DHS Misinformation/Disinformation Board: Joe Biden’s Ministry of Truth

In what is being described as a Ministry of Truth straight out of George Orwell’s 1984, Joe Biden’s DHS (Department of Homeland Security) has established a Misinformation and Disinformation Governance Board (MDGB) designed to deny the free speech rights of people critical of government.

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas made the announcement of the Ministry of Truth’s creation at his Wednesday, April 27 appearance before Congress in response to a question from Rep. James Langevin (D-RI) about how DHS planned to shore up election security and fend off Russian cyber-interference (via CNSNews.com):

“We have just established a mis- and disinformation governance board in the Department of Homeland Security to more effectively combat this threat not only to election security but to our homeland security.

“We are disseminating information to the secretaries of state. We are counseling them and providing resources to ensure better physical security.”

“We are addressing all aspects of election security given, of course, the midterm elections that are upon us and the fundamental integrity of our democratic processes that is at stake.”

For the record, using DHS to provide “election security” was first introduced by Barack Obama as part of his plan to nationalize elections, so it comes as no surprise to see Joe Biden do the same thing, particularly since Democrats have made nationalizing elections and destroying free speech a top priority since the 2020 election.

Joe Biden’s creation of a Ministry of Truth within DHS to hunt down misinformation and disinformation is bad enough on its own, but it gets worse when see who will be heading it up:

Cat's out of the bag: here's what I've been up to the past two months, and why I've been a bit quiet on here.

Honored to be serving in the Biden Administration @DHSgov and helping shape our counter-disinformation efforts. https://t.co/uN20vl7qqV pic.twitter.com/JEn4FqLdck

— Nina Jankowicz (@wiczipedia) April 27, 2022

Nina Jankowicz is a Russian disinformation expert who is easily influenced by partisan ideology when determining the difference between fact and disinformation, making her a perfect fit for Joe Biden’s self-declared war on social media.

For example, in a June 2020 op-ed for Wired.com, Jankowicz wrote that Facebook groups were destroying America because they are built for privacy. And in a recent interview with NPR, she had this to say about Elan Musk’s buyout of Twitter:

“I shudder to think about if free speech absolutists were taking over more platforms, what that would look like for the marginalized communities all around the world, which are already shouldering so much of this abuse, disproportionate amounts of this abuse, and retraumatizing themselves as they try to protect themselves from it, you know, reporting, blocking, et cetera. We need the platforms to do more, and we frankly need law enforcement and our legislatures to do more as well.”

In Orwell’s dystopian vision of the future as described in 1984, the Ministry of Truth pretended to be dedicated to the pursuit of truth when, in fact, its primary function was to erase the truth of the past and present and replace it with the Party’s truth. This was accomplished through the use of doublespeak and Newspeak, languages used to ensure that everyone thought only what the Party wanted to while making it impossible to betray the Party by thinking independent thoughts.

When we look at George Orwell’s book today, many of the excerpts and quotes contained in it are easy to identify in America.

Orwell refers to all-powerful government as “the Party” and Americans have elected — literally and figuratively — the modern-day Republican/Democrat version of this entity; surrendering the power of the people to these private organizations while trusting them to protect and defend the Constitution.

This is how the Party has risen to dominate the political landscape. This is how the Party has created a Ministry of Truth. This is how the Party gets away with using political doublespeak to redefine free speech as misinformation or disinformation and thus criminalizing it.

Using Big Brother methods of manipulation, the Party convinces the populous that it is the only thing standing in the gap between liberty and safety; they are the guardians of our heritage and the benevolent defenders of our values, worthy of our trust and support.

Demanding this level of loyalty allows the Party to insulate itself from criticism. Any threat to the Party represents a threat to the Republic for which it stands. In such an environment, the people will question themselves before they question the Ministry of Truth, and they will suppress suspicion by sealing their lips, lest they be exposed as a spreader of misinformation or disinformation and an enemy of the state.

This level of loyalty is only possible by instilling fear in the people, a necessary component for the Party to maintain absolute control:

• The fear of loss must be so primal that it demands a unification, a surrender of autonomy, and undying allegiance.
• The fear of the Party must be so dominant that the membership defends it, justifies it, and accepts it, even when it incorporates strategies above their capacity to understand it.

1984 shows us what many Americans, caught up in the lies and deception of the Party, still struggles with — Big Brother doesn’t exist for the good of the people. Even the best intentions among those in government eventually give way to the desire to maintain power and control over the citizenry at all costs:

The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites.

The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal.

We are not like that. We know what no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me. ~ George Orwell

Our overlords in government have been pushing a liberty-killing agenda that bears a frightening resemblance to the world George Orwell described in his novel. Just like Big Brother, government has taken steps to control our thoughts, limit our speech, identify criminals before a crime is committed, and track us in public using facial recognition technology.

Donald Trump identified free speech as “Fake News” and Joe Biden identifies it as misinformation and disinformation. Either way, DHS’s Ministry of Truth proves that the Constitution has been subjugated to the will of the Party, and that liberty in America is dying.

 

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David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties.

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