The Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to present a less Orwellian exterior to the public took a big step forward this week, as it disbanded a key subcommittee linked to the Department’s ill-fated Disinformation Governance Board, announced last year and quickly “paused” amid public outcry.
Jen Easterly, head of the DHS’s cyber division — the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA — this week convened the agency’s influential Cybersecurity Advisory Committee (CSAC), which is made up of senior executives from organizations like Twitter, Amazon, and the Stanford Internet Observatory. The agency announced an expanded roster, adding 13 new members to CSAC, including chief cybersecurity officer for General Motors Kevin Tierney and Cathy Lanier, the chief security officer for the NFL. The full CSAC now contains 34 members.
However, amid the additions, CISA also shuffled responsibilities, making a key change. In particular, its “MDM” advisory subcommittee, for “Misinformation, Disinformation and Malinformation,” was scrapped.
The subcommittee’s leaders, including chairperson Kate Starbird of the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public (CIP), and Vijaya Gadde, a former top Twitter executive who was fired last year when Elon Musk took over the company, were shifted to other advisory roles.
A spokesman for the agency said the change appeared in an unpublicized summary of a Dec. 6 advisory board meeting. The summary provided to Racket states Easterly decided late last year that the subcommittee had fulfilled its tasks and would “stand down”:
But that notice appears to have only been posted on the agency website recently (the Wayback Machine captured a first image of it in late February). CISA’s unique approach to website maintenance has drawn attention of late. Last week, Mike Benz of the Foundation for Freedom Online reported that CISA scrubbed key sections of its web page about its campaign against “Misinformation, Disinformation, and Malinformation.” Crucially, the agency appeared to remove references to “domestic threat actors” as purveyors of “MDM.”
Freedom of speech won this Wednesday after the Biden Administration suspended its controversial Disinformation Board. Former disinformation tzar Nina Jankowicz announced her departure today, citing an uncertain future, and, of course, disinformation. “It is deeply disappointing that mischaracterizations of the Board became a distraction from the Department’s vital work, and indeed, along with recent events globally and nationally, embodies why it is necessary. “I maintain my commitment to building awareness of disinformation’s threats and trust the Department will do the same,“ Jankowicz said.
Jankowicz has a long history of spreading false news and gaslighting the public to believe that the Bidens are not a completely corrupt family. She firmly denied the existence of Hunter’s laptop, and perhaps it is no coincidence that the contents of that laptop are slowly being leaked to the public.
Although this Orwellian plan has been temporarily suspended, censorship will continue discreetly.
The outcry on social media about “Mary Poppins” (whose performances have gone viral) is unlikely to subside anytime soon, which is why I surmise that the selection of Jankowicz may have been intended by the DGB masterminds as a red herring, to distract attention from the profound problems with the very idea of a Disinformation Governance Board.
Spectacle and theater have come to dominate the political arena today, even more so than ever before. Politicians are now celebrity oligarchs, who use tax revenues to promote their pet projects, and to enhance their personal investment portfolios, while pretending in scrupulously orchestrated performances to care about the populace from whom all of the money they squander is siphoned. Congresspersons who issue dire warnings about global warming jet across the world for photo ops with President Zelensky in Ukraine. The provision by the federal government of Peloton bicycle memberships to the house of representatives and their staff, all on the taxpayers’ dime, will begin on May 18, 2022. Meanwhile, more than 550K Americans are currently homeless. The absurdity of all of this has reached the point where we now seem to inhabit something akin to a sequel to the Hunger Games.
Consider the person recently selected by the Biden administration to head up its new Disinformation Governance Board (DGB), the self-styled “Mary Poppins of Disinformation,” Nina Jankowicz, whose melodramatic mode of “correcting” what she takes to be falsehoods is disturbing to behold, to put it mildly. The DGB is being championed needless to say by spokespersons for President Biden, including former press secretary Jen Psaki, who not only defended Jankowicz as “an expert on online disinformation” and “a person with extensive qualifications” but also expressed perplexity that anyone should take issue with the mounting of the DGB: “I’m not sure who opposes that effort.” This type of gaslighting should be recognized for what it is by now, for it has gone on throughout the Biden presidency, with officials responding with unbridled snark to anyone who raises perfectly valid questions about what they are doing. How dare you?!
“Our patience is wearing thin,” President Biden himself soberly warned the populace in denouncing the reluctance of some of his compatriots to volunteer as pro-bono subjects in a Pfizer experimental medication trial. We were furthermore “informed” in December 2021 by the White House that, for our disobedience, we could look forward to “a winter of severe illness and death.” Given the volume of such nonstop, and frankly surreal, psyops perpetrated on the populace since 2020, and before that as well—albeit usually more subtly—perhaps no one should have been surprised when a figure who could have been plucked directly from either Hunger Games or Brazil arrived on the scene to lead the charge against disinformation and “help” us to determine what we ought and ought not to believe. As if to further test the credulity and compliance of the populace (both of which were largely confirmed throughout the Coronapocalypse), the Biden administration selected to head up its dubious new board a person who has served as the functional equivalent of a Democratic Party operative for years.
Revulsion is a natural reaction to Jankowicz’s appointment, but this particular piece of political theater strikes me as too “on the nose.” The outcry on social media about “Mary Poppins” (whose performances have gone viral) is unlikely to subside anytime soon, which is why I surmise that the selection of Jankowicz may have been intended by the DGB masterminds as a red herring, to distract attention from the profound problems with the very idea of a Disinformation Governance Board. Perhaps the histrionic Jankowicz will be furloughed in response to a barrage of criticism from lawmakers on the right, to be replaced by a more staid and sober character, someone skilled at persuading television viewers that he speaks the truth. In that event, the U.S. populace and their ostensible representatives will have been duped.
Unfortunately, the victims of government-produced propaganda throughout the Coronapocalypse, which judging by its effects amounted to the psychological equivalent of a blunt-force head injury, have become more receptive than ever before to the latest propaganda lines and scams. “I got vaccinated” profile picture frames have been replaced with a beautiful Ukrainian flag, and some people are even donning t-shirts and displaying blue-and-yellow banners in their front yards alongside their “In this house we believe” rainbow placards. While lamenting inflation, caused directly by the profligate printing of currency by the government to fund COVID-19 “rescue” packages, those who support the latest print run of $40 billion for Ukraine appear to have been convinced by the government-vetted pundits on television (who else?) that although Putin is incorrigibly evil and beyond the reach of reason, he would never, ever, even when repeatedly threatened with regime change and his personal demise, resort to the use of nuclear weapons, thus causing World War III and the end of human civilization.
Those confused by how free speech threatens democracy should remember that for neoconservatives and many progressives democracy means allowing the people to choose between two largely identical supporters of the welfare-warfare state.
Disinformation Governance Board – Sounds like an FDR New Deal program
May 9 – Any doubt that many progressives have abandoned their commitment to free speech was erased by the hysterical reaction to Elon Musk’s effort to purchase Twitter and return the company to its roots as a free speech zone. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich and “woke” neocon Max Boot fretted that Musk’s commitment to free speech threatens democracy. Those confused by how free speech threatens democracy should remember that for neoconservatives and many progressives democracy means allowing the people to choose between two largely identical supporters of the welfare-warfare state. In this version of “democracy,” those whose views are outside the welfare-warfare mainstream — such as libertarians — are marginalized.
More ominous than the griping of ex-government officials and pundits was the threat of prominent Democratic politicians to haul Musk before Congress. These politicians likely want an opportunity to smear Musk and other supporters of free speech as promoters of hate and Russian (and/or Chinese) disinformation.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin and other Senate Democrats, none of whom seem to have read the First Amendment, are also investigating whether it would be “appropriate” for Congress to force tech companies to “moderate” content on their platforms.
President Biden is not waiting for legislation to ramp up the attack on free speech. His administration has created the Disinformation Governance Board located in the Department of Homeland Security. The board’s purpose is to coordinate government and private sector efforts to combat “disinformation,” with a focus on Russia. The focus on Russia is not surprising since “Russian disinformation” has joined racism and sexism as a go-to justification to smear and silence those whose views (and factual information) contradict the political and media establishment’s “party line.”
Biden’s choice to head the Disinformation Governance Board, Nina Jankowicz, is a spreader of disinformation herself. In 2020, for example, Jankowicz parroted the lie that Russia created the damning materials found on Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop. Jankowicz’s résumé also includes stints as an advisor to the Ukraine government and a manager of National Democratic Institute programs in Russia and Belarus. Jankowicz’s background suggests she will never call any lie peddled by the US war party “disinformation.”
The Disinformation Governance Board may not directly censor social media. However, by “encouraging” tech companies desperate to maintain good relations with the federal government to remove “unapproved” opinions from their platforms, it can achieve the same results. This is why anyone who values free speech, which should include everyone who cherishes liberty, should not fall for the claim that tech companies’ behavior is nothing to be concerned about since it does not involve government censorship.
Sadly, some misguided conservatives have joined progressives in promoting legislation imposing new regulations on big tech. Increased regulation will only empower Nina Jankowicz and her ilk to further pressure tech companies to restrict free speech. It will also hurt consumers by reducing the ability to find affordable goods and services online. The only way to protect free speech on the internet is to make online platforms truly private through a complete separation of tech and state.
The drive to censor is driven by the woke mob and authoritarian establishment’s fear that their policies could not maintain majority support if forced to compete in a free market of ideas. This shows that even enemies of liberty sense that the days of the welfare-warfare state are numbered.
So, who exactly is Nina Jankowicz? Certainly, not a person with any concerns about preserving freedom of speech or expression. A quick look at her Twitter history is enough to dispel that. When Facebook permanently banned Donald Trump from its service, Nina was in the wings complaining that this punishment was not harsh enough. Through a metaphor, Nina explained that only mass bans on hundreds or thousands of accounts would be enough to “fix” the disinformation “problem.”
In the aftermath of our reporting, Nina joined a veritable army of “disinformation” journalists doing damage control, though Nina was a little too dim to properly understand what was going on. Here is the disinformation expert Nina reassuring her followers that national security professionals would never dare turn their tools inward against the American people—and, still more important, that color revolutions have nothing to do with race!
Just when you thought the Globalist American Empire couldn’t get more Owellian, the Department of Homeland Security is here to make it all worse.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas testified Wednesday that the Department of Homeland Security is creating a “Disinformation Governance Board” to combat misinformation ahead of the 2022 midterms. [Fox News]
The timing of the announcement is symbolically fitting, given recent warnings from journalists, NGOs, and prominent Democrat Senators that the prospect of Elon Musk restoring free-speech to twitter constitutes a “danger our democracy.” It is only right then that one of our nation’s largest national security bureaucracies should set up a special “governance board” to address the threat of so-called disinformation that emerges when speech isn’t entirely controlled by the Regime and its proxies.
The DHS has not said much about what the “Disinformation Governance Board” will actually do, but Politico’s brief write-up on the announcement offers some clues:
DHS is standing up a new Disinformation Governance Board to coordinate countering misinformation related to homeland security, focused specifically on irregular migration and Russia. Nina Jankowicz will head the board as executive director. She previously was a disinformation fellow at the Wilson Center, advised the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry as part of the Fulbright Public Policy Fellowship and oversaw Russia and Belarus programs at the National Democratic Institute. [Politico]
In case you’re not up-to-date on Government approved euphemisms, “irregular migration” is the new politically correct term for what used to be called “illegal immigration.” We dare the reader to google “irregular migration” and consult what images pop up. Given that the DHS has become a de-facto full service travel agency for illegal aliens pouring over the border, it makes sense that the same agency would want to label any criticism of its policies as dangerous “disinformation.” That “Russia” also falls under the DHS’ new Ministry of Disinformation’s portfolio is arguably even more ridiculous. Didn’t we just learn that the Hunter Biden laptop story, which dozens of media outlets and former intelligence officials demanded to censor as “Russian disinformation,” turned out to be totally true and legitimate?
The specific choice of the Department of Homeland Security to host this new governance board is telling. In 2020, the Trump DHS released a report claiming that “white supremacy” was the single greatest security threat facing America. Mere months ago, the DHS raised the national threat level on the grounds that “misinformation” about Covid-19 or the 2020 election would drive extremist violence.
Key factors contributing to the current heightened threat environment include:
The proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions:
For example, there is widespread online proliferation of false or misleading narratives regarding unsubstantiated widespread election fraud and COVID-19. Grievances associated with these themes inspired violent extremist attacks during 2021.
Malign foreign powers have and continue to amplify these false or misleading narratives in efforts to damage the United States.
In 2002, Congress created the DHS to, among other things, secure America’s border from foreign threats. Now, twenty years on, the DHS has repurposed itself to target as domestic terrorists the Americans who complain about what is crossing America’s border. No development could better illustrate how, over the past two decades, the American security state apparatus has evolved from a shield that guards the American people into a weapon that targets them.
But the establishment of the DHS’s Ministry of Disinformation wouldn’t be a proper intelligence community project unless it was absurd as well as dystopian. For the absurdity, we need to look no further than Nina Jankowicz, the disinformation wizard appointed to protect the American people from dangerous speech about illegal immigration and Russia.
The US Department of Homeland Security announced yesterday that it is creating a “Disinformation Governance Board” to fight “disinformation.” Heading up the new outfit is, not surprisingly, a highly political Democratic Party operative who is herself a spreader of disinformation. What could go wrong? Also today: Germany caves to EU on Russia oil embargo and…another day another aid package to Ukraine: Biden asked for $33 billion!!!
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