Hurricane disinformation has deep roots in anti-government movements

U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has a well-documented history of making outrageous statements on social media from her amplification of QAnon conspiracy theories before her run for Congress to blaming the 2018 California wildfires on space lasers to her continued support for the disproved belief that former President Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election.

But as residents of Georgia and the Carolinas dealt with flooding and damage caused by Hurricane Helene, Greene jumped in with posts on X, Facebook and Truth Social with an ominous message insinuating that Helene was not a natural phenomenon.

“This is a map of hurricane affected areas with an overlay of electoral map by political party shows how hurricane devastation could affect the election,” she wrote in an Oct. 3 post on X accompanied by a patchwork map of the Southeast.

The post attracted hundreds of thousands of views. Then, a little more than an hour later, she followed up on the thought.

“Yes they can control the weather,” she wrote. “It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.”

Greene didn’t say who “they” were, but the post has 43 million views and counting.

Disinformation experts say Greene’s indirect accusations that Helene was steered into swing states ahead of a presidential election taps into a strain of extremist conspiratorial thought stretching back decades on the far right.

“There is unfortunately a long history of disinformation being spread during disasters,” said Sam Woolley, the William S. Dietrich II endowed chair in disinformation studies at the University of Pittsburgh.

Along with Greene’s weather conspiracies, Trump and his supporters have spread falsehoods about the federal response to the storm. Critics, including Deanne Criswell, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, have said the rhetoric is hurting the relief effort.

Woolley said extremists and fringe political figures used the internet to spread conspiracy theories about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Hurricane Katrina and the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013. They do it because it resonates with people in crisis, he said.

“People who spread disinformation understand that tensions are running high at these moments and people are much more likely to make rash decisions,” he said.

Amy Cooter, research director for the Middlebury Institute of International Studies’ Center on Terrorism, Extremism and Counterterrorism, said successful disinformation campaigns make an emotional appeal to their audience. In the case of the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene, it’s about offering people the idea that they can find someone responsible and punish them for it.

“Part of it has to do with people wanting to believe there is a cause they could theoretically control,” she said. “If you believe that somebody is responsible for that, then you can believe that it is something you could take care of.”

In a post Wednesday, Greene suggested the “they” she spoke of could be found in periodic reports submitted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on weather modification. The reports themselves concern projects such as cloud seeding, a process that introduces chemical compounds into clouds to produce localized rain showers. It’s a far stretch from steering a hurricane, but that context is not included in Greene’s post.

“If your home or business or property is damaged or a loved one is killed by their weather modifications shouldn’t you be eligible for compensation?” Greene wrote. “After all, did they ask you if you agreed to our weather being modified?”

In the days following Greene’s initial posts, Google searches spiked for controlling the weather and Greene, as well as associated weather conspiracy theories, such as a false claim that a scientific array in Alaska that studies the upper atmosphere is actually a government weather-controlling program.

While she has a large social media reach, Greene is hardly alone in spreading conspiracies about the weather. Alabama-based meteorologist James Spann begged visitors to his Facebook page to knock it off.

“Professional meteorologists are tired. Another major hurricane has formed and is headed for the Florida Peninsula, so it will be another busy week,” he said in a message posted Monday. “I am trying to push critical weather information out in a calm way; your rhetoric is a huge distraction we don’t need right now.”

Cooter said the comments by Greene and others accusing the government of playing a role in manufacturing natural disasters and then not responding to them come at a convenient time as supporters of Trump look to find an attack on Vice President Kamala Harris that will stick.

“It’s not only do the Democrats hate you but they are doing something nefarious so that they can steal the election,” Cooter said.

But she also said conspiracies about weather control have a long history dating to the 1990s and rhetoric by anti-government groups over President Georgia H.W. Bush’s “New World Order” speech at the end of the Gulf War.

However, Cooter said it shouldn’t be assumed that everyone who digests Greene’s social media posts are in agreement.

“Some are there to openly mock her,” she said.