The Profits of Doom: Another Bunker Contest!

We’ve noted several times at the Bunker that our URQ friends seem to enjoy living in a state of abject terror, grimly warning each other about terrible things that never actually happen. It seems to make them feel alive, important. It’s a kind of terror porn – when real life doesn’t offer them enough excitement, they need to seek artificially induced fear.

Of course, they like the notion of holding dangerous inside knowledge that the rest of us are not privy to. In an earlier era, they’d just be cranky oddballs infesting editorial columns or handing out badly mimeographed pamplets n the street. But the Internet provides a gathering place wherein they can share the Fear, reinforce each others’s delusions, and reassure each other that they, in fact, are the reasonable ones. Yesterday’s Hyde Park, wide-eyed ranter raving about The Jews, The Masons and the Negrification of Mankind is today’s blogcaster with a hideous self-published book.

If you haunt their sites (as I, to my everlasting shame, am wont to do), you will note that the very same idiotic stories seems to do the rounds at roughly the same time. This argues a few common sources; and that, of course, raises the question – WHERE are they getting this shit? Who assembles and distributes this nonsense, and more important – WHY?

In a process not unlike that of tracing the Nile back to its source, I followed a few of the wackier sites back to their sources, then dug a bit. Not surprisingly, most of the sites that peddle the source feeds for URQ paranoia of the more demented variety are sites that also SELL all the stuff necessary to combate the Evils our poor terror-besotted friends are being conditioned to fear.

Exhibit One: The National Terror Alert Response Centre

Description: The home page does its best to look like an actual government site: a cute official seal, upper left, with stars and stripes. The contact page, however, acknowledges that the site “…is a private homeland security blog and not affiliated with any government agency. We archive and comment on homeland security related news items from a variety of news sources, as well as provide immediate updates on breaking stories, bulletins and any change in status to Homeland Security advisory.”

Ah. It’s a blog about scary stuff. Okay, what scary stuff?

The Stories: This site used to concentrate on threats from Ay-rab and Muslim Terrorists, breathlessly and uncritically reporting every fart, burp and threat that any tinpot Islamic study group anywhere in the world cared to utter.

Nowadays, that’s increasingly slim pickings. So the “important breaking stories” they’re currently covering as “homeland security news” include the following:

• Osama bin Laden may at some point release a new video (that’s today’s lead ALERT):
• Bin Laden’s son is seeking asylum in Spain;
• Two guys with Hispanic names were busted in Dallas with guns and ski masks in their car;
• Some guy sent sugar packages labelled “anthrax” to his congressman;
• A bunch of terrorist groups in different countries have announced that they plan to launch terror attacks sometime, against somebody.

On the positive side, these stories are, for the most part, sourced. On the negative side, none of them mean anything. Terrorists terrorize by threatening to do awful things; the point is promote fear and instability. This site does precisely that. There is not one single story showing on the site that provides ANY useful information about an actual event, or the prevention of an event. It is simply a collection of media releases, mostly only tangentially connected with “terrorism”, whose message is: “Be AFWAID. Be VEWWY, VEWWY AFWAID!”

The Profit: So who could possibly make a buck out of promoting a sense of helpless paranoia in a credulous populace?

Meet the sponsors of the site, NITRO PAK, the “WORLD LEADER in EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS” for biological, nuclear, chemical, and other terrorist attacks.  As the “Store” section of the National Terror Alert Response Centre warns,

Whether it’s a STOCK MARKET CRASH, Banking Crisis, TERROR ATTACK, Job Lay-Off, Economic Recession/Depression, Earthquake, Hurricane, etc, each of us MUST be PERSONALLY PREPARED to “weather-the-storm” with long storing food reserves and other preparedness supplies for a minimum of 2 to 6 weeks. A (4) to (12) month reserve or more would even be better. The INVESTMENT you maketoday may very well be become one of the wisest and most important investments you’ll ever make. Lock in today’s lower prices NOW! When crisis strikes, (or you see it on the six o’clock NEWS) the time to prepare is over. Sort of like trying to buy insurance when the house is on fire. NOW’s the time to SERIOUSLY REVIEW your preparedness supplies while time is on your side. Don’t Delay—DO IT NOW!

They peddle emergency food units, knives, first aid kits – “OVER 50,000 LIFE-SAVING ITEMS!!”, ranging from dehydrated “astronaut ice cream” to night-vision goggles and their $250 Anti-Fallout Suit (”Sure, we realize that we can’t prevent the unspeakable from happening, but you can put these odds back in your favor!”)

In a nutshell (emphasis on “nut”): A company that sells and repackages bulk-bought survivalist toys runs a blog whose explicit goal is to scare you into believing your survival depends on precisely the crap they sell.

And yet this “news source” is taken seriously, and linked to as credible information source, by most of the leading URQ bloggers: Michelle Malkin, Atlas Shrugs, Little Green Footballs, and of course, our own dear dim Scenty.

Wanna play? Here’s the deal.

a) Find your favourite URQ fearmonger.
b) Chose one of their regular sources.
c) Do a bit of digging, and link the particular flavour of paranoia being peddled with the product of the purveyor. In other words – they’re trying to scare you. What are they trying to sell you to alleviate the fear they’ve created?
d) You can either respond in this thread with your nomination, or send me your nominee at balbulican@stageleft.info. Feel free to use the format I provide above, or report in any other format you like.

Your submissions will be rated by our faithful readers on the basis of insight, accuracy, and amusement value, and the winning example of Fear Profiteering will be awarded a free copy of “The Impossible H.L. Mencken”, a selection of articles and essays by one fo the most sceptical journalist/pundits who ever lived.

Have fun, and don’t forget to wash your hands afterwards. We’ll pull together and list the submissions next weekend.