So, it looks like the Biden Thought Police force is dead. At the very least, it no longer has its czar. As Spencer wrote yesterday, Nina Jankowicz, the godmother of disinformation, has resigned.
The Department of Homeland Security took it in the teeth when it was announced that it was forming this Ministry of Truth. DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said that this wasn't the Thought Police. In all, he promised this task force wouldn't step on constitutional rights or abuse its power. Yeah, not buying that, especially since the IRS, FBI, and Department of Justice were weaponized to go after Donald Trump and the Republican Party.
Big Government targeting conservatives isn't new. The IRS targeting scandal occurred in 2013.
With Janky leaving the ministry, you can always count on the liberal media to explain why this happened. It wasn't because she was a Russian collusion peddler who also thought the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation (we now know that the laptop is real, and there was no collusion). Jankowicz was, as Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) aptly noted, a "human geyser" of misinformation. This would be like making an arsonist the captain of the firefighter brigade.
Who's to blame for quite possibly the end of Biden's Thought Squad? Right-wing trolls, of course (via WaPo):
…within hours of news of her appointment, Jankowicz was thrust into the spotlight by the very forces she dedicated her career to combating. The board itself and DHS received criticism for both its somewhat ominous name and scant details of specific mission (Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said it “could have done a better job of communicating what it is and what it isn’t”), but Jankowicz was on the receiving end of the harshest attacks, with her role mischaracterized as she became a primary target on the right-wing Internet. She has been subject to an unrelenting barrage of harassment and abuse while unchecked misrepresentations of her work continue to go viral.
Now, just three weeks after its announcement, the Disinformation Governance Board is being “paused,” according to multiple employees at DHS, capping a back-and-forth week of decisions that changed during the course of reporting of this story. On Monday, DHS decided to shut down the board, according to multiple people with knowledge of the situation. By Tuesday morning, Jankowicz had drafted a resignation letter in response to the board’s dissolution.
[…]
The board was created to study best practices in combating the harmful effects of disinformation and to help DHS counter viral lies and propaganda that could threaten domestic security. Unlike the “Ministry of Truth” in George Orwell’s “1984” that became a derogatory comparison point, neither the board nor Jankowicz had any power or ability to declare what is true or false, or compel Internet providers, social media platforms or public schools to take action against certain types of speech. In fact, the board itself had no power or authority to make any operational decisions.
[…]
Experts say that right-wing disinformation and smear campaigns regularly follow the same playbook and that it’s crucial that the public and leaders of institutions, especially in the government, the media and educational bodies, understand more fully how these cycles operate.
[…]
Jankowicz’s case is a perfect example of this system at work, said Emerson T. Brooking, a resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. “They try to define people by these single, decontextualized moments,” Brooking said. “In Nina’s case it’s a few TikTok videos, or one or two comments out of thousands of public appearances. They fixate on these small instances and they define this villain.”
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LOL ?? This is not satire. Crybullies of a feather flock together. pic.twitter.com/5cBaYdEuyt
— Christina Pushaw ?? ???? (@ChristinaPushaw) May 18, 2022
BTW, this was not a “right wing” partisan issue. The corporate media will not report this, but many critics of the DHS Censorship Board are liberals in the classical sense and vote Democrat.
— Christina Pushaw ?? ???? (@ChristinaPushaw) May 18, 2022
Indeed, Jankowicz has a very long history of defending Lorenz and expressing solidarity for the trauma Lorenz suffers when her work is criticized. That's almost certainly where Lorenz got her version of events and seems like it should be disclosed when Lorenz defends Jankowicz. pic.twitter.com/R49NHCQ3RZ
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 18, 2022
Taylor Lorenz, who doxxed the owner of the Libs of TikTok account, penned this story. Frankly, if the DHS had a better rollout—this probably wouldn't have happened. Mayorkas just announced it during a hearing and let it fester. There were no competing talking points because this task force sounded like a Ministry of Truth. Even liberal Bill Maher said the comparison to "1984" was warranted.
Janky was just bad at her job. This whole circus was ill-timed. And someone needs to tell Biden that his poll numbers are trash because he's a bad president with a bad agenda. Misinformation, which the left thinks is everything that makes them look bad, is not at fault. Jankowicz's abysmal TikTok videos didn't help her case, either—and it really looked bad when Mayorkas was asked about them and didn't know they existed. The Truth Squad started off badly, and it never got better. And thank God for that.
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