By NATE HOCHMAN

If the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that Babylon Bee–style parodies often turn out to be prophetic. Yesterday, I jokingly wrote in a Twitter thread:

Turns out my joke was only slightly more extreme than a real Politico headline published around the same time: “Mayorkas cites misinformation about Homeland Security’s disinformation board.” (Or alternatively, as my friend Aaron Sibarium tweeted, “There is no Ministry of Truth,” Minister of Truth confirms.) Politico reports:

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Sunday defended the department’s new disinformation board amid pushback from conservatives who say the effort is Orwellian.

“It works to ensure that the way in which we address threats, the connectivity between threats and acts of violence are addressed without infringing on free speech — protecting civil rights and civil liberties, the right of privacy,” Mayorkas told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”

Mayorkas in another interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” reiterated that the board will work on ways to address disinformation “in a way that does not infringe on free speech, does not infringe on civil liberties.”

“See? Nothing to worry about!” assures the man who’s overseeing the formation of a “Disinformation Governance Board,” whose newly appointed leader labeled the now-confirmed New York Post story on Hunter Biden’s laptop “a Russian influence op.” “Trust us, we won’t be weaponizing this against Americans — our approach to policing disinformation will be ‘politically neutral,’” insists the employee of an administration that has routinely labeled inconvenient but factual news reports as “disinformation,” and is openly working with social-media platforms to censor content it deems as such. “Your civil liberties are safe with us,” says the White House who threatened to sic the feds on parents who protested at school board meetings.

War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength, etc. The problem with unaccountable government bureaucrats defining “disinformation” is that their definition inevitably encompasses true information that just happens to run contrary to their ideological priors. And if policing false or misleading claims is now the purview of the Department of Homeland Security, why shouldn’t the next Republican president use the new “disinformation” bureaucracy to go after the allegations of widespread voter suppression that will inevitably follow his or her victory? After all, disinformation about the sanctity of our electoral process is an existential threat to democracy . . . right?

. . .Right?

Source: https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/there-is-no-ministry-of-truth-minister-of-truth-confirms/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=first |

DISCLAIMER: The author is solely responsible for the views expressed in this article. The author carries the responsibility for citing and/or licensing of images utilized within the text.