Jade Helm 15

Overview

Jade Helm 15 is the codename of the United States military training exercise taking place across several southwestern states from July 15th to September 15th, 2015. Online, the announcement of a new, large-scale domestic special operations exercise quickly became a popular subject of conspiracy theories, especially in the right-wing, conservative blogosphere and social media.

Background

On March 24th, 2015, the United States Army's Special Operations Command (USASOC) announced the upcoming launch of Jade Helm 15, a new, large-scale domestic military training exercise to be held between July 15th and September 15th in seven states (Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, California and Nevada) in conjunction with other U.S Armed Forces. In the following months, other vague details of the operation emerged through the news media, including reports that at least 1,200 troops would be participating, including Army Green Berets, a small group of Navy SEALS and Air Force special operations troops, as well as conventional Army infantry units.

Notable Developments

Online Reactions

While multi-state military training exercises are not uncommon, the news of Jade Helm 15 was met with varying reactions in the social media, ranging from curiosity and concerns to outright opposition and paranoia, especially in Texas, following the viral circulation of a map released by the USASOC (shown below), classifying the region into four colors: two hostile states (Texas and Utah), three permissive states (California Colorado and Nevada) and two conflicted states (New Mexico and Arizona).

Throughout March, a wide range of speculations about the nature of the military exercise in Texas ran wild through Twitter, local blogs including Freedom Outpost and All News Pipeline (the latter of which center-aligns all of its articles), as well as the local conservative radio talk show circuit.

Conspiracy Theories

On March 31st, The Washington Post ran an article titled "Why Operation Jade Helm 15 is freaking out the Internet -- and why it shouldn’t be," detailing some examples of the misinformed fears, such as rumored imposition of martial laws in the participating states.

On April 8th, 2015, YouTuber ANONYMOUS 47258 uploaded a 13-minute video presentation of multiple conspiracy theories, edited in the style of an Anonymous video communique (shown below). Within three months, the video has garnered more than 528,000 views.

On May 17th, Hartford Courant published an article titled "Thank You Texas and Good Luck with the Invasion," highlighting some of the most far-fetched conspiracy theories and hoaxes surrounding the operation.

• A cover-up for a "psychological operation aimed at getting people used to seeing military forces on the streets" in preparing for an impending invasion on the homeland by Chinese military, due to jade being traditionally associated with China.

• A military plan to "round up political dissidents" and "remove key political figures" who may be against the imposition of martial law.

• A secret international operation devised to impose martial law, confiscate firearms and invade Texas; Alex Jones has said that "helm" in the operation codename is an is an acronym for "Homeland Eradication of Local Militants".

• An emergency preparation for an approaching impact event on Earth believed by some conspiracy theorists to occur sometime in September 2015; ending date of Jade Helm 15 is September 15th, 2015.

Search Interest

External References