These MAGA Whackos are Actually Hurting People

Government officials were forced to flee a North Carolina county amid reported threats of armed civilians out “hunting” for hurricane relief workers.

On Saturday, the Washington Post reported that a U.S. Forest Service official sent an email to several different federal agencies warning "National Guard troops had come across two trucks of armed militia saying [they] were out hunting FEMA," the government body responsible for overseeing emergency response management.  The message added that incident management teams “have been notified and are coordinating the evacuation of all assigned personnel” in Rutherford County.

After FEMA officials had been given the all-clear to return to the area, similar threats were reported in Ashe County-- the local Sheriff’s office warned FEMA had yet again been forced to “pause their process” while an assessment of the risk was carried out, Axios reported.

These incidents offer the starkest evidence yet of the havoc caused by the rampant spread of misinformation as to the origin of Hurricanes Helene and Milton and the nature efforts to contain the damage caused. Many of the conspiracy theories surrounding the storms and the government’s response have been spearheaded by GOP representative Marjorie Taylor Green, who in a series of social media reports blamed nefarious (albeit unidentified) electoral forces for “controlling the weather” by means of extra-terrestrial laser technology.  Other tinfoil-hatted pundits have suggested the weather was somehow engineered as part of a conspiracy to provide political cover to mega-corporations engaged in lithium mining, as well as spreading fake reports of citizens being deliberately abandoned in the rubble.

Donald Trump also fanned the flames, pushing unfounded allegations that the Democratic Party is deliberately withholding disaster relief from Republican voters, and that emergency funds have been diverted to undocumented migrants.

With FEMA already having been forced to set up a “rumor response” page on its website, the recent reports of militias roaming the hills in North Carolina is sadly not the only evidence of ways in which these disinformation narratives are adversely affecting the emergency relief efforts.

“It’s terrible because a lot of these folks who need assistance are refusing it because they believe the stuff people are saying about FEMA and the government,” Riva Duncan, a former Forest Service official based in Asheville, North Carolina, said. “And it’s sad because they are probably the ones who need the help the most.”