Wildfires as a weapon in political information warfare

Natural disasters are a political weapon now and the left is always to blame.

Credit: Stuart Palley

Ignoring the most obvious factor of climate change in the wildfires that are ravaging the Los Angeles area, the American right has been very busy in the last 36 hours lying about who is to blame for the ongoing natural disaster.

If you’re reading reputable news from sources like the local journalists who are risking life and limb, losing their homes, and trying to keep their homes and families safe, then you might not be aware how the California wildfires are all the fault of Democrats. But if you live in the alternative information ecosystem of the American right, that’s probably all you know.

Led by Donald Trump, the previously-polite time period in which a natural disaster is still ongoing has now disappeared from the political landscape. Instead, we now live in a world where the bodies haven’t been fully accounted for before Republicans can start finding Democrats and progressives to blame. Trump has been using his childish “Newscum” nickname to denigrate California Gov. Gavin Newsom this week, as the governor and officials in the state continue to work to evacuate afflicted areas, save lives, and contain catastrophe.

MAGA has quickly fallen in line. Some of the biggest voices on the right have used their platforms to blame a rapidly-increasing number of bogeymen for the fires. They include everything from DEI — primarily due to the inclusion of a lesbian woman in the leadership of the Los Angeles Fire Department — to the homeless somehow being responsible for wildfires. At the time I began writing this yesterday afternoon, one of the more notable instances of MAGA politicians taking to the airwaves to blame the wildfires on everything but environmental factors and climate change came from Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), a hardcore election denier and one of the more outspoken Trump sycophants in Congress. Biggs’ claim on Wednesday that the wildfires are so bad because of California’s supposed policy of letting water “flow out to the ocean every year,” as well as his lie about FEMA funding being redirected to undocumented immigrants, seems quaint by the time of this writing.

Now, the entirety of the right-wing information ecosystem — from pundits and influencers to members of Congress and Trump’s entire team — has mobilized to blame any Democratic official or progressive policy they can think of for a natural disaster that is most directly being caused by dry conditions and hurricane force winds.