This is a difficult post, and not really one I want to write. It’s probably going to make a lot of people angry. Still, there are some things that need to be said. All I ask is that you read it carefully; don’t just skim it and react to certain keywords and phrases.

Last Wednesday a tweet on X about Chimney Rock, North Carolina went viral. Some of the information in it lined up with other well-documented sources, but the meat of it — the part that made it go viral — concerned the alleged actions of the federal government in Chimney Rock.

I don’t want to link to any instances of the post, or quote it verbatim, because I don’t want to assist the spread of disinformation. But here’s the gist of it: according to the unidentified source, the feds came to Chimney Rock after it was wrecked by Hurricane Helene. They called a town meeting, and told the residents that their property was being seized by the government under Eminent Domain. They were not allowed to return and rebuild. Everything was to be bulldozed, including all the dead bodies, which were not being collected. The rumor was that the motive was to mine for lithium under the town.

That’s sensational stuff, and it’s no wonder it went viral. But is it true?

There’s only a single unidentified source for the story, as far as I can tell. Before I get into the recent (Thursday) video documentation from Chimney Rock, let’s look into the lithium aspect of the rumor. According to another source, the coveted lithium is part of the Carolina Tin-Spodumene Belt. Wikipedia tells us: “Spodumene is a pyroxene mineral consisting of lithium aluminium inosilicate, LiAl₂, and is a commercially important source of lithium.”

The following map shows the region of western North Carolina (credit: OnTheWorldMap) where spodumene is mined:

The narrow green splotch on the right side of the map is a rough sketch of the Carolina Tin-Spodumene Belt, which runs southwest from Catawba County through Lincolnton and Kings Mountain, crossing the South Carolina line and tapering off near Gaffney. The Belt lies roughly fifty miles east of Chimney Rock, and does not underlie the severely flood-damaged communities in the western mountains. Whatever nefarious doings may be afoot in Chimney Rock, they do not involve lithium.

See this Piedmont Lithium page for more information on the Carolina Tin-Spodumene Belt.

On Thursday a young man named Mark Huneycutt hiked into Chimney Rock for the express purpose of seeing whether any of the wild rumors were true, and to document the damage and recovery efforts underway. He had to travel a long way on foot; the road was completely gone in a number of places, and even an ATV couldn’t get through.

I recommend watching all twenty minutes of this video. The scenes of local residents working together are inspiring — clearing debris, helping each other, and even bulldozing new sections of road where the old one was completely washed away:

I think we can say with confidence that the rumors (really just a single-source rumor) were a hoax. It was a QAnon-type operation, seeded on the web to discredit everyone who is seriously trying to investigate what’s happening in Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee.

We’re being hoaxed. We’re being played.

“But Baron,” you say, “how do you know that video is authentic? And how do you know that there isn’t a lithium belt under Chimney Rock that the feds know about, but no one else does?”

You got me there — I don’t know either of those things.

Maybe the video itself is a hoax. All the people who appeared in it could be actors hired by the Deep State. Maybe all the equipment and buildings and roadways were just staged for the purposes of producing a deep fake. Maybe there really are mounds of dead bodies being heaped up by killdozers in Them Thar Hills.

Maybe a single, unsourced tweet is the truth, and all the rest is lies.

Go ahead, take your copy of Occam’s Razor and apply it to all that, and see what conclusions you come to.

As for me, I think it’s a hoax. It was made up and deployed as deliberate disinformation.

The Powers That Be refer to what people such as myself write as “misinformation” or “disinformation”. But there really is a lot of disinformation out there, deployed by various state and private actors — Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, the CIA, MI6, etc. The Russians are particularly good at seeding disinformation on the web or in the legacy media — they’ve been doing the latter for more than a century. If a little piece of disinformation — it can even just be a minor shading of the truth — would tend to cause dissension and pit various factions against each other in the USA or NATO countries, you can expect the Russians to put it out there.

But I don’t think the Russians are behind this one. It’s more likely to be a Deep State operation. What happens from now on is that anyone who shines a light on what FedGov is REALLY doing in the area — muscling out the Christian charities, keeping private helicopters from rescuing people and carrying in supplies, arresting people for operating without federal permission — is automatically discredited. “He’s just one of them Chimney Rock conspiracy nuts.”

Whatever the government really intends to do will be that much easier to keep under the radar as long as anyone who reports on it is thought to be one of those crazy tinfoil hat people.

And the federal government really is doing vile things in Helene-damaged areas and elsewhere. It is blocking private actors from providing aid, because they are not under federal control. It is keeping out private helicopters that are rescuing people. It wants everything to be channeled through FEMA — no other rescue or recovery effort is considered legitimate.

It’s not just the federals, but also state and local governments. After all, it was a local fire chief who threatened to arrest the private chopper pilot if he went back up into the mountains to rescue anyone else. Some of the local bigwigs seem to be taking their cues from FEMA. When conditions start to return to normal in those mountain communities, we’ll see how long those pocket Hitlers are tolerated by their fellow citizens.

Anyway, all of what I just described is well-documented, with multiple sources. And it’s already happening. But thanks to the bulldozers and piled-up bodies of Chimney Rock, anyone who reports on it is guaranteed to be dismissed as a conspiracy theorist.

That’s what will happen to Elon Musk, who is a source of reliable data on what’s going on in the mountains. Mr. Musk’s employees have been attempting to deliver Starlink terminals and other needed supplies via helicopter to flood-ravaged areas, only to find out that the Feds won’t allow them to complete their mission.

Here’s one of his tweets:

SpaceX engineers are trying to deliver Starlink terminals & supplies to devastated areas in North Carolina right now and @FEMA is both failing to help AND won’t let others help. This is unconscionable!!

They just took this video a few hours ago, where you can see the level of devastation: roads, houses, electricity, water supply and ground Internet connections completely destroyed.

@FEMA wouldn’t let them land to deliver critical supplies … my blood is boiling …

Thanks to a successful disinformation operation, Elon Musk will now be that much easier for the TV talking heads and MSM websites to discount.

The above is an outline of why I consider it a mistake to pass on unverified single-source rumors. I know it’s difficult to hold off until hard data come in; you just have to grit your teeth and wait. And it’s important to keep Occam’s Razor handy to use as a smell-meter on any lurid rumors that pop up.

Below are some data points that passed muster with my version of Occam’s Razor:

Just got off the phone a Pastor in the midst of the flooding in TN/NC. He is in one of the most devastated locations. He verified a few things about the situation:

• Almost all help is being done by private citizens, mainly churches.
• Private helicopters are flying in the vast majority of the supplies.
• Local Sheriffs are telling people to feel free to defend their property from looters by whatever means they have.
• WROL (Without Rule of Law) is happening in some areas, which means looting, robbing, and etc.
• FEMA’s involvement has seriously complicated the rescue efforts.
• Local Sheriffs have threatened to arrest FEMA workers if they hinder rescue and aid work.
• The response to this tragedy has been massive and overwhelming. All from private individuals and local Churches.

Conclusion: whenever you encounter a piece of sensational information, preserve a healthy sense of skepticism about it. Be patient; wait for additional independent sources to appear. Do the background research necessary to cross-check the stories, so that they can be provisionally verified or discounted.

Above all, remember that various actors are ready to abuse your credulity by peddling disinformation, for their own malign purposes.

Many of the people who repeated the rumors about Chimney Rock horrors were literate and well-educated. It sometimes seems that the more education a person has, the easier he is to fool. It makes him an ideal target for the purveyors of dezinformatsiya.