Hurricane Helene — We Are On Our Own

The Abdication of Sovereignty and the Need for Folkishness

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Here at the Imperium Press Substack we’ve built a conceptual framework to dissolve liberalism and return us to more organic communities—we call it folkishness. But once in a while it’s worth asking why we do this. Increasingly, the answer is given to us by the news.

Right now, Hurricane Helene is battering the American Southeast—flyover country—and the people there are being starved of help. This is a vision of the future. Get used to it. When they say “our democracy” is under attack, the emphasis is “our”, as in, “not your” democracy. You are something extra, something superfluous.

In an attempt to expedite the demographic replacement of its native stock, the US government has spent $1.4 billion in the past two years on migrant resettlement. As a result, FEMA is now tapped out and doesn’t have the funds to cover the needs of hurricane season.¹

There has been very little mainstream news coverage of all this. If you search “flood” under news on Google, you will come up with something like this:

Two speculative pieces on climate change, and two on disasters in far-flung places. At the bottom you may notice a rather muted headline about the worst US hurricane disaster since Katrina.

These days if you want news you have to go to Twitter. Thank goodness for Elon Musk buying it. Under a previous Twitter administration, the constant leaks about the disaster would have resulted in sweeping bans:

I can’t believe what I saw today. I’ve been out for 12 hours bringing supplies to people up in the mountains. I was in Yancey County, Mitchell County, Bakersville, Spruce Pine, Burnsville, etc... […] They have no driveways, no power no food. People are dying. […] The government is confiscating supplies from small towns at their “drop off points.” That’s why I’m bringing everything to the people directly.²

Not only is the federal government not helping, it is actively standing in the way of private attempts to help. FEMA has had to “debunk” a number of rumours such as that it is asking for cash donations and turning away volunteers. In its own statement, it denied taking cash donations but did not deny turning away volunteers.³ Social media is awash with stories about the government doing just that:

A South Carolina pilot who flew stranded Hurricane Helene victims in flood-ravaged North Carolina to safety claims he was told he would be arrested if he continued the rescue missions. […] He was also threatened with arrest if he didn’t leave immediately, forcing him to abandon his copilot and son. No flight restrictions were in place prior and during the rescues. […] He immediately contacted emergency services upon his arrival, explained who he was and they asked for his help, setting up a landing zone for him.⁴

Much of what’s floating around on social media is false, but what’s true is that most of the rescue efforts are by private civilians. One thread by someone claiming experience “doing this as a private citizen for almost a decade” went viral, as he explained the reason for the non-response.

The reason they gave us, was that these donations were not from companies on their “preferred vendors list” and that they would not accept them or give them to the residents of the keys impacted by the storm.

It was at that point that I realized, this is all about money.

These ‘preferred vendors’ are getting part of the money being released by the state and federal govt for each disaster. In turn, some of the “vendors” make it on the list because a friend gets them on the list, and in return for getting ridiculously outlandish amounts of compensation for the services they render, they give kickbacks.

So accepting outside donations, even though they are on location and can help people now, they would rather let people suffer so they can get their kickbacks.⁵

So the US federal government is not helping and is in fact turning away help. It is within the DHS’s power to divert money from one agency to another, as was done back in 2018 from FEMA itself to ICE to pay for immigration housing centres.⁶ It’s not that the federal government doesn’t have the money. It is withholding the money it does have, because these red state folks are essentially non-persons.

But there is perhaps more to the story than just schadenfreude in watching these people die. The US presidential election is looming in one month. Any rescue and cleanup efforts will result simply in enfranchising “deplorables” who can’t be trusted to vote in the interests of the security state. There is a perverse incentive not only not to help them, but to block any forthcoming help. It is clear that elements of the civil service are happy to interrupt the “democratic” process, and no effort has been made to stop this at the executive level. The government is not incompetent, nor indifferent. It is hostile to those under its protection.

So we are on our own. Not only is help not coming, but help will not be allowed to come. So you must become more self-sufficient and local in your outlook. This involves learning how to fix things around the house, as well as securing energy and caloric independence. There will be no climactic civil war, only creeping abandonment by the imperial centre. Until you become too independent, in which case they will come for you. But at some point, they will simply not be able to come for you. There will be too many little fires to put out closer to home. At that point, your survival will depend on access to a large network of people with wide-ranging expertise.

If you had to, could you call upon at least one person experienced in all of the following?

• Water purification

• Tracking and hunting

• Navigation without maps

• Tool construction, maintenance, and repair

• Food preservation and butchery

• First aid

• Natural remedies

• Midwifery

• Basic medical and dental care

• Crop cultivation and seed storage

• Animal husbandry

• Baking and off-grid cooking

• Blacksmithing

• Carpentry

• Rope making, knot tying, and rigging

• Self-defense and weapon making

• Bartering and trade

• Leadership and community-building

Most people live in places that are mostly inarable and that require extensive fertilization techniques to be calorically self-sufficient. If you could not move, would the place you live in become a death trap?

The imperial centre is in the process of abandoning flyover country. Worse that that, it is actively hostile to it and has ceased to cloak its hostility. As this process continues, “Appalachiastan” will become more autonomous and mutually hostile. This will impose deadweight costs on the federal security apparatus, since a) it must manage and contain these people, and b) it relies upon them for its military might, upon which the deindustrialized US economy ultimately depends. This will drive further balkanization in a vicious circle leading to runaway devolution sooner or later. In a world of devolution, you need a clan.

You don’t come to the Imperium Press Substack for practical advice on how to forge iron or perform an episiotomy—we give you the more rarefied philosophical tools to build the network of people who can do those things. You are not going to win a decisive battle. You are not going to take back your country like it’s 1950. You are going to see the regime continue to stack Ws, but closer and closer to home, until finally what you have is not a government but a fiction. At that point, you will be living in a folkish world, whether you like it or not. But if you use the tools we’ve given you, it can be your folkish world, rather than someone else’s.

1. https://nypost.com/2024/10/03/us-news/feds-say-theres-no-money-left-to-respond-to-hurricanes-after-fema-used-640-9m-this-year-on-migrants/

2. https://x.com/johnnyreb1989/status/1842021728635256923?s=46

3. “FEMA does not ask for or generally accept any cash donations or volunteers for disaster response. We do encourage people who want to help to volunteer with or donate cash to reputable voluntary or charitable organizations. After a disaster, cash is often the best way to help as it provides the greatest flexibility for these reputable organizations working on the ground to purchase exactly what is needed.

If you encounter someone claiming to represent FEMA and asking for donations, be careful as that is likely a scam. Government employees will never solicit money.”

https://www.fema.gov/disaster/current/hurricane-helene/rumor-response (Accessed: October 4, 2024)

4. https://www.threads.net/@code3sc/post/DAqvo9dvZEj

5. https://x.com/ryantyre/status/1841583311782568064

6. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/12/us/politics/fema-ice-immigration-detention.html