sense and sound smart when they transfer their "knowledge" to uneducated "foot soldiers". They are great speakers and know what their audience needs. If you are a 18 yo boy from broken family that never had more than $5 in your pocket and life is kicking you hard you want somebody to take care of you and answer questions. You want somebody to explain to you why you are poor, why your folks are the way they are, why your life can’t be the way it is shown on TV? Movement leaders pray for victims like that. They will take you in and tell you that it’s not your fault. They will blame: the system, white people, black people or Jews. They will point their fingers at them and say that it doesn’t matter that you dad was drunk 24/7, he doesn’t have a job because an immigrant took it. It is never your fault it is always somebody else you have to blame. You will be fed couple of ideas, facts that when memorized will make you sound dedicated, informative and maybe even smart. But listen to those “ideas” from a neutral point of view: killing all the Jews, there was no holocaust, return of slavery or sending all blacks to Africa and government is out to kill us. How ridiculous they sound? Yes there are some people who believe in them, because being in the organization gives them a feeling of belonging, sense of family. The problem is that “the family” is letting them do what they please as long as they blindly follow the teachings. There is no room for real education there. None of these kids are getting sent to get their GEDs or college schooling. Educated man is dangerous because he can think and rationalize. Those leaders don’t want to be questioned, they want to be followed.

Also see that those big leaders are never in the center of the action. “Foot soldiers” are the one who do the dirty work (murder, beatings, robberies, etc). They are the one who get arrested, sentenced and executed while leaders are sitting safely back home. Also since those organizations are being fueled by a lot of donations, leaders a lot of times are getting rich in the name of their cause.