Mother Jones illustration; Allison Bailey/AFP/Getty; Getty(2)
More than a week after Hurricane Helene decimated the rural mountain communities of Western North Carolina, residents are still searching for missing loved ones and grappling with the destruction of their homes and businesses. On social media, meanwhile, powerful accounts are turning the disaster into the latest vehicle for politically coded conspiracy theories about the failures of the Biden administration—and the righteousness of the Trump campaign.
One group that has picked up this narrative is composed of Christian influencers, many of whom are part of the quickly growing New Apostolic Reformation, which I wrote about last week. Followers of NAR believe that God is calling Christians to take dominion over the government. They are led by a loose network of apostles and prophets who claim that God speaks directly to them. Many NAR leaders also believe that former President Donald Trump has been anointed by God to lead the country. In recent weeks, some have claimed that the political left, including the Kamala Harris presidential campaign, is controlled by witchcraft and demonic forces. As Right Wing Watch reported, on October 1, NAR-affiliated pastor Hank Kunneman turned a request for prayer about the hurricane into a prayer that the storm would show Americans that Trump was the better choice for president.
Lance Wallnau, a powerful NAR apostle and self-proclaimed Christian nationalist, recently hosted vice presidential hopeful Sen. JD Vance at a Pennsylvania rally. Wallnau claimed that Vance was supposed to be campaigning in North Carolina, but the gathering storm forced him to divert to Pennsylvania. This demonstrated that an “act of God” had made Vance’s appearance possible.
But now that the devastation from the storm has become apparent, Wallnau seems to have changed his mind about Helene’s divine origins. Wallnau, who is an organizer of the Project 19 election strategy campaign that aims to mobilize Christian voters in 19 key counties in swing states, has been sharing his concerns about the hurricane on X. “Is the government trying to learn how to manipulate weather?” he asked on Sunday. “If they succeeded do you trust them not to use this ability to stop Trump (a threat who says he will expose them and prosecute) from being elected?” The same day he posted, “Does the government have the ability to manipulate hurricanes? Thought it was a crazy conspiracy idea till I read a government report!” (He linked to a report that discussed the government’s failed campaign from 1962 to 1983 to break up hurricanes using silver iodide.)
Sean Feucht, an NAR leader who has been organizing a tour of prayer rallies at Capitol buildings in major US cities, has been posting about how the Federal Emergency Management Agency supposedly bungled its hurricane response. On October 4, he tweeted that FEMA was “inept, corrupt, and broke!” In a video, he assured people in the hardest hit areas, “Help is on the way—not by bureaucrats in DC, but by rednecks, hillbillies, and everyday Americans.”
In recent weeks, Feucht has been urging followers to join the culmination of his tour at a prayer rally at the Capitol in DC. “October 25th we bring the HARP OF DAVID inside the US Capitol,” he tweeted last week, an apparent reference to an Old Testament story in which the warrior David played a harp to soothe a king who was possessed by an evil spirit.
Dutch Sheets, an NAR leader who advanced the stolen election narrative in broadcasts before the January 6 Capitol insurrection, also posted a video to his 349,000 YouTube subscribers criticizing the government’s hurricane response. He quoted an op-ed from the far-right platform Blaze Media alleging that the government couldn’t afford to adequately help hurricane victims because it had spent too much money providing services for undocumented immigrants. (Though that narrative has been debunked, it has gained traction in far-right enclaves of social media.) The silver lining, Sheets said, is that because of Helene, “Millions of Americans have awakened from their stupor. They see the corruption, are aware of the deep state.”
As Hurricane Milton bears down on Florida, Kat Kerr, a prophet based in Jacksonville, is assuring her 118,000 followers on Facebook that she will “take authority” over the storm to protect people in its path. “We are over the weather, not under the weather,” she said (without evidence). “We also command that no tornadoes be formed.”
She made the same claim before Hurricane Helene.
