The force of nature has struck Florida, North and South Carolina, and Georgia, causing hundreds of deaths and damages valued in tens of thousands of dollars. More terrible, however, is the force of lies, especially when combined with the thirst for power.
Since Hurricane Helene devastated parts of the US, including areas in the crucial states of North Carolina and Georgia, a wave of falsehoods has bombarded the American public with theories as insane as the US Government manufacturing hurricanes to punish the political opposition, closing access to the most affected areas only for those living there - who supposedly vote for Donald Trump - to suffer, and diverting aid to help illegal immigration, Lebanon, and Ukraine.
The conspiracies have been created and spread directly by figures such as the world's richest man, Elon Musk, the neo-Nazi Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, and different Trumpist media outlets like Fox News and Breitbart. In a clear bet on the strategy of the worse, the better, the Republican Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, has refused to convene an extraordinary meeting of that legislative body to approve the delivery of more aid to the affected areas.
Johnson is evangelical and speaks with God at night. In fact, according to his own words, the Almighty has told him that he will play a role similar to that of Moses in the sacred texts of Judaism and Christianity, although apparently, He has not commented on the convenience of helping others on the eve of elections. The Republican governor of Florida and former White House candidate, Ron DeSantis, took several days to respond to calls from the White House offering help to face Hurricane Milton, which hit the city of Tampa in that state in the early hours of Thursday.
All this politicization of hurricanes is part of the new American political dynamic based on the simple adage that no prisoners should be taken. But hostages can be taken. Taylor Greene, who in 2018 claimed that the California wildfires that year had been created by "space lasers" funded by the Rothschild family, a Jewish family that is one of the favorite targets of neo-Nazis, tweeted on Thursday: "Yes, they can control the weather. It's ridiculous for anyone to say they can't." Meanwhile, Elon Musk, citing, in the style of Donald Trump, anonymous sources, posted that a SpaceX engineer [his rocket and spaceflight company] had sent him a message saying that FEMA, the US equivalent of Civil Protection in Spain, "is not only not helping people, but actively blocking citizens who want to help" and even "seizing goods and services."
The State, thus, was punishing the inhabitants of rural areas in North Carolina, even looting them. Trump's campaign quickly seized the situation to invent all kinds of abuses by FEMA and other aid organizations. The news network Fox News, owned by Rupert Murdoch, and the website Breitbart, owned by the billionaire Robert Mercer, insisted that the White House had decided to give $157 million in humanitarian aid to Lebanon for Israel's bombings, ignoring North Carolina. "Harris boasts of giving 157 million to civilians in Lebanon, while many of the victims of Helene are still waiting for help," the website headlined on Sunday.
The list of conspiracies is endless. Some of them are extremely dangerous for those affected, such as those claiming on social media that evacuation warnings are exaggerated because their goal is to depopulate predominantly Republican areas in Georgia and North Carolina - two states that can decide the elections - so that Kamala Harris wins. It's a bold idea, but it's also a lie because one of the most affected cities by Helene, Asheville, with 90,000 inhabitants, is one of the most left-wing cities in the entire United States, to the point that it has independently approved reparations for descendants of black slaves and committed to complying with international agreements to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that the US has not signed. Now, Asheville is semi-destroyed.
But this information is very serious because it can lead people not to evacuate their homes, thinking it's all a government trap to prevent them from voting... or to take over their properties and turn them into lithium mining sites, the mineral used in electric car batteries, which Donald Trump wanted to end until the owner of the second-largest electric car manufacturer, Elon Musk, began actively supporting him.
In any case, the hurricane of falsehoods continues, amidst the passivity - if not complicity or direct support - of major internet companies like Meta (Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp), Twitter, Alphabet (Google, YouTube), and the Chinese TikTok. It's a big change from just 12 years ago when, on the eve of the elections, Hurricane Sandy destroyed part of the New Jersey coast. Republican candidate Mitt Romney supported the efforts of Barack Obama's Government to return the area to normalcy, and the Republican governor - and future presidential candidate - of the state, Chris Christie, appeared on television embracing the Democratic president. However, even then, there were some who fiercely attacked Christie. "The president has delivered what he promised, and I have a job to do, I'm not here to play politics," Christie said when criticized for it. Only 12 years have passed. But those statements, today, seem to only belong in a fiction work like The West Wing. In 2024, hurricanes win elections. The more deaths, the better.