Guest Column
by
Ian
Miles Cheong
The
so-called proponents of freedom and democracy have given themselves
the right to designate what truth is. US President Joe Biden’s
Department of Homeland Security announced last week that it had
formed a “Disinformation Governance Board” to fight the spread of
so-called disinformation on the Internet. While White House
spokeswoman Jen Psaki didn’t elaborate on how the bureau would
operate, she suggested that it would monitor disinformation on topics
like COVID-19 and elections.
Conservatives
have often half-joked about George Orwell’s “1984” becoming a
reality, but it appears that the Biden administration has decided to
literally take a page from the book and create a “Ministry of
Truth”.
The
board’s aim is to target “disinformation,” but what constitutes
disinformation? Many times over the years we have seen complete
censorship from government officials and Big Tech social media
companies, most infamously during the Hunter Biden laptop scandal,
which saw major tech platforms and politicians painting it as
“Russian propaganda.”
Allowing
the government to dictate what “the truth” is sets a dangerous
precedent, as it instead promotes desired narratives to bolster poll
numbers, ratings, or
nudging the citizenry into following government edicts – all on
the basis of “trust
us, we know what’s best for you.”
Facts
be damned. Just do as you’re told. This was seen multiple times
during the pandemic era, when both Dr. Anthony Fauci and then-Surgeon
General Jerome Adams hummed and harred over mask-wearing and social
distancing – first instructing the public not to wear masks, and
then much later calling it a necessity.
Gatekeeping
discourse is a surefire way to control the narrative, controlling
what people see, what they say, and ultimately – what they believe.
It’s also an effective means to silence dissent, and quash those
who might speak out against the regime’s approved narrative – or
even the regime itself.
The
new Ministry of Truth is a tool, and there is no reality in which
this tool will not be used for bad intent – and it’ll claim to be
doing it all in the name of the greater good.
Unsurprisingly,
the Ministry of Truth was rushed into creation seemingly as a
reaction to “free speech absolutist” Elon Musk’s purchase of
the social media platform, Twitter, the de facto town square of
political discourse and public narratives.
With
the relinquishment of Twitter to Musk, those who control mainstream
narratives fear they will lose out on an important resource, and will
no longer be able to promote narratives and fix algorithms to sway
public opinion – at least not with ease. There will be pushback,
and their positions are not ones they are willing to defend, hence
why the creation of this new tool is necessary. It keeps the
plebeians in check.
Free
speech, which in Musk’s belief is “essential
to a functioning democracy,”
flies directly in the face of the Biden administration’s attempts
to crack down on viewpoints that contradict the regime’s official
narrative. And who better to head the Disinformation Governance Board
than Nina Jankowicz, who herself perpetuated several regime-approved
falsehoods?
Jankowicz,
who previously advised the Ukrainian government on disinformation and
strategic communications under the auspices of a Fulbright-Clinton
Public Policy Fellowship,
voiced her support for Christopher Steele, whose infamous “Steele
dossier” on Russian election interference during Donald Trump’s
2016 election dogged the presidency for years. Despite Steele’s
loss of credibility, Jankowicz hyped up the former spy in August 2020
as being able to offer “some
great historical context about the evolution of disinfo”
when he spoke on a podcast about the topic.
It’s
worth noting that the infamous dossier, which included the
unverifiable claim that Russia had “kompromat” on Trump in the
form of a sex tape, has since been entirely discredited. Steele’s
main source, Igor Danchenko, was
later charged with five counts of making false statements to the
FBI. Jankowicz also repeated the
unproven theory that
Hunter Biden’s laptop was the product of a Russian
disinformation campaign, spread by members of the Trump campaign.
“Back
on the ‘laptop from hell," apparently—Biden notes 50 former
natsec officials and 5 former CIA heads that believe the laptop is a
Russian influence op,”
Jankowicz said on Twitter. “Trump
says ‘Russia, Russia, Russia.’”
She
attempted to distance herself from her remarks with the claim that
she was simply livetweeting Trump’s first presidential debate with
Biden. However, when solicited by the Associated Press in October
2020 for her thoughts on the laptop, Jankowicz told the publication
that “We
should view it as a Trump campaign product,” dismissing the fact
that the laptop belonged to Hunter Biden.
As
detailed by
Newsweek, Jankowicz continued to perpetuate doubt against the
story, tweeting on October 22, 2020 that “The
emails don't need to be altered to be part of an influence campaign.
Voters deserve that context, not a [fairy] tale about a laptop repair
shop.”
In
a consolidated effort to disqualify the New York Post’s original
report on Hunter Biden’s laptop as “disinformation”, Twitter,
Facebook, and other social media platforms banned the New York Post
and prevented its users from sharing the story weeks ahead of the
2020 US presidential election. The original report on the laptop has
since been validated by a comprehensive report about the ongoing
federal probe into Hunter Biden’s tax filings, published by the
New York Times.
Twitter’s
then-CEO Jack Dorsey later admitted to a Senate Judiciary Committee
hearing that censoring the report was a “total
mistake,” and chalked up the decision to a “process error.”
Both
Twitter and Facebook heads were grilled over their companies’
perceived anti-conservative bias and penchant for censoring so-called
“disinformation,” with the censorship usually aimed at
conservatives. It’s worth pointing out again that the
now-discredited “Steele dossier” had no problem gaining traction
when it first ran on BuzzFeed.
Nina
Jankowicz had no problem spreading actual disinformation while
helping to silence the truth under the auspices of “combating
disinformation.” Given her predilection towards perpetuating
anti-Russian narratives, one might ask if contradictory evidence to
the “Snake Island” and “Ghost of Kiev” hoaxes constitute
forms of “disinformation” in her book. After all, the mainstream
media is chiefly responsible for
promoting these heroic war stories, both of which were almost
immediately discredited by the Russian media – and later by western
experts. Even
Ukraine’s own propagandists were forced to instruct the public
to stop promoting disinformation about the conflict. Would the
Ministry of Truth move to silence such attacks on its credibility?
Those
concerned with the truth must do everything in their power to resist
the Biden administration’s efforts to police the truth. To that
end, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is one of the few American leaders who
has stepped up and vowed to fight back against the Orwellian
disinformation bureau.
“They
want to be able to put out false narratives without people being able
to speak out and fight back,”
DeSantis said. “But
we’re not going to let Biden get away with this one, so we will be
fighting back.”
Referring to the regime as a “decaying
and discredited ruling elite in this country,”
DeSantis said: “We
believe it’s essential that individual Floridians and Americans are
able to speak out against the false narratives trying to be jammed
down our throats by this regime.”
*Ian
Miles Cheong is
a political and cultural commentator. His work has been featured on
The Rebel, Penthouse, Human Events, and The Post Millennial.