How the Los Angeles wildfires are becoming a 'conspiracy-theorists haven' and a 'political weapon'
When Hurricanes Milton and Helene battered the Southeast in the fall, FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell expressed concern that a new level of misinformation was taking root.
Firefighters fight the flames from the Palisades Fire burning the Theatre Palisades during a powerful windstorm on January 8, 2025 in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, California.
"It's absolutely the worst I've ever seen," she told reporters, as conspiracy theorists' favorite agency was suddenly, absolutely detaining locals in tents, only saving trans people, not saving white people, demanding that all aid money be repaid with interest, and other blatant absurdities spread online.
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Criswell might have wished to keep the superlatives for January.
The fires that are currently raging through the houses of entertainment industry professionals and (a far bigger number of) regular Angelenos have fueled an outpouring of ridiculous comments that has expanded at an unbelievable rate. Platforming it would be counterproductive. But suffice to say there's zero credible evidence that fires were set by eco-terrorists looking to draw attention to climate change; that the tragedy was fueled by massive budget cuts to the LAFD (the department's budget was trimmed a miniscule 2 percent last cycle); that the LAFD's effectiveness has been hampered because it's too busy sending supplies to Ukraine (Donald Trump Jr.'s go-to); or that Gavin Newsom's attempts to save a fish caused a water shortage (Donald Trump’s Sr.’s go-to).
Such tales from Imaginaryland haven't been confined to MAGA; on CNN on Wednesday night, moderate Republic strategist Scott Jennings linked the disaster to DEI recruiting at the LAFD. (He was swiftly dismissed by the panel.)
Neither has the left been immune. Some upper-middle-class liberals in L.A.'s entertainment world have privately raised the prospect of a Guy Fawkesian arson plot, citing, among other things, Joe Rogan's oft-repeated anecdote that a firefighter once informed him that "the right wind" will one day blow over L.A. to destroy it.
Rogan told the story to Quentin Tarantino again last month, and the elites saw it as some kind of dog whistle meant to cue an eat-the-rich attack, despite the fact that there is no evidence to support the idea — Rogan just appeared to be playfully peddling doomerism and gently trolling Hollywood as he always does. Any instances of fires being purposefully set — on Thursday evening, LAPD was working on a preliminary idea that the Kenneth Fire was the result of arson — have shown no evidence of class conflict. Arsonists, according to experts, typically act out of personal illness rather than political rage.
That hasn't stopped some Hollywood stars from promoting the hypothesis via text conversations and WhatsApp groups. Perhaps this is just Establishment anxieties in a post-Mangione world, but it demonstrates one thing: the allure of conspiracy theories is not limited by party loyalty.
So far, there hasn't been any AI-deepfake action. However, when the canvas is so stark — horrible vistas of cataclysmic ruin — you don't need to create images to make your message. Simply caption the existing ones with the most alluring outlandishness you can muster.
Natural disasters have always drawn crazies. Without a clear opponent, such as a terrorist assault, these situations lend themselves to fabricated fiction. But you'd be right to believe that something has changed in the last several years.
Hurricane Katrina in 2005 resulted in a lot of finger-pointing and calls for responsibility. However, the speed, scale, and depth of the scapegoating are unprecedented; what began decades ago as an honest albeit impassioned quest for responsibility in natural disasters has evolved into something far more chaotic and malignant. The Maui fires in the summer of 2023 spawned a slew of ridiculous claims about a "direct energy" laser, which merged with Helene theories in 2024 and are now wrapped up among Southern California fairy tales about Ukrainian drones and Greta Thunberg secret orders.
Laugh at these absurdities, yet these ideologies frequently serve a purpose, particularly on the right: to assist politicians and movements earn points with their supporters. They are the lifeblood of a beast that must constantly keep its followers lubricated and a villain in its sights.
We are witnessing the weaponization of tragedy, which is the exploitation of emotional sorrow for political advantage. Boosted by a social media optimized for outrage and the removal of its institutional guardrails (hello, Meta), the leaders work the system to their advantage, whether that's loosening environmental regulations (the clear goal of the fish story), avoiding the disbursement of aid money (a real concern when Trump takes office in 10 days), or simply sullying a despised elected on the opposite side.
Solutions appear to be scant, particularly as Elon Musk continues to open the hotel doors to misinformation on Twitter's once-robust public square. (Musk has consistently promoted the Newsom-fish theory.)
Geoff Dancy, a political science professor at the University of Toronto who has studied conspiracy theories for much of his career, has argued that conspiracy theorists react more emotionally than intellectually, which is why responding to them with facts rarely works (and may make matters worse; the more pushback they receive, the more they believe something is being kept from them).
People who have studied wildfires also believe the incidents are ideal for conspiracy theories. Lucy Walker, the Oscar-winning documentary director who directed the seminal wildfire film Bring Your Own Brigade a few years ago, said that "it's become virtually an expected aspect of these events."
"I have spoken to more survivors of wildfires than almost anybody because I spent several years making my documentary," Walker said when THR messaged her about it. "I was astounded when seemingly normal folks began telling me extremely improbable conspiracies about alien light beams or any other crazy theory.
"Some of it you can just explain with the fact that the algorithms promote contrary positions," she said. "But I think it is also interesting to ask if maybe some people need protecting as they are really struggling with the absolute horror of this."
Walker said that civilians, at the very least, deserved the benefit of the doubt. "I guess I understand that a lot of people are in shock and sadness, and anger is a well-known stage of mourning that can lead to blaming. It can be challenging to accept the reality that living in our beloved regions is perilous. I hope we can continue to be empathetic with one another rather than adding to the tension by name-calling or pathologizing."
One would hope. However, these theories have real-world repercussions, and if a public figure who is sincerely attempting to solve a problem is taken down by a Trumpian theory mob — or if such fancifulness is used to mobilize support for a cut in aid — it becomes more difficult to perceive it as benign.
If there is one little consolation in all of this, it is that, while the tools and speed are new, the motivations are not. Ask any casual student of history what caused the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, which ravaged most of the city, and they'll point to Mrs. O'Leary's cow, which knocked over a light and set the town on fire. The tale is plainly false; the fire started in the area surrounding her barn, most likely by someone else, and a reporter promptly revealed they made up the cow detail to make the story more intriguing.
Furthermore, Mrs. O'Leary was Irish, an ethnic group being demonized in the city, and blaming her satisfied a populist desire for a villain; she was the DEI hire of her time.
Unfortunately, as major weather disasters increase and both societal and social media settings become more perfect for fueling, these demonizing beliefs are expected to worsen in the future years. Bad actors spreading misleading information can also be a tinderbox.
