“In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. “– 1984
In April 2022, officials with the Department of Homeland Security announced a new program charged with the monitoring of information, called the “Disinformation Governance Board”. Beginning with the dispelling of false information about Russia and the immigration crisis, this new Orwellian initiative comes on the heels of Elon Musk’s threat to purchase Twitter outright and reinstall freedom of speech for all Americans, including those not affiliated with the Democrat party.
Dubbed “The Ministry of Truth” by fans of George Orwell’s blockbuster “1984”, Oceania’s own government was ironically tasked with spreading lies and not stopping them. The title itself is a misnomer, a means to hide their intent under a false label. The new program is to be led by Truth Minister, Nina Jankowicz, a partisan and known liar who previously advanced the fraudulent Steele dossier in an attempt to overturn the 2016 election. A perfect fit for the Democrat Party's dubious new plan. In their first attempt at manipulating truth, the DHS Secretary called out the Latino community as susceptible to disinformation tactics. Unsurprising, considering recent polling that shows Republicans with a 9-point lead among Hispanic voters.
In George Orwell’s 1949 dystopian classic, “1984”, Orwell presents a fictional account of what a western country could become should communism continue to fester. Modeled after Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Russia, the novel serves as a warning of how a totalitarian regime, when given the duty of determining what qualifies as truth, can manipulate reality to control society. Now, nearly three-quarters of a century later, Orwell’s fictional account is coming to life in modern America.
The story begins with Ministry of Truth employee, Winston Smith, the novel’s protagonist assigned to the editing of past newspapers, altering data to reflect the reality of the day. By doing so, he would memory hole the errors of the past to prove that government is always right. Today, it is hard to forget when Georgia’s wannabe governor, Stacey Abrams, wrote an op-ed for USA Today in March 2021, calling for a boycott against Georgia following an election reform bill that she didn’t like. Then, two days later, Major League Baseball took her advice, and moved the All-Star game out of Georgia, depriving the state of an estimated $100 million in income. To cover her error, USA Today, allowed Abrams to retroactively edit her earlier article by removing her call for a boycott and replacing it with “instead of a boycott”.
Orwell imagined a time when our loyalty would be tested by how we responded to the lie that 2+2=5, a mathematical impossibility that Winston affirmed during his eventual imprisonment. Well, it seems that hour has also arrived when in 2020, academia’s critical theory deemed that 2+2 = 4 is racist, white, and colonial, simply by expecting students to provide a correct answer. Yet even though this mathematical calculation is objectively true, removing the freedom to say that 2+2 makes 4, is the goal of disinformation campaigns by government officials assigned with controlling the truth.
As we’ve seen firsthand, it’s become increasingly difficult to separate the truth from fiction when we learned during COVID that the difference between a conspiracy theory and the truth is about six months. That is the time that it typically took for the government lies to be exposed, and no longer reasonably deniable. Biden’s Disinformation Governance Board is anything but interested in restoring truth to the nation. Instead, like Winston, Democrats wish to muddy the facts, to push their own carefully constructed narrative.
“A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people”, said John F. Kennedy on the 20th anniversary of the Voice of America in February 1962. Elon Musk created a firestorm when he revealed his interest in buying Twitter, to restore freedom of speech for all. Freedom is not only the ability to speak but the ability to speak the truth.
Comments