Top officials in North Carolina and at the Federal Emergency Management Agency responding to Helene are being subjected to a flurry of antisemitic attacks, causing some of them to fear for their safety as they prepare for another hurricane to strike Florida.
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The attacks, which include wild claims that Jewish officials are conspiring to orchestrate the disasters, sabotage the recovery or even seize victims’ property, are being fomented largely on Elon Musk’s X. Antisemitic tropes have commingled on the site with false rumors and conspiracy theories amid the chaos of the recovery effort, according to a report released Tuesday by the nonprofit Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD).
The online vitriol is compounding the challenges facing emergency management officials dealing with the aftermath of Helene and readying a response to Milton, a Category 5 hurricane barreling toward Florida. The volume and virulence of the X posts have dismayed experts who warn that they risk undermining lifesaving response measures.
“We’re seeing an alarming trend of antisemitism being included now in false narratives around pretty much any breaking news event,” said Isabelle Frances-Wright, ISD’s director of technology and society. “This portends a grim outlook for the information ecosystem, both on X itself but also on other platforms where these narratives trickle into and evolve.”
The report focused on 33 recent viral X posts that spread misinformation about Helene, which made landfall in Florida as a major hurricane last month and caused at least 231 deaths and widespread devastation in six states.
The posts collectively attracted 159 million views, even though their claims were thoroughly debunked by local residents, FEMA, the White House and other government officials. Ten of the posts contained antisemitic sentiments and collectively drew 17.1 million views.
In comparison, FEMA, which leads the federal response to Helene, drew just short of 2.6 million views for its 10 most popular posts on Saturday and Sunday.
The report noted that antisemitic sentiments were largely directed at three individual officials: FEMA director of public affairs Jaclyn Rothenberg, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Asheville, N.C., Mayor Esther Manheimer. Many came from accounts that have also trafficked in other forms of misinformation on X, including false claims about Haitians eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, the war in Ukraine, and the 2020 presidential election.
As of Monday evening, X had not removed any of the 33 posts, three of which received “community notes” appending fact-checks or additional context to the original post, according to ISD. While X’s rules prohibit hateful tropes or personal attacks based on ethnicity or religion, the company, previously known as Twitter, has pulled back on content moderation and reinstated prominent accounts banned for violating those policies since Musk bought it in 2022.
X did not respond to requests for comment.
FEMA has created a webpage devoted to debunking false rumors about Helene, and Rothenberg has used her professional X account to rebut several falsehoods. The replies to those missives have been studded with antisemitic comments questioning whether she is more loyal to Israel than to the United States because of her Jewish heritage.
Ask your climate questions. With the help of generative Al, we'll try to deliver answers based on our published reporting.
The attacks, which include wild claims that Jewish officials are conspiring to orchestrate the disasters, sabotage the recovery or even seize victims’ property, are being fomented largely on Elon Musk’s X. Antisemitic tropes have commingled on the site with false rumors and conspiracy theories amid the chaos of the recovery effort, according to a report released Tuesday by the nonprofit Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD).
The online vitriol is compounding the challenges facing emergency management officials dealing with the aftermath of Helene and readying a response to Milton, a Category 5 hurricane barreling toward Florida. The volume and virulence of the X posts have dismayed experts who warn that they risk undermining lifesaving response measures.
“We’re seeing an alarming trend of antisemitism being included now in false narratives around pretty much any breaking news event,” said Isabelle Frances-Wright, ISD’s director of technology and society. “This portends a grim outlook for the information ecosystem, both on X itself but also on other platforms where these narratives trickle into and evolve.”
The report focused on 33 recent viral X posts that spread misinformation about Helene, which made landfall in Florida as a major hurricane last month and caused at least 231 deaths and widespread devastation in six states.
The posts collectively attracted 159 million views, even though their claims were thoroughly debunked by local residents, FEMA, the White House and other government officials. Ten of the posts contained antisemitic sentiments and collectively drew 17.1 million views.
In comparison, FEMA, which leads the federal response to Helene, drew just short of 2.6 million views for its 10 most popular posts on Saturday and Sunday.
The report noted that antisemitic sentiments were largely directed at three individual officials: FEMA director of public affairs Jaclyn Rothenberg, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Asheville, N.C., Mayor Esther Manheimer. Many came from accounts that have also trafficked in other forms of misinformation on X, including false claims about Haitians eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, the war in Ukraine, and the 2020 presidential election.
As of Monday evening, X had not removed any of the 33 posts, three of which received “community notes” appending fact-checks or additional context to the original post, according to ISD. While X’s rules prohibit hateful tropes or personal attacks based on ethnicity or religion, the company, previously known as Twitter, has pulled back on content moderation and reinstated prominent accounts banned for violating those policies since Musk bought it in 2022.
X did not respond to requests for comment.
FEMA has created a webpage devoted to debunking false rumors about Helene, and Rothenberg has used her professional X account to rebut several falsehoods. The replies to those missives have been studded with antisemitic comments questioning whether she is more loyal to Israel than to the United States because of her Jewish heritage.
