On October 12, the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office in western North Carolina received a call about a man who had threatened to harm Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) workers responding to the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. The man, William Parsons, had made a Facebook post calling on others to “overtake” the site, writing that he was “sick and tired of the BS.” Parsons also reportedly runs Facebook pages in support of Donald Trump and in opposition to coronavirus vaccines.
Law enforcement officials arrived at the site to find Parsons armed with a pistol and a rifle. Parsons was arrested and charged with going armed to the terror of the public. After he was released on a $10,000 bond, however, Parsons told a different story. In an interview, he said that when he arrived at the site, there was “absolutely nothing there,” so he stayed and volunteered until police apprehended him at the scene.
Parsons’s change of tone is remarkable, but the damage had already been done. The reason Parsons found “nothing there” is that the site was partially cleared of FEMA workers before his arrival due to safety concerns. The safety measures came amid threats from him and many others, including rumors of armed militia groups targeting FEMA personnel that led FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell to temporarily suspend door-to-door operations.
Since FEMA’s creation during the Jimmy Carter administration, fringe conspiracy theories about “FEMA concentration camps” have figured into the worldview of far-right militia groups and commentators like Alex Jones. Facebook and other social media platforms have added fuel to the flames of right-wing FEMA paranoia.
More recently, Trump’s lies about FEMA undoubtedly factor into online misinformation about the recovery efforts following the hurricanes that have impacted the United States within the last month. During his presidency, Trump routinely made false claims related to disaster…
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Auteur: Casey Wetherbee
