Conspiranoia, much like rust in the world of singer
Neil Young, never sleeps. The same goes with weaponization of God
whenever bad things happen. Whether the focal point is a deadly pandemic, a devastating hurricane, a tragic wildfire, or yet another mass shooting in the USA, the conspiranoids and the insufferably righteous will be front and center with a
series of increasingly wackadoodle narratives -- all too many of
which are politically motivated these days. So it should come as
no surprise that Burning
Man, the infamous nine-day masochist
"radical-self-reliance" festival, should have attracted
a new round of conspiracy tales and God-dun-it explanations when
extreme weather conditions -- flooding, to be exact --
turned it into a calamity.
I'll state right off the bat that I am probably not the most
sympathetic or empathetic soul when it comes to Burning Man
attendees. The mass camp-out and self-deprivation orgy seems to
have changed very little since I snarked about it (and, more specifically, about one of
its most pretentious attendees) waaaaay back in September 2007. The big differences between then and now seem to be
that the Burning Man of today has become significantly more expensive
over the years, and there are tens of thousands more attendees
than there were back then.
But as silly as I think Burning Man devotees are,
I also think they're relatively harmless. They do their thing, I
do mine (which mostly involves being inside in front of the air
conditioner, far away from the cruel desert heat, and staying
well-hydrated). Not so harmless are reich-wing nutcakes and
conspiracy peddlers such as Georgia Congresswoman/proud
insurrectionist/Trump sycophant Marjorie Taylor Greene and the
vile Alex Jones, whose recent conversation about the reasons for the Burning
Man 2023 disaster are making the news.
On the Sunday night (September 3, 2023) episode of Jones'
infernal Infowars show, he and Greene took to gabbing about the
fact that 70,000 or so folks were stranded at Burning Man due to
the torrential rains and the mud. (You can watch the video here.)
Greene mentioned the strandings, upon which Jones interjected
with a harrumphing comment about a "mock sacrifice"
that had supposedly occurred just before the weather turned
dangerous, and then Greene responded, "God has a way of
making sure everyone knows who God is."
The implication could not be plainer: Clearly, the
flooding was God's way of punishing those heathen attendees. The
punishment-from-God angle has actually been a go-to narrative for Christofascists for years whenever
there has been a natural disaster. And
Marge is nothing if not a Christofascist...oops, I mean "Christian nationalist."
Apparently not satisfied with the divine-disaster explanation,
Marge then lapsed into reich-wing political conspiranoia,
asserting that the stranded Burners were probably being
"brainwashed" into believing that climate change was
the root cause of the weather disaster in the desert, after which
they were certain to go forth and evangelize about fighting the
human-made climate crisis. She said, "I believe this is the
left's new lie that they're going to put on the American people.
This is what they're brainwashing people to believe."
It's not entirely clear whether she was insinuating that the
radical left might have somehow colluded with the Almighty to
produce the dangerous weather that benefited their agenda, or if
she thought they were merely stopping the attendees from leaving
the festival in order to create a mass panic that would inspire
the stranded to jump on board with the lefty climate agenda.
Either idea is bonkers, especially since it's a pretty safe bet
that most of the folks who attended Burning Man already
believe that human-induced climate change is actually a thing. In
other words, there's nothing at all "new" about the
generally accepted science that Marge and her reich-wing
colleagues continue to insist is a "lie" or a
"hoax."
Margie wasn't the only reich-wing zealot to push the
punishment-from-God narrative. On the same night Greene appeared
on Infowars, Senator Mike Lee of Utah went on Twitter/X to imply
that the floods were "God's judgement." From Rolling Stone, via Yahoo:
The post linked to a tabloid article describing some of the more offbeat activities at Burning Man, including “group orgasm sessions, daily whippings and naked oil wrestling.” Of such pursuits, the senator grumbled, “This isn’t healthy.” Shortly before that, Lee had quote-tweeted far-right Daily Wire host Michael Knowles‘ comment that “one should endeavor to avoid traveling to the desert for week-long bacchanalian orgies that culminate in the worship of giant burning idols.” Lee wondered how many may have “had a ‘road to Damascus’ moment” at this year’s Burning Man, making a biblical reference to the conversion of Paul the Apostle to Christianity.
Several other reich wingnuts weighed in on the God angle as well, including one of Donald Trump's co-indictees in the Georgia case. From the Rolling Stone/Yahoo piece again:
Last but not least, Jeff Clark, a former assistant attorney general indicted in Georgia last month along with 18 others, including Donald Trump, for an alleged conspiracy to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election, weighed in with his own moralizing take. Commenting Sunday on a post from former solicitor general Neal Katyal, who had hiked out through the mud to escape Burning Man, Clark called the festival a “neopagan ritual.”
“Pray that these folks come to the light & realize that the only path is through and to our Lord,” Clark wrote. “We are all fallen and need God, and to repent as a Nation.”
Yet another conspiracy tale arose in the midst of the strandings: tongues were wagging about an Ebola outbreak, which was supposedly the reason nobody was allowed to leave the festival. From The Daily Dot:
“Now there’s some new terrifying information coming out that there’s a virus on the loose in the festival and that people are getting really sick with boils, vomiting, hemorrhaging,” a TikToker shared on Sunday. “To me, this makes way more sense than flooding in terms of what their response was to the situation.”
The Ebola tale was causing such hysteria that
the local sheriff had to step in to debunk it.
As Bevan Hurley at the (UK) Independent noted, Burning Man 2023 was an undeniable disaster. But
the explanations offered by the conspiranoids were not the cause.
Nevertheless the conspiracy tales took on a life of their own, as
they always do. And various satirical posts, such as a hoax
narrative about cannibalism, only muddied the situation (so to
speak).
All of this would be merely funny if it weren't for the fact that
conspiracy-peddling Christian nationalist loons such as Marjorie
Taylor Greene actually possess real power to shut the US
government down and further erode our democracy, as noted in a September 5, 2023 opinion piece in USA
Today by columnist Rex Huppke. The absurdity of
Marge's crackpot tales, wrote Huppke, doesn't mean that we can
safely ignore Greene's "willingness to sit next to someone
like [Alex] Jones and gin up conspiratorial Burning Man
nonsense."
During a town hall meeting with constituents last week, Greene said: “I’ve already decided I will not vote to fund the government unless we have passed an impeachment inquiry on Joe Biden.”
To date, Republicans have provided zero evidence that President Biden has done anything worthy of impeachment. His son, Hunter Biden, is being investigated by a special counsel, but any wrongdoing on the part of the president remains purely speculative.
That clearly won’t stop Greene, or any number of small-minded far-right congressional goofballs, from willingly shutting down the government in promotion of a still-baseless conspiracy.
After all, Greene sees a conspiracy in an inordinately wet Burning Man festival. She proudly sits next to a man who has spun some of the most hateful and damaging conspiracies imaginable.
The Republican Party has been overrun by fools like her, and with a Sept. 30 government funding deadline looming, Greene and her far-right compatriots have the power to wreak havoc.
She’s not a serious person, but she has conned her way into a position that allows her to cause Americans serious problems.
It may all seem overwhelmingly ridiculous, and it is. But we ignore her, and the off-the-rails party that has fostered her, at our own peril.
Yeah. What Rex said.
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