Thought The Biden Ministry of Truth Was Gone? They've Doubled the Fun

P. Gardner Goldsmith | May 15, 2023
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Some background…

Despite the great effort of many freedom-loving Americans, and despite the belief among some of those Americans that their work saw the elimination of the “Disinformation Governance Board” at the Department of “Homeland” Security, MRCTV readers no doubt are aware that that so-called “Ministry of Truth” continued after the departure of executive director Nina Jankowicz, who soon went to work for a U.K.-based propaganda org and registered as a “foreign agent” (seriously).

And MRCTV readers likely also know that the Bidenistas then tapped none other than leftist crony Michael Chertoff to slather a new coat of unconstitutional paint on the panopticon of the Ministry. (That’s Mike Chertoff, who was one of the key figures in making sure the feds got body scanners in airports so they can break the Fourth Amendment a lot more, and whose employer, after he left the post of “Homeland Security Czar” under George W. Bush, just happened to be… the body scanner manufacturer.)

MRCTV readers likely also know that, since 2016, I’ve been reporting on the “Portman-Murphy Countering Foreign Propaganda Act”, which, on and off since December of that year, has shoveled hundreds of millions of dollars to organizations like the Virality Project, which worked to censor libertarians and conservatives such as MRCTV on social media.

So, it’s important not to become jaded when hearing the latest, which is that the feds have ramped up their censorship efforts – in a big, Orwellian, way.

Ken Klippenstein writes for The Intercept that a new “overseeing” federal bureau is going to start working with a lot of established federal gangs to “fight” the “malign influence” of foreign forces. But, of course, the new federal agency will be able to label us as “malign” and possibly influenced by those foreigners.

It’s called the Foreign Malign Influence Center (FMIC). It’s housed at the Office of the Director of U.S. National Intelligence (ODNI), and its claim to “fight” speech that its agents don’t like is so broad, many Americans could be targeted.

In other words, this FMIC appears to be a more underhanded, less visible, more dangerous form of “Disinformation Governance Board 2.”

And it’s the logical extension of the “Portman-Murphy” Act, the bogus “Russian Influence” narrative that people like ex-CIA head John Brennan helped spin to hide the truth of the Hunter Biden laptop, and it is a logical extension of the FBI payoffs to Twitter that worked simultaneous to the feds trying to suppress anti-war, anti-lockdown, pro-liberty social media posts.

The DNI “Fact Sheet” for this Speech-Meiser gang claims its motto is “exposing deception in defense of liberty,” which is kind of darkly humorous, given that we’re forced to pay for it, and there appears to be no constitutional provision for it, at all. But the effusive and effortlessly deceptive rhetoric doesn’t stop there. Indeed, the actual statute creating this FMIC gives it carte blanche to shut down speech in order to “protect elections” and “public opinion” in the U.S.

Seriously.

Related: Microsoft-Tied NewsGuard Was Paid By Feds While It Censored Conservative Media, Including MRCTV | MRCTV

And that lively little Fact Sheet claims that the threat of messaging from “foreign influences” or from Americans offering messages “on behalf of” foreigners the feds don’t like is so ever-present and “dynamic”:

“…informing efforts to counter it requires constant attention, a whole-of-government approach, support from the private sector, and engagement from the public.’”

Of course, if one knows the track record of this federal leviathan, and is aware of everything from generations of tax-paid shills spying on MLK, Jr., to feds portraying as “potential terrorists” concerned parents who visit school board meetings, to other feds portraying as “potential terrorists” people with Ron Paul bumper stickers on their cars, to other feds portraying that aforementioned Hunter laptop as “Russian Disinformation,” and on and on, one might not think this FMIC idea is as glorious, safe, or constitutional as the tax-gourmands might depict it to be.

The definition of “threat” is up to them, and “whole of government” is a wide-reaching, ill-defined, euphemistic promo-term that puts an assumptive “big-response-to-a-big-threat” patina on what in reality is an enormous anti-constitutional spying, legal targeting, censorship, propaganda machine that has, with each newly coined “crisis,” expanded to shocking proportions since the end of World War II.

Thus, few who are aware of these vastly corrupt U.S. spying and propaganda arms would be surprised to see that “protection of U.S. public opinion” portion of the U.S. code for the FMIC turn into “silence opinion the FMIC doesn’t want seen.”

And if the U.S. government is not engaged in a congressionally-declared war against a foreign nation, what business is it of the feds to sift through the internet and label certain speech “malign foreign influence” anyway? What, precisely, is “malign”? They’ve shown us already that they have a sorry track record in claiming real info was “Russian propaganda,” so who’s to think that, even if this were constitutional – which it is not – the feds wouldn’t start labeling “Peanuts” comics as subversive “hate” speech from a foreign realm?

Wouldn’t it just be a whole lot more forthright to openly admit they just want to keep censoring speech and labeling certain kinds of ideas as “malign”?

Indeed, it seems as if the feds weren’t too inclined to tell people about this giant octopus at all – not until it either slipped out, or it got more exposure than the participating bureaucrats expected.

The news of this FMIC came, as if an admission last week, when ODNI chief Avril Haines mentioned it 45 minutes into a speech at a hearing organized by the Senate Armed Services Committee.

And Klippenstein writes:

“The FMIC was established on September 23 of last year after Congress approved funding, but its creation was announced publicly only after The Intercept’s inquiry.”

And Klippenstein notes that Ms. Haines’ new toy, this FMIC, is connected to the ever-lovin’ Global Engagement Center.

“‘What we have been doing is effectively trying to support the Global Engagement Center and others throughout the U.S. government in helping them to understand what are the plans and intentions of the key actors in this space: China, Russia, Iran, etc.’ The GEC is a State Department entity tasked with countering foreign disinformation by amplifying America’s own propaganda.”

And, of course, that’s not really what it’s been doing. As Matt Taibbi reported in his March 2 releases from the 17th tranche of Twitter Files, the GEC is tied to multiple Deep State and Intel organizations and has directly worked to stifle the social media reach of many, MANY Americans, including reporters.

Which brings us back to Portman-Murphy, and MRCTV.

As I reported in March, following the clues found in Taibbi’s Twitter work, the GEC gets its funding from…Portman-Murphy. Meaning, it gets it from you and me, and we will be thrown in jail if we resist their tax-grabs. 

And, as I subsequently reported for MRCTV on March 13, the GEC also works with Microsoft-affiliated “NewsGuard” – which has directly and precisely targeted for “lower reach” my work and the work of others here at MRCTV.

Could someone in D.C. ask Ms. Haines how ethical, constitutional, or sensible it is work with a “GEC” that literally takes my money in order to censor me and other reporters? I’d like to know.

In the meantime, this new entity will continue to suck up our money, and, likely, continue to try to stifle our speech.

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