The Charleston City Paper
As millions of our fellow countrymen got about the grim business of survival in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene – praying for rescue, finding food and water, grieving the dead – Georgia Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene shared her thoughts on the tragedy.
“Yes, they can control the weather,” Greene wrote in an Oct. 3 social media post, after noting Helene had devastated mostly Republican areas. “It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.”
Seriously. That’s what she said. Not “our hearts go out to the victims.” Not “here’s what we’re doing to help.” Not even a bland but inoffensive offer of “thoughts and prayers.”
Just more of the same conspiracy-mongering partisan bile.
But as awful as that was, we probably wouldn’t be discussing it if Greene were the only one trying to tear the country apart with lies and damned lies in the wake of Helene’s onslaught. After all, this is the same congresswoman who once warned America of the dangers of Jewish space lasers. In the parlance of mental health professionals, she’s a loon.
But sadly, she’s not the only one whipping up conspiracy theories about Helene. In fact, former President Donald Trump gleefully spread a few of his own at an Oct. 3 Michigan rally when he untruthfully accused his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, of misusing relief money.
“Kamala spent all her FEMA money, billions of dollars, on housing for illegal migrants,” Trump said, somehow managing to squeeze at least three lies into a single short sentence.
But the hurricane conspiracies don’t stop there. Indeed, the problem has gotten so out of control in the far-right fever swamps of social media that state and local GOP officials are practically begging their own supporters to stand down before the cyclone of misinformation gets somebody killed.
“Friends, can I ask a small favor?” N.C. Republican State Sen. Kevin Corbin wrote in a Facebook post. “Will you all help STOP this conspiracy theory junk that is floating all over Facebook and the internet about the floods in WNC? …. PLEASE help stop this junk. It is just a distraction to people trying to do their job.”
Here in South Carolina, a clearly frustrated Gov. Henry McMaster added, “We ask people not to listen to rumors. … Don’t get your information from these unofficial sources, because 99% of the time, they’re wrong.”
And federal emergency officials have grown so concerned about the damage these lies can do to response and recovery efforts that they’ve created a Helene Rumor Response page on the FEMA website.
Among the social-media fueled falsehoods it debunks:
- No, the relief money wasn’t spent on illegal immigrants.
- No, FEMA isn’t confiscating anyone’s property.
- And no, White people aren’t being denied benefits on the basis of their skin color.
To combat the hurricane hogwash, FEMA recommends that citizens carefully identify trustworthy sources of news – like the old-fashioned traditional media that vets information – and only share from those outlets.
Our advice would be even simpler: Get back to trusting the trained professionals who ask tough questions and sort through complicated information to spread the truth – not the yahoos, domestic and foreign, who want to mislead you.
Charleston City Paper is an award-winning weekly newspaper in Charleston, S.C.
