The Department of Homeland Security flag flies outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) headquarters in Washington on July 17, 2020. (Olivier Douliery/AFP/Getty Images)
For many, I’m sure, that’s an easy question to answer. For philosophers, not so much.
Plato firmly believed that truth was something to be uncovered, unearthed, and examined. An absolutist in the extreme, genuine knowledge, he argued, was attainable.
Other prominent philosophers, however, vehemently disagreed. Truth, they said, was subjective and highly malleable. That strain of thought is particularly virulent today, with people being encouraged to speak their own version of their truth.
Sophistry aside, most of us can agree that there’s no such thing as “my truth” or “your truth.” There’s the truth, and then there’s everything else. Truth’s “character” is both logically and empirically sound. But just because we can define truth, and just because most people know the difference between fact and fiction, it doesn’t mean that the idea of truth—or, to be more specific, the truth—will be respected.
This brings us to the new Disinformation Governance Board. Created by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the board has drawn comparisons to George Orwell’s “Ministry of Truth.” It has also attracted a fair amount of ridicule on both sides of the journalistic aisle. The Washington Post has criticized both the board’s name and its purpose.
What is its purpose, exactly?
The DHS is led by Alejandro Mayorkas, a man who, according to The Hill’s Joe Concha, is currently presiding “over the worst border crisis of our lifetimes.” A man “who publicly denies it is a crisis at all while privately admitting it is.” With such a man in charge, “what,” asked Concha, somewhat sarcastically, “could possibly go wrong?”
President Joe Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas look up during a virtual bilateral meeting with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez from the White House in Washington on March 1, 2021. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
Quite a lot, actually. The board will be led by Nina Jankowicz, a supposed “Russian disinformation expert.” On Twitter, Jankowicz encourages her followers to refer to her as “the Mary Poppins of disinformation.” How refreshing.
With Jankowicz, there’s just one problem—and it’s a rather sizable one. According to the New York Post, she has a history of spreading intentionally misleading information. And according to Jonathan Turley, a highly-respected legal scholar, she also has a history of encouraging censorship.
Moreover, as Andrew Esquire, a legal expert, told me, other problems exist. “The difficulty,” he said, “is that we don’t have a concrete outline of what the ‘Disinformation Governance Board’ within the Department of Homeland Security will actually do.”
“At the moment,” he noted, “we can only picture an Orwellian Ministry of Truth, censoring information in an arbitrary and capricious manner.”
When asked about the aforementioned “Mary Poppins of disinformation,” Esquire responded, “We do know that Nina Jankowicz, the Truth Czar, has stated her initial departmental intent is to counter narratives regarding Russia and migration.”
Esquire continued, “As this information does not appear to stretch into the realm of prohibited speech under the First Amendment, Biden’s Ministry of Truth will presumably violate the First Amendment.”
Why do we even need such a board?
Esquire was quick to point out that the country “already possesses sufficient law enforcement to target unprotected speech, such as speech which calls for imminent, direct violence.”
Now, though, “we are entering into an era where Biden and his progressive cronies are attempting to crack down on protected speech which violates the established narrative,” he said.
Can we trust the DHS to be the arbiter of truth—the only arbiter of truth?
Considering the abovementioned Mayorkas appears to have lied to Congress while under oath, the answer seems to be no. Moreover, the DHS has a history of violating the rights of law-abiding citizens.
Since the early 2000s, the DHS has changed dramatically. Once dedicated to detecting foreign threats, today, the DHS appears to be more focused on the silencing of narratives that don’t align with its own.
Watch Your Mouth
Time’s Charlotte Alter recently wrote a piece lamenting the white man’s “obsession” with free speech. This, of course, is a load of nonsense. The right to free expression should “obsess” us all, regardless of skin color or gender.
According to a New York Times Opinion/Siena College Poll, 84 percent of Americans believe that being afraid to exercise freedom of speech is a “serious problem.” Over half (55 percent) of Americans have admitted to holding their tongues, “that is, not spoken freely over the last year because they were concerned about retaliation or harsh criticism.”
The white man’s “obsession” appears to be an “obsession” shared by many Americans. Compared to a decade ago, according to the poll, “by 46-21%,“ Americans ”are less, rather than more, free to express their viewpoint on politics.“ And ”by 35-28% less, rather than more, free to discuss issues of race.”
Only a third of respondents “think all Americans completely enjoy freedom of speech.” Meanwhile, only “11% believe Americans completely enjoy freedom from fear.”
Finally, 30% said that although they favor free speech as a whole, “sometimes you have to shut down speech that is anti-democratic, bigoted or simply untrue.”
This brings us back to the Disinformation Governance Board. One fears that this new creation has less to do with truth and more to do with acceptable versions of events. If this proves to be the case, then a statement will only be considered true if it aligns with the beliefs possessed by the people in charge. When people define truth in such a tenuous manner, we should be concerned. When these people happen to be in positions of supreme power, we should be terrified.
Orwell’s Ministry of Truth was the stuff of fiction. The Disinformation Board is the stuff of very real nightmares.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
John Mac Ghlionn is a researcher and essayist. He covers psychology and social relations, and has a keen interest in social dysfunction and media manipulation. His work has been published by the New York Post, The Sydney Morning Herald, Newsweek, National Review, and The Spectator US, among others.
