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Weaponizing the Current Thing: Biden's Ministry of Truth & its origins

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Weaponizing the Current Thing: Biden's Ministry of Truth & its origins

Far from tackling foreign disinformation, the DHS is targeting domestic dissent.

Jordan Schachtel
May 2, 2022
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Weaponizing the Current Thing: Biden's Ministry of Truth & its origins

dossier.substack.com

What has the Department of Homeland Security’s Disinformation Governance Board — or rather, the Biden Administration’s Ministry Of Truth — been up to since its founding? 

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Nobody really knows, but the timeline of its creation coincides with increasingly disturbing activities launched within Homeland Security to target not Russians, but American citizens. Far from targeting foreign disinformation or anything of the sort, the activities of DHS have increasingly focused on targeting and surveilling domestic dissent.

We only know about the Truth Ministry’s origin timeline because its appointed leader, progressive activist Nina Jankowicz, revealed as much on Twitter.

Twitter avatar for @wiczipedia
Nina Jankowicz 🇺🇦🇺🇸 @wiczipedia
Cat's out of the bag: here's what I've been up to the past two months, and why I've been a bit quiet on here. Honored to be serving in the Biden Administration @DHSgov and helping shape our counter-disinformation efforts. politico.com/newsletters/pl…
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11:17 AM ∙ Apr 27, 2022
5,195Likes852Retweets

Prior to the announcement from DHS last week, there was no sign of such a Disinformation Governance Board outfit operating within the federal bureaucracy, but there are clues, and a track record of similar outfits that may have served as predecessors to the current namesake. 

If you’re looking for answers from the government, you’re not going to get any. The people in charge of the Truth Ministry unsurprisingly have no intention of being honest about its founding, function, and leadership.

In an interview over the weekend, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Jankowicz’s boss, claimed she was “eminently qualified,” a “renowned expert,” and politically “neutral.”

The neutral claim is laughably absurd, as Jankowicz has openly campaigned for democrat politicians, most notably, the notorious disinformation launderer that is Hillary Clinton. Jankowicz appears to have personal and professional ties to the Clinton cartel, through her work as a Fulbright-Clinton fellow, a job that included her serving as an adviser to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry.

Twitter avatar for @wiczipedia
Nina Jankowicz 🇺🇦🇺🇸 @wiczipedia
Civic duty = ✔️ #SuperTuesday #VAprimary #ImWithHer #HillYes
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1:00 PM ∙ Mar 1, 2016
Twitter avatar for @wiczipedia
Nina Jankowicz 🇺🇦🇺🇸 @wiczipedia
Thrilled to be headed to #Ukraine this fall as a Fulbright-Clinton Public Policy Fellow! @FulbrightPrgrm
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3:15 PM ∙ Jun 14, 2016
8Likes2Retweets
Twitter avatar for @wiczipedia
Nina Jankowicz 🇺🇦🇺🇸 @wiczipedia
In my grandfather’s memory & as a Polish-American, I’m proud to support @HillaryClinton. hillaryclinton.com/forms/heritage…
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8:47 PM ∙ Aug 2, 2016
24Likes18Retweets

Now that any sane person can clearly establish that Jankowicz is a political activist who has no interest in separating truth from “disinformation,” let’s get back to the DHS component.

DHS claims the Disinformation Governance Board, led by Russia specialist Jankowicz, has a primary mission that will focus on tackling misinformation that leads to migrant surges at the U.S. southern border, in addition to combatting supposed disinformation coming from Russia. It is unclear why Jankowicz would lead an organization that ostensibly targets non-english speaking Latin American residents, given the fact that she has no established familiarity with the languages spoken by the vast majority of migrants.

Additionally, it is the State Department that has traditionally held the role of managing propaganda and counter propaganda operations, especially when it comes to Eastern Europe and Russia, which is the niche focus of Jankowicz’s career thus far.

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Perhaps the real target of the Ministry of Truth is the American people, specifically, Americans who don’t conform with the Current Thing.

The campaigns took a rabidly aggressive posture against peaceful American political opposition in late 2021, when DHS infamously issued a series of memos classifying opponents of COVID lockdowns as potential “domestic violent extremists.”

 DHS also warned about these so-called extremists discussing “conspiracy theories concerning the origins of COVID-19 and effectiveness of vaccines,” despite the “vaccines” not actually working and the origins of COVID-19 being repeatedly covered up by the federal bureaucracy. 

At around the same time of the Truth Ministry’s apparent founding, DHS was continuing to issue increasingly noxious bulletins targeting not foreigners, but American citizens, classing them as disinformation agents and potential violent extremists.

A possible predecessor to the Disinformation Governance Board is an outfit that sprung up in February called the “Mis-, Dis-, and Malinformation (MDM) team,” which was tasked with “building national resilience to MDM and foreign influence activities.” The MDM team was established at DHS through the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which, most notably, is in charge of overseeing “election integrity” issues.

CISA

In February, at around the same time as the apparent founding of the Disinformation Governance Board, DHS likened opposition to lockdowns as a sign of likely terrorist behavior. In fact, the most notable aspect of a domestic terrorist is a person who will “sow discord and undermine public trust in government institutions,” DHS said.

DHS memo

“COVID-19 mitigation measures—particularly COVID-19 vaccine and mask mandates—have been used by domestic violent extremists to justify violence since 2020 and could continue to inspire these extremists to target government, healthcare, and academic institutions that they associate with those measures,” the memo adds.

DHS memo
DHS memo

It continues, claiming that those who disseminate what is described as “false or misleading narratives regarding unsubstantiated widespread election fraud and COVID-19” are the signs of a likely terrorist.

There is no public track record for the Disinformation Governance Board, but many hints are pointing to the reality of an organization established to continue surveilling and harassing the Biden Administration’s domestic political opposition, under the guise of “fighting disinformation.” Whether it’s a war in Ukraine or your next mRNA COVID shot, you better be on the right side of their Current Thing, or you might just be labeled a potential violent extremist terrorist. And the Ministry of Truth will serve as a complimentary instrument for that system.

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Weaponizing the Current Thing: Biden's Ministry of Truth & its origins

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31 Comments
Judith G
May 2, 2022Liked by Jordan Schachtel

They call folks who don’t trust the government “domestic terrorists” while engaging in behavior that will only create more of them. SMDH.

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Betsy McDonel Herr, Ph.D.
May 2, 2022Liked by Jordan Schachtel

Thank you for covering this and I hope you stay on top of where this will lead. It is executive ordered not a congressionally authorized effort within DHS to target free speech. Judge Andrew Napolitano discusses this on his YouTube channel. He comments on the ominous size of the officer force in DHS (60,000) versus the FBI (8,000).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IsS6mSQR4o

Here are some further ideas for leads to investigate:

I completed a rigorous legitimate 2 year research and policy fellowship in mental health services in 1991-1993 which was competitively awarded by the NIH administered through a legitimate national organization devoted to public mental health services improvement NASMHPD.

https://www.nasmhpd.org/

For such a fellowship there were nationally recognized, credentialed and accomplished mentors appointed to oversee each fellow as well as a locally competed and approved site proposal for each fellow. I still have copies of these proposals. Fellows had extensive learning plans with outcomes that were proposed and approved. At the end of the fellowship an extensive report was submitted about meeting learning objectives, completing proposed activities and producing accomplishments such as peer-reviewed publications, policy papers and technical reports for state governments and community health centers, and grant proposals. I kept these plans and reports. I was exposed to state level politics in multiple states to learn their unique systems, and learned federal policy history, but in no way was the fellowship political or partisan.

What I am suggesting is looking deeply into what the experience and expectations were of a Fulbright Clinton Fellowship. Was it competed? Who supervised? How is it funded and awarded? Tax dollars used? Under what authority? What funds were spent? Who else was in Jankowicz' fellowship cohort? Can you obtain materials like a learning plan and a progress and final report to the funder fulfilling the terms of the fellowship? Do the activities if listed seem legitimate and appropriately detailed? Are there conflicts of interest apparent in the oversight of the fellow? Was something about the usual process of the fellowship subverted for Jankowicz? It is outrageous that a supposedly legitimate fellowship program could produce an outcome like Jankowicz. A fellow would need to spend time in government learning the ropes before being elevated to such a highly visible position. This scenario makes a laughingstock of the hard work and integrity of fellows from other programs. The funder, if federal government, should be FOIA'd for these materials.

I think if you lay bare these details you may hit some revelations.

Happy to answer any further fellowship experience questions. You likely have other followers who can weigh in on this angle.

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