Weekly Scroll: Orwellian FEMA Conspiracies

Twitter's FEMA freakout, plus: How Reddit is like Scott's "Seeing Like a State"

Twitter’s FEMA Freak-out

I’m not saying anything original by pointing out that Elon Musk acquired Twitter with the explicit goal of promoting right wing politics, or that the site is continually degrading as a result of said acquisition. It’s been hammered into the ground on this blog and dozens of other sites. And yet the response to Hurricane Helene really drove home for me just how much of a cesspool Twitter is these days.

In the aftermath of the storm hitting the Southeastern US, conspiracy theories, lies and disinformation flourished like I’ve never seen before. Here’s a conspiracy post with a million impressions that says FEMA is working with Israeli commandos to blockade impacted areas, and threatening to kill FEMA workers. It’s still up.

This sort of thing is absolutely everywhere. I’m not picking on small accounts, or trolling through the muck to find isolated instances. These are huge accounts and official personas promoting this type of wild conspiracy. Here’s a tweet with 8M views making up a story about vigilante violence against FEMA workers. Here’s an right wing ‘Apes’ account with 500K followers spreading misinformation that FEMA can seize your property. Here’s the right wing account ‘VoteHarrisOut’ with 150K followers telling people not to accept FEMA aid because it’s a loan that must be paid back - FEMA themselves had to refute it. Laura Loomer, who until recently had the ear of former President Trump, is tweeting “This is a matter of survival. Do not comply with FEMA.”.