In the wake of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, an unusual conspiracy theory about the Federal Emergency Management Agency that has been percolating for decades has begun to resurface online. Now, the government agency is making one of its strongest efforts against the claim yet, NBC News reports.

In a new section of its hurricane rumor response page published Wednesday, FEMA weighed in spawned the long-running conspiracy theory this followed shortly after the agency was established. Known as the “FEMA camps” theory, it falsely speculates that the agency is setting up camps designed to “detain people.”

On the page, the government agency wrote that it recently set up temporary housing for personnel responding to the aftermath of Hurricane Helene at several locations in western North Carolina. FEMA added that there are more than a thousand FEMA employees in the state and that the accommodation, which is protected by security personnel, is for personnel and “not for any other purpose.” He called the “FEMA camp” rumors “all false.”

“The ‘FEMA camp’ rumors are based on longstanding conspiracy theories designed to discredit our efforts to help survivors,” the page reads. “FEMA does not round up or detain people, adopt martial law, establish internment camps, or secretly operate mining settlements.”

A FEMA spokesman said the government agency addressed the rumor to “set the record straight” after “noting a sustained volume of false and misleading information that harmed survivors and response efforts” about response housing, on which FEMA establishes in consultation with state and local. officials.

In the past, FEMA did as well the establishment of temporary housing for survivors, usually around 30 to 50 units in an area, depending on need. The spokesperson added that there are currently no temporary housing units for survivors in North Carolina.

Over the past month, videos and photos have been taken of FEMA workers’ jobs in the South posted onlineattracting hundreds of thousands of views and comments speculating that these were actually “FEMA camps”.

“I imagine this might be where they take people who refuse to leave their properties,” user X speculate last week.

The “FEMA camps” conspiracy theory is the belief that FEMA is a front for what could become a “widespread system of internment camps to hold citizens deemed problematic or extremist,” Sara Aniano, disinformation analyst at the Anti-Defamation League Center . on extremism, he told NBC News.

To most, the bogus conspiracy theory may seem far-fetched, but skepticism about FEMA’s intentions fueled chaos in hurricane-hit regions, with one man arrested for allegedly threatening employees of the agency and FEMA adjustment to its workflows due to security issues. The man was later released after posting a $10,000 secured bond.

An agency spokesman said that for each natural disaster, FEMA created a rumor response page to address misinformation, including for Covid-19. When the agency begins to see a trend of misinformation circulating online, the spokesman added, the agency will create a rumor response page. In recent years, the government agency has created various pages to respond to rumors about Texas winter stormswildfires in New Mexico and Hawaiiand one for Hurricane Fiona.

When fires broke out in Maui last year, USA Today reported on the spread of the FEMA camp conspiracy theory after a Facebook user posted a video showing a series of shelters, captioned “FEMA camps.” A FEMA spokesperson told USA Today that the rumor was “false” and that the government agency had not built any housing in Maui at that time. Unlike the hurricane rumor response page, FEMA does not appear to respond to rumors on its wildfire page.

Conspiracy theories about FEMA first surfaced a few years later Creation of FEMA in 1979 by former President Jimmy Carter following a series of natural disasters in the 1960s and ’70s, including Hurricane Camille in 1969, which struck Mississippi and caused more than a billion dollars in damage and more than 200 deaths. That same year, Carter signed another executive order that gave FEMA “dual mission of emergency management and civil defense.”

Two years after the federal agency was founded, a newsletter written by a right-wing anti-government movement called Posse Comitatus made one of the first false claims about FEMA detention campswarning that they would imprison “hard-core patriots,” according to research from the Southern Poverty Law Center. The statement was false, but according Center for Strategic and International Studiesshe exemplified the fears of federal overreach that helped propel the rise of the American militia movement.

In 1987the detention camp conspiracy was propelled further after more news articles documented how Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North of the Reagan administration drew up a plan to implement martial law in the US in which powers would be handed over to FEMA in the event of an emergency such as nuclear war.

Rebecca Rouse, a professor who teaches practical, emergency and security studies at Tulane University and previously worked at FEMA from 2019 to 2020, told NBC News that real events often help start false conspiracy theories. She said she believes the existence of internment camps throughout history, including the American camps that imprisoned people of Japanese descent during World War II and the current migrant camps on the U.S.-Mexico border, have fueled conspiracy theories.

“Knowing that there are versions of things that happen, I think, makes us more likely to believe that something really awful could happen,” Rouse said.

Conspiracy entwined with violence with 1995 Oklahoma City bombingwhose authors aligned themselves with the anti-government right The “patriot” movement.. During Senate hearings following the domestic terrorist attack, members of the movement said they feared that “‘urban gangs,'” led by Washington and potentially acting in concert with UN and foreign troops, would sweep in from the coast, confiscate weapons and throw “would send members of the Patriot militias to internment camps run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency,” The Southern Poverty Law Center wrote.

By 2009, Alex Jones, perhaps one of the best-known modern conspiracy theorists, was promoting the fake FEMA camp conspiracy theory and mocking those who tried to disprove it.

The theory rose again in 2015 after Superstorm Sandy, after The US military announced that it will start Jade Helm 15 training – a two-month military exercise focused on “unconventional warfare” combat techniques. As a result, USA Today reported, conspiracists quickly began spreading the theory that the dome-shaped roofs that had been paid for by FEMA were connected to Jade Helm and were being used to contain insurgents. In reality, the dome roofs were for people hurricane shelter, according to The New York Times.

In the wake of the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas, where a man opened fire on a concert crowd and killed 60 people, The Guardian reported that the shooter believed in the FEMA camp conspiracy theory. The shooter reportedly said that, according to the report Evacuation efforts led by FEMA during Hurricane Katrina there was a “heavy sweep for law enforcement and the military to start knocking down the doors and … confiscating the guns.”

The ADL’s Aniano said that while it’s not possible to pinpoint exactly what drives conspiracy theorists to take violent action, violent actors often try to find a way to combat “perceived enemies.”

“Conspiracy theories create these kinds of perceived enemies that don’t necessarily exist as enemies but are portrayed as such in the conspiracy narrative, and then extremists or violent actors or what have you and then prescribed actions to counter those enemies,” Aniano said. . “So if the narrative, as it has been again over the last month, is that FEMA is bad, FEMA is hurting Americans, FEMA is an existential threat and a threat to America, then of course that gives you somebody to— identify him.”

When Covid-19 hit, along came mentions of the FEMA camp conspiracy theory. After then-President Donald Trump declared Covid a national emergency in March 2020, FEMA was one of the most important responses to the pandemic. FEMA had this power because Stafford Law of 1988, which allows it to become a lead agency when the president declares an emergency in response to a natural disaster. An agreement was subsequently concluded which would allow FEMA to provide uncongregated shelters for those who could not quarantine in their own homes. However, many began to speculate that this was another iteration of the FEMA camps.

In response to an increase in rumors, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine hosted a press briefing in September 2020, where he addressed the FEMA camps conspiracy theory, calling it “crazy” and “ridiculous”. He said he was prompted to address the rumor after receiving numerous calls about it.

“Bottom line, neither President Trump’s FEMA nor the Ohio Department of Health will set up FEMA camps for anyone to quarantine against their will,” DeWine said. “What we’re doing is providing a safe place for people to stay when they have loved ones they’re trying to protect and they have nowhere else to go.”

However, state representative Bill Seitz, a Republican, appeared to give credence to the rumors, according to Ohio Public Radiosaying that “the shelter-in-place order for non-congregants was worded far too broadly” and gave government officials the power to say “OK, we don’t think you’re going to quarantine at home as we’re asking you to — go to camp by hospitalization you go.'”

Seitz later said he didn’t think DeWine would use that power, according to the Ohio Public Radio report. Seitz did not immediately respond to a request for comment on his current views on the theory and whether he had intended to refer to it.

The FEMA camp conspiracy theory continued throughout the pandemic after President Joe Biden signed various executive orders regarding vaccinations and testing. In an executive order, Biden determined that FEMA would create up to 100 new vaccination centers. In response to this, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said the plan was “not necessary” and referred to vaccination sites as “FEMA camps.”

Although the FEMA camp conspiracy theory has been shot down time and time again, Aniano believes it won’t be the last.

“The conspiracy theory, it’s going to come up again,” Aniano said. “Something will happen, a natural disaster, an act of God, and this will happen again. I would warn people to be prepared to watch out for it.”

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