White House Distances Itself From Disinformation Governance Board

That Joe Biden, he's such a leader. He promised us that he'd always take responsibility and would never pass the buck or put off blame to others.

White House says DHS disinformation board 'never met,' denies involvement in pause
Karine Jean-Pierre said the board faced 'mischaracterizations from outside forces'

Outside forces?

RUSSIANS?!

The White House denied Wednesday that it had a role in the pause of the Department of Homeland Security's Disinformation Governance Board and claimed that the board "never convened" amid "mischaracterizations from outside forces."

"The board has never convened," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters. "Yes, the board is pausing in the sense that it will not convene while former Secretary [Michael] Chertoff and former Deputy AG [Jamie] Gorelick do their assessment, but the department's work across several administrations to address disinformation that threatens the security of our country is critical and that will indeed continue."

Jean-Pierre denied that the White House had any role in the pause of the process and insisted that "neither Nina Jankowicz, nor the board, have anything to do with the censorship or removing content from anywhere."

As I said, this is a lie. Sagar Enjeti of Morning Rises used to work for the Pentagon, and described how the "best practices" system works: The government creates the alleged "best practices," then sends them off to the industries they control, who must adopt them if they wish to continue being in good government favor.

So this board would create "best practices" for censoring "disinformation" and then tell social media monopolies -- more dependent than most other companies on government good-will to not be broken up or regulated by government -- how and what to censor.

As usual, the Moderate, Centrist President Who Would Bring Honor Back to the Oval Office and Restore Our Norms, as promised to us by the virtuous, courageous Truth-Tellers of NeverTrump, is brazenly lying.

Instead, Jean-Pierre said Jankowicz's position on the board was to provide information on how to combat disinformation and reiterated that the board's mission was "never about censorship, policing speech, or removing content from anywhere."

Yes, that's why you appointed a flakey Theater Kid whose entire resume is about censoring her political enemies to head the Ministry of Truth.

Speaking of: The ridiculous leftist propagandist defending Taylor Lorenz for her disgraceful defense of the Ministry of Truth -- and her attacks on Americans for criticizing the government's attempt to establish MiniTru -- claim that at least she should be praised for having gotten the "scoop" of MiniTru being put "on pause."

Leftist propagandist Dave Wiegel, for example, says if you don't like Lorenz's scoop, get your own scoop and write your own propaganda.

Strange flex from a "journalist" who's supposed to be all about informing the public, but okay.

In all likelihood, she was given the scoop by Jankowicz -- because, as it turns out, Nina Jankowicz is quite the Super-Fan of Taylor Lorenz, and therefore would have trusted Taylor Lorenz to give her just the sort of coverage she wanted.

The sort of spin that Jankowicz herself offered Lorenz in Lorenz's time of need -- that no woman on the internet should ever be criticized, and if they are criticized, it's just right-wing misogynist trolls (possibly hired by RUSSIA) attacking women in order to silence them!

As Greenwald says -- strange that Lorenz would not mention this!

Well, not strange at all, because Lorenz is an extremely dishonest person, and if she noted that Jankowicz had a long history of smearing Lorenz's critics, it might make Lorenz's smearing of Jankowicz's critics look exactly like what it was -- a return of a favor by a fellow leftwing feminist in the same political guild.

Greenwald also notes that Lorenz deliberately omits mention of the fact that the left -- the real left, not the neoliberal "shitlib" left that controls the media -- was just as aggressively opposed to Jankowicz and the Ministry of Truth as the convenient right-wing scapegoats were:

The Nation did not mince words in its critique of Jankowicz:

Late last month, the Joe Biden administration publicly confirmed that a "Disinformation Governing Board" working group had been created within the Department of Homeland Security. The news prompted a flood of concern about the impact of such an Orwellian organ on America.

But there's no need to engage in hypotheticals to understand the dangers. One has to only consider the past of Nina Jankowicz, the head of the new disinformation board.

Jankowicz's experience as a disinformation warrior includes her work with StopFake, a US government-funded "anti-disinformation" organization founded in March 2014 and lauded as a model of how to combat Kremlin lies. Four years later, StopFake began aggressively whitewashing two Ukrainian neo-Nazi groups with a long track record of violence, including war crimes.

Today, StopFake is an official Facebook fact-checking partner, which gives it the power to censor news, while Jankowicz is America's disinformation czar.

If the Biden administration is serious about combating threats such as white supremacy, perhaps it should first reflect on the old Roman question: Who will guard the guardians?

StopFake was founded right after Ukraine's 2014 Maidan uprising ousted the country's president and swept a new, US-backed government into power. Formed by professors and students from the Kyiv Mohyla Journalism School, StopFake presented itself as a plucky, grassroots group wielding hard facts and semi-permanent smirks as it shredded Russian propaganda. It gained notoriety by producing slick videos hosted by dynamic disinformation warriors debunking the Moscow lies of the day.

Western reporters--and checkbooks--were paying attention. Shortly after its creation, StopFake began receiving funding from Western governments, including the National Endowment for Democracy--an organization mainly funded by the US Congress--and the British embassy in Ukraine. It was also supported by George Soros's Open Society Foundation. (StopFake has run numerous episodes that cover Soros but fail to disclose this potential conflict of interest--a violation of basic tenets of journalism.)

Among StopFake's hosts was Jankowicz, a graduate of Bryn Mawr and the Georgetown School of Foreign Service who was already part of the burgeoning disinformation warrior industry while in Ukraine as a Fulbright Clinton Public Policy Fellow. On January 29, 2017, she hosted StopFake Episode 117, whose lead story dealt with a perennial obsession of Russian propaganda: Ukraine's volunteer battalions.

Jankowicz's mission: Praise the Citizen Militias as the flower of Ukranian manhood.

And "debunk" as Russian propaganda those pesky claims that these units were involved in war crimes and that one of them was even an openly Nazi unit.

While Janowicz extolled the battalions, an on-screen graphic displayed patches of four paramilitaries: Aidar, Dnipro-1, Donbas, and Azov. All four have a documented record of war crimes, while Azov is an outright neo-Nazi group.

On September 10, 2014, three years before Jankowicz's warm portrayal of volunteer battalions, Newsweek ran an article titled "Ukrainian Nationalist Volunteers Committing 'ISIS-style' War Crimes." The story, which covered a report by Amnesty International, featured Aidar, one of the battalions lauded in Jankowicz's segment. According to Amnesty, Aidar fighters amassed a record of "widespread abuses," ranging from kidnapping and torture to "possible executions."

Three months later, Amnesty issued an urgent report about Aidar and Dnipro-1--another paramilitary featured in Jankowicz's segment--blocking food from eastern Ukrainian towns and villages. "Using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is a war crime," Amnesty stated.

(Of course, almost every war crime charged against one side in this conflict has also been charged against the other; Russia has reportedly recently been blocking food in its siege of Mariupol.)

The Donbas Battalion--the third paramilitary in Jankowicz's segment--is another unit notorious for torture, as documented by the UN, among others. The fourth group, Azov, not only has its own history of war crimes, but is avowedly neo-Nazi; indeed, the Azov patch shown in Jankowicz's video has a stylized Wolfsangel (the "N" with the sword)--a popular white supremacist rune used by groups like Aryan Nations.

Azov--which is now a premier hub of transnational white supremacy--has been extensively covered by Western media outlets, including by me in The Nation. Its nature was well known by the time of Jankowicz's 2017 StopFake video. (In a 2020 book, Jankowicz briefly acknowledged Azov is a "far-right group," but immediately pivoted to portraying them as victims of a Russian hoax.)

During Jankowicz's tenure with StopFake (her last known episode aired May 21, 2017), the disinformation site continued being touted as a pioneer in combating Russian propaganda. In March 2017, a fawning Politico story heralded StopFake as the "grand wizards" of the anti-fake news ecosystem. It was an ironically prophetic description, given that Jankowicz's misleading "nothing to see here" report about the battalions turned out to be a mere fraction of what StopFake has done for Ukraine's far right.

By 2018, StopFake started defending C14, a neo-Nazi gang that conducted horrific pogroms of Ukraine's Roma. After media outlet Hromadske described C14 as neo-Nazi, one of StopFake's founders tweeted "for Hromadske, C14 is 'neo-Nazi,' in reality one of them--Oleksandr Voitko--is a war veteran and before going to the war--alum and faculty at @MohylaJSchool, journalist at Foreign news desk at Channel 5. Now also active participant of war veterans grass-root organization," as if the fact that the gang has a veteran somehow precludes it from being neo-Nazi.

In 2020, StopFake defended C14 in a press release. The same year, news broke that C14 was aiding Kyiv police in enforcing Covid quarantine measures; StopFake labeled this fake news, denying C14 is far-right, describing it as a "community organization" instead, and citing C14's own denial of carrying out anti-Roma pogroms as "evidence" of its innocence.

This is what made Jankowicz an "internationally renown" disinformation specialist: running George Soros' own disinformation unit.

At any rate, The Nation is plainly not a magazine of "right-wing trolls."

Jimmy Dore also makes that same point, that the "shitlibs" don't want to admit that both the right and the left opposed the Ministry of Truth because it upsets their eternal narrative:

3 I do find it very interesting this woman worked for Ukraine's Zelensky.
Posted by: Blago

I don't know what to make of that, but it is interesting. It could just be evidence showing us where the monied interests were pouring their money four years ago. Soros was pouring his money into Ukraine, therefore, there were a lot of phoney-baloney makework jobs for the would-be entrants into the Ruling Class servicing the Ukraine accounts. And we'll be seeing a lot of Soros-aligned people with Urkraine on their resumes. Posted by: ace

posted by Ace at 01:16 PM

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