We hear that misinformation is wrong information, disinformation is deliberate wrong information, and malinformation, a newly coined Orwellian term that hasn’t yet weaseled its way into the dictionary, is true information that goes against the regime narrative and thereby does ‘harm.’
Example. Biden is a strong president — clearly misinformation. The Hunter laptop is Russian propaganda — disinformation. The Hunter laptop story is true but runs counter to the Biden narrative, so it was suppressed — malinformation.
Disinformation is a powerful tool for wannabe tyrants. Those who practice the disinformation dark arts wield a double-edged sword. With one edge the government apparatus claims their critics and opponents are spreading harmful disinformation and use their considerable power to censor and eradicate dissent. Much as the term “hate speech” opens the door to the suppression of free speech, “disinformation” is the skeleton key of modern domestic propaganda and censorship. With it, the regime can target political movements, specific politicians, and prominent voices on the grounds that they are influenced by or in thrall to foreign “disinformation.” The goal is consensus. Silencing all opposing views creates by default an apparent unity of thought. The climate change crisis is a prime example of censorship creating false consensus.
The grain of truth is that the effective techniques of disinformation were honed by our intelligence branches in foreign arenas, against other governments and peoples. However, putting parents who talk at school board meetings, Catholics who pray with rosary beads, pro-life protesters and Americans who disagree with transmania, vaccines, climate crisis, or war on government lists of potential terrorists, is beyond the pale.
The other edge of the disinformation sword is the government directly pushing false narratives. The direct assertion of lies requires more coordinated support, especially from the media. A prime example was when the government wanted to spy on Trump and his campaign in the phony Russia collusion hoax. The FBI hired operatives to write false reports, leaked stories to media outlets they controlled, and then packaged it all together as the ‘evidence’ to obtain spy warrants. Safe and effective vaccines is another example of a false narrative. No one in government speaks of these, presumably because the government never lies.
Pushing lies out broadly is a form of brute force attack, where the lie is replicated many thousands of times on hundreds of channels until the lie solidifies in the minds of the target audience. The sometimes hidden, sometimes overt, coordination of academics, journalists, and public intellectuals to push a regime-backed political line is justified as the needed counterbalance to all the “disinformation” narratives out there.
Anyone can use this double-edged attack on truth, but the government has an overwhelming advantage because it controls regulation, the police branches, and the courts, which together provide tremendous force and leverage no outsider can match.
Who manages the American government’s disinformation apparatus? The DHS, FBI, DOD, NSA, CIA, to name a few. The DHS included a list of 374 search words to be tracked in the department’s 2011 Analyst’s Desktop Binder used at their National Operations Center. A senior DHS official claimed the manual “is a starting point, not the endgame in maintaining situational awareness of natural and man-made threats” and denied that the government was monitoring signs of dissent. The talk is always about threats, but the real threat to regime power is dissent. The manual even instructs workers to identify media reports that reflect adversely on DHS.
The U.S. government issues secret “keyword warrants” to Google for anyone who looks up certain phrases and names, allowing police and other spy agencies to dig through Google’s search history database to identify innocent people merely based on what they might have searched and use that for further intrusions, despite the complete violation of Fourth Amendment protections.
Center for Countering Digital Hate, a left-wing censorship NGO based in the UK with ties to both the UK and U.S. governments, used as talking points by the White House and their shills, and reverberated by all of mainstream media.
It is 2024 and, oh, how things change. We know COVID-19 came from a gain-of-function lab, lockdowns and masks didn’t work, the COVID vaccines were not effective, and have caused and are still causing great harm. Far from the villains they were made out to be, the so-called Disinformation Dozen are consummate professionals who were simply telling the truth. That didn’t protect them from being censored, railroaded from their professions, and ostracized from general society as crazy conspiracy nuts who push disinformation.
European governments are leading the disinformation charge, arresting dissenters under vague and arbitrary hate speech laws that are thinly veiled censorship decrees allowing them to quash dissent and criticism. The EU has demanded that X censor content or face prosecution. France arrested the Telegram founder for refusing their demands for censorship.
The U.S. isn’t far behind. A U.S. federal court ruled that the FBI and DHS pressured social media companies to remove content it deemed as disinformation, including posts from accounts that originated within the United States. When a court injunction threatened their operation, the censorship apparatus panicked. They got a reprieve when the Supreme Court, in a terrible act of cowardice, lifted the injunction and refused to address the government’s attempt to destroy the First Amendment. The DoJ announced indictments on two Russians in an attempt to smear several conservative media influencers. The assault on free speech has accelerated and the means to do it are being hardened into place.
Accomplishing the dark days of tyranny in the U.S. requires trickery. Trick number one: redefine democracy not as the people choosing their government, but as the government institutions themselves. When you hear the attorney general bleating about people criticizing the DoJ being a threat to democracy, he is attacking the actual exercise of democracy.
Trick number two: declare broad areas of society, like the internet and elections, to be part of national security. This gives the federal government the immediate right to interfere using censorship, surveillance, or even prosecution, all in the name of protecting national security.
Trick number three: confuse the subject of information with terms like misinformation, disinformation, malinformation, and hate speech. Redefining the very words used is part of the disinformation campaign.
The darkest deed of any tyranny is claiming its own lies are truth and its opponent’s truths are lies. Disinformation, misinformation, and mal-information form a shapeless, shifting bog that underlies the government disinformation program and threatens to pull anyone under who might fall into disfavor with the ruling regime. Censoring what you don’t like to hear is the end of free speech and the death of a free society. When the regime narrative can be completely devoid of truth, no one is safe.
What is true for you is what you have observed. No government can be the arbiter of truth, nor can it censor its way to the truth. The only solution is more free speech, and one by one, removing those from power who insist on throttling the free exercise thereof.
Ed Thompson is a podcaster, columnist and author of educational and fiction books with over 25 years experience as a tutor and teacher. Learn More
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