Maui tragedy fans the flames of conspiranoia

It should come as no surprise to anyone who is even marginally in tune with contemporary culture that the tragic wildfires on the Hawaiian island of Maui have sparked an explosive round of conspiracy narratives by -- in no particular order of significance -- (1) climate change deniers; (2) anti-government keyboard warriors; (3) conspicuous contrarians who, like teenagers rebelling against Mom and Dad, automatically reject anything reported by the "mainstream" or "legacy" media; and (4) random worshipers at the Universal Church of Conspiranoia. Many if not most of these folks reside quite comfortably in all four groups.

You've no doubt heard some variation on the saying, "Never let a good crisis go to waste," an aphorism variously attributed originally to Winston Churchill, Niccolo Machiavelli, and several others. Today's cynics like to haul out that saying and brandish it like a weapon in the service of blasting pretty much any contemporary person or group (usually political) whose opinions or actions, in response to the crisis du jour, they oppose. (And many like to put the saying into practice themselves; witness the barrage of criticisms, most of them politically motivated, of President Biden regarding his administration's responses to the Maui disaster.)

In any event, while the identity of the individual who coined the phrase is a matter that will probably never be settled, what is certain is that the conspiranoid crowd will never, ever let a crisis such as a natural disaster or other tragic event go to waste. The moment the news breaks, the hysteria is flying around social media and blogs and chat forums.

DEWs and dont's
Some experts who have weighed in about the Maui disaster have indicated that extreme weather, driven by human-induced climate change, has contributed to the fires -- if not outright causing them, then making them far more severe than they might have ordinarily been. Others have said pish-posh to that, claiming instead that decades of poor land management and declining agriculture are to blame. I think it's reasonable to speculate that it's not an either-or situation and is very likely a combination of those factors. (Which is congruent with most credible analyses I've seen so far of the Maui fires.)

But that's not good enough for the conspiranoids, many of whom are stalwart climate change deniers and will reflexively argue against any explanation that even remotely suggests climate change. One of their pet narratives is that the fires were deliberately set though government use of Directed Energy Weapons (DEWs). And these folks are more than willing to share photographic "evidence," even if some of those photos are bogus.

This just raises the question of why the big bad gummit would be doing such a thing to the innocent residents of Maui. Apparently it's all part of a plot to turn Maui into a "smart island," and/or to transform the city of Lahaina -- which has been devastated -- into a "15-minute city." From Vice.com, August 15, 2023:

For the Maui wildfires, the conspiracy theorists have added a new twist to their claims, asserting baselessly that the fires were purposely started to fulfill the World Economic Forum’s goal of creating a smart island on Maui or a 15-minute city in Lahaina, depending on which conspiracy theorist you listen to.

Some social media users pointed to a conference that took place on Maui in January, where scientists discussed the idea of 15-minute cities—an urban planning concept where all amenities would be available within a 15-minute walk or bike ride.

While the claims about the government seeking to create a smart island or turn the fire-razed city of Lahaina into a 15-minute city are new, the idea that laser weapon systems developed by the government have been used to start the wildfires are nothing new, dating back to at least the devastating wildfires that raged across California in October 2017.

These claims merge two distinct conspiracy narratives: a deep distrust of governments, and claims that undermine the role of climate change in the dramatic increase in the number of wildfires raging across North America in recent years.

And, as noted above, the conspiranoids don't care about facts, and they'll share photographic or video "evidence" for their claims, even if that "evidence" is totally made up. Also from the Vice article:

On X, where much of the conspiracies have been spread, video claiming to show a “direct energy weapon” or DEW being fired in Maui was viewed 10 million times before a Community Note was added pointing out that the footage actually showed a transformer explosion in Chile earlier this year.

Another post on X showed what appeared to be a laser beam pointing at a burning church in Maui, but a review of the original image taken by an Associated Press photographer shows the image had been doctored. That post racked up 9 million views.

One claim made by the conspiracy-minded to reinforce their argument is that a "smart city conference" was held in Maui in January 2023, presumably in preparation for an attack later in the year. Another related claim is that the upcoming Hawaii Digital Government Summit, scheduled for September 25, 2023, will include the formulation of plans to make Maui the first "smart" island. Those claims have been debunked, but that has apparently done little to discourage the conspiranoids.

In a further attempt to validate their accusations, some of those embracing the DEWs narrative have shared links that offer valid information about the weapons, accompanying their posts with some comment such as, "See, Directed Energy Weapons are REAL!" But that's a straw-man argument, as nobody credible is arguing that these weapons are not real. The US government has been researching them for decades, spending billions of dollars on the research, but so far nobody has been able to get them out of the lab and into the battlefield (or onto Maui, as the case may be).

"That's what they WANT you to think," I can hear the conspiranoids and contrarians sniffing now. Unlike we the sheeple, they refuse to be placated.

One small book for Amazon, one giant leap to conclusions for the conspiranoids
The conspiracy buzz has only heightened with the publication of a "book" titled Fire and Fury: The Story of the 2023 Maui Fire and its Implications for Climate Change, by someone (or something, if you lean towards the theory that it was AI-generated) going by the puckish pseudonym of "Dr. Miles Stones." (Milestones, get it?) So far the book has a one-star review average on Amazon, with some reviewers being indignant climate-change deniers who know beyond a doubt that this work is socialist propaganda. Nevertheless as I write this, Amazon lists it as the #1 bestseller under the category "Natural disasters."

Beyond their resistance to climate science, what has so many of the "netizens" up in arms is the fact that the book was generated so quickly, while the tragedy is still ongoing. To those folks, the work clearly had to have been prepared ahead of the (deliberately-set) fires. Typical of the responses I've seen to this book is a Facebook post where the poster asked:

Who on Earth can write a book and get it out four days after such a tragedy? Oh, the rulers.Guess what the angle is...

Who on Earth can write a book and get it out in four days? I think the answer is, pretty much anyone with an Amazon account and a valid payment method, due to something that is commonly called "technology." Currently this title is listed as being available in two formats: e-book (Kindle) and a paperback print version. Amazon’s well-oiled self-publishing machine allows for rapid publishing of an e-book, and print versions are print-on-demand, meaning that if there’s an order for a print copy, a copy will be printed and shipped. Even if there are no orders for the print book it will still be listed as an option if the author is willing to pay for that option. If the author of this book had been willing to spring for a hard bound print copy, that would have been listed as well.

And Amazon, of course, doesn’t care about the merits of a work. Even if it’s crap that was hammered out in a half hour and uploaded, as long as the writer also provides valid payment information to Amazon, a book is born.

Also worth noting is that, according to the product descriptions on Amazon, this particular title is a mere 44 pages if you print out the Kindle version, and only 86 pages in the actual print version. If you're a prolific or long-winded writer, writing that much in a day, or even a couple of hours, is NBD. It's also entirely possible that in creating this work, the author simply copied and pasted material he/she/it had already composed elsewhere since news of the disaster broke, and then cobbled it into something he/she/it could sell as a book, and then uploaded it to the big Amazon self-publishing machine. Or, as several folks have mentioned, AI could have been used to generate the content. These days you never know.

Is it exploitative to publish a book about a tragedy while it's still raging on? No doubt. But it doesn't take any paranoid conspiracy narrative to explain how this work could have gotten published so quickly.

Oprah did it! (Along with Bill Gates, Lady Gaga, et al.)
For various reasons, I'm not a big fan of Oprah Winfrey. But I'm not at all willing to believe, as some apparently do, that she was part of a conspiracy of "elites" who own property on Maui and were responsible for the fires, presumably in order to force indigenous people and other less fortunate folks to sell their properties. Nevertheless that's one of the other pet narratives that the conspiranoids are pushing. Their key "evidence" is their (false) claim that all of the properties belonging to the celebs has remained mysteriously undamaged, as reported on, among other sources, news.com.au (August 15, 2023):

Twitter user Matt Wallace, who has 1.2 million followers on the social media platform now officially known as X, claimed on Sunday that “locals in Maui were refusing to sell their land to the elites”.

“The part of the island mainly destroyed by the fires was prime area right next to lavish mega-mansions,” he wrote in the post which has been viewed nearly 12 million times. “Now, a lot of those locals are forced to sell their land and many tragically died in the flames.”

He claimed “Oprah Winfrey has a luxury mansion in Maui — it’s completely fine”, repeating the statement for Jeff Bezos, Lady Gaga, Bill Gates, Morgan Freeman, Will Smith and Julia Roberts.

There have also been reports that investors have been calling victims who had to evacuate their land, with offers to buy that land. Now that is one claim that I'm willing to believe; unfortunately, these tragedies attract scummy opportunists. But the celeb-blaming? Just more conspiranoia fiction.

Into the fiery archives...
Of the various conspiracy narratives that are swirling around the Interwebs about the Maui fires, it's the celebrity-focused one that interests me the most, especially the suspicious harrumphing about homes of "the elite" mysteriously being untouched by the flames. That puts me in mind of a long-ago online conflagration ignited by none other than career huckster Joe Vitale, one of this blog's former favorite subjects, who years ago and apparently without irony took on the nickname "Mr. Fire."

Waaaay back in the autumn of 2007, back in the daze when the crassly materialistic new-wage moviemercial The Secret was still the rage, Mr. Fire, one of the "stars" of that big hit, wrote a controversial blog post about the devastating San Diego wildfires. His post generated so much heat, so to speak, that not long afterward he scrubbed all of the critical comments to the post, and has since wiped that post, and a followup, from his archives altogether. Since his original writings are long gone, you'll just have to take my Whirled's word for it, starting with this October 26, 2007 post (see the first item, "How to avoid getting your house burned down").

If you don't feel like following that link, I'll just quote myself, and quote myself quoting Joe, right here.

There has been an incredible amount of pain, suffering, and loss of life and property on the Left Coast this past week or so, what with those pesky wildfires. But much of this could possibly have been avoided if only all of the residents had been Law Of Attraction hustledorks. How do I know? I know because it’s all there in black and white on the blog of Mr. Fire himself. Apparently if you have a fire in your soul and are focused on that, your house won’t burn down. To me this sort of contradicts the "like attracts like" idea so popular with LOA-ers, but then again, it does fit in nicely with that whole concept of "fighting fire with fire." Or even with "like cures like," which is the basis of the well-respected science of homeopathy.

Mr. Fire tells us that while 45 homes burned near the home of Secret star John Asshat Assaraf, John’s home is safe! And so are the home and office of another Secret star, James Earl Ray…oops, I mean James ARTHUR Ray. (James EARL Ray is deceased, and so, because of him, is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Sorry; I keep getting my James Rays mixed up.) Furthermore, the manager of yet another Secret star, Lisa "Hairdo" Nichols also escaped the fires unscathed.

"Instead of wondering why they attracted a fire," writes Mr. Fire, "it might be wiser to wonder how they didn’t attract a fire." Mr. Fire says he has spent the last day or so with Lisa and John, who, he says, "are not focused on fires. They are focused on the fire in their soul." What sets them apart from others, apparently, is that they "spend their time working, making a difference, writing, speaking, and changing lives." Same goes with Dr. John Demartini, yet another Secret star and a friend of Joe’s for more than 20 years. Like the others, Dr. Demartini lives a life of passion and purpose.

"Fires," says Mr. Fire, "don’t stop people like this."

Given the content of his post, and in the context of Joe's many other declarations about the magic of the "Law of Attraction," it's hardly a shocker that the message most people took from Joe's words was that these Secret stars -- who were of course experts in the Law of Attraction -- were somehow able to lasso said law and keep it from damaging their homes. And lots of folks called Joe on that.

In an indignant and defensive followup post, which I wrote about in my own followup (but which, like the original Mr. Fire post, is long gone), Joe said that his post had been a sort of Rorschach test for his readers. He essentially declared that if people had a problem with his original post, that was purely a result of their own bias/limited vision/spiritual flaws. And he also explained that he had deleted most of the comments to that original post because too many of them contained "personal attacks, insults, wild claims, and dark negativity."

In retrospect, the old online battles over The Secret and the ridiculous hype by flopportunists such as Mr. Fire seem like such innocent times. Given the milieu of "alternative facts" and formerly-fringe-but-now-mainstream conspiranoia narratives in which we now live, I'm almost nostalgic for the good old daze when the ludicrousness of The Secret, and the foibles of its cast of hustledorks, were the most pressing issues on this Whirled.

Addendum, August 23, 2023: The other day I was discussing the Maui wildfires with a good friend who said she was sure that the rethuglicans would find a way to blame President Biden for the disaster (or for making it worse). I added that they would probably blame "wokeness" too. Both my friend's and my predictions were no-brainers, of course; Biden had already been catching flak from the reich, and it seems that the reich blame wokeness for virtually every bad thing that happens these days. Regarding the latter, on August 16, 2023 The New Republic ran a piece about -- yes, far-reich figures blaming the wildfires on wokeness. Or at least, they're accusing wokeness, specifically DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) ideas and policies of being responsible for a five-hour delay in diverting water to firefighters in Lahaina.

As Hawaii reels from devastating wildfires and considers how to rebuild, far-right figures are… blaming wokeness for the whole thing.

The conspiracy theory essentially goes like this: An Obama-backed Hawaii official delayed the diversion of water to firefighters during the wildfires in Maui, because that official is a native Hawaiian who respects how water is used...

...“[W]e’re learning that the official who delayed the approval is an Obama Foundation ‘Asia Pacific Leader’ & a climate activist,” [GOP presidential candidate Vivek ] Ramaswamy tweeted. He’s a “climate activist who believes water should be ‘revered’ first and foremost. The DEI agenda is literally costing people their lives.” 

Ramaswamy and his fellow fascists based their entire blame-DEI narrative on the fact that in 2022, as a member of a panel on sustainability, the official in question, M. Kaleo Manuel, had made comments about how native Hawaiians consider water to be one of the "earthly manifestations of God." Somehow this got twisted into Manuel declaring that water itself is more important than human lives. Just take a look at some of the recent comments on the YouTube video linked to in this paragraph. The same types of comments are littering Twitter/X too, with reich-wing hysterics blaming DEI and liberals and so forth for the fact that little children were burned alive. They're calling for imprisonment or even the death penalty for Mr. Manuel and other scapegoats.

As is very often the case, the real story is much more nuanced than reich-wing pearl clutchers tell it. Battles over water rights have been raging in Maui for generations, but access to water for firefighting is a priority even among the "woke." And in this case, there's no clear evidence that it would have made any difference even if the request for diversion had not been delayed for five hours. Other factors, such as melted pipes and powerless pumps, not to mention winds that were too strong to drop water from helicopters, made reservoir levels moot.

A series of blunders and miscommunications probably did hamper the firefighting efforts overall, costing people their lives. But to blame "wokeness" for this is either stupid or cynical or both. But that's the American reich for you.

Note: If you want to help the victims of the Maui fires, here is a list of resources.

Related on this Whirled:

• August 31, 2017: Harvey is bringing out the conspiranoids -- Wildfires are far from the only conspiranoid attractants; hurricanes bring 'em out too. In August 2017, Hurricane Harvey devastated my former hometown of Houston, Texas, as well as numerous smaller cities in southeast Texas. Even other states were affected. For their part, the conspiranoids claimed that Hurricane Harvey was engineered as a "weather terrorism" weapon, and they provided all sorts of "evidence" to prove it.
• August 9, 2019: Conspiranoid claptrap & manipulative manifestos cloud narrative about El Paso & Dayton shootings -- Mass shootings are also magnets for conspiranoids, and the El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio shootings, which took place in early August 2019, were no exception. From conspiracy-porn crapitalists like Alex Jones and Mike Adams to republican "leaders" including then-president Trump, the American reich was out in force with a variety of conspiracy narratives and targeted scapegoating. Many of them blamed "antifa" and/or "the Deep State" for the shootings, while accusing Democrats/liberals/gun safety advocates of exploiting or even engineering the tragedies in efforts to advance a nefarious gun-control agenda.
• September 11, 2011: Farces of nature -- Back in 2011, during a terrible drought and a plague of Texas wildfires, Ron and I experienced firsthand the awful fear that happens when fires hit much too close to home. We were fortunate that the fire didn't reach our house, but we and our multiple fur babies did have to evacuate, and it was a very stressful time. Many of the people around us fared much worse. Meanwhile, Joe "Mr. Fire" Vitale was working his McSpirituality magick on his blog and other forums, offering spiritual explanations for the fires that were raging across Texas. He also invited his readers to help him stop the wildfires, the way they had previously helped him "stop" a couple of hurricanes (or so he claimed), using only the awesome power of their collective minds. Of note, he has so far not made a similar public invitation to help stop the Maui wildfires -- at least not that I've seen; perhaps he issued the invitation on more exclusive forums, having learned his lesson from being so soundly ridiculed for previous such missives.