Are Right-Wing Politicians Giving Credibility to the Idea the Military Is Taking Over Texas?

The official story is that Jade Helm 15 is a US military exercise that will take place in Texas, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah starting in July. There's no evidence that it's anything more than that, but for people who don't believe in official stories, Jade Helm 15 has become the center of paranoid fantasies involving martial law and secret tunnels under Walmart—and some politicians aren't dismissing those concerns out of hand.

The operation has been controversial ever since it was announced in late March, with one website denouncing it as "undoubtedly the most frightening thing to occur on American soil since the Civil War." When an Army officer fielded questions about Jade Helm 15 at an April meeting in Bastrop County attended by a concerned crowd of 150, he was asked if it was all a ploy to take away guns and impose martial law throughout much of the Southwest.

"It's the same thing that happened in Nazi Germany. You get the people used to the troops on the street, the appearance of uniformed troops and the militarization of the police," Bob Wells, a Bastrop resident who was at the meeting, told the Austin American-Statesman. "They're gathering intelligence. That's what they're doing. And they're moving logistics in place for martial law. That's my feeling. Now I could be wrong. I hope I am wrong. I hope I'm a 'conspiracy theorist.'"

Conservatives and Texans are generally disinclined to trust the federal government, and some clearly see something ominous in such a massive, somewhat secretive series of drills. A few of them folded a separate conspiracy theory involving the sudden closing of several Walmarts into the narrative, the idea being that the big box stores would serve as bases of operations.

It might sound silly, but enough people bought into the theory that the Pentagon has had to publicly announce that it wasn't going to be infringing anyone's rights—a spokesman even said, "We are not taking over anything"—and Walmart took time to dismiss the rumors when reached by Talking Points Memo.

Surprisingly, some politicians haven't simply laughed off these Infowars-level speculations and reassured people that there's nothing to see here. Most notably, on April 28, Texas Governor Greg Abbott began talking about deploying the Texas State Guard to monitor the exercises, and White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest had to address the controversy.

Then, on Saturday, Texas Senator, 2016 presidential hopeful, and outrage machine Ted Cruz indicated that he had some sympathy for the people who believe the training program is actually a ruse to take over the Republic.

"You know, I understand the concern that's been raised by a lot of citizens about Jade Helm," Cruz told a reporter in South Carolina. "My office—we've reached out to the Pentagon to inquire about this exercise."

Studies have found that people on the extreme ends of the political spectrum are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories, and some research claims that Republicans are more susceptible than Democrats to these paranoid narratives. Since many of Cruz's fans are far-right Republicans, it only makes sense that he would be sympathetic to what blue staters might regard as tinfoil-hat-esque fears.

"He doesn't want to say, 'These people are nuts,'" says Miami University professor and conspiracy theory expert Timothy Melley. "He's in a primary relying on voters who feel this way. And their antigovernment suspicions align with his politics."

Cruz isn't the only Republican who hasn't dismissed the Jade Helm 15 theories. Rand Paul, the other prominent Republican looking to run an insurgent 2016 campaign, told a radio host his staff would "look at" the operation, while the other Texas Senator, John Cornyn, released a statement that read, "I'm closely following how the military training exercise Jade Helm 15 will affect both Texas communities and our military preparedness, and I look forward to getting answers from US Special Operations Command."

(VICE reached out to all the other Republican senators in the states where Jade Helm 15 will take place, but didn't receive a response about their positions. We'll update the post if we do.)

From the start, the military has assured people that "the most noticeable effect the exercise may have on the local communities is an increase in vehicle and military air traffic and its associated noise." But such statements don't normally do much to reassure people who assume the government lies all the time.

Melley, the academic, points out that sometimes crazy-sounding conspiracy theories are true. African-Americans talked about the Tuskagee Experiments for long time before they were validated. The revelations from the Snowden leak sound more unbelievable than science fiction. And just because someone believes in a wild-sounding theory doesn't make them crazy, he adds.

"There are plenty of people who are highly functional who believe in some of these theories," Melley says. "Look at McCarthy—he was fucking nuts and he changed the world."

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