Actually, I’ve gotten more a feeling that this mimics early stages of riots against the elites described by Jared Diamond in Collapse. They end with elites creating makeshift barricades, and angry masses bursting through.
But I also have felt like, when it comes to publications detailing unsustainability of civilization the last 40 years, only us and the elites have listened. Our reaction includes rewilding. Theirs appears an effort to trigger a controlled collapse with them as the rulers of an 80% reduced “useless eaters” society inspired by George Orwell’s 1984.
It is a conspiracy theory, but the elite became elites using conspiracies, by definition, so not entirely unreasonable. Al Gore called for an American Arab Spring a few weeks before OWS started and Adbusters magazine, which had the OWS idea, apparently did Elite bidding in other cases (not sure for myself about that). It does feel early for peasant revolts to start - food still plenty available from donation sources, etc. Though there is more anger (also in part from dwindling personal rights when the TSA hasn’t yet caught one terrorist) than “tribal” team sports can dissipate now.
So from the elites’ perspective OWS is dangerous, but relatively controllable compared to if it started a few months later, when the announcement of a double dip “recession” we know is coming, comes.
Edit: btw, if elites get a Big Brother state in place, “holes in the map” should still appear because of lower energy and resources. Unless Alaska has Saudi Arabia size unannounced oil reserves as a few people think. But that sounds to me more like optimism of people who can’t imagine something as uncivilized as rewilding.