To most people in the US, FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) is a a disaster response agency under the Department of Homeland Security founded by executive decision in 1979 by then president Jimmy Carter. However in counter culture and in alternative media that is distrustful of the US government, FEMA is potentially a nefarious agency that at the drop of a hat, ready to round up US citizens into concentration Camps. Other conspiracy theories point to FEMA being a tool to help establish a new world order.
These conspiracies in recent decades have picked up steam or noteriety with the ubiquity of the internet and entertainment art referencing these FEMA camps (the critically acclaimed and best selling video game series, Deus Ex being a good example).
However from a cursory glance, since its inception, FEMA has been a lightning rod for conspiracies that allude to odious goals and methods. Is there a specific origin point of these conspiracy theories with regards to FEMA and why does FEMA throughout the decades since its inception continue to be a be a point of alternative theories. Also are there any other examples in US history where certain parts of the US government were focuses of conspiracy theories?
The Southern Poverty Law Center has an entire article on this topic, but I'll paraphase with some additional insight having grown up in the rural USA during the 90s and spent a lot of time at gun shows and listened inadvertently to many an AM talk radio conspiracy theorists fearmongering about the Y2K bug.
The FEMA conspiracy theories are a subset of US government conspiracy theories, which really arose after the events of the 60's and 70's. The civil rights movement and assassination of both Martin Luther King Jr. and President JFK coupled with the failures in Vietnam and Nixon's Watergate fiasco....these events really shook up the general public's belief in the government and caused some people to question everything.
You mix this in with the publication of literature -- such as books about the Philadelphia Experiment and Roswell UFO crash by writers like Charles Berlitz -- and you have the conditions for large groups of people across the USA to believe in these conspiracy theories hook, line and sinker.
When you have enough people interested in these ideas you then see more media produced to satisfy that interest, and much of this media comes in the form of AM radio broadcasts from people like Rush Limbaugh, Art Bell and Alex Jones. So as their broadcasts spread and reach people daily across the United States, more people become aware of the conspiracy theories and within this awareness you get more and more people believing in them.
That's not all though. The Y2K bug conspiracy theory during the 1990s was a huge lightning rod for these fringe groups, as they got TV producers to broadcast specials about it on popular TV programs like Sightings, reaching even huger audiences as Sightings aired on Fox affiliate channels across the US.
They were even able to convince individuals like Jerry Falwell that the crisis was going to create an apocalyptic event. Falwell went to the lengths of doing televangelist seminars on the subject of Y2K to his audience of millions of followers and you now had mega church groups converting into survivalists militias preparing for the end of the world, selling all their possessions and stocking up on guns and ammo. When 2000 came and went without any problems, many of these people didn't just abandon their conspiracy theory beliefs but rather their desire to see the government fall remained, and they are still waiting for the second coming of Christ, or whatever, and the end of days. So they easily move on to conspiracies that support the narrative, such as FEMA death camps that will one day come for them and their loved ones, and kick off the apocalypse. They raised their children in these beliefs, and their children became the adults you see resharing these stories on Facebook, Twitter, reddit and elsewhere. And so the stories spread and the conspiracy theory talk radio hosts and podcasters audiences increase, and the cycle continues.