The Department of Homeland Security put a “pause” Monday on its disinformation board after the truth czar, who resigned Wednesday, came under fire for spreading disinformation herself, The Washington Post reported.
DHS shut the board down Monday and Nina Jankowicz, who was tapped to lead the department, drafted a resignation letter Tuesday, according to The Washington Post. Jankowicz was reportedly pulled into a meeting late Tuesday night, however, with officials giving her the chance to stay on as the department determines whether to move forward with the highly polarized board. Jankowicz formally resigned Wednesday, according to The Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz.
The decision comes as Jankowicz faced extreme backlash for pushing disinformation.
Jankowicz attempted to discredit the Hunter Biden laptop story as a “Trump campaign product” while speaking to ABC News in 2020. During the second presidential debate, Jankowicz posted that President Joe Biden cited “50 former natsec officials and 5 former CIA heads that believe the laptop is a Russian influence op.”
The laptop was authenticated by several outlets including the Daily Caller News Foundation.
She also expressed concern about Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter and what would happen if “free speech absolutists were taking over more platforms.”
Jankowicz also said in 2021 the GOP is made up of “disinformers” who “have seized on” issues like Critical Race Theory to spread “disinformation.”
A DHS spokesperson defended Jankowicz in a statement to The Post.
“Nina Jankowicz has been subjected to unjustified and vile personal attacks and physical threats. In congressional hearings and in media interviews, the Secretary has repeatedly defended her as eminently qualified and underscored the importance of the Department’s disinformation work, and he will continue to do so.”
The DHS announced the creation of the Disinformation Governance Board in April to counter what it considers misinformation and disinformation, particularly disinformation coming from Russia and misleading rhetoric about the U.S.-Mexico border. DHS Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas has fended off criticism of the board, recently saying the “board does not have any operational authority or capability.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki has spread disinformation repeatedly from the podium while speaking about the Disinformation Governance Board, claiming its “work” was present under the Trump administration.
Psaki’s go-todefense of the establishment of the board under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is a continuation “of disinformation-related work that began under the prior administration.” One of the key bodies countering disinformation founded under former President Donald Trump, the Countering Foreign Influence Task Force (CFITF), was renamed by the Biden administration when he came into office the Mis-, Dis-, and Malinformation (MDM) and was modified to focus on domestic rather than foreign threats, two Trump DHS officials told the Daily Caller.
“The CFITF was focused on foreign influence – particularly as it related to elections. The current MDM description from DHS takes the word ‘foreign’ out of the title. It’s clear that MDM, as it’s currently defined, is also looking at domestic communication,” ChadWolf, former acting secretary of the DHS, told the Daily Caller.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), was created in 2018 under Trump to counter cybersecurity threats. In May of 2018, “a Countering Foreign Influence Task Force (CFITF) was established within CISA’s predecessor agency,” according to CISA’s website, and was tasked with “helping the American people understand the risks from” MDM.
CFITF was modified by the Biden administration in 2021 to officially change its name to MDM, and its “mission evolved to reflect the changing information environment,” according to its website.
The Biden-era DHS, its assistant press secretary and the CFITF did not respond to several requests from the Daily Caller to say why the name change was necessary, and what the new “mission” of the MDM is.
The MDM is now “charged with building national resilience to MDM and foreign influence activities,” the website reads. It also mentions that MDM campaigns are waged by both “foreign and domestic threat actors.”
A “Disinformation Stops With You” resource listed on the website states disinformation can be spread by “foreign states, scammers and extremist groups.” An election MDM resource states “Russian, Chinese, and Iranian state-sponsored elements, as well as domestic extremist groups,” are the primary culprits of spreading MDM.
President Joe Biden stated May 4 the “MAGA crowd is really the most extreme political organization that’s existed in American history, in recent American history.”
“When it comes to disinformation, it’s clear that DHS, under President Biden, is making this a core responsibility – to include in the domestic context. They are also politicizing the issue as they have established a Disinformation Governance Board in the Secretary’s office. They have taken control of combating foreign influence away from operating components, where decisions were largely made from career civil servants, and moved that power to the Secretary’s office. On top of that, they have appointed a highly controversial and partisan individual to head that board” Nina Jankowicz, Wolf continued.
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkassaid the Disinformation Governance Board, which he first mentioned April 27 in a Senate hearing, wants to “develop guidelines, standards, guardrails to ensure that the work that has been ongoing for nearly 10 years does not infringe on people’s free speech rights, rights of privacy, civil rights and civil liberties.” He echoed Psaki in saying that the “work” was being done under Trump, and claimed that the board will focus on foreign surveillance, not domestic.
A DHS spokesperson told the Daily Caller “the Disinformation Governance Board is an internal working group that was established with the explicit goal of ensuring … Americans’ freedom of speech, civil rights, civil liberties, and privacy,” noting that the group has no “operational authority or capability” and that Psaki has said the DHS has worked to address disinformation “for years and throughout multiple administrations.”
Acting Deputy Chief of Staff for the DHS under Trump, LoraRies, told the Daily Caller that the Biden administration’s DHS focuses on “content” rather than harmful “foreign adversaries,” and that Trump would have never started a Disinformation Governance Board.
Former Deputy DHS Secretary Ken Cuccinelli told the Daily Caller that the board “is an entirely new creation of their own making,” called it the “Ministry of Truth,” and said there is “no way” the Democrats will operate the board “well.” “It is one of the most philosophically alarming things produced by this administration,” he added.
“The Biden Administration has changed the focus from foreign adversaries seeking to harm American cybersecurity and infrastructure to focus on content. This paved the way for this Disinformation Governance Board that will surely be weaponized against Americans. The government should not be the arbiter of truth or ‘misinformation.’ We Americans have learned the hard way that ‘misinformation’ is often just information the left doesn’t like,” Ries said.
“Instead of focusing on foreign terror threats and securing the homeland, particularly the border to prevent such threats from entering the U.S., the Biden Administration appears more interested in using the national security state to target concerned parents at school board meetings and Americans rightly skeptical about government’s own coronavirus disinformation. This administration prioritizes the wrong things. Secretary Mayorkas, like the Biden Administration, has turned inward – away from foreign threats and against Americans, in particular political opponents, who they label as ‘extremists,’” she concluded.
The newly appointed leader of the Disinformation Governance Board, Jankowicz, who will be in charge of determining what disinformation is, has been criticized for spreading disinformation about Hunter Biden’s laptop. She also supported the Steele Dossier, which Daniel Hoffman, a former CIA officer, said was possibly “part of a Russian espionage disinformation plot.”
Mayorkas and Psaki have defended Jankowicz, calling her an “expert” in disinformation.
Republicansenators have questioned Mayorkas, exposing that he did not know about Jankowicz’s TikTok videos, nor about her Hunter Biden claims before she was appointed.
Wolf concluded by calling on the DHS “to provide the American people transparency as to what the Board is and was planning to do, and why the Department chose to put on an overtly partisan individual in charge who could easily be accused of spreading disinformation herself prior to her government service.”
Only time will tell if Rogan’s critics have the last laugh and see him gone completely.
Comedian Joe Rogan is the biggest name in podcasting. His show, the Joe Rogan Experience, attracts an estimated 11 million listeners per episode. Since 2020, Spotify has enjoyed an exclusive deal with JRE for an estimated US$100 million. With three to four episodes per week, each of which run for hours at a time, he has a lot of influence — and a lot to lose.
And don’t his detractors know it!
“I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform,” Neil Young wrote to his management team and record label last week. “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.” Spotify sided with Rogan — and then removed Young’s catalogue from their service.
Young’s decision followed the release of an open letter, penned by a 270-strong “coalition of scientists, medical professionals, professors, and science communicators,” who called Rogan out for “misinformation” and “promoting baseless conspiracy theories”. They were particularly referring to his recent interviews with Drs Robert Malone and Peter McCullough.
(As it turns out, fewer than 100 of the signees were medical doctors, most of whom work at universities and do not practice medicine. The remainder included teachers, psychologists, engineers, podcasters, a dentist, and a vet.)
Others have since followed the lead of Rogan’s frontrunner critics. Singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell soon announced she would remove her music from Spotify, followed by guitarist Nils Lofgren.
According to the Los Angeles Times, there are rumours that the Foo Fighters, Barry Manilow, and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle “will be the next to walk”. Indeed, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex released a statement denouncing a “global misinformation crisis” and telling of their heroic efforts to hold Spotify accountable.
More recently, even the White House has urged Spotify to tighten the screws of censorship, first amendment be damned.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki calls on Spotify, a Swedish company, to do more to censor Joe Rogan, an American citizen, with regard to COVID.
While Joe Rogan is a giant, he is certainly not uncancellable. And Spotify is no charitable organisation. Shareholders and company executives factor profits into any major decision — which may be why Spotify has already quietly cancelled over 40 past JRE episodes. They have also announced their decision to add a content advisory label to any podcasts that discuss Covid-19.
It may not end there. Only time will tell if Rogan’s critics have the last laugh and see him gone completely.
Just what is so threatening about this former UFC commentator and psychedelics enthusiast?
Decorated journalist Glenn Greenwald — whose centre-left libertarian outlook closely aligns with Rogan’s — minces no words on the controversy:
“Censorship — once the province of the American Right during the heyday of the Moral Majority of the 1980s — now occurs in isolated instances in that faction. In modern-day American liberalism, however, censorship is a virtual religion. They simply cannot abide the idea that anyone who thinks differently or sees the world differently than they should be heard.“
Warns Greenwald: the woke’s focus until recently was to “expand and distort the concept of ‘hate speech’ to mean ‘views that make us uncomfortable,’ and then demand that such ‘hateful’ views be prohibited on that basis.” Now, he says, their target is “misinformation” or “disinformation” — terms that “have no clear or concise meaning”. And the lack of definition is deliberate. “Like the term ‘terrorism,’ it is their elasticity that makes them so useful,” he writes.
“Corporate outlets beloved by liberals are free to spout serious falsehoods without being deemed guilty of disinformation,” Greenwald notes, “and, because of that, do so routinely.”
It’s not Rogan’s alleged “misinformation” that worries these outlets. It’s their loss of control over the narrative being believed by the masses. They too have much to lose — and they are losing. Rogan’s stats dwarf the viewership of America’s popular cable news channels, even in primetime.
For further proof that “misinformation” is not Joe Rogan’s crime, consider that Neil Young previously released an entire album, The Monsanto Years (2015), which sowed major popular distrust towards genetically modified cropping.
Young released a short anti-GMO documentary, and he went on tour “amplifying misinformation about GMOs to large mainstream audiences”. He was also interviewed by Steven Colbert on The Late Show, where he warned of “the terrible diseases and all of the things that are happening” to people who eat genetically modified products.
To Joe Rogan’s credit, he released a nine-minute video via Spotify in which he graciously addresses his critics, admits various failings, and clarifies that he is no expert but enjoys hearing from experts across the ideological divide. His message would disarm all but the most dedicated censorship enthusiasts.
In the video, Rogan addresses the hot potato that is ‘misinformation’, and makes a good case for why his show deserves to stay up:
“The problem I have with the term ‘misinformation’ — especially today — is that many of the things that we thought of as misinformation just a short while ago are now accepted as fact.
“Like for instance, eight months ago if you said, ‘If you get vaccinated you can still catch covid and you can still spread covid,’ you would be removed from social media. They would ban you from certain platforms. Now, that’s accepted as fact.
“If you said, ‘I don’t think cloth masks work,’ you would be banned from social media. Now that’s openly and repeatedly stated on CNN.
“If you said, ‘I think it’s possible that Covid-19 came from a lab,’ you would be banned from many social media platforms. Now that’s on the cover of Newsweek.”
Precisely. “Misinformation” is whatever the cultural imperialists decide it is at any given moment, until they change their mind or the truth catches up with them.
Rather than censoring him, Rogan’s critics would do well to listen to his podcast. By doing so, they may even learn what their future opinions will be.
Kurt Mahlburg is a writer and author, and an emerging Australian voice on culture and the Christian faith. He has a passion for both the philosophical and the personal, drawing on his background as a graduate… More by Kurt Mahlburg
RELATED TWEET:
After I was beaten by antifa & hospitalized for a brain bleed in 2019, @joerogan offered to give me a voice even though I was unknown. The pile on against him now is because he’s willing to speak with those overlooked by the establishment. Thank you, Joe. https://t.co/oqaSvrbgWfpic.twitter.com/uKfcrbcBbu
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00MercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexitieshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexities2022-02-04 05:53:452022-02-04 07:31:39The Joe Rogan affair is not about ‘misinformation’ but narrative control
