And when preppers like Rawles invoked the specter of the savage, what they were doing was setting up a divide between themselves—as carriers of the flame of civilization, as heirs of the frontier spirit—and those who would immediately revert to a state of nature, the wild natives of the post-collapse world. And in setting up that divide, what they were further doing, whether they understood it or not, was creating the necessary conditions for a return to the cleansing violence of the nation’s colonial past.
