The storm devastation in Florida, Georgia and North Carolina captured the attention of Americans across the country. With that spotlight came a deluge of false claims and conspiracy theories about the extreme weather and recovery efforts.
Former President Trump helped fuel a storm of misinformation this month when he baselessly claimed the government purposely withheld aid from Republican hurricane victims.
The uptick in misinformation just weeks ahead of the election is no coincidence, misinformation experts suggested.
“It’s no accident that we’re seeing a lot of misinformation now just because we’re a month from the election people are expecting to be very close, and so candidates are using everything they can to try and sway those undecided voters,” Darrell West, vice president and director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution, said.
Voters and election watchers were already attuned to the potential for misinformation given long-lasting falsehoods over the 2020 election and efforts by foreign adversaries to influence this year’s race.
The persistent concerns come as Trump — the Republican presidential nominee — continues to baselessly claim the 2020 election was fraudulently decided in President Biden’s favor, despite several recounts and investigations.
FEMA refuted the former president's claims last week, while several elected officials — including Republicans — called on Trump and other online users to stop spreading misinformation as it hindered the recovery process.
In some cases, misinformation sparked calls for violence against FEMA personnel, progressive watchdog Media Matters said in an analysis last week.
One post on TikTok said FEMA employees should be “arrested or shot or hung on sight,” according to the report.
These videos have amassed hundreds of thousands of views, though TikTok said it has since removed the posts flagged in the report.
Abbie Richards, the misinformation researcher behind the report, told The Hill the violent rhetoric follows years of misinformation sowing distrust in the government.
“Political leaders and our information ecosystem have created belief systems in people where they feel like they cannot trust, like parts of the government and also parts of the government that are doing some of the most helpful work,” she said, pointing to election and disaster response officials.
The contentious rhetoric surrounding FEMA reached a boiling point over the weekend when North Carolina officials announced the agency temporarily paused aid in parts of the state in the wake of reported threats against those assisting in recovery efforts.
“We are stewing in even more politicization and misinformation than unusual when you’re three weeks away from an election and everybody’s trying to turn any new event into part of their political campaign. So, it’s hard to separate them,” she added.
Read more at TheHill.com.
