Appalachian Apocalypse: Censorship Is Alive And Well In America

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“Truth is only hearsay,” Matty Healy sang not long ago. And in our “post-truth” world, it’s hard to argue his point. In so many ways, we have completely lost our true north – but nowhere are we more rudderless right now than in our conception of, search for and recognition of truth.

Even when it is staring us in the face…

Our culture has succumbed completely to a malignant ‘reality relativism’ in which up is down, dogs are cats, boys are girls and fact is fiction – and anyone daring to question the toxic misology being peddled by our censorship industrial complex gets branded a purveyor of misinformation. And subsequently attacked, doxxed and canceled.

Never mind the input of your five senses, they say… believe what you are told.

I could write all day about the root causes of our culture’s wholesale abandonment of truth – absence of faith, intellectual incuriosity, partisan blindness, ideological polarization, reflexive herd-think, artificial intelligence and the arrogant belief we can replace God – but these are mere causes of our malaise. They point to “how” we have become lost, not necessarily “why.”

The answer to the real question, sadly, is as predictable as ever: Power. To control information is to control ideation. And to control ideation is to control the population.

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In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene‘s catastrophic impact on the mountain territory of western North Carolina, the flow of information has been limited and inconsistent. As a result, there has been more uncertainty than usual as it relates to fundamental disaster metrics – i.e. how many died, how many are missing, how much damage was done and what efforts are being made to rescue, restore and rebuild.

We ask and seek to answer these questions in the hopes of determining a) what happened, b) what needs to be done and c) who to hold accountable for doing it. And in most cases, we usually have reasonably accurate answers for them within a few days of a disaster occurring.

Not this time, though. With this story, though, it’s different…

Already one of the more remote regions in our country, Appalachia is now more isolated than ever. Helene’s assault on its infrastructure – most notably dozens if not hundreds of washed out roads – has rendered the impacted area almost completely inaccessible. Moreover, police roadblocks have been erected throughout the region, further restricting access.

Inaccessibility makes the search for truth harder… and contributes to the fog of misinformation (official and otherwise) becoming thicker. As that fog thickened to an impermeable degree earlier this week, a message from the governor of the Tar Heel State struck me as… concerning.

“As we continue our unprecedented response to Hurricane Helene, the nation is beginning to understand that impacted areas have been the target of a relentless vortex of disinformation, dialed up by bad actors and platforms like X,” North Carolina governor Roy Cooper wrote (ironically, on X). “Spreading false information to sow chaos hurts real people. Politicians, billionaires and grifters who peddle lies during a time of crisis should be held accountable.”

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Cooper’s message struck me as too cute by half… the sort of thing people say when their objective is narrative control, not public interest. Maybe I’m wrong, but I took those words as him trying to muzzle “real people,” not help them.

So, our outlet responded…

“Tell you what, governor… we’re going to look with our own eyes and report what we find,” we wrote on X. “Too often these days, those crying ‘misinformation’ are actually doing the misinforming.”

Enter our Andy Fancher, who spent 48 hours in Appalachia this week visiting multiple areas decimated by the storm (and who is currently preparing to make a second trip to the region).

Andy filed his first report yesterday, a dispatch which included an incredibly conservative estimate of the death toll from the storm – and the number of missing persons in the region in its aftermath. “Officially,” Helene killed 119 people in North Carolina per local mainstream media – with an estimated 200 people missing. According to Andy’s report, however, those numbers are dramatically understated.

Citing multiple first responders in the area with direct knowledge of the situation, Andy reported at least 500 deaths and 1,500 people missing – estimates he deemed “conservative.” Not only are those numbers consistent with frequently updated data posted to Hurricane Helene People Finder, I reached out to multiple sources familiar with the federal response to see if they matched up with their unofficial estimates.

“Yes,” one told me. “100 percent.”

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There are multiple reasons why the death toll from this storm is likely to exceed – perhaps dramatically – Andy’s “conservative” estimate. Consider a recent post by Sarah Verardo, founder of the group Save Our Allies. According to Verardo, the death toll in Appalachia is “likely five to ten times what has been reported, if not higher.”

Verardo cited numerous reasons for her conclusion. For starters, the chain of custody of human remains is proving difficult to establish, and notification of next of kin has been “hard if not impossible” given compromised communications.

There’s also a sad reality to contend with: Many of the bodies are in no condition to be identified.

“It’s graphic and awful but look what this hurricane did to the roads, the highways, the infrastructure,” Verardo said. “Some bodies are not in a state for easy identification.”

Verardo added that many bodies remain unrecovered – and potentially unrecoverable – because they are in “inaccessible areas.”

“There are bodies who may be trapped under debris, mud, etc.,” she said. “This will require mass excavation at some point.”

Despite Andy’s article offering an incredibly conservative death toll estimate – a reasonable, responsible, researched estimate based on being there and talking to people who had personally seen the bodies – Meta’s Facebook removed it shortly after it published, accusing Andy of “misleading” readers and engaging in the dissemination of “spam.”

Take a look…

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Earlier this evening, @Facebook REMOVED a post regarding what I saw while touring Western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene. According to @Meta, an accurate number of storm-related fatalities was “misleading.” Go figure! @FITSNews #AppalachiaStrong pic.twitter.com/Qjw6D60qvl

— Andrew Fancher (@RealAndyFancher) October 10, 2024

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Should we be surprised? Sadly, no. Meta chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg has previously admitted his companies actively participated in state-sponsored censorship in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election.

“We’ve changed our policies and processes to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” Zuckerberg wrote in a letter to U.S. House judiciary committee chairman Jim Jordan less than two months ago.

Really?

Could have fooled me…

This is why our outlet is never going to stop pursuing and publishing our best conception of the truth to make sure that it, too, doesn’t become a casualty of this tragedy.

While many media outlets reporting on the ‘Appalachian Apocalypse’ have done so from the comfort of their newsrooms – or have traveled to the region only to stand where they’re told to stand and say what they’re told to say – we have approached it a bit differently. Led by Andy, we’ve done what journalists are supposed to do – what our mission statement compels us to do – which is to “seek and speak the truth.”

Come what may…

Count on us to continue to do that… censorship be damned.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…

Will Folks is the owner and founding editor of FITSNews. Prior to founding his own news outlet, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina, bass guitarist in an alternative rock band and bouncer at a Columbia, S.C. dive bar. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.

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