NCJ Number
172992
Journal
Law Enforcement Technology Volume: 25 Issue: 2 Dated: February 1998 Pages: 49-55
Date Published
1998
Length
4 pages
Annotation
"Preparedness expos," like gun shows, are conventions or conferences that travel around the country, providing information and products designed to prepare people for anticipated large- scale threats to their lives and freedoms; undercover police officers can learn much about right-wing "conspiracists" by reading the publications and hearing the lectures presented at these expos.
Abstract
At the expos, dozens of vendors sell everything from holistic medicine to survival gear that includes do-it-yourself surgery kits, water purification systems, and Geiger counters. A number of vendors' booths are devoted to devices designed to grow, store, and prepare food. The most common products offered at the expos are publications of all kinds and audio and videotapes. Underlying most of the information and products presented at expos is the belief that the events that affect people's lives are controlled by a cabal of rich and powerful persons in the process of creating a new world order that will deprive everyone of liberty and even life. Those drawn to this conspiracy ideology tend to have a paranoid mentality. The dictionary definition of paranoia is "a mental disorder characterized by systematized delusions and the projection of personal conflicts that are ascribed to the supposed hostility of others." Many who frequent the preparedness expos live in a world organized around shared beliefs based on arcane theories of the world as a facade, behind which conspiracies of every kind are operating, all designed to disenfranchise them. These delusions are not only false but are immune to reason. Those who challenge their delusions are viewed by them as either naive and unenlightened or as agents of the conspiracy.