Opinion: Director of ‘neutral’ disinformation board fails on neutrality, distinguishing truth from lies

by mcardinal

Willie R. Tubbs, FISM News

 

The online equivalent of the Honus Wagner baseball card would be video of Nina Jankowicz, head of the recently-minted Homeland Security Disinformation Governance Board, doing or saying something that is in any way reflective of a measured political worldview.

There are, most collectors agree, only about 60 original Wagner baseball cards in existence, and each is incredibly valuable. A moment of Jankowicz demonstrating neutrality might prove even harder to find.

One can find numerous examples of her parroting whatever is popular on the left at the moment, using newspeak that would make Orwell proud, or belting out some of the worst song parodies to have ever been written, but never an indication of centrism.

That the Biden administration would take an interest in tamping down disinformation is hardly a surprise. What is surprising is that the administration has selected a person so unambiguously unlikable and unqualified to lead the left’s never-ending march toward censorship.

But even that surprise must be tempered. Jankowicz is in keeping with a leftist trend – theater sells.

Throughout the pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci has been accused of engaging in political theater, but he’s a rank amateur compared to his colleagues.  

Last December, conservatives sat aghast as Dr. Francis Collins, the now-retired director of the National Institutes of Health, strummed his guitar and sang a COVID-repurposed version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” that contained the lyrics, “Thank God the shots came very fast, so all my fears are now behind me… Masks off finally! Thank God science and people have brought the pandemic’s end.”

Nero, known to ancient scholars as an “actor-emperor” because his love of arts outstripped his ability to dutifully govern, once played a cithara while Rome burned.

Collins stared sensitively into space, with self-impressed satisfaction, while people’s lives and livelihoods crumbled around him. He also did so after generously launching a campaign through the media to discredit actual scientists who offered alternative approaches to fighting COVID. Thank God for the scientists indeed.

Add Jankowicz to the list of people who have graciously set aside the more important work of parody writing to, with a little luck on their part and apathy on yours, rule over you as a tyrant.

It’s easy to locate, and Breitbart did, proof that Jankowicz is no lover of Christianity – as is evidenced by the fact she once repurposed the song “My Simple Christmas Wish (Rich, Famous, & Powerful),” already a baldly anti-Christian tune that equates getting a part with the spirit of Christmas.

In Jankowicz’s version, recorded in 2015, the person who now directs the world’s first “neutral” anti-speech group sang (poorly), “I want to be rich, famous, and powerful! Step on all my enemies and never do a thing. Who do I f*** to be famous and powerful? I’ve done everything I can, and now the rest is up to you.”

Nothing speaks to the spirit of Christmas like espousing one’s dictatorial fantasies.

This video, somehow even more troubling than Jankowicz’s more recent and better-known remake of the show tune “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” is telling.

It speaks not of the director’s sexual proclivities – that was a joke – but of a narcissistic desire to be known.

The self-worshipping element of the director’s personality is quite troubling. When was the last time a major public figure assumed their official portrait was so packed with beauty that everyone would be forced to stop and stare?

That’s how the new “knower of truth” announced what one would presume is the biggest appointment of her career.

As bad as Jankowicz’s histrionics and theatrics are, and they are dreadful, her track record in identifying misinformation is at least as bad.

She once said that Chris Steele, creator of the long-debunked Trump dossier, offered “great historical context about the evolution of disinfo.”

In defense of Jankowicz, high-end thieves also offer great insight into how to crack a safe.

In 2020, she posted an anti-mask tweet, when that was the official talking point of Fauci.

More recently, as reported in more detail on FISM, she expressed dismay over the emergence of free speech absolutists on social media platforms, saying “We need the platforms to do more, and we frankly need law enforcement and our legislatures to do more” to punish people for unwelcome speech on the internet.

She’s also been famously wrong on the Hunter Biden laptop, which she said in 2020 should be viewed as a “Trump campaign product.”

Even if one chooses to believe that something called a Disinformation Governance Board can lead to anything other than despotism, it seems reasonable to expect the leader of such a board to exhibit a track record of success in differentiating truth from lies. Naming Jankowicz as the head of a truth commission is like seeing a gas station clerk get fooled by a fake 20 and naming him the head of an anti-counterfeiting board.

Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas assures Americans that Jankowicz and her disinformation board are there only to study the lies perpetrated by people from outside the United States and help the good people securing the homeland protect us from foreign threats.

And if you think that is where the board ends, there is a deposed prince who just emailed you about a get-rich-scheme that simply can’t fail.

No one in America – left, right, or center – should want such a board, even if Jankowicz were to be replaced by a non-singing person who comes across as mostly centrist.

This board represents another step in the left’s never-ending mission to quiet voices they don’t like on the internet. This is foundation building for another lurch into your daily life down the line.

There is an old axiom, one might even call it a precedent on which our very government is founded, that says the answer to bad speech is more and better speech. This renders useless and illegal boards meant to determine what is and is not true.

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