Coming Full Circle: FEMA Camp Theory Gains Traction on Far Left
If you Google the phrase “FEMA camps,” the first several links that come up will be websites like far-right conspiracist Alex Jones’ InfoWars (“Because there is a war on for your mind”) and the United American Freedom Foundation (“Providing International News From An Extreme Right Viewpoint”). Click around a bit and you’ll find a bevy of far-right outfits fretting that, any day now, federal agents will start hauling off law-abiding, God-fearing Americans to secret “concentration camps” run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
But if you search long enough, you may notice something strange: The theory - which began almost three decades ago with a warning from the extreme-right, anti-Semitic Posse Comitatus that “hardcore Patriots” would be imprisoned in FEMA detention camps - is no longer solely the province of the radical right.
On Dec. 14, Camille Marino, who runs the hard-left animal liberation website Negotiation is Over (NIO), posted on her website an “Alert” titled “Military Now Recruiting Guards for FEMA Domestic Detainment/Internment Camps.” The article, which first appeared on a conspiracist website called “End the Lie,” features the usual warnings about the end of civil liberties along with the announcement that the U.S. Army (supposedly) is looking for a Few Good Totalitarians to herd dissenters into camps.
End the Lie is a clearinghouse for conspiracy theories of the antigovernment “Patriot” movement, whose adherents want to end the Federal Reserve, drastically shrink the government, and put most power in the hands of county-level officials, and who believe that civilian militias will be essential for keeping order after society collapses. End the Lie posts numerous articles citing Alex Jones, the chief propagandist of the FEMA camp meme.
