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November 28, 2008
Konsumterrorism

A German word with no real English equivalent is Konsumterror.  The verbal translation is consuming-terror. A English definition of the sense might be: a fear that one is missing out by not buying something.

This person then could be called a casualty of Konsumterrorism:

A worker died after being trampled and a woman miscarried when hundreds of shoppers smashed through the doors of a Long Island Wal-Mart Friday morning, witnesses said.

The unidentified worker, employed as an overnight stock clerk, tried to hold back the unruly crowds just after the Valley Stream store opened at 5 a.m.
…
"He was bum-rushed by 200 people," said Jimmy Overby,
43, a co-worker. "They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled
and killed in front of me. They took me down too…I literally had to
fight people off my back."

Link via Atrios

Ain’t there laws against inciting terrorism? Who should be punished for this?

Posted by b on November 28, 2008 at 15:42 UTC | Permalink
Comments

Say what?
I do not get it, why did so many stampede to get into a store at 5 am? Is Long Island running out of food?

Posted by: a swedish kind of death | Nov 28 2008 16:26 utc | 1

They’re just fighting terrorism, in the only way they know how. The collateral damage is a mere unfortunate, but necessary part of … words fail me.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 28 2008 16:32 utc | 2

wait till it’s food, and not cheap XBox’s…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 28 2008 16:43 utc | 3

Uncle $cam, didn’t ya know? A family that plays together stays together.

Posted by: Colin | Nov 28 2008 18:24 utc | 4

I grew up in the area, a couple of miles from Valley Stream. “Escaped” after college and haven’t lived there on a permanent basis for 45 years, in large part because this is exactly the sort of environment that was growing. WalMart didn’t even exist there when I left (it was “Korvettes”, now K-Mart; and S. Klein) WalMart excels and exceeds expectations in catering to the basest instincts. “Low prices” (for low quality merchandise) is only a come on; its not necesary to shop at WalMart but for the propaganda.
Now I lived in a basically rural areal, where the WalMarts are only desensitizing and inhuman, not [yet] deadly. Still, we don’t shop there. I go in occasionally at lunch hour to ‘study’ the milieu. Many of my (mental health) clients, lower socioeconomic rural folk have a variety of disorders, quite often anxiety combined with panic attack. Without prompting, many of them cite onset of symptoms when they enter the local WalMart (which is moribund by WalMart standards). I recommend they avoid WalMarts for the assault to the senses it (clearly) triggers. I explain, by way of normalizing to some extent their reactions, how out of the realm of ‘normal’ experience it is, particularly for these folk, who are in some ways closer to the earth, to “natural”.
We have our own variety of shopping madness around here (SW Virginia), but the intensity of the urban ethic and its virtual insanity is still just a tick away.

Posted by: DonS | Nov 28 2008 18:56 utc | 5

Something’s gone terribly wrong. People have been psychologically conditioned; the konsumterror has been ingrained in the increasingly altered schematic of their brains since they were kids. I don’t know how else to explain such insanity.

Posted by: Copeland | Nov 28 2008 19:51 utc | 6

slightly ot – two good reads on econ-stuff:
London Banker: What We Value Is What We Save In a Crisis – the ‘western’ ruling class is saving the wrong thing, the eastern the right one.
LRB: Donald MacKenzie on Hedge Funds: An Address in Mayfair
edited – three reads:
NYRB: Krugman What to Do

Posted by: b | Nov 28 2008 20:35 utc | 7

Just a reflection. When Diana died the crowds worked themselves into spasms of hysteria, when the Beatles got to New York young girls behaved dementially. Crowds spend hours in the cold of Winter to obtain tickets for a concert and then, once in, yell and gesticulate unrestrainedly. The masses also await the opening of stores on the day the masses have been told that everybody goes shopping, so they go to shop. In a word, the behavior of American masses is not different from any other, stampedes in Mecca, football brawls. We alienate our mind and reason within cultural contexts and are carried away: to the Bastille, to the Winter Palace, to Berlin, to Paris. It is baffling but it is not strange. Sorry for the family of the man that lost his life.

Posted by: jlcg | Nov 28 2008 20:36 utc | 8

More to the story from National Post:

A pregnant shopper who made her way inside the store with the masses was pushed to the ground and suffered a miscarriage, a witness said. Sadly, no one stopped to help the victims.

But heck, pardner, that ain’t nothin’:

A gunman opened fire at a Toys R Us store in Palm Desert, killing two and causing shoppers at the busy store to scramble for cover.
Palm Desert Councilman Bob Spiegel told The Times that based on early reports, two rival groups shopping at the store had some kind of argument and then shots were fired. Two men were killed in the exchange of gunfire, he said.
Riverside County sheriff and fire officials responded to a report of a shooting and two gunshot victims at 11:32 a.m.
“We have two dead individuals inside the store,” Dennis Gutierrez of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department told the Associated Press. “The events of why the shots were fired is still ongoing.”
Glenn Splain, a worker at a nearby World Gym, told the Associated Press “Some people got into a fight. … One of the guys here thought it was over a toy, but it got louder and louder and then there were gunshots.”

Guns and insane drooling-idiot bargain-hunters. Who needs Al-Quaida?

Posted by: Obelix | Nov 28 2008 23:28 utc | 9

I predict that the next stampede will be the hordes of tort attorneys seeking to file a wrongful-death lawsuit against the Son of Sam on behalf of the victims and their families.

Posted by: Obelix | Nov 29 2008 0:08 utc | 10

Yes, a lot of Negroes are neck-deep in American-Consumerism, but Negroes on the average are seven times poorer than White folks which means that per-capita, seven White homes have an X-box for every Black home that has one.

Posted by: jony_b_cool | Nov 29 2008 4:23 utc | 11

It’s a sale?

Posted by: a swedish kind of death | Nov 29 2008 6:25 utc | 12

James Wolcott partly blames the media:
“Blitz Line Starts Here”

Whether or not this particular store was negligent in providing security and crowd control will be determined following an investigation, but it seems to be that local and cable news also bear partial responsibility for this man’s death, for helping incite such trampling. For days preceding Black Friday the local and cable news outfits run item after item about “doorbuster sales,” stoking the sense of anticipation and making it seem like family fun, reminiscent of that old game show where contestants raced through a store stocking their cart with anything they could pull from the shelves.

Posted by: Colin | Nov 29 2008 11:44 utc | 13

In my chauvinist confidence, I was sure the US was at the forefront in making up trendy words, but I have to salute German-speakers for “Konsumterror”. It’s up there with “Schadenfreude”, which is a needed word once you hear it, but has no congnate in English.

Posted by: Roger Bigod | Nov 29 2008 16:17 utc | 14

askod:
If you haven’t already gleaned from other sources:
The day after Thanksgiving is called Black Friday, and signifies the kick-off of the holiday shopping season. Shopping in the US, is of course, a major league sport, and on Black Friday, stores run huge sales and open early. Now what ya got is a contact sport, and this year, blood sport.
One response, sponsored by Adbusters Magazine, is to participate in Buy Nothing Day.

Posted by: catlady | Nov 29 2008 16:48 utc | 15

Just for the record, there are diverging opinions on the origin/meaning of “black Friday”

The term “Black Friday” originated in Philadelphia in reference to the heavy traffic on that day. (see Origin of the name “Black Friday” below) More recently, merchants and the media have used it instead to refer to the beginning of the period in which retailers are in the black (i.e., turning a profit).

Posted by: Chuck Cliff | Nov 29 2008 18:22 utc | 16

Thanks,
I started to figure that after a while. Black some-day usually referring to some violent or otherwise sad or horrible day in history it took a while. Mayde it is appropriate though. Regarding other Black Fridays I found this on wikipedia:
Black Friday – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Black Friday may refer to the following historical events:

  • Black Friday (1869), the Fisk-Gould Scandal (24 Sep), a financial crisis in the United States
  • Haymarket affair (11 November 1887), four Chicago anarchists hanged, without evidence, for the deaths of seven police officers during a labor meeting
  • Black Friday (1910), a campaign outside the British House of Commons (18 Nov) of the Women’s Social and Political Union the Conciliation Bill which failed
  • Black Friday (1919), the Battle of George Square (31 Jan), a riot stemming from industrial unrest in Glasgow, Scotland
  • Black Friday (1921), the announcement of British transport union leaders (15 Apr) not to call for strike action against wage reductions for miners
  • Black Friday (1939), a day of devastating fires in Australia (13 Jan)
  • Black Friday (1944), a disastrous attack by the The Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) of Canada (13 Oct) near Woensdrecht during the Battle of the Scheldt
  • Black Friday (1945), an air battle over Sunnfjord (9 Feb), the largest over Norway
  • Hollywood Black Friday (5 October 1945), a riot at the Warner Bros. studios stemming from a Confederation of Studio Unions (CSU) strike leading to the eventual breakup of the CSU
  • Black Friday (1977), Game Three of the 1977 National League Championship Series in Major League Baseball, in which the Philadelphia Phillies lost a two-run lead to the Los Angeles Dodgers with two outs in the ninth inning and no runners on base
  • Black Friday (1978), a massacre of protesters in Iran (8 Sep)
  • 1985 United States-Canadian tornado outbreak/The Barrie Tornado, (May 31, 1985)
  • Edmonton Tornado (July 31, 1987), a tornado touching down in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
  • Black Friday (1982), the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands, sparking the Falklands War
  • Black Friday (Maldives) (2004), a crackdown in Maldives, Malé (13 Aug) on peaceful protesters

Posted by: a swedish kind of death | Nov 30 2008 4:37 utc | 17

The World I Know

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 1 2008 21:13 utc | 18

riots for shopping… mad world.
Mall opening Berlin

Posted by: Anonymous | Dec 2 2008 6:54 utc | 19

@#19:
They’re all good Americans now.

Posted by: Anonymous | Dec 2 2008 7:37 utc | 20

#20. Ich, offenbaren.

Posted by: Katzefrau | Dec 2 2008 7:41 utc | 21

Katzefrau 🙂 Germans would write Katzenfrau even if only one Katze would be involved.

Posted by: b | Dec 2 2008 13:29 utc | 22

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