How Hurricane Helene Has Fuelled Far-Right Conspiracies
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Hurricane Milton tore across Florida last week, just a few weeks after Hurricane Helene ripped across much of the East Coast, stretching all the way from Florida to the Northeast.

But the epicenter of destruction for Helene was unexpected. Asheville, North Carolina, a city more than 300 miles from the coast, was devastated by mudslides and floods. Officials in North Carolina say they were blinded by Helene's sheer intensity. Homes swept away, restaurants and shops torn to pieces, communities cut off from clean water and electricity, leaving residents nowhere to go.

Now, as the community attempts to rebuild, the recovery process has been mired in conspiracy and disinformation. This has ranged from Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeting, quote, they can control the weather, to others claiming that FEMA dollars are being diverted to housing migrants. But where are these conspiracies coming from? And what impact might they have in November? Jessica Pishko is a writer on the ground in North Carolina.

She joins us to discuss Helene's aftermath and how swirling conspiracies about the storm may affect the election. You're listening to The Political Scene. I'm Tyler Foggett, and I'm a senior editor at The New Yorker.

Hey, Jessica. Thanks so much for coming on the show. I'm glad to be here. I know that things are hectic where you are right now. Do you mind explaining to listeners what your current situation is? So I am sitting in my living room in Asheville. Outside, we have about 10 utility trucks and multiple buzz saws going on. So if you hear noises of construction, that's what's going on outside. Okay, great. Thank you for the heads up.

Let's talk about what's going on in Nashville right now. Recently, we've seen Hurricane Milton and Hurricane Helene devastate the southeastern United States. I feel like the...

The impact on Asheville was kind of surprising in part because, you know, the actual hurricane hit pretty far away from Asheville. And then also there's been this longstanding idea that Asheville is a climate haven. So, you know, a place that is somewhat safe from the worst effects of climate change. And yet, you know, you recently wrote a piece for us about how the area has become the epicenter of a regional crisis after Hurricane Helene. So can you just explain to us kind of what happened to Asheville and why it was hit so hard? Yeah.

I think that certainly this storm, at least the extent of the storm, was a surprise to everyone. We were pretty aware that the storm was coming, but I do think local and state officials did not anticipate that the impact would be so bad.

Part of the reason why we had such a tough time here was that we had had a week of rain before the storm came. So the soil is very saturated and water levels were rather high. So when the storm, Hurricane Helene came and the winds hit, it was fertile ground for both flooding and

mudslides, as well as a lot of trees falling down. You know, Asheville has a reputation of being a really beautiful place. I think that gives it a sense of a refuge away from climate change. But of course, what we've seen is that it's not a refuge from climate change. Nothing is.

In particular, Asheville and the Western North Carolina region simply hasn't updated their infrastructure in a while. So, for example, in terms of water, this is a place where a lot of people still rely on well water. Well water can't be used unless you have electricity. So if you don't have a generator, you can't draw water from a well.

The water system also hasn't been updated in some time. So that's created a lot of problems in terms of why a lot of Asheville and the surrounding area still doesn't have potable water because the places from which these water companies draw the water were simply just not prepared for the amount of flooding, mudslides, and

And because of the flooding, of course, a lot of things got washed into rivers and waters like cars and fuel, people's items and furniture. So the water that results is not clean, right? So it's not suitable for use. Even in places like Black Mountain, where they finally restored water, there the water is not even safe for bathing. Wow. It's only safe for flushing the toilet.

I'm wondering if you can talk more about Black Mountain and some of the more remote areas of the state. What have the difficulties been in rescuing people and getting them the aid that they need?

In the immediate aftermath of the storm, there was a lot of trouble getting to people and impacted areas. And, you know, for example, I had written in my piece and in my own experience was simply that people cannot go further than a few feet away from their house. So we did not have a lot of serious flooding. We had a little flooding, but we were trapped in our house by fallen trees.

So without chains, a chainsaw and, you know, some heavy equipment, it was it was very difficult for us to get out of our house. So we had to, you know, climb around. And so here where I live, we spend a lot of time climbing over trees and climbing.

trying to locate people and make sure people could get out of their house and were safe. In other areas, there was just really intense flooding and mudslides, which closed down roads and made it really difficult for people to get places by car or truck. What we did see, though, were a lot of people using helicopters,

Actually, one of the interesting parts about the immediate days after Hurricane Helene was the number of private helicopters that came. For the experts I spoke to, this is relatively unprecedented. I talked to one leader of a group who does helicopter drop-offs of rescues. It's a group called Operation Helio, and they work with various groups like FEMA to deliver supplies in the immediate aftermath of a disaster like this. And it

At one point, there were around 100 volunteers flying helicopters. So people had just showed up with helicopters. A few people apparently in America owned Blackhawk helicopters privately. So we had this burst of private helicopters and they were doing a lot of stuff like rescuing people who were atop mountains and hills. So a lot of those people had just their entire house and road washed away in giant mudslides. So it was really difficult for them to get down.

And this, though, to bear in mind, is the immediate aftermath. I'd say at this point, so now we're about two weeks out right now, things are actually relatively calm. There's a large National Guard presence. Even here, I see National Guard helicopters constantly flying in the sky. They've managed to get trucks through. It's rather strange. I think this is the effect of a hurricane is that certain spots look untouched and then other spots just look completely devastated.

But, you know, the problem, of course, is that the issues of water and electricity and cell service are still a problem, even if, let's say, the natural landscape looks relatively unscathed.

I've heard two sort of different overarching political narratives about the storm. And I'm wondering if we can just like walk through both of them and then kind of talk about which one, in your opinion, seems more legitimate, essentially. So the first is that extreme weather events like Helene and Milton are going to damage Harris's chances of winning in November, in part because—

People are upset by the government response. The second is that Hurricane Helene in particular is going to be bad for Trump because the counties that have been the most damaged are swing counties that went for him in 2020. And I'm wondering which one of these you think is likely or that this is bad for Harris or that it's bad for Trump or if both could simultaneously be true. It's hard to say.

And here I'll sort of talk a little bit about like some of the things that they've been doing and not doing. So one of the things about North Carolina, I know that it's considered a bit of a swing state between Harris and Trump. The legislature is rather gerrymandered. It's very Republican.

So, for example, they just passed a emergency relief bill, which was really important to get done. But the Republican legislators held a press conference without any Democrat legislators, even though it was really a bipartisan bill. So everybody voted for it, except for Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson, who wasn't present that day. But everyone voted for it, Republican and Democrat. But the GOP held their own press conference.

as a way of supporting their own candidates. At the same time, a bill was proposed to alter some of the things about voting. And so a Democrat representative proposed a bill that would extend the time to register, that would make certain adjustments in terms of early voting. And that bill was immediately shut down. So...

So, you know, one of the issues, of course, is that the GOP and the Democrats will say like both sides are playing politics. And of course, whatever they're doing is neutral. So I think that it's been interesting because Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson has really used this as an opportunity to go on the road with a lot of far right officials.

There's a sheriff just east of here, and he went on the road with this particular sheriff delivering supplies at Western North Carolina. I would say I didn't see this personally, but he has posted videos of him going to places and making a show of bringing supplies to needed areas and talking about the lack of FEMA response.

Now, the thing about that, of course, is that the FEMA response is plainly here. Nonprofits work with FEMA. They get FEMA money, even if they don't advertise that they get FEMA money. And FEMA has certainly been coordinating a large scale response. It would be pretty difficult to look around and not.

say that there isn't a response. I think the feeling that FEMA isn't here, which is a valid feeling, I felt that too in the first few days afterwards, right? You have no power or water or self-service and you're trapped in your house. I, of course, also felt distressed. But the thing about FEMA is that the system we have is...

One in which we want, they say, minimal federal intervention. So FEMA really spends a lot of their time reimbursing localities. So all these trucks trying to restore power. I mean, this is FEMA, right? That's FEMA attempting to restore our power. So I think maybe people...

understand thoroughly that not everyone working with FEMA has a FEMA jacket on. But I also think the GOP here has really used that as a tool. You know, Mark Robinson is not polling very well right now. And so I think he in particular and the GOP of the state

have tried to muster the forces to make the GOP look as robust of their response as possible, while also catering to factions of the far right that intensely oppose FEMA or that don't like the federal government because it's being run by, uh,

Joe Biden or who want to advocate in some way that, you know, we don't need federal aid or federal aid is always going to be ineffectual. Yeah, no, it seems like the far right has kind of kicked up a different kind of storm, which is a storm of online misinformation about FEMA, about the hurricanes. So I want to talk to you about that next. But first, we're going to take a quick break, quick break. We'll hear more of the political scene from The New Yorker in just a moment.

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Jessica, I'd like to talk to you about the online conspiracies that have emerged in the wake of the hurricanes. Many of them involve FEMA. There's the claim that FEMA abandoned parts of North Carolina so that the Biden administration could mine lithium there for electric vehicles. There's the theory that FEMA ran out of money because the Biden administration has been diverting disaster funds to newly arriving migrants. And also the theory that the government was bulldozing communities to cover up bodies left behind by the storm.

Are these all just straight up lies or are some of the conspiracies that you've seen been based in some kernel of truth? I certainly think that there are a lot of conspiracies both in the Internet and

world and particularly on TikTok, a lot of information spread pretty quickly. And then there's a different sense on the ground that also has, I think, some conspiracy theories and kind of incorrect information, but it's slightly different depending on where you go. I mean, one of the challenges I think in this particular storm was that because of the loss of self-service, people really did not have a way to get

good information. So for example, there was a period of time where, you know, once I got in touch with members of my family, for example, they knew a lot more about what was going on in Asheville than I did. I had, you know, maybe five days with those cell service. I had sort of no idea what was going on in the state. I didn't know what the

plan was. So are you saying that misinformation was kind of spreading on the ground just because you have so many people who are kind of disconnected from the rest of the world? I think that that

helped that people were disconnected. People certainly felt really vulnerable. You know, a lot of people were hoping to be evacuated. And in those immediate days, there was just no way to get in touch, like no internet. No, you know, you couldn't go to the FIBA website. And I know a lot of people were trying to set up

hubs to counter disinformation. But the problem, of course, was that people really couldn't get to that stuff. But I also think that in certain places like Chimney Rock, which is one of the regions where these rumors about bulldozing and lithium mines spread,

was because the destruction there felt really bad, right? Like it was true that in certain places, this flooding and mudslides, I mean, it really had a terrible impact on buildings. You know, people lost their homes and all of their belongings, even though the death toll at Chimney Rock itself, very quickly, that death toll got exaggerated. It was really spread by a lot of

People on Twitter, Michael Flynn, who was the national security advisor in the Trump administration, he spread a lot of rumors online about just people being abandoned, you know, children being left to like float. So there was a rumor that he spread that was like people had tied their children to bits of wood or trees to save them while their parents had died. Just really gruesome rumors.

stuff that, I mean, is in my mind actually is very hurtful because there is a lot of people who are truly suffering. They've lost all their things. People have died. And so, you know, the idea of using that as like this conspiracy theory is very strange. And I can say that I went to Chimney Rock and I went to Lake Lure.

It's just, it's not true. Like there isn't one person I think said like you could smell decomposing bodies. You could not smell decomposing bodies. I mean, it was, this is all just not true but there were a lot of kind of failed incidents in which people felt very strongly that administrative officials had gotten in the way. For example, there was a helicopter pilot a private individual who had flown in to help some people. He landed in a restricted area

Around Chimney Rock and made a video and a burst of TikTok saying that an administrative official or some sort of law enforcement official threatened to arrest him because he was doing unauthorized flights and had landed in a restricted area. Now, the town of Lake Lure had to do a great deal of countermeasures.

programming, right? They had to issue statements and videos to counter this misinformation because people were really upset. They felt like this person was a volunteer hero who had come in to help people. And here were people like threatening to arrest him. But the thing is like the countering of the misinformation,

didn't get, never gets the strength that the TikTok videos and the sort of idea of like a hero narrative. I think one of the things that's really popular in the aftermath of the disaster is heroic individuals who come either bearing food or water or rescuing people. It's really dramatic.

People like the story. And just speaking of, you know, like local volunteers and heroes, like I've seen that in some cases it's been like far right militias like Patriot Front and the Proud Boys who have been talking about how they're conducting mutual aid programs in Western North Carolina and that they're going in with their chainsaws to save people who are stranded. And so I'm wondering if there's like a politicization of the local hero narrative and that if some of these local heroes are more often than not right wingers, essentially, and if that's part of what's going on here.

I think the hero narrative does tie neatly into the right wing and far right because it's a sort of libertarian narrative, right? It's the idea that we don't need government to help us. What we need are a handful of strong, brave individuals. Kind of reminds me of some of the arguments about gun ownership, too, where it's like, you know, the good guy with a gun who can counter the mass shooter. Exactly. It's exactly the same. And it's the same kind of person, too, right? It's like a white, middle-aged man

who happened to be sort of the main contingent of Trump voters. And certainly, you know, the idea of Appalachia, Western North Carolina, I think there's like this romanticization of mountain people. Some state senator here made a comment when they passed the aid package that was like mountain people don't like aid.

They take care of themselves. It's like this idea that it's a realm of self-sufficiency. And a lot of people here who live on isolated mountains, they do kind of value that self-sufficiency. And I think that that's a lot of what it's about. What I will say in terms of the actual militia deployment is that they haven't been able to deploy, I think, as they would have liked.

Because of road closures and because of the heavy presence of the National Guard and law enforcement, so many of the most impacted areas have police checkpoints.

So I experienced this myself. You simply cannot get into certain areas without passing a police checkpoint, which means you require either a police escort or you have to be a resident. So what I saw is a lot of shutdowns, a lot of curfews, restricting movement. So I have seen things.

that a lot of these right wing militias have talked about deployment and are purporting to raise money for mutual aid. But what I haven't seen is them actually being able to deploy. Now, that said, I do think the next couple of weeks will be more fertile for some of that action because as

As roads are open and cleared, as life sort of resumes something that looks like normal, people start to move around. There's still going to be a lot of loss. Like people have still lost a lot of their stuff. They've lost their homes, their cars, right? So there's still a lot of problems. There's a lot of structural problems left. Things won't get rebuilt that fast. And that's where I think we start to come into the second and third dangers, right? So-

I already heard a conspiracy, new conspiracy theory that was like the water was so tainted that if you like put your hand in it, you would get burnt. Like it's so acidic. So there's like fears of tainted water. And I think that these new theories

issues and conspiracy theories as people start to move around might read more of this far-right activity. And some of it is also just that the region, while Asheville itself is pretty blue and Democrat, the region around it is very red. And again, very, very locked into that individual libertarian narrative that is really popular on the far right.

We've been talking a lot about Republican disinformation. And, you know, I feel like at least leading up to the hurricanes, when we think about Republican disinformation, we're often talking about climate denialism. The American historian Timothy Snyder recently sent out a newsletter about what he describes as the fascist logic of climate lying. And it's basically all about the ways in which, you know, as the earth heats and storms and droughts get worse and worse,

Trump and Vance will suppress science and blame the scientists on problems like climate change. And so I'm just curious, when we talk about, you know, Republican misinformation, we were talking earlier about, you know, the specific stuff about FEMA and how they're failing to do their jobs because they're more worried about, you know, illegal immigrants than they are about the poor people of Western North Carolina. But how much of this misinformation is about climate change specifically? Or are Republicans not even really going there as much because, you know,

It seems weird to deny climate change when you have all these people who are extremely vulnerable to climate change, who have just like lost their house, essentially. It would seem that climate change is an obvious issue that people should be talking about.

What I will say is the North Carolina legislature, when it met to discuss this emergency bill, they met on October 9th. So they wouldn't have any discussion of climate change. So it's plain from the political standpoint of government and leadership that climate change is just not a thing to be talked about.

That's just, you know, well, I think our local state rep, who is Chuck Edwards, who's a very far right politician, did issue a sort of disclaimer to say that the weather was not caused by human forces, which is a rumor that Marjorie Taylor Greene spread, right? That

in some way, like scientists or some powers that be had created the hurricane. So Chuck Edwards, you know, issued a correction to say, well, no, this wasn't human created, but he refused to say anything about climate change. And he continued to blame administrative officials. What I do see, which is very similar to the voting fraud panic, is

is that people are very eager to blame what I would consider administrative people, kind of folks who...

managed towns and cities who balance budgets, who are responsible for FEMA funding, who are trying to make good decisions on behalf of communities, and who are not elected political figures. There was a sheriff east of here who blamed his city manager because she asked that people keep their receipts for FEMA reimbursement.

He described that as administrative red tape that was getting in the way. So it wouldn't surprise me to hear that a similar attitude about people who want to talk about climate science would say, well, that's just, you know, getting in the way of actual relief. It's a little bit like when, unfortunately, when there's a mass shooting, right? All talk of gun control falls off the table is politicized talk.

Right. That that what what should be doing is talking about helping victims and we shouldn't be politicizing the problem. I mean, the issue, of course, is that this is all political. Right. Everything that's happened is plainly a political decision, as we can tell by the way the North Carolina GOP has treated the situation and, you know, is trying to really use it as a way to get their electoral base out.

Absolutely. I'd like to talk more with you about the politics of this and what this might all mean for the election in November, but we're going to take another quick break. We'll hear more of the political scene in just a moment. I'm Nomi Frye. I'm Vincent Cunningham. I'm Alex Schwartz. And we are Critics At Large, a podcast from The New Yorker. Guys, what do we do on the show every week? We

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So, Jessica, you were talking about Mark Robinson earlier. And, you know, before Hurricane Helene, the big story in North Carolina was Robinson, the Republican lieutenant governor who is now running to be governor. In September, it was revealed that he had called himself a black Nazi on a porn forum many years ago. And there are so many, you know, kind of terrible things that have come out about him, most of which I don't even feel comfortable saying on air.

But his candidacy was really in crisis, and Republicans were worried that not only would he lose the gubernatorial race, but that it would result in Trump losing North Carolina altogether because Trump endorsed Robinson and has not rescinded that endorsement. As you mentioned, Robinson has been kind of going around. You know, he's been helping to propagate some of the hurricane conspiracies, claiming that Biden and Harris are purposefully withholding aid from Republican counties and that the National Guard has been refusing to fly aid missions.

And so I'm wondering if you see Robinson's spread of hurricane misinformation as an intentional election strategy to try and pull himself back into the race. And if you have any sense of whether it's working and whether he has successfully laundered his reputation or whether it's still very much the case that you hear Robinson's name and you're just like the guy who called himself a black Nazi. Yeah.

So it is true that Mark Robinson has certainly gone on a political spree under the guise of aid. This has been his sort of chance to drive around, I think, in the convoy distributing food and water to people and

I mean, one of the things about wanting to give people food and water, which is it looks better than just passing an emergency relief bill, right? This has a better, there's a better visual of driving like a convoy of trucks filled with water bottles than going into the state legislature to help pass a bill. But what I think is really important is that

Mark Robinson is doing is more of like a rhetorical ploy that of course is familiar, right? That this is a familiar way of someone who has plainly a great number of, you know, quote unquote personal controversies, if that's what we want to call it, that

You know, his reputation is still pretty TARDIS, but he's arguing that people shouldn't be focused on that. They should instead be focused on all the good works he's doing. Now, the thing about the good works he's doing, again, is that while it is excellent to deliver much needed items to Western North Carolina, that's really not.

you know, in the long term, what the people of Western North Carolina need. I mean, what people are facing now is the immense task of rebuilding. People need power and water. There's been no school. So you're really talking about people who need deep infrastructure,

They need help to reopen hospitals and roads to get schools. Schools can't reopen because they don't have water. They're talking about digging wells so that they can open the public schools and putting in porta-potties. Like that's the stuff that people need here.

so that they can start to rebuild. Again, I don't think I need to tell people like how awful it is not to have kids in schools. I might be a little biased because I have a kid in school myself, but we all saw during COVID, I think that that was really hard. And now once again, like the kids of Western North Carolina may not be able to go to school for maybe another month, which I think is, you know, it's really hard on people. And it's hard to establish a sense of normalcy when you're

you feel like you're suspended in disaster. So to finish us off, um,

You know, one thing I've been interested in, and I guess I should just start by saying that obviously the human and the environmental impact of the hurricanes is the most important concern here. At the same time, it's also true that, you know, Hurricane Helene has made it extremely hard for candidates to run a normal campaign in North Carolina. It's kind of the opposite of, you know, what we're seeing in Pennsylvania, where it's like the people there are just being like inundated with stuff. You know, you're

Everyone's knocking on your door, that sort of thing. It seems like in North Carolina, or at least in Western North Carolina, door knocking and phone banking aren't happening. Neither are political town halls and rallies. I read that a Republican running for state Senate in a district that includes Asheville recently told The Times, we could care less at this point. All of our priorities have been reset. Meanwhile, a Democrat running for the North Carolina Court of Appeals said, it feels insensitive for me to even worry about what happens in November.

And yet there's still going to be an election in November, less than a month from now. And so I guess I'm just curious, I mean, what happens if candidates can't really campaign? Or is this all just kind of, you know, sort of temporary and you think in two weeks it'll all start back up again and it'll just kind of be like a speed round of campaigning? Yeah.

I think the campaigning issue is a genuine problem. And here's what I'll say. So I went to talk to Caleb Rudrow, who's the Democrat running for the state Senate seat in the region that includes Asheville. And he is running against Chuck Edwards, the Republican incumbent. Now, the

problem is that Chuck Edwards has said that he would suspend his campaign because he didn't want to politicize the disaster. The issue with that is that because he is an incumbent and because the GOP of North Carolina has done a great deal to uplift their candidates, um,

show them in action right show them helping people that they are getting political airtime by virtue of the fact that like they're incumbent and in the state house and they are passing bills so this sort of goes back to that press conference i mentioned where the north carolina gop did a big press conference about how they passed this bill to help everybody but didn't invite any democrats and didn't mention the fact that it was like a bipartisan bill that all the democrats were

agreed to as well, right? It was not like the Republicans, you know, passed it without Democrats. No, everybody passed it, but they didn't want to include the Democrats. So what is kind of going on, I think, is a little bit of a sleight of hand. So Caleb Rudrow, who's running against Chuck Edwards, is at disadvantage because he cannot hold the

events he would like to. He is going door to door and he's working with people and he's visiting people in shelters and doing that sort of thing. Whereas the Republican can afford to suspend his campaign because he's the incumbent. Is that what you're saying? Exactly. Yeah. So that's exactly the situation. So I do think like this idea that it's

a that they're being apolitical, but they're being political anyway, ends up acting to the benefit of incumbent Republicans and to the detriment of Democrats. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Jessica. I really appreciate you taking the time. Thank you so much. Jessica Pishko is a journalist and lawyer and the author of the recent book, The Highest Law in the Land, How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy.

You can read her writing on North Carolina at newyorker.com. This has been The Political Scene. I'm Tyler Foggett. Our producer is Sam Egan, and our editor is Gianna Palmer. Our engineer today was Jake Loomis, with mixing by Mike Kutchman. Our executive producer is Stephen Valentino. Chris Bannon is Conde Nast's head of global audio. Our theme music is by Alison Leighton Brown. Enjoy your week, and we'll see you next Wednesday. My name is Madeline Barron. I'm a journalist for The New Yorker. I...

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