For years now, virtually every national tragedy — natural or manmade — is accompanied by a barrage of right-wing conspiracy theories. The deadly and devastating floods that ravaged central Texas over the Fourth of July weekend are no different.
The flash floods that killed over 100 people, including at least 27 campers and counselors at a summer camp for young girls, have become fodder for online conspiracies and harassment that are being fomented by online trolls, right-wing influencers, and even Republican lawmakers.
As she has in the wake of past natural disasters, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Fla.) suggested that the floods were the result of human-engineered weather modification — a baseless conspiracy that claims processes like cloud seeding can produce catastrophic weather events.
Greene wrote on X that she would be introducing legislation “that prohibits the injection, release, or dispersion of chemicals or substances into the atmosphere for the express purpose of altering weather, temperature, climate, or sunlight intensity. It will be a felony offense.”
“We must end the dangerous and deadly practice of weather modification and geoengineering,” she added.
It’s not the first time Greene has claimed that weather modification was the cause of a deadly natural disaster in the United States. In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene — which carved a path of destruction through Florida, the Carolinas, Georgia, and Tennessee and killed over 250 people — the congresswoman claimed that a shadowy entity could “control the weather.” Greene also suggested that the hurricane could have been deployed to affect the outcome of the 2024 election.
Retired Gen. Michael Flynn — Trump’s former national security adviser turned QAnon influencer — also promoted conspiracy theories suggesting that the floods were the result of cloud seeding.
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“We have to place a bigger spotlight on this,” Flynn wrote on X, “and anyone who calls this out as a conspiracy theory can go F themselves. Ask any Vietnam Vet who was sprayed with agent orange if the [U.S. Government] sprays stuff from above!”
Republican congressional candidate Kandiss Taylor, wrote on X: “FAKE WEATHER. REAL DAMAGE. This isn’t just ‘climate change.’ It’s cloud seeding, geoengineering, & manipulation. If fake weather causes real tragedy, that’s murder. Pray. Prepare. Question the narrative.”
The online rush by right-wingers to attach conspiracies to practically every event of public note has created another grim reality for the families of victims, survivors, first responders and local officials: death threats.
According to a Tuesday report from Wired, the cloud seeding company Rainmaker has been caught in a wave of threats, and one Oklahoma weather radar station was vandalized and damaged, allegedly by a right-wing vigilante group that had bought into the conspiracies.
“It is not physically possible or possible within the laws of atmospheric chemistry to cloud seed at a scale that would cause an event like [the Texas flooding] to occur,” Meteorologist Matt Lanza told Wired. “The meteorological ingredients [for the storm] were already there, and cloud seeding could not have played a role.”
Similar threats were made against first responders and members of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene as right-wingers pushed false claims that the Biden administration had intentionally abandoned Republican areas affected by the storm. In the modern political landscape, those who bravely venture into broken and battered American communities in the aftermath of a disaster cannot focus on their lifesaving work, but must instead expend energy fending off attacks and accusations from their own elected officials.
From Rolling Stone US
