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Mina Kim: Welcome to Forum. I’m Mina Kim. What happens when an expert on conspiracy theories finds himself caught up in one? That’s what happened to Mike Rothschild when he survived the Eaton Fire in Altadena — one of the devastating LA-area fires that broke out in January. After losing his home and trying to get information about what happened and what to do next, Rothschild was met with dizzying disinformation, rumors, and conspiracy theories that even he — someone who spent years studying them, like the rise of QAnon — felt at times helpless against.
Listeners — have you ever lived through disinformation about your own experience? Rothschild has a new piece for MIT Technology Review called “What It’s Like to Be in the Middle of a Conspiracy Theory — According to a Conspiracy Theory Expert.” Mike, welcome to Forum.
Mike Rothschild: Thank you for having me.
Mina Kim: Thank you for being here. You open your piece at a May support group meeting for Eaton Fire survivors. What happened during that meeting?
Mike Rothschild: This meeting was held at a church in Pasadena, and it was a listening session for the third-party report LA County commissioned on all of the things that had gone wrong during the fire evacuation. And because so many things went wrong, it was a rather heated meeting. There wasn’t so much listening as there was yelling. People were venting. People were angry. I was angry. People were looking for someone to blame. Of course there’s LA County Fire, the emergency response — why didn’t the warnings go out? But then you started to get into the conspiracy theories. I heard things like Black residents in West Altadena were left to die — which I think is partially true — and then I heard something about Joe Biden grounding the firefighting planes from LA County airspace because he didn’t want to be disturbed. My ears pricked up. That is completely up my alley as a conspiracy theory journalist and researcher — but I’m not hearing it as that guy. I’m hearing it as someone who has just lost his home.
So my mind goes down two tracks: do I debunk this? I haven’t heard this. Is it my place? Is their anger justified even if it’s incorrect? And that moment — this was May — has really stuck with me.
Mina Kim: You mentioned a couple of conspiracy theories, but it also sounds like there were countless false claims and accusations touching the culture wars — like DEI firefighters letting houses burn. What were some of the others along those lines?
Mike Rothschild: Oh absolutely. Early on we heard things like the DEI fire chief allowed homes to burn. And I watched the firefighters in action — you couldn’t imagine anyone with more courage and tenacity than the people who ran toward the fires to put them out, as opposed to the rest of us who were running for our lives hoping someone would put the fires out. We heard things like undocumented immigrants set the fire. Black Lives Matter or Antifa activists. We heard things like Altadena was allowed to burn so Gavin Newsom could clear land to build Olympic facilities or smart communities.
It’s nonsense. And most of it was not coming from people experiencing the fires — we were in the middle of the fires. It was people outside the community, outside Los Angeles, spreading these things not to help or get to the truth — but because they had an ax to grind with an organization, political entity, or politician. And none of it was helping any of us.
Mina Kim: What was that like for you — in the middle of what you were going through?
Mike Rothschild: It was one more layer of complication and anguish on top of a situation that was nothing but complication and anguish. It felt like we needed rock-solid information — where to go, what was safe, what was happening. And instead we got a blizzard of nonsense, false claims, hoaxes, and AI slop about the Hollywood sign being on fire. You just need someone to tell you what is going on — and there were fewer people telling us what was going on than ever before.
Mina Kim: Let me invite listeners in. Does this sound familiar? Have you ever been in a traumatic event and found yourself bombarded with disinformation or struggling to tell fact from fiction? Maybe you survived the Eaton Fire and have direct experience with what Mike is describing.
Mike, on top of all this — as a disinformation expert, people were reaching out to you to help them navigate the wave they were getting?
Mike Rothschild: Yeah. Friends of mine who know what I do and don’t entirely understand it. I’m not sure I entirely understand what I do. But friends were asking: I saw this thing — is it real? Some of it was “FEMA is handing out vouchers that will pay 90% of your rent for three years.” That was forwarded to me by someone with the local Boys and Girls Club. I politely reached out and said this is not true — FEMA doesn’t do this. They took it down.
I had a friend who saw a picture of a page from a Bible that had been burned and survived. That might be true — we found a page of Psalms partially burned. We didn’t want to throw it in the trash but didn’t know what to do — so we put it in a Ziploc bag. We still have it. Friends were just looking for certainty and order — same as everyone else — they just thought I had more of it, and in that moment, I really didn’t.
Mina Kim: I was struck by your description of feeling like a surgeon operating on yourself.
Mike Rothschild: Yeah. It feels like you’re watching what’s happening and you know you’re supposed to help — but you can’t because it’s happening to you.
Mina Kim: For the record — when it comes to the theory that Biden grounded firefighting aircraft in LA for his own ability to fly out of there — that’s not true.
Mike Rothschild: No. It is not true at all. President Biden had flown into Los Angeles the day before the fires. The last couple of weeks of his presidency he was dedicating new national monuments. It was a coincidence he was in town. Normally you coordinate with air traffic control to fly over restricted space around the president — but what grounded firefighting planes that night were the 90 mile-an-hour winds ripping people’s homes apart and ripping trees apart. It had nothing to do with Joe Biden — it had everything to do with the wind. That’s where the climate change conversation starts — and that’s the conversation conspiracy theorists will do anything to avoid.
Mina Kim: What makes us susceptible to believing conspiracy theories like that in the wake of disaster? You mentioned the need for certainty or reason in something that doesn’t make sense.
Mike Rothschild: It’s the need for certainty and order in chaos. The need to find patterns in random noise. The need to feel like somebody knows what’s going on — that someone is in control. So much of conspiracies stems from this need for someone to be in charge rather than our lives being beholden to random chance and bad luck.
For the people in Altadena, there are definitely reasons why this fire started and spread so badly. But why does one house burn and another doesn’t? It’s hard to understand how wildfires work — but it’s easy to blame a space laser targeting you because you must be a special person who knows the truth, and they need to get rid of you. So much of this comes from needing someone to understand — someone to be in charge.
Mina Kim: Why do you think there were good reasons for Altadena to be vulnerable to fire?
Mike Rothschild: Altadena is a unique community situated in foothills. The homes are 100 years old — wooden — with these wonderful architectural features, eaves and steeped roofs. Wonderful to live in — but very vulnerable to fire. Altadena was hit by burning embers from fires miles to the north. Our home in the Janes Village neighborhood — one of the hardest hit — was probably a mile south of what was traditionally seen as the fire danger line. We didn’t think we were in danger. We went to bed at midnight thinking: the winds shifted — we’ll be fine. Three and a half hours later, we’re running for our lives. It’s hard to blame a confluence of factors — it’s easier to blame a dark cabal with it out for you.
Mina Kim: Let me go to a call — Joan in Mill Valley. Hi Joan, you’re on.
Joan: Oh hi. You asked if anybody feels the effect of being a victim of disinformation — knowing what’s real or not. My comment is: I feel under siege since the political climate shifted in 2015. It’s been nine years — like ten years — and I do feel that. And I was mentioning to the person who answered the call — I’m on Snopes all the time. We’re all feeling it. I appreciate the author being an expert in helping us unravel this — because it’s a very helpless and freaked-out feeling.
Mina Kim: Even worse, Joan, than natural disasters you’ve been through?
Joan: Yeah. I was in a fire in 2008 — and there was controversy about how it started. We felt disinformation about that. The building inspector — I kept saying: we know there’s a cut line in the wall. This person — a city employee — said there was a cut wire and they never fixed it, didn’t put in a junction box. These landlords were not great. And they were literally in restrained jubilation after that building burned. Someone died. And I kept talking to the building manager saying please make sure that wire— oh but the owners are so nice. There was no one on our side for that.
Mina Kim: Mike — it sounds like it’s so hard when there’s an element of truth to some of these things. What’s real and what’s not. We are coming up on a break. Let me remind listeners: we’re talking to Mike Rothschild, a journalist and expert on the growth and impact of conspiracy theories, who had to navigate conspiracy theories surrounding the Eaton Fire. More after the break. I’m Mina Kim.
