by Jonathan Turley
There is an old fable of a scorpion who wants to cross a river and convinced a hesitant frog to carry him on its back. After all, if he stung the frog in the river, they both would die. That seemed logical so the frog agreed to do so only to have the scorpion deliver a lethal sting halfway across. When the frog asked why the scorpion would doom them both, the scorpion replies: “I am sorry, but I couldn’t resist the urge. It’s in my nature.”
The story came to mind this week when the new head of the Disinformation Governance Board, Nina Jankowicz, pledged to protect free speech despite a career dissing and dismissing the right. After withering criticism of her appointment, Jankowicz declared the new board at Homeland Security will “maintain the Dept’s committment [sic] to protecting free speech.” She has spent a career denouncing “first amendment zealots” like myself who believe in a robust view of free speech.
As previously discussed, Jankowicz has made a career as an advocate for public and corporate censorship as well as spreading disinformation. She has been a popular figure on the left in assuring audiences that “the ‘free speech vs censorship’ framing is a false dichotomy.”
Not surprisingly, she was one of the first to express outrage at the notion that Elon Musk might restore free speech rights to Twitter:“I shudder to think about if free speech absolutists were taking over more platforms, what that would look like for the marginalized communities … which are already shouldering … disproportionate amounts of this abuse.”
Jankowicz has declared disinformation to be “an American pathology” and said that Joe Biden is the doctor who can cure that condition.
That pathology, however, appears to largely manifest itself on the right for Jankowicz who has been criticized for spreading disinformation on subjects like the Hunter Biden laptop. She is also a huge advocate of censorship, including calls to ban conservative publications from social media.
In her article, “How to Defeat Disinformation: An Agenda for the Biden Administration” in Foreign Affairs in November of 2020, Jankowicz wrote that Biden needed to get into the business of regulating speech in a big way. Despite the outcry of many of us over the expansive censorship programs on social media, Jankowicz was not satisfied. She dismissed those programs as merely“temporary, surface-level changes to curb the spread of false claims, but [social media companies] continue to profit from the very structures and imperatives that are now driving groups of Trump-supporting, reality-denying vigilantes to rally at ballot counting centers across the country.”
That has led Jankowicz to call for good old-fashioned government controls over speech if Biden is going to take the threat of disinformation “seriously.” She has pushed the same European censorship efforts that were recently championed by Hillary Clinton after the Musk takeover.
https://twitter.com/ChristinaPushaw/status/1520413478405779456?t=PTc4P2FTZYm4DUcBe8vn_A&s=19
Nothing like forming this unconstitutional department right before we can remind people what Democrat majority has done in such a short time, just before midterms.
She’s a bigger effing psycho than even I thought
Never question the extent of their scumbaggery.
(Rod Serling voiceover) “Imagine, if you will, a world where…”
President Trump had announced the formation of an agency to combat ‘Fake News’ being spread against him.
Imagine the lefty reaction.
Note that they are fully in support of this.
They evidently can’t imagine there will ever be a free and fair election that might put them out of power so they don’t control this plainly unconstitutional, un-American monster they are unleashing.
A sad day for the entity formerly know as the United States of America.
☹️
Well, as an example, when Trump said “fake news is the enemy of the people” (i.e., the media lying to the public is bad), the left “disinformationed” it as “the media is the enemy of the people”. No doubt Jankowicz will be issuing a correction with a sternly worded letter to follow.
I wonder if she’s ever been around when idiot Biden spoke of being arrested in South Africa? Or opposing the Iraq war? Or supporting the raid on bin Laden? Or Trump saying white supremacists were “fine people”? Or “shutting down the virus”? Or any of the thousands of other self-serving lies he tells over and over and over? Idiot Biden is more likely to eradicate truth than defend it.
Only the left seeks to censor free speech. It is inarguable that what they consider “disinformation” is simply anything that might harm the left.
“You measure society by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists.”
-Abbie Hoffman
“Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.”
-Cindy Sheehan
“I’m sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and disagree with this administration, somehow you’re not patriotic. We need to stand up and say we’re Americans, and we have the right to debate and disagree with any administration.” ― Hillary Rodham Clinton
Methinks Hillary meant Democrats have the right to debate and disagree with any Republican administration.
They don’t ever intend for said ‘rights’ to be reciprocal.
Nina Jankowicz, 2020: Government Should Not Be in ‘Business’ of Policing ‘Disinformation’
This action by the biden regime is completely unconstitutional. The first amendment is quite clear when it defends freedom of speech. Many countries do not have such protection for the right of free speech and can institute barriers to speech. That is not the case in the Constitutional republic formed by the Framers of our Constitution.
So, the left’s examples of “disinformation” are the results of their own corruption. Instead of policing everyone’s free speech, why don’t they just stop being corrupt?