ELON VS. OBAMA:
Musk and a merry band of fellow billionaires that includes [Internet entrepreneur David Sacks] and the venture capitalist Marc Andreesen seem to be coalescing into an American counterelite committed to breaking the monopoly on public discourse held by our current ruling class.
On the other side of the skirmish line we have the forces of the bipartisan political establishment under the command of General Barack Obama. The members of this faction are easy to identify because they have been engaged in an unhinged freakout for weeks. Ever since news first broke indicating that Musk was trying to acquire a controlling share of Twitter, his critics have been apoplectic about the dangers to democracy that will be unleashed by allowing users to more freely share and view information. Former Clinton administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich captured the shrill zeitgeist of apocalyptic liberal technocrats everywhere when he warned that Musk’s “libertarian vision of an ‘uncontrolled’ internet [is] also the dream of every dictator, strongman, and demagogue.” Uh, sure, “what linked Idi Amin, Suharto, and Adolf Hitler,” James Kirchick recently noted in The Scroll, “was their belief in unfettered freedom of speech.”
But the official, buttoned-up version of the freakout was articulated by Obama himself. Less than a week ago in a speech at Stanford University, the former president warned that it’s necessary to impose more regulations on the internet, in order to prevent toxic disinformation from destroying American democracy by eroding citizens’ trust. “Once they lose trust in their leaders, in mainstream media, in political institutions, in each other, in the possibility of truth, the game’s won,” Obama told the audience at the Silicon Valley hub. “As Putin discovered leading up to the 2016 election,” Obama said, “our own social media platforms are well designed to support such a mission.”
Obama’s latest forays into disinformation were a prelude to this development: free Speech Alert: DHS Setting up New “Disinformation Governance Board.”
Nina Jankowicz, who will head the board as executive director, has an extensive, swampy background in the area of “disinformation” as well as the geopolitical interface between Russia and Europe. Her bio for Syracuse University, where she is an adjunct professor, reads in part:
Jankowicz’s expertise spans the public, private and academic sectors. She has advised governments, international organizations and tech companies; testified before the United States Congress and European Parliament; and led accessible, actionable research about the effects of disinformation on women, minorities, democratic activists and freedom of expression around the world.
Jankowicz has extensive media experience, with writing published in many major American newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Atlantic. She is a regular guest on major radio and television programs such as the PBS Newshour, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS and Amanpour, the BBC World Service, and NPR’s All Things Considered.
Clearly, the Left is very worried about black and Hispanic Americans hearing anything contrary to the party line.
Additionally, states the bio, “In 2016-17, [Jankowicz] advised the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry on disinformation and strategic communications under the auspices of a Fulbright-Clinton Public Policy Fellowship. Prior to her Fulbright grant, she managed democracy assistance programs to Russia and Belarus at the National Democratic Institute.” Just the person to make sure only approved information reaches Americans, as the administration fumbles us closer to war every day while assuring us that news about Hunter’s Ukrainian lucre is merely Russian misinformation.
Jankowicz has written two books, How to Lose the Information War and How to Be A Woman Online. In a pinned tweet pimping her newly released second book, Jankowiz lets her inner misandry loose and writes, “Men ‘burst violently into your mentions and your life like the Kool-aid man, demanding your attention, hawking opinions that they believe are unarguably, manifestly correct and indispensable.’”
What could possibly go wrong?
