'Liberal preppers' are getting ready for Trump’s second presidency — here's how

13 January

Preppers have a reputation for being right-wing conservatives and libertarians. But The Atlantic's Olga Khazan, in an article published on January 13, examines a phenomenon that hasn't received a great deal of media coverage: liberal and progressive preppers who expect the worst from Donald Trump's second presidency.

According to Khazan, "moderators of several liberal-prepping forums" have told her they are seeing "a spike in interest and activity since Trump's reelection in November."

"Like their conservative counterparts," Khazan explains, "liberal preppers are worried about the stability of the economy and the power grid. But unlike the conservatives, they also worry about climate-change-induced disasters and the potential that Trump will weaken America's security through foreign-policy snafus."

Liberal and progressive preppers, Khazan reports, are also worried about the incoming Trump Administration's health policies.

According to Khazan, "Several preppers I interviewed mentioned getting current on their vaccines, in case the new administration alters the rules for vaccine insurance coverage, or updating their passports, in case they feel they have to leave the country."

One of the liberal preppers Khazan interviewed was Juli Gittinger, a religious studies professor at Georgia College.

"Starting in 2018," Khazan notes, "Gittinger surveyed several hundred liberal preppers, and a few conservatives, on Facebook. When she asked what got them into prepping, 31 of the 300-some respondents mentioned the election of Trump, and 35 mentioned 'political anxieties.' Among the calamities they feared would strike were both the politically driven — economic and societal collapse, an attack from a foreign power — and the completely random: a pandemic, a natural disaster."

One of the respondents told Gittinger, "The country is so divided that anything could ignite riots like we haven’t seen before."

Khazan points out that some of the "liberal preppers" she interviewed "had an air of paranoia."

"Many of their worst-case scenarios seemed unlikely to ever take place," Khazan writes. "What are the odds that American citizens would actually be banned from international travel? What is the likelihood that Republicans would outlaw not just Plan B, but also birth control, which is used by 82 percent of reproductive-age women? Then again, we live in outrageous times, during which a reality-TV host can become president, for the second time, after a failed coup attempt."

Read Olga Khazan's full article for The Atlantic at this link (subscription required).

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