Daily Inspiration Quote by Ernst Zundel

The line tries to smuggle self-interest into the language of civic responsibility. Zundel frames his choice as neighborly prudence: he is "so in Dutch" with the people around him that he couldn’t bear to “upset” them over what “might be a fake bomb scare.” The phrasing is doing damage control in real time. It’s not a confession so much as a preemptive defense, built to sound reasonable in the one register that plays well publicly: concern for others.

That’s the subtext: he’s managing reputational risk, not public safety. By centering the hypothetical inconvenience of an evacuation, he shifts attention away from the far more serious question of why a bomb scare is even in the conversational universe. "Might be" and "fake" are rhetorical softeners, designed to blur responsibility and turn a high-stakes incident into an overreaction story: authorities and neighbors would be the ones “getting upset,” not him creating danger. The passive framing launders agency.

The context that matters is Zundel’s career as an extremist provocateur: a figure who repeatedly sought attention through confrontation, media spectacle, and grievance narratives. Read through that lens, the sentence sounds like a man rehearsing the story that keeps him in the role he prefers - embattled, misunderstood, unfairly suspected - while implying that any public alarm would be irrational and socially costly. It’s a small, strategic piece of minimization, calibrated to make the audience weigh annoyance against threat, and to choose annoyance.