Why Kristi Noem hates FEMA

First things first Mainstream media reports that Donald Trump has backed away or scrapped plans to destroy the Federal Crisis Management Agency are greatly exaggerated Trump is just doing what he invariably does when faced with intense residents scrutiny of his unpopular positions Lying As usual he will go right back to doing the bad thing as soon as the news cycle moves on to something else Right now the aftermath of the tragic floods in Texas is dominating the news so Trump will pretend he has no desire to end the federal agency doing the heroic work of helping people in the state recover and regroup The misleading Washington Post headline from Friday which claimed Trump moves away from abolishing FEMA was forthwith undercut by the actual reporting which revealed the White House is using weasel words like rebranding and reorganizing to conceal that the goal of destroying the agency has not changed Observing that Trump has dialed up and down his aversion to the agency depending on the occasion the reporters noted that White House spokespeople continued to insist that the agency is part of a bloated bureaucracy and talked about how it s the job of states to deal with natural disasters not the federal administration Tricia McLaughlin assistant secretary of homeland guard admitted out loud to the Post that under Department of Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem FEMA as it is in the modern day will no longer exist The as it exists in the current era caveat is put there to give Noem and Trump wiggle room but make no mistake Their goal is to destroy the system of tragedy relief that Americans depend on especially as conditions change worsens Noem isn t giving up the dream of ending the federal agency Sending innocent people to wither away in foreign gulags has been Noem s top priority at DHS but she s seems to be nearly as excited about cutting off aid to Americans who are suffering from natural disasters In February she declared her intent to get rid of FEMA the way it exists in the present day In March Politico released that Noem plans to subject FEMA to the chopping block Those plans haven t changed This week she reiterated that FEMA fundamentally requirements to go away as it exists and called for it to be eliminated as it exists in contemporary times The as it exists in the present day caveat is put there to give Noem and Trump wiggle room but make no mistake Their goal is to destroy the system of mishap relief that Americans depend on especially as setting change worsens To people outside of the paranoid MAGA conspiracist bubble Noem s obsession with destroying FEMA makes no sense The mission of FEMA is broadly popular with in Americans agreeing that the federal authorities should have a major role in helping Americans after a calamity Noem gets this which is why she pays lip arrangement to the idea that relief will somehow continue without FEMA even as Trump has made it clear the goal is to wean states off financial aid from the federal regime But this is a White House that feels beholden to loony far-right conspiracy theorists and not ordinary Americans That s why they re embracing fringe ideas from mass deportations to taking away vaccines that greater part people reject Killing FEMA has been a long-time goal of the crank right especially those with white nationalist leanings That s a big reason Noem and Trump want to end the agency Related FEMA s acting director is MIA and the media hasn t even noticed The history of conspiracy theories about FEMA goes back to the agency s founding under President Jimmy Carter in Far-right groups right away started circulating rumors that FEMA s mishap relief mission was a cover story for the true goal Rounding up white Christians into concentration camps so the globalists read Jews people of color feminists queer people could impose the New World Order As usual with racist conspiracists the psychological motivation is a combination of sublimated shame and defensiveness manifesting in a victim complex In the imagination of right-wingers the real casualties are white Christians and it s the people who were once subjected to slavery concentration camps and genocide who are the oppressors At the center of the conspiracy theory is this concept of FEMA camps The claim is that FEMA will pretend to be setting up crisis relief stations but really they re laying groundwork for prison camps for white Christians To bolster this assertion hoaxsters will use images of barbed wire around military prisons or tents set up for military training events falsely labeling the installations FEMA The racist subtext is never hard to spot Militia groups that promote FEMA camps conspiracies will often spin yarns about how urban gangs will be recruited to round up patriots their code word for white conservative Christians into camps Unsurprisingly fears of FEMA camps tend to flare up at times of heightened racial anxieties In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in the George W Bush administration was accused of racism due to the underwhelming efforts to rescue the largely Black population of flood survivors in New Orleans Soon however conservatives circulated urban legends that it was white people who were the casualties Photos of trailer camps FEMA set up belatedly to house survivors were circulated with false captions claiming these were being set up as concentration camps for patriots Want more Amanda Marcotte on politics Sign up for her free newsletter Standing Room Only now also on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts But really it was the voting process of President Barack Obama in that put the FEMA conspiracy theories into overdrive Fears that a Black president would round up white people into camps spread rapidly often aided by opportunistic Republican politicians The Oath Keepers were one of the militias that formed after Obama s voting based around a vow that they would not enforce imaginary efforts by the president to round up patriots into concentration camps In the conspiracy theory grew even more pronounced when fear about the Jade Helm Army training exercise tore through social media Photos of soldiers undertaking standard training procedures in Texas were circulated as proof that the FEMA round-ups were about to begin Shelters built to protect people from tornadoes were brandished as proof that the prison camps were coming The hysterics were obviously about the upcoming presidential poll in and racist fears that Obama would not leave office without implementing the genocide the fringe right claimed was coming for white Christians It s easy to laugh at this stuff But Trump with his race baiting and conspiracism rode this tidal wave of white anxiety right into the White House He is the avatar of the oppressor who wants to believe he s the victim Of discipline he shares the same loathing of FEMA In he even went back to the well promoting the lie that FEMA was paying undocumented immigrants to vote for Democrats We need your help to stay independent Subscribe this day to aid Amanda Marcotte s journalism Similarly Noem s scarce months in office have been focused entirely on branding DHS primarily as an institution meant to promote white supremacy That s mostly communicated through her ICE photo ops where Noem uses her self-presentation as a cartoonishly exaggerated icon of white femininity as a visual contrast to the darker-skinned immigrants her agents are arresting for real-life concentration camps which the administration is euphemistically calling detention centers But attacking FEMA which is central to white supremacist conspiracy theories is part of the same schtick Nor is it all talk One reason that FEMA aid was slowed in response to the Texas floods is that Noem banned the agency from spending more than without her direct sign-off an obstacle that made it impossible for personnel to move expeditiously FEMA s acting director David Richardson has been notably absent from the response effort and as Salon released Thursday has not made a community announcement since he took office in early May DHS won t answer journalists questions about that On Friday the New York Times released that Noem allowed thousands of call center workers to be laid off after the flood ensuring the majority of desperate calls for help from FEMA went unanswered This isn t just about a longstanding right-wing conspiracy theory though we have seen how much hold that has over the White House in similar situations involving vaccine approval or the fictional Epstein files MAGA s hatred of FEMA also speaks to the grotesque view of the role of governing body The Trumpist model of federal regime is that it s there to streamline corruption for wealthy leaders and inflict pain on people MAGA doesn t like especially people of color They don t appear to think it s the ruling body s job to help ordinary people The point of FEMA is that the vast majority of Americans don t have the independent wealth that allows them to rebuild after a catastrophe with ease But in the eyes of Trump and Noem those who are not wealthy like a great number of of the casualties in Texas should be on their own if they can t pay their way out of trouble Read more about this topic Texas floods show that Trump s America is a cold hard place Texas flash flood is a preview of chaos to come Conspiracy theories Warning lights on the dashboard of democracy The post Why Kristi Noem hates FEMA appeared first on Salon com