Quick Take: Disinformation Follies of 2022
A review of the Biden Administration’s latest hit
It figures that the Department of Homeland Security’s new Disinformation Governance Board (DGB) is to be headed up by a ditzy musical comedy wannabe, Nina Jankowicz, whose tuneful authoritarian proclivities may be sampled on TikToc. Washington DC has long been America’s theater of the absurd, so why not go all the way with Nina?
Cries of alarm have risen on the Right over this Orwellian development and admittedly the new entity’s title has a sinister Ministry of Truth vibe. But I find it hard to take either the DGB or its head honcho seriously. You can overdo Orwellian, make it more funny than sinister, and this the Biden Administration has achieved in its campaign against, ahem, disinformation.
Item One: You may remember that the First Amendment prohibits the federal government from abridging freedom of speech or of the press. And yes, that includes what progressives are pleased to call disinformation. The term is a bit slippery, after all. In the past it included the sordid tale of Hunter Biden’s laptop (now known to be true) while excluding the anti-Trump Steele dossier (now known to be fake). So perhaps the definition of disinformation shouldn’t be entrusted to a government entity led by an avowed left-wing activist. Anyhow, the DGB has no power to censor speech that it deems to be disinformation. Presumably Jankowicz will go running along to Facebook, Twitter, CNN, MSNBC, etc., demanding that they do her dirty work for her. The government colluding with the media to suppress speech: Those optics, as they say, would not be good.
Item Two: Who knew that “disinformation expert” and “disinformation fellow” are real jobs? It was news to me when the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, described Jankowicz as a renowned expert on disinformation. How exactly do you get to that place in your career? Well, she earned a double major in Russian and political science at Bryn Mawr, was a Fulbright fellow, worked with the Ukrainian government, served as a “disinformation fellow” at the Woodrow Wilson Center, and had written a couple of books, including How to Be a Woman Online. Supposedly these credentials qualify her to spot disinformation—but as a matter of fact her record in that regard is spotty. It seems that in 2020 Jankowicz herself dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop story as GOP/Russian disinformation. Oops…
Item Three: Poor timing is one of the Biden Administration’s chief distinguishing characteristics and with the creation of the DGB, here we go again. It’s the spring of 2022, the President's approval rating rests at the bottom of a deep crater, the Democratic Party’s popularity has disappeared into a black hole, the upcoming midterm election is shaping up as a progressive extinction event, and what does the White House do? Why, it tosses a nice big juicy chunk of red meat to the opposition! Against a background of leftie handwringing about Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, the horrors of “free speech absolutism,” claims that the First Amendment primarily benefits White men, etc., the DGB (rhymes with KGB!) is all too easily framed as a nefarious plot to silence the other side ahead of the election. Why would the Biden Administration yield up such a hot-button issue? Well, let’s be brutally honest, it’s because the Biden Administration is oversupplied with incompetent idiots like Secretary Mayorkas.
Yes, I agree, eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. But perhaps we need not worry too much about Team Biden’s campaign against freedom of speech in America. If pandemic policy, Afghanistan, Build Back Better, the state of the economy, Jen Psaki’s serial mendacity and the President’s chronic incoherence are anything to go by, he and his minions couldn’t get a Starbucks order straight, much less undermine the First Amendment.
Quite. This just isn't a problem that's causing me to lose sleep.