Source : the age
As entire communities in Los Angeles were being engulfed by hurricane-force firestorms that ignited last week, pugilistic right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones posted a video on X, formerly Twitter.
“Los Angeles Fires Are Part Of A Larger Globalist Plot To Wage Economic Warfare & Deindustrialize The Untied [sic] States Before Triggering Total Collapse,” he wrote.
Entire neighbourhoods have been reduced to ash in the deadly blazes that have scorched Los Angeles.Credit: Bloomberg
In the video, Jones angrily went on.
“[When] you look at what’s happening in Los Angeles right now – at every level, at every step of the way, this is not mismanagement – this is perfect administrative, economic, industrial sabotage,” he said.
“This is murder, this is destruction, this is scorched earth; this is siege by design. So this is a designed economic warfare system that they’ve been developing really since the 50s in the globalist publications and battle plans … and they call it the rewilding, the deindustrialisation plan 1992, Rio de Janeiro, the Earth Summit.”
By Jones’ account, the deadly bushfires that had by midday on Monday destroyed almost 16,200 hectares in California were part of a globalist plot to collapse American society and, indeed, the entire Western world.
The remains of the Pacific Palisades Bowl Mobile Estates in Los Angeles on Friday.Credit: NYT
Elon Musk, the most powerful and influential person in President-elect Donald Trump’s inner sanctum, replied to Jones with one word: “True.”
As the fires took hold, so, too, did misinformation on social media platforms. Chief among them are Musk’s X platform, where Musk himself has been fanning the flames of division, including making claims that the LA fire department’s diversity programs have contributed to civilian deaths.
Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) investments and hiring processes, he has repeatedly said, have caused deaths that could otherwise have been avoided if more white men were fighting the fires.
During Hurricane Helene, the sheer volume of disinformation swirling around prompted the North Carolina Department of Public Safety to publish a website debunking urban myths and conspiracy theories.
No, the government wasn’t taking hurricane-affected land for lithium mining, the website assured residents. Nor were the hurricanes the result of “weather manipulation”, as Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene had claimed. “No technology exists that can create, destroy, modify, strengthen or steer hurricanes in any way, shape or form,” the Department of Public Safety was forced to say.
Brian Haines, who helped manage the state’s joint information centre, told The Wall Street Journal: “Bar none, this was probably the worst I’ve ever seen as far as misinformation and disinformation goes.”
Authorities are once again struggling to put accurate information in front of residents at a time when miscalculations can have deadly consequences.
Brandon Richards, who leads California Governor Gavin Newsom’s communications efforts, told The Washington Post the rise of misinformation during disasters could be deadly.
“If people don’t trust their government, but the government is saying you are in an evacuation zone and need to evacuate people, people might not do that or they might do it too late,” he said.
Newsom, a Democrat, has come under repeated personal and professional attack from the right during the firestorms, including by Musk, who promoted inaccurate claims Newsom had “literally decriminalised” looting.
So frustrated has Newsom become by the tide of conspiracy theories, misrepresentations and half-truths that his office established a website to disseminate facts on the southern California fires.
Distinguished professor and climatologist Michael Mann told this masthead he was leaving X because “agents of disinformation” aimed to “further an agenda of fossil fuel extraction [and] these individuals are guilty not just of crimes against humanity but crimes against the planet”.
“I have certainly seen an uptick in anti-science disinformation in recent months and I attribute that to Elon Musk and his close relationship with Russia and Saudi Arabia, who helped finance his purchase of Twitter precisely so they can neuter it as a medium for proactive communication action on climate,” he said.
The scale of the information wars engulfing the United States is beyond anything seen in Australia, but experts say it could also happen here, particularly after Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook and Instagram’s fact-checking service would be dumped.
“This is something that we saw in Australia during the Black Summer [fires], and we’re seeing it here in the US, but even worse because bad actors – petro-states like Russia and Saudi Arabia – have seized control of the virtual public square, via Elon Musk,” said Mann.
“This has had a tremendously pernicious impact on our public discourse, since social media is being used to promote disinformation rather than fact and science-based discussion.”
Earlier this year, academics from the Australian National University proved that repeated exposure to climate scepticism and denial increased the perceived truth of those claims.
Even the most committed climate science believers could be swayed by hearing repeated scepticism, researchers showed and sceptics could be affected by repeated statements of science.
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