America's Disinformation Dystopia

Plus some words on Passover and its significance

A handy guide to the Disinformation Industrial Complex via Discourse.

America’s Disinformation Dystopia

Last year I was delighted to sit for an interview for Gloria Greenfield’s documentary, out now, “Civilization in the Danger Zone,” proudly appearing alongside the likes of Victor Davis Hanson, Larry Arnn, Christopher Rufo, and many other conservative luminaries. I highly recommend it.

Subsequently, Gloria asked that I write an essay on a topic of my choice of vital significance to the country, for her production company’s website. For that topic, I chose to take a deep-dive into America’s censorship regime — looking at the perverse theory behind it and even more perverse practices that it has spawned.

This essay represents an attempt to connect many of the War on Wrongthink dots on which I’ve been writing for the last few years.

Here’s a taste:

Our government has used the purported threat of foreign actors to target domestic Wrongthinkers; it re-characterized its duty to defend “infrastructure” to dramatically expand the associated censorship regime; now it is threatening those exposing the censorship regime, openly calling for still further censorship, and even threatening to punish people for literal thought crimes.

Following a request by the Federal Trade Commission for all communications between Twitter’s interactions with those journalists like Shellenberger and Taibbi who helped release the Twitter Files, in their recent Weaponization Committee hearing, Democrats demanded that they reveal their sources.

When not making such chilling demands, Ranking Member Stacey Plaskett contemptuously and characteristically referring to the award-winning authors as “so-called journalists.” For they were both traitors to their class, as liberals willing to expose the depredations of Democrats, and they threaten the entire censorship regime they have helped build.

As do the whistleblowers reporting to the Weaponization Committee who Democrats have similarly attacked, and the purportedly dangerous conspiracy theorists the FBI referred to when forced to respond to allegations of their role in the censorship regime as revealed by the Twitter Files.

…Meanwhile, the Department of Justice threatens to literally criminalize speech in its pursuit of memester Douglass Mackey over what else, but “election interference stemming from [a] voter disinformation campaign” on social media.

What is to be done?

A Weaponization Committee that exposes government assaults on free speech is a necessary but insufficient step to ultimately combatting a much deeper and graver problem.

…ultimately, we must rekindle our belief in free speech.

That an eminent federal judge will get shouted down at Stanford Law School, including being harangued by an administrator, tells you everything you need to know about what our future holds absent a massive course correction in our education system, and in our culture.

Our institutions reflect the people who comprise them.

Ultimately, there is simply no way to preserve the fundamental rights on which all others rely if we do not cultivate a public that cherishes them.

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Is the Disinformation-Industrial Complex Coming for K-12 Schools?

In a related piece at Newsweek, I wrote a follow-up to my extensive report at RealClearInvestigations on the rise of media literacy education. In the piece, I link media literacy education to the burgeoning War on Wrongthink, and make the case that the pedagogy is far more likely to prove a recipe for indoctrination than a tool for education.

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NatCon Squad: Trump Indictment, Mackey Thoughtcrime Conviction, My Take on Passover

In this week’s NatCon Squad, we discuss the Trump indictment, the creation of literal thoughtcrimes in the conviction of political memester Douglass Mackey, and ruminate on the significance of Passover (a conversation I led) and Easter. Check it out below: