Last week, there was a story from the Biden Administration, and at first it didn't seem like it could possibly be true. The news seemed so implausible, the announcement so politically clumsy that this must be some kind of mistake. Well, it's a mistake, all right, but it's the truth.
The United States government now has a Disinformation Governance Board. In other words, almost exactly what the novelist George Orwell warned against in the last century, the United States government now has a Ministry of Truth.
Most Americans found out in the aftermath of the Homeland Security Secretary, Alejandra Mayorkas, testifying before a meeting of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security. In the course of that testimony, Secretary Mayorkas simply mentioned that the Department now had a Disinformation Governance Board that had been created in order to fight the spread of what was described as disinformation on the internet.
Now, let's just back up for a moment. We are talking about the Federal Department of Homeland Security. This department, born in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, was intended to consolidate and strengthen America's domestic security defined as Homeland Security.
Secretary Mayorkas has made some controversial statements in the past. The Biden Administration is, after all, just a little bit over a year old, but nonetheless, this was one of those bombshells that doesn't even appear at first hearing to be possible. We are talking about a department of the United States federal government as a part of the Executive Branch of our Constitutional government establishing what is basically what Orwell warned against as a Bureau of Truth or a Department of Truth. In this case, it is known as the Disinformation Governance Board.
Now, this is not an attempt to try to organize disinformation and govern it. It's an attempt to try to prevent it, and that raises a huge issue. Who gets to decide what is and is not disinformation? In a world that is inherently political, and when you're talking about the federal government, the government of the United States of America, what does it mean that our Homeland Security Department has now put together what it acknowledges in public is a Disinformation Governance Board?
Well, just consider that as you're looking at this, this is one of the most politically explosive, politically volatile concepts imaginable in our Constitutional order, but even if the Homeland Secretary basically bumbled into acknowledging its existence, the more you look at it, the more troubling the picture becomes. For example, Newsweek had reported that Nina Jankowicz is the president's pick to serve as the Executive Director of this Department of Homeland Security Disinformation Governance Board, and as Newsweek Magazine had acknowledged, the appointment has already met with some controversy, and for good reason.
Jankowicz, identified as the first Executive Director of this program, has been a Global Fellow at The Wilson Center. That's a think tank in Washington D.C. She's an author and we're told that her research is "focused on disinformation as well as Russia and the treatment of women online." Well, that description might make a little bit of sense, except for the fact that the very idea of a Disinformation Governance Board appears just at face value to be a violation of the Constitution of the United States of America.
Later in the article, Jankowicz is described as the author of these two books, number one, How to Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict, and an even more recent book entitled How to Be a Woman Online: Surviving Abuse and Harassment and How to Fight Back.
It turns out that just a cursory look at social media feeds would indicate that Nina Jankowicz herself is an extremely prolific user of social media and a very politically identified one at that. Even as the news was breaking about the existence of this board and Jankowicz as its first Executive Director, she was active on Twitter opposing Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter and going on to warn of its effects.
She wrote,
"I shudder to think about it if free speech absolutists were to take over more platforms. What would that look like for the marginalized communities?"
A look at her own Twitter and social media feed would indicate that Nina Jankowicz is actually no great friend of free speech. As a matter of fact, you look at her books, you look at her other writings, you look at her impact, you look at her own behavior online, you're looking at someone who does really represent not only the left, but a very decidedly identified member of the left.
Last Wednesday, Jankowicz also tweeted that she was "honored to be serving in the Biden Administration." She identified the Department of Homeland Security. She went on to say that she would be "helping shape our counter-disinformation efforts."
Now, let's go back to George Orwell for a moment. Let's go back to 1984. What would it mean that the government has something like a Ministry of Truth? Now, should the government tell the truth? Yes. Does the government always tell the truth? No. In a fallen world, no government always tells the truth, but one of the necessities of any kind of free society is that the government has its power to control information checked by outsiders, not that the government would actually have the power to check that information, especially when it comes to something as clumsily put together, as clumsily announced, and as clumsily appointed as this.
When you're looking at this Department of Homeland Security Disinformation Governance Board, it's almost as if someone put something together as fake news in order to make people think that the United States government had just fallen into George Orwell's novel 1984, but this is not something that is a parody. It's not a joke. This was something that was announced by the Secretary in the Department of Homeland Security in a conversation with a Congressional subcommittee. He basically let the cat out of the bag. Did he intend to do so in this way? Or was this a massive mishandling of the situation by the administration? Perhaps we will never know, but the fact is the basic issue here is that the United States government has no right to have a Disinformation Governance Board. Basically, again, a Ministry of Truth.
Let's go back to George Orwell a moment. You'll recall that he wrote that work, 1984, largely out of moral outrage at the attempt by the Soviet government and other dictatorships, other totalitarian regimes of the 20th century to control truth. Orwell understood something foundational and that's this. If you are going to have a totalitarian government, it has to have total control of the truth.
Now, as you're looking at that, just consider the fact that if you live in China, then you are only getting the information, at least legally, that is officially passed through the Community Party and all of its opinion shapers and all of its propaganda ministers. You're also looking at the fact that right now if you're in Russia, Vladimir Putin basically has control over all of the major internal information sources. If you have access to some other source, you're probably already committing a crime.
The very essence of totalitarianism is to attempt total control. In order to do that, you have to have control of the information. Now, that could come about by more ways than you might imagine. It's not just the power to prevent some information from ever seeing the light of day, it is to prevent any fair and free understanding of that data or that information because the government controls the apparatus of interpretation.
In a totalitarian government, the ultimate effort is to try to prevent some information from ever even coming to public attention. That's why you have to have a draconian, enormous bureaucratic enforcement mechanism. It is not reassuring to know that this particular Disinformation Governance Board is located in a department of unprecedented police force, and that is the United States Federal Department of Homeland Security.
Now, just to be honest, you look at this and you would think that no administration in its right mind would want to have any political association with having even considered such a thing, much less bringing it about, but it was probably not an accident that Secretary Mayorkas dropped this information in the midst of a conversation mostly about something else, and that had to do with Homeland Security. As you began to look at this story and as the press began to give some attention to the story, a part of what they talked about was political grandstanding coming from Republicans, but what would you expect? How in the world could Republicans in the House or in the Senate not respond to something like this when basically you had something that even most of those lawmakers certainly found it hard to believe might even exist as a reality? You can imagine they jumped on it. We should all be jumping on this.
Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas jumped on the story. "The federal government has no business creating a Ministry of Truth. The Department of Homeland Security's Disinformation Board is unconstitutional and un-American, and I'll be introducing a bill to defund it." Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri wrote and released a letter to Secretary Mayorkas in which he wrote,
"I write with deep concern about the Department of Homeland Security's decision to create a new Disinformation Governance Board. I confess," he wrote," at first I thought this announcement was satire. Surely no American administration would ever use the power of government to sit in judgment on the First Amendment speech of its own citizens. "Sadly," he writes, "I was mistaken. Rather than protecting our border or the American Homeland, you've chosen to make policing America's speech your priority. This new board is almost certainly unconstitutional and should be dissolved immediately."
Both of those senators also pointed to something else, and that was the woman who was appointed to lead this Disinformation Governance Board because again, she is not an uncontroversial character in herself. She was rather savage in her denunciation of President Trump and his Administration in serial tweets. She also warned of what she called "homegrown fascism which predated President Donald Trump." Her words. She has described the United States as systematically racist and she's been highly involved in dealing with many controversial partisan issues.
We really have two issues here, but they are related and they've both been handed over on a platter by the Biden Administration into an absolute context of political controversy, and in this case, deserved controversy. When I first heard about this, I thought, "It cannot possibly be true." Like Senator Hawley, I thought this must be some form of misrepresentation or political satire, but all you have to do is listen to the Secretary's testimony and you understand he means this to be taken seriously.
Now, should the United States government in some way sense to counter untruth with truth? Yes, that's exactly what takes place all the time, but it has to be done up front. It can't be done by trying to prevent the free exchange of information in so far as that takes place within a Constitutional context. Our Constitution does not allow the Executive Branch of government to set itself up as the arbiter of what kind of speech is and is not allowable in public, and for that matter, you can also look at the fact that the woman who has been appointed as the first Executive Director of this particular Governance Board is also someone who has opposed Elon Musk taking over Twitter on a free speech platform.
You would think that any administration that might be actually trying to get away with something like this would appoint someone who would be absolutely anodyne, someone uncontroversial as the first Executive Director, but it turns out that exactly the opposite is the case. Now, from a Christian worldview perspective, it just reminds us of the fact that information is inherently moral. It's always inherently moral. Whoever controls information eventually controls destiny, in one sense controls future events, controls options, controls politics, controls economics. If you have insider information, that's one thing, but if you also plant false information, that's something else, but who decides what's true and what's false?
We as Christians understand someone really does need to decide, and that someone, by the way, comes down to the American citizen. Now, that is not to underestimate the challenge of American citizens in sifting through all these issues. That is simply to say that Christians should understand that trying to find some kind of bureaucratic shortcut in which we are relieved of the responsibility to determine what is true and false because the government is going to do it for us, I think you can recognize the inherent danger in that. The Christian worldview would tell us to avoid concentrating that kind of authority in any politically sensitive or directed position, but that's exactly what this board would represent.
Now, conservatives are going to have to acknowledge that there is a war over information. There is a war over knowledge. There is a war over truth. We know that, but the point is that whether we would have a Republican President or a Democratic President, a liberal President or a conservative President, we should not want any President heading an Executive Branch that would have a Ministry of Truth, or for that matter, a Disinformation Governance Board. Just think of those words again. How clumsy is this? Was no one thinking through even in terms of how it's named? A Disinformation Governance Board? Is that what President Biden and his Administration say they're going to try to do, to govern disinformation? I don't even think that's their plan.
It just goes to point out that this is one of the clumsiest, most blatantly unconstitutional actions to be taken by any administration in recent years, and to that was added an aggravating level of politics when it comes to the woman who's been appointed to head this program. You look at it and you recognize this is not only a political disaster, it's not only a Constitutional disaster, it is also something that Christians understand comes right down to whether or not you trust anyone in the government to determine what is and is not true.
Christians just need to look back to the New Testament and remember ominously that the Roman Empire was actually attempting its own form of a Disinformation Governance Board as it was attempting to wipe out Christianity. A government that will set itself up as the arbiter of truth is a government that sets itself up for an autocratic totalitarian rule, and history reveals exactly where that leads.
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