'Jewish Space Lasers': Rothschild Wildfire and Weather Conspiracies
The claim
“California's deadly 2018 Camp Fire was started by space-based lasers tied to 'Rothschild Inc.' — the meme-era conspiracy attributing engineered disasters to Jewish financiers.”
An unfalsifiable narrative of hidden coordinated Jewish power, contradicted by the documented record.
Historical context
In a November 17, 2018 Facebook post, future congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene speculated that the Camp Fire — which killed 85 people and destroyed Paradise, California — was ignited by 'lasers or blue beams of light' from space solar generators, naming Rothschild Inc. (via a PG&E board member who was its vice-chairman) among the beneficiaries, alongside claims the fire cleared land for a rail project. Unearthed by Media Matters in January 2021, the post was instantly recognized as recycling Rothschild demonology and became shorthand — 'Jewish space lasers' — for meme-era antisemitism. Greene, by then an elected QAnon-sympathetic member of Congress, was stripped of committee assignments in February 2021. The trope persists, resurfacing after the 2023 Maui and 2025 Los Angeles fires as 'directed energy weapon' claims with Rothschild and Soros variants.
The debunking
Cal Fire's official investigation determined the Camp Fire was started by a faulty Pacific Gas & Electric transmission line (the Caribou-Palermo line); PG&E pleaded guilty in 2020 to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter — a complete, criminal-court-tested causal record leaving nothing for orbital lasers to explain. No space-based solar generation system capable of igniting ground fires existed or exists; the PG&E–Rothschild 'link' was one board member's unrelated position at an advisory firm. Snopes' fact-check confirmed Greene authored the post (while noting she wrote 'Rothschild Inc.' rather than the literal phrase 'Jewish space lasers,' a gloss coined by journalist Jonathan Chait), and Media Matters preserved the full text after deletion. The genealogy is what makes the episode emblematic: attributing disasters to hidden Rothschild machination for profit is the same nineteenth-century myth that blamed the family for wars, crashes, and Waterloo speculation, now refit with sci-fi hardware and spread through Facebook memes — demonstrating how legacy antisemitic finance myths are laundered into 'directed energy weapon' disaster conspiracies that recur with each new catastrophe.
Descends from
Directly reuses the Rothschild myth's core mechanic — the family secretly engineering catastrophe for financial gain — substituting a wildfire and space lasers for the wars and market crashes of nineteenth-century versions; Greene's post named 'Rothschild Inc.' explicitly.
The claim circulated through QAnon-adjacent Facebook networks where Rothschild demonology is foundational lore; Greene's broader QAnon advocacy carried the meme from fringe groups into the U.S. Congress and global news coverage.
Full lineage
- Deicide Charge ("Christ-Killers")
- →Blood Libel (Ritual Murder Accusation)
- →Well-Poisoning Accusation
- →The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy
- →The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
- →The 'Jews Control Banking' Myth and the Rothschild Legend
- →QAnon: Blood Libel and the Protocols, Rebranded
- →'Jewish Space Lasers': Rothschild Wildfire and Weather Conspiracies
Sources
- Eric Hananoki (2021). Marjorie Taylor Greene penned conspiracy theory that a laser beam from space started deadly 2018 California wildfire. Media Matters for America.
- Jewish Telegraphic Agency (2021). Congresswoman says Rothschild-funded space lasers caused deadly California fire. JTA.
- Snopes Staff (2021). Did Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Say 'Jewish Space Lasers' Caused California Wildfires?. Snopes.