Latest news with #DisinformationGovernanceBoard
New York Post
24-04-2025
- Politics
- New York Post
The week in whoppers: Clyburn's eye-rolling excuse for Dems' messaging failure, Jankowicz's ‘autocracy' audacity and more
Diary of disturbing disinformation and dangerous delusions This claim: 'The problem we've got is that we have to depend upon the media to deliver [our message].' — Rep. Jim Clyburn, Friday We say: The only identifiable message coming from the Democratic Party since 2015 has been 'orange man bad,' and mainstream press outlets have been enthusiastically delivering that nonstop. Advertisement In fact, the media seem to operate as nothing but a delivery service for Democrat messaging. Own up to the real problem, Dems. Americans have heard your message; they're just not interested. This appeal: Advertisement 'I would like to call upon [the European Parliament] to stand firm against another autocracy: The United States of America.' — Nina Jankowicz, Tuesday We say: Look who's talking! Under President Biden, Jankowicz briefly led the short-lived Disinformation Governance Board, an office tucked into Homeland Security that promised to tell Americans what was fact and what was 'disinformation.' That's a tactic right from the autocrat's playbook. Worse, Jankowicz chose to make this breathless plea at a hearing on threats from Russia, a virtual autocracy itself. The gall. Advertisement This statement: 'Anyone who is not prepared to stand up and fight for the Constitution doesn't deserve to lead.' — Sen. Chris Van Hollen, Sunday We say: Unbelievable. Van Hollen had absolutely zilch to say about standing up for the Constitution when President Biden violated it by allowing millions of unvetted illegal migrants into the country. Advertisement Now that President Trump is following immigration law and booting them, Van Hollen is rushing to El Salvador to hold photo ops with alleged MS-13 members and bloviating about what a constitutional defender he is. This headline: 'Exclusive: Cops Writing 15% of Their Red Light Tix to Cyclists, Who are Just 2% of Road Users' — Streetsblog NYC, Friday We say: Hmmmmm. This piece implies cops are tougher on two-wheeled riders than on car drivers, a typical lefty slant. But a better explanation may be that cyclists and e-bike riders ignore traffic laws at a much higher rate than drivers. For confirmation, just ask any New York pedestrian who's nearly been run down by a bike on a sidewalk. — Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
Yahoo
05-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Fact Check: Rep. Keith Self quoted Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels at congressional hearing. Here's the context
Claim: 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." Rating: 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, AFP. "US Agency Focused on Foreign Disinformation Shuts Down." France24, 24 Dec. 2024, Bertrand, Sean Lyngaas, Priscilla Alvarez,Natasha. "Expert Hired to Run DHS' Newly Created Disinformation Board Resigns | CNN Politics." CNN, 18 May 2022, Bond, Shannon. "A Major Disinformation Research Team's Future Is Uncertain after Political Attacks." NPR, 14 June 2024. NPR, "Censorship-Industrial Complex: The Need for First Amendment Safeguards at the State Department." House Foreign Affairs Committee, 1 Apr. 2025, "GOP Rep Quotes Infamous Nazi During Censorship Hearing." The Daily Beast, 2 Apr. 2025, Hooper, Kelly. "Mayorkas Cites Misinformation about Homeland Security's Disinformation Board." Politico, 1 May 2022, Lorenz, Taylor. "How the Biden Administration Let Right-Wing Attacks Derail Its Disinformation Efforts." The Washington Post, 18 May 2022, 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, Myers, Steven Lee, and Jim Rutenberg. "New Group Joins the Political Fight Over Disinformation Online." The New York Times, 22 Apr. 2024, "North Texas Congress Members Clash over Use of Nazi Propagandist Joseph Goebbels Quote at Hearing." 3 Apr. 2025, "Programs." The American Sunlight Project, 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, Sands, Geneva. "DHS Shuts down Disinformation Board Months after Its Efforts Were Paused | CNN Politics." CNN, 25 Aug. 2022, Tait, Robert. "Capitol Hill Hearing on 'Censorship Industrial Complex' under Biden Based on 'Fiction', Says Expert." The Guardian, 1 Apr. 2025. The Guardian, "Team." The American Sunlight Project, Accessed 4 Apr. 2025.
Yahoo
03-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
GOP Rep Quotes Infamous Nazi Joseph Goebbels During Censorship Hearing
A Republican congressman appalled Democrats at a congressional hearing by quoting infamous Nazi Joseph Goebbels. '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,' said Texas' Keith Self. Goebbels was the minister of propaganda for the Third Reich under Adolf Hitler. His role was to convince the German people to support Hitler's regime, which he did so by spreading anti-Semitism and orchestrating the 1933 burning of 'un-German' books in Berlin. Self, 72, referenced Goebbels' words during a House subcommittee meeting aimed at determining whether a 'censorship industrial complex' existed. The Tuesday hearing was held after Republicans claimed that Biden-era policies aimed to stifle rightwing views. Texas Democrat Rep. Julie Johnson heavily criticized Self's remarks. 'When you're quoting Joseph Goebbels about... the role of state in the public debate, we have a big problem,' Johnson said. 'I mean, that's as alarming as hell to me, when that becomes the gold standard of Hitler.' She said it was concerning that he was referencing a quote associated with 'German atrocities during World War II.' She later posted the clip of Self on X with the comment, 'Joseph Goebbels was a literal Nazi and one of Hitler's closest allies. To my Republican colleagues, it is probably best not to quote him during a congressional hearing.' Self rebutted that Johnson's 'framing is completely misleading.' He said: 'I was referring to the philosophy of Nina Jankowicz, the former head of Biden's Disinformation Governance Board. Probably best not to throw stones when your party supported funneling millions of dollars through Biden's State Dept. to shape public opinion.' At the hearing, Jankowicz, the leader of a pro-democracy organization and former executive director of the Disinformation Governance Board, said that 'the premise of this hearing, the so called censorship industrial complex, is a fiction that has not only had profound impacts on my life and safety, but on our national security.' She later added that the 'fiction is itself suppressing speech and stymieing critical research that protects our country.' DOGE leader Elon Musk later called Jankowicz and her colleague 'evil people.' Despite Self's defense, it isn't the first time he's used Goebbel quotes. He cited the Nazi in 2010 when he was running for reelection as Collin County Judge. At the time, he tried to bite back at his opponent by saying, 'if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.' At the time, he claimed he was only using the widely-circulated yet unsubstantiated Goebbels quote to show that his opponent was 'using the method.' HuffPost reported that Self's office did not directly comment on his bizarre Nazi quotes but instead said: 'It is indisputable that the Biden administration weaponized its State Department to censor and suppress American citizens from their right to free speech.' Self also recently received backlash after misgendering Rep. Sarah McBride (D-DE), the first openly transgender congresswoman. The outcries following Self's Goebbels quote comes after Democrats condemned Musk's gesture at the presidential inauguration, which looked like a Nazi salute. He did little to defend the move at the time but instead made Holocaust-related jokes and Nazi puns to his over 200 million X followers. Musk also recently retweeted an X post saying that Hitler and other dictators like Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong did not murder millions of people, but 'their public sector workers did' instead.
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Nina Jankowicz's Defense of Government Censors Is Based on Misinformation
Nina Jankowicz is the former director of the Department of Homeland Security's Disinformation Governance Board, an entity that purported to advise the Biden administration on how best to counter online misinformation but was shuttered after drawing the ire of conservatives and libertarians. Like so many other purported disinfo experts, Jankowicz's record of identifying actual lies is decidedly mixed: She had dutifully joined the intelligence community and much of the mainstream media, for instance, in wrongly asserting that the New York Post's Hunter Biden laptop story was disinformation peddled by Russia. She personally expressed the view that the straightforward explanation—Hunter Biden left his laptop at a repair shop—was a "fairy tale." Oops. But like so many other former government intelligence officials who were fundamentally wrong about pivotal issues pertaining to their area of expertise, Jankowicz is fated to fail upward. She is now the president of the Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting transparency, though the group does not disclose its sources of funding. That intriguing policy—some would say execrable hypocrisy—was noted by Rep. Michael Baumgartner (R–Wash.) during a fiery congressional subcommittee hearing on Tuesday. Jankowicz testified alongside one of her most ardent critics, the independent journalist Matt Taibbi, whose work exposing the federal government's efforts to compel social media companies to censor contrarian speech was a major driver of negative attention to projects like the Disinformation Governance Board. Taibbi's Twitter Files (as well as similar projects, like Reason's Facebook Files) demonstrated that aggressive moderation of dissident opinions online was not a choice freely made by social media companies—it was forced on them by government agents who were themselves misinformed about the facts. Jankowicz defended the Sunlight Foundation's lack of transparency on grounds that she has personally faced bullying as a result of her antidisinfo advocacy, and she wished to spare her backers from such a fate. She also tore into Taibbi, accusing him of failing to understand the implications of the information he uncovered and the social media censorship stories he had reported on. "Mr. Taibbi said when he was first searching through the so-called Twitter Files, he didn't know what he was looking at," said Jankowicz. "Well, he still doesn't. Everything looks like a conspiracy when you don't know how anything works." That's a bold claim from someone who bought into a conspiracy theory about the Hunter Biden laptop story. Jankowicz proceeded to flatly assert that the State Department's Global Engagement Center, charged with countering foreign propaganda, was never engaged in anything approaching censorship. This claim is abjectly false and collapses under scrutiny. At issue are two independent antidisinfo organizations, NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index, that received funding from the State Department. In her testimony, Jankowicz acknowledged that these organizations were federally funded, although she defended the grants as focused on combatting Chinese government propaganda rather than encouraging censorship of American media entities. We will return to that in a moment. Jankowicz subsequently took issue with the idea that NewsGuard was biased against right-leaning news sources, noting that several "conservative" organizations including The Wall Street Journal, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, and Reason (i.e., this magazine) had received favorable evaluations. Neither Reason nor Cato identifies as conservative, of course; alas, this is precisely the sort of sloppiness one has by now come to expect from the antidisinfo experts. It is true, in any case, that NewsGuard favorably evaluated Reason. But the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) is another matter entirely. This organization—a British nonprofit, backed by the State Department—listed Reason as one of the 10 "riskiest online news outlets" and warned advertisers against appearing on the website. The GDI's stated rationale for this purported danger was inscrutable; the disinfo cops accused Reason of having unclear authorship policies, which is simply not true. Reason was far from the only disfavored news source: The GDI targeted the New York Post, RealClearPolitics, The Daily Wire, Blaze Media, The American Conservative, and the Washington Examiner. The Examiner subsequently took a closer look at the GDI's operations and determined that its missives to advertisers to avoid "risky" libertarian and conservative news sites were partly based on the idea that these outlets were promoting COVID-19 misinformation. Specifically, the GDI was shaming these websites for including commentary that COVID-19 may have leaked from a Chinese lab. This theory, labeled a "coronavirus conspiracy" by the GDI, is now judged by the FBI, the CIA, and the Energy Department to be the most plausible explanation for the pandemic's origins. Oops, again. But wait a minute: Wasn't Jankowicz defending the State Department's decision to fund these antidisinfo organizations on grounds that they were merely using taxpayer dollars to counter Chinese government propaganda? The GDI tried to suppress the idea that COVID-19 could have emerged from a Chinese lab under lax safety conditions, a disaster that was subsequently hidden by Chinese officials. Given that millions of people died all over the world as a result of the pandemic, any organizations running cover for the Chinese government on this topic are effectively complicit in the Chinese government's most essential propaganda campaign. So much for the State Department paying disinfo cops to counter foreign misinformation. When it came to COVID-19's origins, the GDI enforced the misinformation. And Jankowicz is still defending it. The post Nina Jankowicz's Defense of Government Censors Is Based on Misinformation appeared first on
Fox News
18-02-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Vance is right about free speech. That's what makes EU and US leftists so mad
European elites are in a tizzy: not because their political leaders are in freefall or because their economies are in decline, but because Vice President JD Vance had the bad manners to air their dirty laundry in public. At the Munich Security Conference, the U.S. vice president accused Eurocrats of abandoning some of the sacred principles that sustain democratic nations. He is correct; free speech is under attack in Europe and open elections are under threat. Why? Because, like liberal governors and mayors in the U.S., establishment pols in Europe are in crisis. Their policies have driven down growth and built gigantic welfare states that are unsustainable. Their kowtowing to climate activists and labor unions has driven the cost of manufacturing, in Germany, for instance, through the roof, causing the basic engine of that country to stall. In addition, they have opened their borders to massive immigration which has driven up crime and infuriated their own citizens. If this sounds familiar, it is because Democrats in the U.S. have followed a similar course. Allowing unchecked illegal immigration, adopting idiotic climate policies and hobbling businesses with cumbersome regulations may attract leftist supporters, but the damage done by those policies eventually pushes voters to demand change. That's what happened last year with the election of President Donald Trump, and that's what's taking place in Europe. What is their response? As in the U.S., trying to limit blowback by reining in free speech and subverting the will of the people through manipulating elections. Remember how then-President Joe Biden's White House leaned on social media platforms to suppress dissent? Remember his Disinformation Governance Board, established in 2022 to crack down on "misinformation?" Outrage ensued, and the Orwellian agency soon disappeared. But … Biden brought us "that close" to official government censorship. Biden also tried to lock up Trump, his principal political rival, while numerous states tried to take the former president off the ballot. Those are the kinds of tactics being employed in Europe to keep popular candidates from winning elections. Right-wing candidates are pushing aside Europe's long-standing centrist parties, willing to challenge the liberal orthodoxies that have (mis)governed Europe for decades. The continent, simply, is in upheaval. How bad is it? Consider: The UK, through Brexit, left the EU, but did not abandon their losing policies. A liberal government headed by Keir Starmer, was elected by a landslide vote last July; in just three months, the prime minister saw an historic drop of 49 points in his approval rating. The Times recently reported that their polling showed Starmer's net favorability rating "had fallen to its lowest ever level (again), at -41." German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has an approval rating of 31%. On February 23 Germany will host elections; Scholz is almost certain to lose, beaten by both the center-right Christian Democrats and the far-right AFD. Driving the vote? Immigration, integration and the economy. In France, President Emmanuel Macron's approval is hovering around 20%; a snap poll last fall and a vote of no confidence ushered in a new government, led by a prime minister with equally dismal approval. France is in political deadlock. Panicking EU bureaucrats and politicians are trying to protect themselves from voters' wrath by reining in free speech on the pretext that people might be misled by "disinformation" campaigns. They have also in some cases, as in France last year, colluded against political parties or politicians that do not hew to their liberal orthodoxy. As Vance noted, an election in Romania was recently canceled when the ruling politicians did not like the outcome; their excuse was that Russia had interfered with the election by posting ads online. As Vance noted, "You can believe it's wrong for Russia to buy social media advertisements to influence your elections. We certainly do … But if your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn't very strong to begin with." Ouch. Various EU countries have passed laws that threaten imprisonment for insulting remarks and even forbid silent prayer when close to an abortion clinic. Silent prayer! Vance did not mention it, but last year Scotland adopted one of the most controversial new laws, called the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act.' It expands on conventional "hate crime" regulations to include "stirring up hatred" against any number of protected groups, including "sexual orientation, transgender identity or being intersex." The prohibition extends to comments made online, so someone insulting another person's religion or gender in an online post, for instance, could be arrested. J.K. Rowling, author of the hugely popular "Harry Potter" books, has become a pariah in some circles for referring to trans women as men; she took to social media to condemn Scotland's new law, writing, "freedom of speech and belief are at an end in Scotland if the accurate description of biological sex is deemed criminal." Scotland is not an outlier. "60 Minutes" broadcast a segment just recently showing German police cracking down on online "hate speech," raiding apartments and arresting perpetrators. Clarifying the law, the CBS reporter asks German prosecutors, "Is it a crime to insult someone?" The answer: yes. Also a crime: posting or even reposting malicious gossip. In 2023, Swiss authorities sentenced a controversial writer to 60 days in jail for describing a journalist as a "fat lesbian," a violation of that country's hate speech regulations. To Americans, these laws are repugnant, even though many would like to see hate speech disappear from the Internet. Historically, our country has celebrated our First Amendment right to free speech. Support for that fundamental right has waned, surveys show, especially with left-leaning young people who say they would support banning speakers with diverging viewpoints. So, Americans can and should cheer Vance's brash denunciation of waning freedoms in Europe but beware: the U.S. is not far behind.
