It Could Happen Here - Hurricane Conspiracy Theories

Episode Date: October 14, 2024

Do Democrats control the weather? Will FEMA raid your home? Garrison and Mia discuss why the misinformation ecosystem is getting worse and how fact-checking may not fix it.  Sources:https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/10/hurricane-milton-conspiracies-misinformation/680221/https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2024/10/09/hurricane-helene-fema-funding-response-fact-check/75587360007/https://www.fema.gov/disaster/current/hurricane-helene/rumor-responsehttps://www.reuters.com/world/us/hurricane-milton-helene-fact-checking-conspiracies-rumors-2024-10-09/https://x.com/atrupar/status/1844070899160359052https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2024/10/08/hurricane-milton-helene-recovery-trump-lies/75557458007/https://www.news-journalonline.com/story/news/hurricane/2024/10/10/after-milton-desantis-denounces-online-hurricane-conspiracy-theories/75576038007/https://x.com/SULLY10X/status/1843348003203232104https://www.mediamatters.org/tiktok/amazon-alexa-error-sparking-conspiracy-theories-about-hurricane-milton-tiktokhttps://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/ai-girl-maga-hurricane-helene-1235125285/https://x.com/KandissTaylor/status/1843080488115658942https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1844405108685275179https://x.com/MollyJongFast/status/1844412719476379746https://www.isdglobal.org/digital_dispatches/hurricane-helene-brews-up-storm-of-online-falsehoods-and-threats/#https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/10/24266848/violent-threats-against-fema-swirl-on-social-media https://www.mediamatters.org/tiktok/tiktok-misinformation-about-hurricane-helene-has-spurred-calls-violence-against-femahttps://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/hurricane-milton-misinformation-meteorlogist-death-threats-1235130352/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami? Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Calls on media. Welcome to It Could Happen Here. It is a beautiful sunny day in Atlanta, Georgia, which means I think they're all lying about the weather. They said this hurricane was going to come, and I'm fine. I don't believe them. It's all fake.

Joined with me today is Mia Wong. I'm garrison davis welcome dick it happened here welcome and it's hey look it's it's cloudy in portland so clearly they were telling the truth i don't know what's going on in your reality but i can't believe that the republicans have hijacked the weather control matrix and are aiming it at portland oregon to wipe it off the map to give Oregon's vote to Donald Trump in the next election. You know, one of my foundational early political memories was discovering that the mid-2010s era mayor of Ankara thought that NATO had an earthquake machine that they were setting off off the coast of Turkey in order to cause tsunamis during hurricane season so that because of some nato could destroy the turkish economy god i hope so i always thought that was very funny and now every every single like major politician in america believes some shit like that now and i was like

oh everyone has something not everyone has the same thing but everyone has something crazy that they believe and that's what we're talking about here today. So, oh boy, it has gotten bad, folks. As Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton brought widespread devastation to the southeastern United States, politicians, TV anchors, and influencers have been trying to weaponize the tragedy and the disaster relief effort for their own partisan electoral gain, particularly via the use of disinformation. Now, while the government's response to Hurricane Helene can certainly be criticized, bad faith attacks originating from the far right have spread wildly online and have been boosted by Trump and Fox News. Many of these focus on the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA,

with some of them connecting to like decades old conspiracy theories about the agency. So this episode, we're going to go over some of the conspiracy theories and misinformation circulating about these hurricanes, but not necessarily to like debunk them. Because like, I know who's listening to this, but I think it's actually more helpful to place them into the larger tapestry of conspiracy thinking leading into the election and discuss how modern misinformation has presented a whole new problem that simple fact checks aren't equipped to handle. Hey, Garrison, you are very confident about that, but I personally know leftists who I have been friends with who believe the weather weapon shit,

so you never know. Well, I mean i i do believe that fact checks aren't going to be the main solution here oh no they're not gonna they're not gonna help that i'm just saying look there are believers everywhere for the eyes to see it's great that's kind of what i'm saying here yeah now let's start by talking about donald trump and fema oh god so some of the misinformation spreading about fem FEMA right now includes the claim that the agency is only providing $750 in aid to individuals affected by Hurricane Helene, when actually the $750 payments are just the initial relief funds to help with immediate needs. There's also been claims that FEMA only issues loans and any relief money received has

to be paid back. This isn't true. Only in rare cases, when someone receives duplicate funds from FEMA and insurance, does money have to be returned to FEMA? There's also been claims that if victims fail to pay back FEMA, they will then seize your property. This is also false. More on this later. Now, a TikTok video with over a million views claimed that FEMA is raiding people's homes to seize supplies. This isn't true. FEMA doesn't raid people's homes. On a more racist note, it's claimed that FEMA has run out of money for hurricane victims because Kamala spent billions of FEMA dollars on housing for illegal immigrants.

FEMA dollars on housing for illegal immigrants. At a campaign rally, Donald Trump said, and I'm not going to do the voice, the Harris-Biden administration says they don't have money because they spent it all on illegal immigrants. They stole the FEMA money, just like they stole it from a bank so that they could give it to their illegal immigrants, unquote. This lie was also shared by Sean Hannity on Fox News news and even when confronted with facts that to discredit this claim commentators on fox still insist that even though it's not technically true it still feels true it may not be actually true that fema resources that could have been available in north carolina have been given to migrants but there's no question about the broader orientation of fema under the Biden

Harris administration, which has been to channel huge amounts of money to communities and to non-governmental organizations to help with the massive influx of migrants that they themselves have created. And this is a fun one, too, because like there is FEMA underfunding. But the reason there's FEMA underfunding is that Republicans keep voting not to give it more money. Yes. Which, like, oh, boy. I mean, again again like this is a big part of the Republican strategy just making life worse for everybody so that everyone's more angry so that people will vote Republican yeah and that's that is the strategy they they want because as long as their as long as their base is doing badly and and like upset and angry they will find some way to blame it on the opposition and then vote in republican this has been the conservative governmental strategy for decades yeah do all the

terrible stuff and then blame the stuff that you did on immigrants which yeah good times love this country great stuff happening a famously reliable strategy trump's also lied about the governor of georgia not being able to get in contact with President Biden to coordinate disaster relief efforts when in fact they had spoken the day prior. Trump also claimed that the federal government and the North Carolina Democratic governor have been quote going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas unquote. This is also completely false that there were more isolated areas in North Carolina that were harder to reach, but people are trying to get there. And in fact, some of the hardest to reach areas were actually immigrant communities who were like too scared to like actually ask for federal help out of fear they would be deported. So like, yes, there actually is people really struggling to get

relief, but it's not by and large your Trump voters. Like again, certainly the relief efforts managed by the government have had their fair share of problems. People are not getting all the help they need, but this is not a conspiracy by the democratic governor to deprive Republicans of hurricane relief. Like that's not true. Now Trump's falsehoods about the hurricane and the disaster response in service of his reelection campaign have signaled that it's a-okay for republicans to spread all manner of hurricane conspiracy theories targeting the federal government oh boy and this is where we're gonna get into the the newest conspiracy theory sweeping the nation that the government controls the weather all of the weather especially hurricanes now uh this is not a new conspiracy theory certainly i'm so sick of the weather weapon shit but the fact that we have sitting congressmen including margie

taylor green from georgia who is riding this thing like a fucking horse is a little bit wild uh she has been posting non-stop the past week about how, quote unquote, they control the weather. I wonder what they means. She has been attributing the weather modification to a few different agencies, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Yeah, sure. Sure. Noah's doing this. Like, come on.

doing this like come on uh she has posted memes that that prove that they're controlling the weather because they list a whole bunch of weather modification patents now the funny thing is is that most of these patents are like over a hundred years old if any of them are expired yeah these patents contain plans to drop water from balloons to produce rain. That's the weather modification she's talking about. She included a patent that includes like a way to use like airplane exhaust to blow away poison gas from like trenches. That's chemtrails, Garrison. It's chemtrails. It's absurd.

All of these things are like ancient patents. And like weather modification is a real thing, technically. Like we have been trying to alter the weather. One of the pointed to real technologies is cloud seeding. Cloud seeding is a small-scale technology to alter a cloud's precipitation, usually to increase a cloud's ability to produce localized rain by adding ice or condensation nuclei into the forming clouds. This helps areas suffering from drought and low rainfall.

into the forming clouds. This helps areas suffering from drought and low rainfall. Cloud seeding has been jumped upon by Republican conspiracy theorists as proof that the government is actually engaging in a massive weather control operation, including to produce hurricanes. Now, hurricanes are famously quite large, and it is impossible to determine the path or cause one to happen this just simply isn't true yeah and i mean the largest scale like attempt to manipulate whether the humanity has ever done like on purpose that wasn't global warming was for the 2008 olympics in beijing and it took it took the entire industrial technological and scientific capacity of a nation of one billion people and putting like an unfathomable amount of resources and planning and like logistical capability at specifically not making it rain in beijing for like a fairly small amount of time

and lowering the air pollution levels they barely managed to pull that off so they they sort of kind of made the weather better in one city for like two weeks and that took a a level of resource coordination like fucking unfathomable like most of human history like it's it's it's very challenging to alter the weather it requires a it requires a lot of resources no it doesn't it doesn't work very well like they had to like shut down factories across like half the country like it was fiasco and like these people aren't actually like talking about that they're talking about conspiratorial efforts from the federal government's illuminati to to like to like target hurricanes yeah like on certain red states to alter the election like

that that's that's really what they're talking about conspiracy theorists on the right have pointed it to harp oh no a university of alaska fairbanks program not the heart bullshit that uses high frequency equipment uh to study the upper atmosphere according to reuters no atmospheric monitoring equipment do not alter the weather conspiracy theorists have also targeted doppler radios and nexrad basically like radar control systems and radio control systems as being used to change weather patterns and cause hurricanes this this isn't true you can't change the weather with a radio or with radar yeah again like we're not we're not debunking this because this is so

no this is so ludicrous but these are the conspiracy theories that they're invoking and like and like harp conspiracy theories do go back quite a while i've seen a few other things talking about like direct energy weapons and lasers from space or lasers from the ground pointed at the atmosphere which caused hurricanes to form. This also isn't real. We cannot cause a hurricane to form. It's too big. The thing about this stuff is these are all old conspiracies, but these are things that used

to be like, you would walk into a room full of guys who believed that 9-11 was staged with holograms and that MKUltra successfully produced mind control that was originally developed by North Korea, and those people would laugh the like harp idiots out of the room. Yeah. It was a conspiracy seen by other conspiracy

theorists as like too obviously bullshit. Like. Do you know what isn't bullshit Mia? Is it the products and services that support this podcast? It sure is. The MyPillow guy you're trying to sell gold now? Here we go. Get your gold.

Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me in a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom,

and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Black Lit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Black Lit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech

from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help

real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Hola, mi gente. It's Honey German, and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment

with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture

to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999,

a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian.

Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. Gonzalez will make headlines everywhere. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Parenti.

And I'm Jimei Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. One of the most exciting things about having your first real job is that first real paycheck. You're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone. But you also have a lot of questions like, how should I be investing this money? I mean, how much do I save? And what about my 401k? Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian Toot, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down. I always get roasted on the internet when I say this out loud, but I'm like, every single year, you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere between 10 to 15%.

I'm not saying you're going to get 15% every single year, but if you ask for 10 to 15 and you end up getting eight, that is actually a true raise. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Alright, we are back. But yes, these conspiracy theories have existed for a long time, talking about some degree of the government's ability to influence natural disasters and big weather events. People have tried to blame forest fires on lasers,

specifically the Maui fires from a few years ago. They said were actually caused by direct energy weapons to get people to flee their land so that it could be seized by the federal government. All this kind of stuff. Now, some of them also point to geoengineering, right? They say that although geoengineering is said to combat climate change, it actually causes climate change. Geoengineering, there's technically a few forms, but the one that we're talking about basically injects aerosolized chemicals into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight. Obviously, reflecting sunlight's not going to make a hurricane worse, but whatever. So this has gotten really bad.

This has taken over a significant portion of the online right yeah to the point that even people like desantis are having to like come out and say hey guys no this this this isn't real in a press conference desantis claimed that there are in fact weather conspiracies quote on both sides uh-huh yeah my my one my one friend you kind of have some people who think the government can do this, and others think it's because of fossil fuels, unquote. Oh my fucking god. DeSantis'

communication director later reiterated the claim, saying, quote, the government controls the weather crowd, and the global warming and climate change alarmists are two sides of the same coin. Unscientific, agenda-motivated motivated and unhelpful following a storm weather is weather unquote jesus christ so even in their refutation of the weather

controlling conspiracies they cannot help but dip into some climate denial conspiracies we love to see it oh my god now i think like hurricanes and natural disasters are uniquely susceptible to misinformation. During times of crisis, people try to search for information to relieve stress, and they often don't take the extra time to verify said information. Whenever a new natural disaster strikes,

old footage and videos circulate being passed off as current events. Conversations and arguments about climate change and climate denial also spark during natural disasters, leading to a surge of climate change conspiracy theories. While this is nothing new, the way people are getting information is changing with the increased use of AI, chatbots, personal assistants, and image generation. There was this TikTok trend ahead of Hurricane Milton, where you ask an Amazon Alexa what the result of the hurricane was going to be before it hit landfall. I'm going to play this video that has over 2 million views on Twitter.

Alexa, how many lives were lost during Hurricane Milton? How many lives were lost during Hurricane Milton? Overall, extreme Hurricane Milton caused $21.3 billion in damages and caused 262 fatalities. October 8th, 2024, 12.15 p.m. Central Time. Very scary. Now, this other video has over 750,000 views on TikTok. Alexa, what kind of hurricane is Hurricane Milton? From fandom.com, Hurricane Milton was an extremely powerful Category 5 hurricane that caused widespread damage across its path in October 2024.

They've already predicted the outcome. Wonder why. So, that one may have given you a hint about what's going on here. Obviously, Alexa doesn't know the future, nor has the government pre-programmed data about its secret weather control program into your Echo device. Alexa just pulls from information it finds online in this case

fandom.com hypothetical hurricanes wiki are you fucking which is a wiki which is a wiki based comprehensive database of hypothetical tropical cyclone articles that anyone could edit unquote you know i i said i said as a I said as a joke a couple years ago that we were about two years out from the QAnon people discovering the plot of Metal Gear Solid and believing it was real. But like, we're so close to that now.

We are two months out from an AI telling them the plot of Metal Gear Solid and them believing the Patriots secretly control the government. They're quoting from a fandom wiki on fake hurricanes that people make for fun and can be manipulated in the lead-up to a hurricane specifically to cause this type of reaction again like as a bit right it's it's absurd now to go

even further into this ai singularity hellhole oh no a twitter user tried to debunk that first video i played predicting the death toll in the the replies, this other user wrote, quote, there was a Hurricane Milton in the year 2000. Please, before you post, at least try to fact check with Grok, unquote. They include a Grok AI screenshot that reads, quote, the name Milton has been used for one hurricane in the Atlantic Basin. Hurricane Milton occurred in 2000. However, for the 2024 hurricane season, there was another hurricane Milton, making it the second time this name has been used for an Atlantic hurricane,

unquote. So an argument then ensued about which AI is correct. Quote, particularly in Mexico, where it made landfall. I asked ChatGPT a second time, was there a Milton hurricane in 2000? ChatGPT said, yes, there was a hurricane Milton in 2000. It formed in the Eastern Pacific in late December. You know, I... Another person replied, saying, Grok states a 2000 hurricane named Milton struck Nicaragua in 2000, but it doesn't show up on the National Weather Service's hurricane tracking charts for 2000, unquote. Very curious. It's insane. It's insane. These people are using chat GPT and grok AI as search engines. And when they hallucinate

fake data, they're alleging some kind of conspiracy theory to suppress data on a previous hurricane milton i mean and it's it's also just worse like having like this person condescend being like please before you post try to fact check with grok you're like what the fuck are you talking about grok is a comedy ai chat bot that's going to generate you like a nonsense response it's not a fact checking tool it's not even a search engine they're just hallucinating data that people are then passing off as real as real information i think i i kind of feel for these people in the sense that like if you live through the 2010s the thing that you were able to do and that you were trained to do was if you had a

question you would type it into google and sometimes it would give you the right answer yeah right but now it's like a machine has been created that answers the question what if google never gave you the correct answer and all of these people have been trained that they can put this into the internet and it will give them the correct answer except now we we have a machine that destroys the entire amazon every single second in order to generate the wrong answer well and like specifically because of how these like AI systems have been politicized with like Elon Musk and stuff, like Republicans view it as like a political imperative to use them over the Democrat leaning like search engines. And people aren't just turning to AI in lieu of search engine.

They're also using TikTok. They're also now using X as their own search engine to get reliable information from users instead of actually verified information online, which you can find with a little bit of searching. So all this is creating a quite volatile scenario where misinformation is spreading at a faster pace than it really ever has before. Now, just like in the Springfield pet eating hoax, people on the right are also spreading AI images as evidence of how the Biden-Harris government failed their disaster relief response after Hurricane Helene.

The most circulated image is of a crying little girl wearing a life vest, holding a wet puppy. Oh no. She is sitting in a boat surrounded by floodwater. This is, this is pure boomer bait, right? Like. Yeah. You will never regret liking this post.

Rolling Stone traced this AI image to a Trump web forum called patriots.win. Oh, God. And users there quickly saw that it was AI, but that didn't stop its spread online. The image got on Twitter and was spread around after being posted by Utah Senator Mike Lee, who has a dark mega profile picture. I'm going to quote from Rolling Stone, quote, Laura Loomer called the image sad, quote, tweeting from a post by Buzz Patterson, columnist for the conservative blog Red State, who wrote of the picture, our government has failed us again. Amy Kamir, RNC National Committee woman for the Georgia GOP,

and the co-founder of Women for Trump, tweeted on Thursday that the image has been, quote, seared into my mind, unquote. Informed that she was not looking at an authentic photo, Kermer doubled down. Y'all, I don't know where this photo came from, and honestly, it doesn't matter. There are people going through much worse than what is

shown in this pic. So I'm leaving it up because it's emblematic of the trauma and the pain people are living through right now. Unquote. Oh my God. So I get like, at this point, people know they're spreading fake information, but they're doing it anyway because it helps them. Like they are willing participants in the complete removal of reality from their constituents brains a mega twitter account posted this ai photo with the girl and the puppy and wrote quote kamala doesn't have enough money for this child i can't hate this administration enough unquote oh my god so do you know what i can't hate enough nope no uh do you know what I can't hate enough? Nope, nope. Do you know what I love dearly with my full life force? Is it products and services?

Yeah, it's the products and services that support this podcast. Listen to them. We will be right back afterwards. Hey, I'm Jacqueline Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks

while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them.

Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech

from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough,

so join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars,

from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun,

el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh.

And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba.

Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Parenti. And I'm Jimei Jackson-Gadsden.

We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. One of the most exciting things about having your first real job is that first real paycheck. You're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone. But you also have a lot of questions like, how should I be investing this money? I mean, how much do I save? And what about my 401k? Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian Tu, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down. I always get roasted on the internet when I say this out loud, but I'm like, every single year you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere

between 10 to 15%. I'm not saying you're going to get 15% every single year, but if you ask for 10 to 15 and you end up getting eight, that is actually a true raise. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, we return to conclude our hurricane misinfo rundown. So why is this stuff catching on? Like, what's happening that's causing this to be so much worse than usual? What's going on? Why is this spreading right now? To answer that question, I'm first going to read a tweet from Candace Taylor, a Georgia candidate for governor back in 2022. Quote, the weather can and is being

manipulated. Wake up. Stop being ignorant or plain stupid. There is no such thing as coincidence. The most important election in the history of America is 30 days away. Pray. Georgia voting has been compromised, and I don't know if we will be able to get all of our early voting days in. Now a hurricane is coming straight for Florida. These two states are necessary for a Trump victory. No coincidence. So of course, this is all a conspiracy to send hurricanes specifically at red states to compromise Trump's ability to win the election. A woman at a Trump rally explained that the government is using cloud seeding to make the hurricanes worse and that this was pre-planned because amazon alexis already knew

the information about the hurricanes ahead of time her reasoning was that the hurricane damaged land could be seized for lithium mining by kamala harris's husband and that the weather was controlled to rig the election against trump now this little tidbit about Kamala's husband, that's a nice little anti-Semitic jab in there. Of course, the Jews are controlling the weather to do lithium mining. Why not? I'm not going to play a short clip from this interview, not the whole thing, because it's way too long and she rambles about cloud seeding for longer than I want to include. But I will include this one short clip. You're implying that the government made a hurricane stronger

to hurt its own country, the United States of America? Correct. And what would be the gain of that? When, if you, like there's been people out there, if they have an Alexa, I don't know if you've heard that,

and they've asked, what caused Milton? You can go on there now. It's already predicted the number of deaths and the amount of, it's already predicted it. On a Google, it won't do that. If you ask it about Helene, it'll tell you the government actively used seed clouding. This is before Helene even happened. Why would a country want to have a hurricane be strong and hit its own country? Because they want to control certain places. And if you're looking at where the hurricane's going, it's a lot of red states. If you're looking at the counties in North Carolina that were hit,

there were all of them, 26 out of 28 of those counties were for Trump. They're doing whatever they can because they can't rig the election. Even control the weather? There were all of them, 26 out of 28 of those counties were for Trump. They're doing whatever they can because they can't rig the election. Even control the weather? Yes. Very compelling stuff coming out of the Trump rallies. Jesus Christ. I'm going to quote from a Media Matters article on hurricane misinformation and conspiracy theories. Quote, a video with over 64,000 views has on-screen text that reads,

we're at the point of revolution. It features a user speculating for over six minutes that Hurricane Helene was somehow part of a plan to suppress white Republican votes. Quote, you might be able to speculate that this is something to do with the fact that these are largely white, rural Appalachian areas that have been affected. They're looking at it like this. This election is three weeks from now. We've just wiped out the complete and total infrastructure for all these towns and cities.

That's great, because guess which way these towns leaned? They leaned red. These were largely Republican-leading towns. As far as they're concerned, they could all die, and they don't care because that's just one less vote for trump unquote yes ashville north carolina famously famously a republican town famously the conservative paradise of ashville yeah now a lot of these conspiracies also link up to very old like fema conspiracies right there's been conspiracies about FEMA

since the 1980s. They've been heavily tied in with the militia movement. The formation of the Oath Keepers was in response to FEMA concentration camp conspiracy theories. Basically that they'll use natural disasters in FEMA to round up patriots to do some kind of new world order

or that they're going to use FEMA to seize your land so then you're going to use FEMA to seize your land, so then you're going to be put in a FEMA concentration camp. Very old conspiracies. Now, these have kind of fed into the current conspiracy matrix regarding the hurricanes. I'm going to quote from this one guy on Twitter called The Health Ranger. No, not The Health Ranger. No. Mia, do you know who the health ranger is yeah the health ranger is is is a frequent alex jones guest yes he is like an anti-vax guy and he's a whole he's a whole thing in this whole conspiracy universe i hate him so much he does and this this is this is what he says about the current hurricanes. Quote, No.

Incoming intel, all caps. FEMA is waiving ungodly amounts of money at private security firms right now, begging for security contractors to station at Florida to prevent Floridians from returning to their homes and businesses after the storm hits. The evacuation orders are to push people out of Florida and keep them out. Reportedly, Delta Force personnel advising FEMA at the top, devising denial of area enforcement plans, which will be enforced at gunpoint if required. I'm told FEMA is practically panicked to get enough armed personnel on site, anticipating a tremendous amount of resistance from displaced people who want to return home to salvage whatever they can. This is the next step up the escalation ladder as the federal government wages war against the American people, as we saw FEMA carrying out

in North Carolina, actively hindering rescue efforts to maximize starvation and death. To the people, do not escalate. Hold your got over 10,000 likes and was spread wildly around Twitter. A few days ago, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue posted an article documenting this current conspiracy ecosystem, and they included one TikTok video that stated, quote, to my North Carolina families, please, I know it's hard, but please do not take that $750. It's a loan, and if you don't pay it back, they will seize your property. In response to this, FEMA clearly stated that FEMA cannot seize your property or land. Applying for disaster assistance does not grant FEMA or the federal government authority or ownership over your property or land.

So now we have these conspiracy theorists, which are being boosted by Republican officials, basically encouraging people to resist help from FEMA, to not evacuate. And like all of this puts themselves and others in great danger, right? You might say, well, if conspiracy theorists don't want help from FEMA, like what's the harm, right? Well, like these people have like kids,

like these people have families. It's not just them that are going to be affected. If they're refusing to evacuate their family from the path of a hurricane and like their kids die that's super fucked up if they're refusing like help from fema to to like feed themselves and their family that's that's not a good sign of the current state of this country yeah yeah like it's it's bad ron desantis's press secretary had to come out against the the unhinged ramble from HealthRanger on Twitter. She quote tweeted his post saying, spreading lies like this could have serious

consequences. If people in evacuation zones see this and decide not to evacuate, despite warnings from state and local emergency management, they are unnecessarily putting their own lives and the lives of first responders at grave risk unquote wow the the wow well the fucking ron desantis's press person the the leopards are finally eating your face have you joined the leopard eating face party wow who could possibly have predicted this the ron desantis team has been replaced by the lizard people i swear no like things got so bad that in DeSantis' like, emergency declaration, he had to specifically put in language that stated that law enforcement will help ensure that people can return to their property after the evacuation has ended. Like,

goofy. Goofy shit. And just like in general, all these FEMA conspiracies are preventing people in need from requesting badly needed help from the agency. I'm going to include this one clip from this guy who was interviewed on MSNBC talking about how his family has been refusing help in North Carolina. My father-in-law lives just outside of Asheville, North Carolina, and he was badly damaged by Hurricane Helene. And he has refused all FEMA help because he's a hardcore Trumper. And he believes he literally believes that if he accepts anything from FEMA, they're going to take his house. I don't understand how so many people are under the spell of this freaking con man.

I don't understand it. Well, it's absolutely heartbreaking about your father-in-law. So sorry Absolutely heartbreaking about your father-in-law. So sorry to hear it. You know, I hope. And it's hard, it's hard just, it's hard to even imagine it. I mean, he lost almost everything, and he's refusing all help from the federal government and complaining to us that he doesn't have food, that he doesn't have the stuff he needs,

and yet he won't accept the help. What the hell are we supposed to do? We're not in a position to be able to fly across the country and help him. There's people begging us to get him to accept help, and he won't do it. Wow. And I guarantee you, I'm not the only one. I guarantee you, I'm not the only one. I'm not the only one. I wish there was something I could say as to, you know, I don't know.

Is there, does he have access to any electronics where you could send him some information debunking this and that he might? We've done all of that. We've done all of that. We've sent him, we've sent him all the FEMA bulletins. We've sent him all the stuff from the fact checkers. He doesn't believe it. He thinks it's all, he just believes Trump. Literally, Dan.

He just, it's a cult. He's a cult member. I'm sorry to say it. He's a cult member. And he's my father-in-law and it sucks. That's pretty bad. That's devastating. And I think yeah is very resonant to a lot of people right now and how this whole like conspiracy misinfo ecosystem that's been getting

worse slowly over the course of the eight years has just like ruined families and puts people in like constant active danger now uh these conspiracies have also led to threats against FEMA workers and meteorologists for both being a part of the conspiracy and for controlling the weather. I'm going to read a quote from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, quote, falsehoods around hurricane response have spawned credible threats and incitement to violence directed at the federal government. This includes calls to send militias to face down FEMA for the perceived denial of aid, and that individuals should quote-unquote shoot FEMA officials and the agency's emergency responders. Unverified claims about attacks on FEMA representatives have been used to glorify and encourage violence, unquote.

Media Matters archived a TikTok video threatening FEMA employees, which received over 200,000 views, saying, quote, Dear Feds and FEMA, if you're trying to deny people access to help in the affected area, be advised we're still under the War on Terror emergency declaration. If you violate your constitutional oath to protect and assist the charge will be treason punishment can mean being unalived immediately by the citizens you are withholding aid from unquote on tiktok they're threatening to unalive government agents another video states, quote, Public notice.

We, the United States of America, have declared FEMA personnel engaged in obstructing local rescue efforts in the area impacted by Hurricane Helene to be enemies of the state. If FEMA personnel offer any further obstruction or fail to immediately assist to their best ability, they can be arrested or shot or hung on site. Unquote.

Jesus Christ. Now now a lot of these conspiracy theories are also heavily anti-semitic talking about like the religion of local officials like i think like the mayor of asheville and just in general combining these weather control conspiracy theories with fema conspiracy theories saying that like the jews are somehow controlling all of this and like that's just a recurring aspect of these conspiracies that i feel like it is it is worth mentioning especially because like the right is like trying to weaponize claims of anti-semitism to attack the democrats on israel right now which is absurd because the democrats are extremely pro-israel but still

their constituents are going to be spreading all these like very unhinged anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Jews controlling weather and using FEMA to hurt Christians in the Appalachians, all that kind of stuff. Now it's not just threats against FEMA officials. Death threats have also been targeted against meteorologists as Rolling Stone documented in a article last week. Quote, I've been doing this for 46 years and it's never been like this, says Alabama meteorologist James Spann. He says he's been inundated with misinformation and threatening messages like, stop lying about the government controlling the weather or else, unquote. Great. A Washington DC based meteorologist named Matthew Capusi said, quote, for me to post a hurricane forecast and for people to accuse me

of creating the hurricane by working for some secret Illuminati entity is disappointing and distressing, and it's resulting in a decrease in public trust, unquote. So like, again, like, why is this all happening? A part of it is because the election is upcoming and people are trying to find reasons to think why Trump might lose. And they're saying that the hurricanes are actually a plot by the Illuminati to make Trump lose the election via having these storms controlled by Jews and Democrats to target Republican areas. But what has changed in the actual ecosystem to allow this to feel like it's so much worse than what it usually has been?

And I've kind of decided that everyone is now Alex Jones. Like everyone has become their own little mini Alex Jones. Platforms have changed in the past eight years to create massive social and financial incentives to go viral. So now everyone is just doing what Alex Jones did, right? Like Alex Jones learned that he could make a profit saying all kinds of crazy shit on air. And now other people have also learned this lesson. This is a part of, I think, what's going on now. How does everyone has the capacity to go viral by saying whatever crazy shit they can during a moment of crisis. A few days ago, there was a really good article in The Atlantic by Charles Warzel titled, I'm running out of ways to explain

how bad this is. This is going to be linked in the sources below. I recommend you give it a read, but I'm going to read a paragraph from it here. Quote, this is more than just a misinformation crisis. To watch as real information is overwhelmed by crank theories and public servants battle death threats is to confront two alarming facts. First, that a durable ecosystem exists to ensconce citizens in an alternate reality. And second, that the people consuming and amplifying those lies are not helpless dupes, but willing participants. This reality fracturing is the result of an information ecosystem that is dominated by platforms that offer financial and attentional incentives to lie and enrage, and to turn every tragedy

and every large event into a shameless content creation opportunity. This collides with a swath of people who would rather live in an alternate reality built on distrust and grievance than change their fundamental beliefs about the world, unquote. I know, Mia mia we've been talking about this misinformation problem in the chat and i know you had some comments you wanted to you wanted to share yeah there was a oh god where did i first hear this might have been a philosophy episode but there's a bunch of philosophical stuff about how ignorance works and about how it's not just like, ignorance isn't just the state of not knowing something. You have to actively create it, right?

You have to go out of your way not to seek the information that would sort of like, you know, cause you to have to know or cause you to change your worldview or cause you to like have to confront what your beliefs are. So people actively sort of construct this this reality around themselves so they don't have to do anything that ever sort of challenges their own views and this is something that you can see i mean you just you see it happening all over the place and this is one of the things that where cell gets like gets right that is important is that like people are active participants

in the construction of their own universes and now there's there's a financial incentive there's a social incentive and there's also a cognitive incentive which is that like having to deal with the fact you might be wrong but something fucking sucks yes and it's hard and sometimes you just don't want to know totally yeah i mean and this is something that like myself, Robert, and you have been talking about increasingly the past few years. It feels like misinformation is an outdated model to understand our current predicament, right? Like misinformation is no longer meant to like actually change minds or persuade people. It's just a mechanism to construct and reinforce false realities. to construct and reinforce false realities. Like in the recent meme politics episode, I talked about how AI images of trans athletes or of immigrants stealing pets, like these aren't meant to convince anyone

of their authenticity, but they exist in lieu of evidence to help people maintain their reality tunnel. An information researcher at the University of Washington named Michael Caulfield wrote an article earlier this year about how a whole bunch of mega people started to deny the authenticity of those videos of Kamala Harris's rally in that Detroit hangar,

showing like a massive, massive huge crowd with Air Force One or Air Force Two landing and her getting off. With these mega people saying that this was like AI, this is fake, there was no way the crowd would be this big. And they invented a whole bunch of reasons for why this photo must be fake. And this wasn't fake, this was a real photo this was easily verified there's like video evidence from multiple sources showing that this is a real thing that happened but caulfield wrote quote the primary use of misinformation is not to change the beliefs of other people at all instead the vast majority of misinformation is offered as a service for people to maintain their beliefs in face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, unquote. And yeah, I don't believe in giving these

people a degree of passivity, right? Like this is an active choice that they are doubling down and reinforcing and creating their own reality tunnels to live in. And I think the other aspect of this, this is something that Robert was talking with me last night, is like the people also propagating this, the people creating the environments to make this happen are also willing participants, right? Like this is a big reason why Musk bought Twitter is so that it purposely could turn into the current conspiracy like shit show that it currently is. Facebook used to be where conspiracy theorists gathered to post their weird boomer opinions, and now it's Twitter alongside just actual

useful, verifiable information. And now, because these two platforms have kind of combined how we have so much conspiracy content on Twitter, it also just damages the use of Twitter as a platform to look for real information. And I think you can see the same thing with TikTok with its very loose content moderation policy regarding factual information, and the fact that people use TikTok as its own search engine, creating its own ecosystem of misinformation, fully isolated away from the rest of the internet.

long-term project by the right. You could look at the John Birch Society and other anti-communist groups from the 50s who used to deliberately put out fake articles about communists infiltrating. Fox News and a whole bunch of conservative mass media like talk radio was created at least in part as a reaction to Nixon being forced out of office. And a lot of the same people funding right-wing media are also pushing for charter schools and attempts to destroy public education. It's all an intentional effort to make people's media literacy go completely down the toilet and propagate entire false versions of reality in service of a few rich people. And that's what our current situation is right now. And I don't know if there's a way to stop it. As you heard in that clip from MSNBC, like fact checks don't work anymore

because that's not like the point of any of this. It's not meant to actually persuade people. It's only meant to reinforce what they already want to believe. So what do you do in a world post fact checking? I don't know. And we're going to have to find out. I don't know, Mia, do you have any closing thoughts?

You know, I will say one of the few things I've ever seen that's gotten someone out of something like this is just sometimes, it doesn't always work like this, but every once in a while you could have an experience that is so cognitively shattering to everything that you'd believed that it just implodes. So, Mia, you're advocating to dose your Republican family members with LSD? Is that what I'm hearing? Well, no. What I'm advocating is that the people who think that China is a socialist state be sent to China and have to interact with members of the Chinese Communist Party.

Because I have seen this work. It does work. It can. I've seen it happen. You can't talk to these people for more than five minutes without you but i mean you know in a sort of more serious note i mean this is something that you know you're trying to fight emotions on on a sort of intellectual level and so like if you want to deal with this you i i don't i think you have to kind of be working on on a sort of like emotional act factor register and that sucks because it's you know it's effectively the abandonment of politics as politics it's it's arguably just a complete retreat into fascism but you know if you take the sort of understanding of fast one of the elements of it as fascism is reducing all politics to aesthetics right but we've hit this point where there's there's no centralizing viewpoint like central reality tunnels that most people are in. And that's largely partially because of these people trying to destroy it and partially because the people who were running the mainstream media blew themselves up by lying about Iraq.

And then by spending 30 years insisting that neoliberalism was the greatest economic system ever and then 2008 happening. that like neoliberalism was the greatest economic system ever and then 2008 happening and so like you know we're in this position where the people who had built the guardrails blew it up in order to make money and push a political agenda so now a bunch of other people who want to just destroy everything inside of those rails are just like detonating bombs inside of all of our like psychological conscious i mean i think the guy who was talking about his stepdad in asheville is correct it is a cult and you have to treat it like you would treat a cult you can't fact check them out of this you have to treat them like your friend just joined scientology some people might just choose to completely cut the person off

because they find it too dangerous, and that's fine. But I think there should be others that remain as a lifeline to the person, right? If they ever one day realize, oh no, I'm in a cult and I need help, there needs to be a way for them to get out. There needs to be a lifeline for them to escape. And this is the only way

that, quote-unquote, cult deprogramming has worked. You can point to like people who've like gotten out of the q anon conspiracy theory like this is the only tactic that actually works and it's reliant on the courtesy of others right it's it's reliant that you have to put yourself in a degree of danger by maintaining contact with this person that is kind of dangerous because they are in this like very volatile cult there needs to be some lifeline for them. And I think that's really the only way that I know of right now

that shows a degree of success in getting people out of this fucked up conspiracy matrix. And it sucks and it's not easy. And most people promoting cult deprogramming are hacks with pseudoscience. And it turns out this is just a very emotional problem and it

requires, unfortunately, emotional solutions that a simple Reuters fact check will not suffice. So anyway, that is my rundown on what's currently going on with the hurricane misinformation. It's really bad. Yep, it could happen here. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media.

For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Thanks for listening. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires.

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