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‘Quid Est Veritas?’ Biden Unveils Ministry of Truth
The Biden administration is creating a group to counter “disinformation” and “misinformation.” It will be led by a woman who repeatedly pushed both.
The Department of Homeland Security appointed Nina Jankowicz to head the group. Her previous job title was “disinformation fellow” at the Wilson Center, a title that seems a bit on the nose. While at Wilson, she frequently offered false narratives about Hunter Biden’s incriminating “laptop from hell” and Trump’s involvement with Russia. One might even call it misinformation.
On October 20, 2020, the AP interviewed Jankowicz who insisted the laptop was a non-story:
The actual origins of the emails are unclear. And disinformation experts say there are multiple red flags that raise doubts about [the email authenticity, including questions about whether the laptop actually belongs to Hunter Biden, said Nina Jankowicz, a fellow at the nonpartisan Wilson Center in Washington….
“We should view it as a Trump campaign product,” Jankowicz said.
Later that month, Jankowicz tweeted, “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.”
When that tweet resurfaced this week, she claimed: “For those who believe this tweet is a key to all my views, it is simply a direct quote from both candidates during the final presidential debate. If you look at my timeline, you will see I was livetweeting that evening.”
Back to October 2020. Jankowicz linked to a news article that cast “yet more doubt on the provenance of the NY Post’s Hunter Biden story.” She added, “Not to mention 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.”
She gushed over Christopher Steele, the man who pushed the debunked “Steele dossier” alleging Russian/Trump collusion. “Listened to this last night – Chris Steele (yes THAT Chris Steele) provides some great historical context about the evolution of disinfo,” Jankowicz tweeted in August 2020.
In other words, the DHS anti-disinformation group will be led by a leading purveyor of disinformation.
On Thursday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked about Jankowicz’s ability to head the board. “I don’t have any comment on the laptop,” Psaki replied. “And I don’t know who this individual is, so I have no comment on that specifically.”
That instills confidence.
Jankowicz’s deceptions are bad enough but the very concept of government officials defining “truth” is dangerous if not malevolent.
“Misinformation” vs. “Disinformation”
Since politicians and the media use these terms without context, some definitions are in order. “Disinformation” is intentional false information, whereas “misinformation” is false information, whether intended or not.
Say it’s World War I and the Brits want to demoralize German soldiers. The allies drop leaflets on a Kraut trench saying the Kaiser is about to sue for peace. That is disinformation.
When a deceived German soldier credulously reads the bad info to his buddies, that is what’s usually meant by misinformation. (Technically, it’s both mis- and dif-, but illustrates the difference)
The working definition of both disagrees with the above. When Biden or a cable news anchor uses either term, it means “thing I don’t like.” The Chinese lab-leak theory was misinformation until Trump was well out of office. It was disinfo to claim the vaccine didn’t prevent Covid until the media couldn’t hide the fact any longer. Jankowicz herself claimed Hunter’s laptop was misinfo until it wasn’t.
Partisan actors pretend to defend truth but don’t even know what it is.
Quid Est Veritas?
A confused Pontius Pilate famously asked Christ “what is truth?” Our current rulers are just as ignorant, as are the media and academia. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy spills 13,000 words giving various answers to that question, only leaving the reader more confused.
If the greatest minds in history couldn’t settle on a definition, I doubt Joe Biden will be the first. Even sincere folks without an agenda won’t agree on what they think is true, let alone define truth itself. But the left definitely has an agenda.
Biologically, only two genders exist, one with XY chromosomes and one with XX. That is a fact, repeatedly proven by science, philosophy, theology, tradition, and history. It still will be tagged “misinformation” because the left doesn’t like it. Instead, they will describe 57 genders as “fact,” at least until they’re told there are 63 or 86. Then, they only need to update the Newspeak Dictionary and the lie becomes the officially approved “truth.”
Newspeak Dictionary, 12th Edition
The AP Stylebook has done this for years. Earlier this month, Stylebook editor Paula Froke announced numerous additions and updates to the bible of journalism. “Among the changes she announced were a new inclusive storytelling chapter, plus updates and expansions covering disabilities; race-related coverage; gender, sex and sexual orientation; pronouns; and religion,” their blog post stated.
Last year’s update shows just how flighty and arbitrary “truth” is to the media:
Since the most recent print edition, the AP decided to capitalize Black, but advises using an individual’s identity, if known. (Froke said that while “white” remains lowercase when used as a racial identifier, “that’s subject to further discussion down the road.”) The stylebook now capitalizes “Indigenous.” Of “brown” as an identifying label, it says, “Avoid this broad and imprecise term in racial, ethnic or cultural references” because “Interpretations of what the term includes vary widely.” “People of color” is acceptable in “broad references to multiple races other than white,” the stylebook advises, though many people object to the term in part because it “lumps together into one monolithic group anyone who isn’t white.” And it advises, as so many entries now do, to “Be specific whenever possible.”
I guarantee the above paragraph will be tagged “misinformation” in a few years when all the terms have changed yet again. The 55 previous editions of the stylebook will be memory-holed; Newspeak has evolved.
Biden’s Ministry of Truth will be far less powerful than the one described by George Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-Four, at least at the start. But the goal is similar. As Orwell wrote, “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”
He described this more clearly later in the novel:
In the end, the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable—what then?
Orwell had a limited imagination. Today, one plus one makes 57.
Nina Jankowicz’s job isn’t to root out misinformation or disinformation. It is to call common-sense “lies” and replace it with ever more complex deceptions. Politicians, academia, and the media can’t define “truth” and have no need for a definition anyway. Their goal is power and they will twist facts however needed to obtain it.
They have exchanged the truth for a lie and every honest person knows it.
Published in General
That doesn’t follow from what I wrote. If I came to believe that, then of course I would support an alternative. Again, I want to “do whatever has the best chance of defending, preserving, and restoring the country.”
But I’ve stated my reasons for believing that it’s a fool’s errand to try to start a third party on the right, or to abandon the the Republican Party, and I’m not going to let frustration, irritation, or impatience motivate me to do what I think is bad for the country.
Watch this space….
They’ve suspended it:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/faith-freedom-self-reliance/news/bidens-controversial-disinformation-board-suspended-after-wave-of-criticism
Looks like I owe Henry Racette a steak dinner.
It’s only “on pause.” They’ll leave it there. Finding a new leader for the commission will be a challenge. They would have to find an “expert in disinformation” who never made public statements indicating that they accepted the “Russian collusion” hoax or the “consensus” that “Hunter’s laptop is Russian disinformation.”
“Republicans are Progressives in conservative drag” because they didn’t abolish the CFPB.
This sounds like “linwoodism” to me: named in honor of the fake conservative who urged Georgia Republicans not to vote in the election that decided control of the Senate.
The first question you should ask is, did the Republicans have filibuster-proof control of the Senate. And the answer is, always, no — because, unlike the Democrats, the Republicans have never had filibuster-proof control of the Senate.
So if Republicans can’t roll back Democratic initiatives, what good are they? Answer: as long as they are in power, they block the next Democratic initiative.
Taras, yes.
There’s a danger in demanding too much virtue from our elected officials. The best of them will often let us down, and there are very few who are “the best of them”: for the most part, they’re pretty mediocre and self-serving.
But they aren’t all the same. For whatever reason, one side enthusiastically embraces progressive change; the other opposes it, sometimes enthusiastically and sometimes half-heartedly. But that’s an important difference: the big programs are almost always the creations of the left; the attacks on the institutions are almost always from the left; the demand for higher taxes and more control over the citizen is almost always from the left.
I wish Republicans fought harder and smarter. I’d like to see a new generation of Republicans who have learned that you can strike an adversarial pose against the press and survive, even thrive. I think we’re seeing a bit of that, and I hope we see much more.
But there’s a huge difference between the gung-ho progressive collectivism and social engineering of the Democrats and the squishy, overly cautious, sometimes half-hearted conservatism of the Republicans. It’s the difference between a bad driver and someone bent on mowing down the crowd with his SUV. If those are the only choices we’ve got (and they are), we’re better off with the Republicans.
If only. . .
Twitter is all atwitter today with news that those damned Republicans blocked billions in federal baby formula subsidies.
Children’s baby formula, Mandrake! Children’s baby formula!
And that is the difference between Republicans and Democrats. Democrat policies are worse, and they see every crisis — most of which they have a hand in creating — as an opportunity to spend our money buying their votes.
When was the last time you heard of Democrats being unified in opposition to government spending? That’s the complaint being leveled against the Republicans right now.
Oh, that’s right: police, defense, and border security. The Democrats are generally unified in opposition to spending on those things. But not much else.
It might confuse people until you realize it was just money thrown at the FDA — the ones responsible for the shortages in the first place. That’s why 192 Republicans voted against it.
I dunno, they just spent $40 Billion on defense and border security. Granted, it wasn’t our defense or border . . .
They’re against funding those things, until their car gets stolen, etc. And then they claim it was Republicans who were behind “defund the police.” Which many of their people are stupid enough to believe. (Maybe because conservatives prefer that their daughters/wives become doctors – or plumbers and electricians – rather than teachers?)
I don’t know how to respond to this comment after Republicans voted for $40B to “Ukraine relief”.
If I figured it out, it wouldn’t be CoC compliant.
I didn’t say that Republicans oppose ALL spending. Just that they oppose much more than so the Democrats.
And I’m far more comfortable with foreign aid to Ukraine than I am with funding, say, wind farms.
I think that $28M for baby formula isn’t even comparable to the $40B and it says far more about R priorities than their opposition to spending.
Howitzers and their shells are a lot more expensive than baby formula.
The principled position would have been to vote no on both. This wasn’t principled. It was prioritizing another country over their own.
I don’t care what your defense is until both of you can demonstrate you understand why this is outrageous.
I recall someone in an earlier comment pointing out that the $28M was just basically slush funds to the FDA, not to actually produce or buy formula.
And no federal money is needed to purchase baby formula anyway. People are basically lined up ready, willing, and able to buy it. The problem is not lack of money, federal or otherwise.
The other is just slush fund, too. Did you see the ear marks?
Maybe so. Maybe the best we can do, in the present situation, is throw lots of money towards Ukraine and hope that some of it spills out of Joe and Hunter Biden’s pockets and actually helps Ukrainians. But throwing any amount of money at the FDA is not going to produce or buy baby formula.
I’m not arguing to give money for baby formula – I’m pointing out the hypocrisy. 40B is way more than 28M to be lost. And your argument that maybe some might fall out his pocket???
All this is is virtue signaling. And the virtue that was signaled is that we have a problem with hatred of self in our government.
$28M wouldn’t buy any baby formula. $40B is sending Howitzers etc.
That’s because the makers of howitzers and their shells only have to sell the designs to the slow-witted D0D once. Baby formula makers have the knuckleheads from the FDA showing up again and again and again …
@stina — Both sides in Washington like the idea of a war in which no American troops are involved.
After Ukraine, the next step in Putin’s program of reconstituting the Soviet Union (under another name) would necessarily be to attack NATO, which would put American forces directly into combat.
After the fiasco in Afghanistan, the Biden administration must be glad that, for once, the US has an ally that doesn’t have to be bribed and cajoled into fighting.
In fact, Biden can bask in the reflected glory of the Ukrainians’ courage and competence — just as Obama did with the Navy Seals who risked their lives to take down Osama bin Laden.
I don’t think the “principled position” on aiding a foreign power in an existential conflict against a global adversary is as unambiguous as you do, Stina. I think a reasonable case can be made for supporting Ukraine. I probably wouldn’t have spent $40 billion, but I don’t object to us spending something.
I don’t think increasing food subsidies in the U.S. makes sense. I think that’s a classic progressive move: create a problem and then demand a government program to solve it. I’m glad Republicans opposed it.
Translation: I’ll ignore your arguments until you agree with me.
Heh. It’s okay to disagree.
Okay, I know you weren’t serious, but just to be sure . . . . Yes, the government does come back again and again for howitzers and shells.
Yes, but do they do the same kind of repeat inspections like the FDA does of various production facilities including baby formula?
You now, if they made enough howitzers and shells, they would be a lot cheaper. Get the howitzer down to about $1200, with each shell about $14.25.
I wrote “designs.” The designs change, but not that fast. They still buy the actual weapons and munitions.
That’s not what I said and don’t misrepresent my arguments. None of you that think this is ok actually understand why others are outraged. Largely, we are treated as being unreasonable. I’m so tired of it. My position is perfectly reasonable. Treat it like it is.
I’m not sure who is arguing what above, but giving money to the Ukraine for defense is foolish, short sighted, and extremely dangerous, unless we’re trying to start a world war. Now that idiot Milley is trying to take credit for every success the Ukraine has had. Why is that our business? We are in no treaties with the Ukraine that I’m aware of. We are not responsible for the well-being of every country in the world.