First off, the timing of this new ‘Disinformation Board’ is dubious.
Following Elon Musk’s $44 billion dollar purchase of Twitter, he quickly promised to level the political playing field. “For Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally,” Musk said.
…and the left had a meltdown.
MSNBC’s Joy Reid accused Musk of being racist. “Elon Musk, I guess he misses the old South Africa in the 80s,” Reid said. “He wants that back,” Reid said, referencing the apartheid era.
Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said Musk’s purchase was “dangerous to our democracy.”
The official word from the White House, via Jen Psaki, was “No matter who owns or runs Twitter, the president has long been concerned about the power of large social media platforms, the power they have over our everyday lives.”
Long been concerned? I doubt Biden was losing sleep when the left ran the show. But now there are accusations of racism —and free speech, one of our founding principles, is somehow a threat to our country. So the left is going to do what the left does: attempt to control the narrative. By hook or by crook.
Introducing the Department of Homeland Security’s Disinformation Governance Board (hold your applause, please). Secretary Mayorkas didn’t go into specifics about the powers granted to this new board (scary) but did say it would also target election misinformation (scarier).
So, a new disinformation board with undefined powers from a far-left administration that will monitor Americans online and decide what they can and cannot discuss. Okay, great —so who’s running this thing? Surely it’s someone fair-minded and even- handed, with bipartisan support.
Nope. It’s a Hunter Biden laptop denier. Meet Nina Jankowicz.
“The Russia disinformation expert previously called the laptop of President Joe Biden’s son Hunter a ‘Trump campaign product,’” the Daily Mail reports. “This is causing questions over Jankowicz’s ability to accurately judge disinformation now that several sources have come out confirming the validity of Hunter’s laptop.”
One of the biggest scandals and most-discussed topics during the Twitter takeover was the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020. Twitter banned the New York Post. Musk says “Suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate.”
According to the Daily Mail, “in an October 2020 report, Jankowicz shared her skepticism of the contents of the laptop and the claims it belonged to Hunter.”
‘We should view it as a Trump campaign product,’ she told the Daily News.
“I shudder to think about if free speech absolutists were taking over more platforms, what that would look like for the marginalized communities,’ Jankowicz told NPR last week.
Musk says he considers himself a free speech absolutist.
Sounds like we’re headed for a showdown.
