'I'm sorry but I don't have time for this,' one expert told BuzzFeed News.
On Nov. 13, 2019, Facebook user Scarlet Glenn made a post that attempted to make sense of why Australia's bushfires were happening.
Her theory? The fires had been deliberately lit along the path of a proposed high-speed rail corridor down the country's East Coast. In little over 100 words, Glenn's Facebook post links together a decades-old UN non-binding resolution, an Australian state premier and a company with no known office to make the case. Soon after posting, she added a map in the post's comments comparing a proposed high-speed rail route with a map of Australia's fires.
Glenn's post took off. It appears to be one of the first posts relating to the high-speed rail conspiracy theory, which has been shared and reposted thousands of time as the bushfires have continued to burn.It's also been spread on Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and 4chan.It's even on Pinterest, where a link to an article about the conspiracy theory is the first search result for"Australian bushfire cause".
The theory — which, let's just say it, is not true — alleges that the fires have been deliberately lit to force out land owners and clear the way for the construction of Australia's high-speed rail project, which has been wheeled out as a concept by politicians for decades, only to be promptly returned to the drawer to gather dust.
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