Fact Check: Rep. Keith Self quoted Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels at congressional hearing. Here's the context
During a March 2025 congressional hearing, U.S. Rep. Keith Self, a Republican from Texas, quoted Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels as saying, "It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion."
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Context:
Prior to quoting Goebbels, Self was questioning Nina Jankowicz, a disinformation expert who wrote the 2020 book "How to Lose the Information War" and led the Disinformation Governance Board (DGB) during its brief existence in Joe Biden's administration. He asked Jankowicz about her personal beliefs regarding "the role of government in [forming] public opinion" in an attempt to compare her answers to Goebbels' statement.
On April 1, 2025, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs held a congressional hearing titled, "Censorship-Industrial Complex: The Need for First Amendment Safeguards at the State Department."
During the hearing, Rep. Keith Self, a Republican from Texas, allegedly quoted Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda minister of Nazi Germany, as saying, "It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion."
The claim was shared in a video on X by the account of Rep. Julie Johnson, a Democrat from Texas, and quickly went viral on multiple platforms because, well, it purported to show an American politician quoting a Nazi propagandist.
Based on a video of the full hearing uploaded to the House Foreign Affairs Committee Republicans YouTube channel, the claim is true — Self did quote Goebbels at the hearing. However, Johnson's post was misleading in that it omitted the context of Self's remark and the reason he quoted Goebbels in the first place.
Self replied to Johnson's post the next day:
Self's Goebbels quote came at the end of his questioning, which focused on Nina Jankowicz, the CEO of the American Sunlight Project, a nonprofit that describes its mission as "increasing the cost of lies that undermine democracy."
Jankowicz is a disinformation researcher who wrote the 2020 book "How to Lose the Information War," and according to The New York Times, once served as an adviser to Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She founded the American Sunlight Project in 2024 in response to a large, ongoing campaign by conservative Republicans "to silence think tanks and universities that expose the sources of disinformation" by arguing that measures to fight disinformation unfairly target conservative speech.
However, Self didn't want to discuss Jankowicz's personal record as a disinformation researcher — he wanted to discuss her 11 weeks leading the Disinformation Governance Board (DGB) during former President Joe Biden's administration.
In early 2022, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) established the advisory-only DGB, led by Jankowicz, with a goal of combating "disinformation coming from Russia and rebutting misleading information aimed at migrants hoping to travel to the U.S.-Mexico border," according to Politico.
It did not go particularly well for the board. Republicans immediately began making comparisons to George Orwell's "1984," and the Biden administration floundered in response. Even then-DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said on CNN that officials "probably could have done a better job of communicating what [the DGB] does and does not do."
According to CNN, DHS paused the board's activities in May 2022 in response to the backlash and Jankowicz resigned after the pause was announced. The board was fully shut down that August.
A video of the hearing is available on YouTube, uploaded by the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Self's questioning begins at 1:01:33.
Self opened his questioning by asking Jankowicz her personal opinion, having worked in the government ("for 11 weeks," Jankowicz noted), on the government's role in "enforcing free speech."
Jankowicz responded that the First Amendment, which grants the right to free speech, is "sacrosanct," and that she thought the government should not be "arresting people for exercising their speech."
Self then read a supposed quote from Jankowicz during her time leading DGB saying that "law enforcement and our legislatures [needed] to do more," implying that she was advocating that the government using law enforcement to restrict free speech.
Jankowicz said the quote omitted necessary context, namely that she was "talking about online harms and threats against people online for exercising their speech," not free speech itself.
Self's final question, which he asked in four different ways (Jankowicz gave a similar answer the first three times and did not engage with that part of the question on the fourth), was the following: "What is the mission of the state, the right of the state, to form public opinion?" Self's choice of wording clearly alluded to the Goebbels quote.
Here is the transcript of the exchange from Self's final question through to the Goebbels quote [the annotations are ours, to add as much context to the exchange as possible]. The transcription begins at the 1:04:07 mark of the video:
Self: What is the mission of the state, the right of the state, to form public opinion? Because we're talking about — our government has been involved in doing that for the last few years.
Jankowicz: In my opinion, the government has a First Amendment right to free speech as well, and SCOTUS [Supreme Court of the United States] has just affirmed with a case last June, we just heard a case that came in federal court in New York, that, actually showed that NewsGuard was not acting as an envoy of the state.
Self: So what is the role of the government?
Jankowicz: The role of the government can express its free speech, right? And citizens have a right to their free speech as well. I don't really understand your question, sir, I'm not sure the point.
Self: I'm asking you what is the role of government in public opinion? Because we're talking about actions here that have tried to form public opinion. On the Hunter [Biden] laptop, on the Russia disinformation, all of that. I'm asking you what is the role of government in that matter?
Jankowicz: Absolutely, congressman. So the government is allowed to express its own opinions, its viewpoints, as we're seeing this administration do, as we saw the previous administration do—
Self: Well, what is their role when it is absolutely wrong? The Hunter laptop is probably the best example we could roll out here.
[This is a reference to social media companies trying to slow the spread of the original New York Post article about Hunter Biden's laptop published just before the 2020 presidential election. Jankowicz was not an employee of the government at the time.]
Jankowicz: I actually disagree with that, because when Twitter decided to add friction [slow the spread] to the Hunter Biden laptop case, it actually got more views. You've also heard Mr. Taibbi talk about 22 million tweets, millions of things censored through the GEC [Global Engagement Center] to the Election Integrity Partnership [EIP]?
[Journalist Matt Taibbi, another witness at the hearing, was the lead author of the "Twitter Files," a report comprising internal Twitter documents Elon Musk gave journalists shortly after buying and taking over the social media platform.
The Global Engagement Center was an agency in the State Department founded in 2016 to combat "foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining or influencing the policies, security, or stability of the United States." It folded in 2024 after the Republican-controlled Congress refused to fund it.
The EIP was a partnership of misinformation researchers between Stanford University and the University of Washington that helped track false and misleading information during the 2020 and 2022 elections. According to NPR, it faced massive conservative backlash and was the focus of claims that it was a front used by the Biden administration to suppress speech. It also folded in 2024.]
Jankowicz: You know how many emails went between the GEC and the EIP? 15. You can look it up in Chairman Jordan's documents that he released at the end of last year. Fifteen emails. I've sent more text messages to my husband about our toddler's potty training in the last week than emails went from the GEC to the EIP, and those were all about overt Russian propaganda — RT and Sputnik — except for one, when the GEC analyst said to the folks there, "I can't comment on this one because I'm a government employee, but I think you should check it out." That's all that happened, sir.
Self: So I'm gonna leave you, and I'll yield back a little bit of my time, a direct quote from Joseph Goebbels. "It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion," and I think that may be what we're discussing here.
So it's true that Self quoted Goebbels, but as the context clearly shows, he was attempting to liken Jankowicz's views to the Nazi propaganda minister's.
About Us - Global Engagement Center - United States Department of State. 5 Oct. 2023, https://web.archive.org/web/20231005025458/https://www.state.gov/about-us-global-engagement-center-2/.
AFP. "US Agency Focused on Foreign Disinformation Shuts Down." France24, 24 Dec. 2024, https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20241224-us-agency-focused-on-foreign-disinformation-shuts-down.
Bertrand, Sean Lyngaas, Priscilla Alvarez,Natasha. "Expert Hired to Run DHS' Newly Created Disinformation Board Resigns | CNN Politics." CNN, 18 May 2022, https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/18/politics/dhs-disinformation-board-paused/index.html.
Bond, Shannon. "A Major Disinformation Research Team's Future Is Uncertain after Political Attacks." NPR, 14 June 2024. NPR, https://www.npr.org/2024/06/14/g-s1-4570/a-major-disinformation-research-teams-future-is-uncertain-after-political-attacks.
"Censorship-Industrial Complex: The Need for First Amendment Safeguards at the State Department." House Foreign Affairs Committee, 1 Apr. 2025, https://democrats-foreignaffairs.house.gov/2025/4/censorship-industrial-complex-the-need-for-first-amendment-safeguards-at-the-state-department.
"GOP Rep Quotes Infamous Nazi During Censorship Hearing." The Daily Beast, 2 Apr. 2025, https://www.thedailybeast.com/gop-rep-quotes-infamous-nazi-joseph-goebbels-during-censorship-hearing/.
Hooper, Kelly. "Mayorkas Cites Misinformation about Homeland Security's Disinformation Board." Politico, 1 May 2022, https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/01/mayorkas-defends-dhs-disinformation-board-00029182.
Lorenz, Taylor. "How the Biden Administration Let Right-Wing Attacks Derail Its Disinformation Efforts." The Washington Post, 18 May 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/05/18/disinformation-board-dhs-nina-jankowicz/.
Myers, Steven Lee, and Sheera Frenkel. "G.O.P. Targets Researchers Who Study Disinformation Ahead of 2024 Election." The New York Times, 19 June 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/19/technology/gop-disinformation-researchers-2024-election.html.
Myers, Steven Lee, and Jim Rutenberg. "New Group Joins the Political Fight Over Disinformation Online." The New York Times, 22 Apr. 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/22/business/media/american-sunlight-project-fight-disinformation.html.
"North Texas Congress Members Clash over Use of Nazi Propagandist Joseph Goebbels Quote at Hearing." Wfaa.Com, 3 Apr. 2025, https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/local/texas/north-texas-congressman-quotes-nazi-propaganda-minister-joseph-goebbels/287-fe3d60ad-e239-40c6-a98e-67ee909cd278.
"Programs." The American Sunlight Project, https://www.americansunlight.org/programs. Accessed 4 Apr. 2025.
Rutenberg , Jim, and Steven Lee Myers. "How Trump's Allies Are Winning the War Over Disinformation." The New York Times, 17 Mar. 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/17/us/politics/trump-disinformation-2024-social-media.html.
Sands, Geneva. "DHS Shuts down Disinformation Board Months after Its Efforts Were Paused | CNN Politics." CNN, 25 Aug. 2022, https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/24/politics/dhs-disinformation-board-shut-down/index.html.
Tait, Robert. "Capitol Hill Hearing on 'Censorship Industrial Complex' under Biden Based on 'Fiction', Says Expert." The Guardian, 1 Apr. 2025. The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/01/capitol-hill-hearing-biden-censorship-trump.
"Team." The American Sunlight Project, https://www.americansunlight.org/team. Accessed 4 Apr. 2025.
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