Call It Censorship: A Court Rules Against Former “Disinformation Czar” Nina Jankowicz Authored by Jonathan Turley, Below is my column in the New York Post on the ruling against Nina Jankowicz in her defamation case. It turns out that calling opposing views defamation is no better than calling them disinformation. Here is the column: For free speech advocates, there are few images more chilling than that of Nina Jankowicz singing her now-infamous tune as “the Mary Poppins of Disinformation.” The woman who would become known as the “Disinformation Czar” sang a cheerful TikTok parody of “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” to rally people to the cause of censorship. When the press caught wind of President Biden’s plan to appoint Jankowicz as head of the Department of Homeland Security’s new “disinformation board,” Fox News said she “intended to censor Americans’ speech.” The backlash was swift. Plans for the board were suspended, and Jankowicz resigned in 2022. She then sued Fox News for defamation. On Monday, the case was dismissed. But Chief Judge Colm Connolly, a Delaware Democrat, didn’t just say it was legally unfounded — he demolished the claims of figures like Jankowicz that they are really not engaged in censorship. I was one of Jankowicz’s earliest and most vocal critics and she is discussed in my new book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” as part of the current growing anti-free speech movement in the United States. The Biden administration has coordinated with social media and targeted the revenue of conservative, libertarian and other sites. These figures gleefully worked to silence others with the support of millions in public dollars for years. Yet, when exposed to criticism, they often portrayed themselves as victims with an obliging and supportive media. They all took a page from Mary Poppins, who “taught us the most wonderful word!” In this case, the word is “disinformation” and it is certainly

Inside The EU’s War On Free Speech Authored by Thomas Fazi via UnHerd.com, The latest salvo in the ongoing battle between between Elon Musk and the EU came courtesy of the X owner. He revealed that in the run-up to the European elections, X was offered “an illegal secret deal”: if the platform would agree to secretly censoring online speech, then the European Commission wouldn’t fine it for violations of its new online content moderation law, the Digital Services Act (DSA). X refused to cooperate, but all the other major platforms accepted the deal. Musk’s revelation came shortly after Thierry Breton, the EU’s censorship czar, announced the Commission’s preliminary findings that X’s new “blue check” verification system was in violation of the DSA. Given that anyone can now subscribe and obtain a “verified status” — unlike before Musk when the platform arbitrarily decided who was worthy of the coveted blue check — this, he stated, undermines users’ ability to make informed decisions about account authenticity. The Commission also accused X of “fail[ing] to provide access to its public data to researchers”, as mandated by the DSA. It urged the company to address such breaches or face a fine up to 6% of its total worldwide annual turnover, which was approximately $3.4 billion in 2023. Failure to comply could result in X being banned from operating in the EU altogether. The line trotted out by the Commission is that this all about “transparency” and protecting users from deception and disinformation. But the truth, as Musk suggests, is that this is really about the EU’s desire — and the DSA’s ultimate goal — to secretly control the online narrative. So much for transparency. This mission to censor has been backed up by Mike Benz, a former Trump official and cybersecurity expert who has alleged that “granting researchers access to X’s public data” isn’t quite

The Censorship Boomerang Authored by Bret Swanson via The Brownstone Institute, “Madness is rare in individuals; but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule.” – Friedrich Nietzsche They fooled themselves. The censorship meant to keep regular people in the dark instead blinded the pseudo-elite censors and their friends.  The shock – both feigned and real – over Joe Biden’s long-obvious dementia cements our 2022 diagnosis of the ruling class’s dysinformation disorder. Yes, some knew and hid the truth, as the brilliant Timur Kuran explains. But many journalists and Democratic power brokers appear to have been truly clueless. Otherwise, they would have changed course long ago.  The refrain that Joe is “sharp as a tack” was just the latest in two decades’ worth of increasingly preposterous propaganda.  Iraqi WMD Russian collusion 51 intel officers Everything Covid SARS2 emerged in a wet market Lockdown Mask your toddlers Jab the healthy Horse dewormer Ukraine is winning – escalate! The border’s secure This propaganda is believed most deeply and fervently in Washington, D.C., New York, and Hollywood. Those who think they know the most turn out to know the least. So what? Lots of people are wrong lots of the time.  Well, it turns out self-delusion at scale is no trifling matter. With Covid, it produced the biggest set of policy debacles since the Great Depression and has now brought us closer to nuclear conflict than any time since October 1962.  A Dangerous Info Gap In June of 2020, we warned of growing censorship spurred by the Internet’s very openness:  The democratization of knowledge, expertise, and opinion is a fundamental and mostly welcome shift. Over time, it should allow us to learn faster and better stumble our way toward the truth. Ideally, preference cascades that expose falsehoods and improve the world won’t take decades to emerge.  But not