Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Culture

New conspiracy theory just dropped — Jews are causing the hurricanes

Marjorie Taylor Greene accused a shadowy “them” of causing hurricanes in order to swing the presidential election

Accusing Jews of controlling the weather is not new for Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the conspiratorial congresswoman from Georgia. She once accused the Rothschilds of starting forest fires with space lasers. Now she’s accused a shadowy “they” of causing both Hurricane Helene’s damage as well as the incoming destruction of Hurricane Milton, expected to make landfall in Florida on Wednesday.

“Yes they can control the weather,” she posted on X. “It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.”

While Greene’s space lasers comment was widely roasted as the ramblings of a crazy conspiracy theorist, the more recent weather comments have caught on.

On nearly every viral video I’ve seen about cleaning up from Helene’s devastation, preparing for Milton or evacuating from the storm’s path, there are comments accusing “them” of causing the storms. 

Often, this is framed as a kind of election interference; commenters note that the areas hit hardest by the storms are largely red states — Florida, Georgia, South Carolina — and accuse Democrats of orchestrating the hurricanes. 

The conspiracy has also penetrated the left side of the political spectrum, with some people blaming Israel for causing the global warming that has contributed to the growing intensity of hurricane season.

But much of the time, the conspiracy theorists don’t identify the mysterious “they” supposedly causing the storms. That sort of vague gesturing is a hallmark of conspiratorial thinking, allowing readers to blame whichever groups they like least — the banks, the government, a mysterious cabal of evil powers.

While few people outright blame Jews for the hurricanes, the inference is easy to make, even without Greene’s famous Rothschild space laser comment. After all, going all the way back to the Black Plague, Jews have been accused of somehow orchestrating acts of terrifying destruction. And the idea that a rich cabal would seek to control the elections — well, that’s got antisemitic history behind it as well.

Greene, for her part, is egging on the conspiracies. She has tweeted out a meme showing patents filed for weather control devices, though none of them have been proven to work. She also tweeted a clip of a 9-year-old CBS report on the potential for lasers to impact weather events — though the theory has also not worked outside a lab. And none of the processes by which humans might theoretically control the weather are able to cause or steer a giant hurricane.

That’s not to say that humans didn’t help to create the storms; most scientists agree that the increasingly destructive hurricane seasons ripping through the U.S. are caused by global warming.

But to defend against the accusation, most Jews are turning to jokes, not science. After all, if we controlled the weather, why would we hit our aging parents in Florida?

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.