One Man’s Truth is Another Man’s Lie

Pop Quiz:

Who said: “The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.”?

What author observed: “Disinformation is duping. Misinformation is tricking.”?

What US politician said: “(O)ne reason the Russian misinformation campaign was successful was that our country’s natural defenses had been worn down over several years of powerful interests that sought to make it harder for Americans to distinguish between truth and lies.”?

What novelist wrote: “When you tear out a man’s tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you’re only telling the world that you fear what he might say.”?

What President said: “Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.”?

Answers at the end of this post.

There is much discussion among the leftist media and Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, aka the Ministry of Truth (MOT) about the pandemic of mis and disinformation. Generally the discussion revolves around how to impose controls on the spread of this virus. Their reflexive vaccine of choice is always censorship, which silences any voices that do not embrace the approved story line as put forth by the Washington “elite”.

Misinformation is arguably less insidious in that it is often based on ignorance or misunderstanding. The typical conspiracy theory tends to be rumor driven. The rush to be the first to press often results in the publication of misinformation. It can, of course, be corrected if the media are so inclined. The so-called birther issue with President Obama is an example and it was ultimately resolved when Obama made public his American birth certificate. Disinformation, on the other hand, is the intentional dissemination of information that is known to be untrue. There is a valid argument, pushed hard by the left, that there should be some level of control on the distribution of such disinformation. Those who believe in free thinking offer a counter-argument…the truth will inevitably drive disinformation from the market place of ideas.

There is a more Machiavellian form of disinformation: protecting left wing propaganda by censoring the truth. George Orwell’s tour de force 1984 is predicated on the censorship of truth. In 2022 the media and the MOT are assiduously engaged in ensuring that the public is not able to explore either opposing arguments or the truth such that authoritarian mythology remains uncontested.

The best recent example is the pandemic unleashed by the government of China. Facebook and Twitter users were banned, excommunicated or banished if they challenged the Faucian obfuscation about the source of the virus. To argue against the mask mandate, the vaccine mandates or lock downs pushed by the vainglorious COVIDiots in Washington was to risk a trip to the electronic Gulag. Dr. Scott Atlas, in his excellent book A Plague Upon Our House, offers up a firsthand account of the inability of Doctors Fauci and Birx to accept any evidence that contradicted or was in disagreement with their medical/political diktats. They positively bristled when anyone had the temerity to challenge their opinions.

On October 4, 2020 The Great Barrington Declaration was issued over the signatures of Martin Kulldorff (Harvard), Sunetra Gupta (Oxford) and Jay Bhattacharya (Stanford). It is worth reading. These are well credentialed and experienced medical experts who were immediately dismissed as “fringe epidemiologists”. It is worth noting that neither Fauci nor Birx is an epidemiologist. The Declaration argued that lock downs are counterproductive, more protection should be provided for those at high risk and that herd or natural immunity would inevitably come into play. The last point is the third rail of the COVID debate.

As a result the three authors were blocked from social media and the Declaration was treated as if it were a siren song performed by Satan himself, not to be confused with President Trump. A Praetorian Guard immediately moved to protect the COVIDiots from direct or indirect criticism. This meant that the President was denied the necessary vigorous debate required to formulate a successful response to the pandemic. Optimism was simply banned. In short, no debate was allowed and no evidence was offered to rebut the issues raised by the three experts. Ignorance was fiercely protected.

The failure to make such information immediately available may be defended if it can be reasonably argued that the data is not yet validated and, as such, there is a risk that it could be “misinformation”. But once the information is proven credible the failure to allow publication becomes “disinformation”…an intentional manipulation of public opinion. But in this case there was a strong argument that the Declaration should have been placed before the public immediately based on the credentials of the authors. To describe them as “fringe” was clearly disinformation. It was recently disclosed in the New York Times that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has admitted to withholding data related to the pandemic, data which might have called into question decisions made by the government. There is a body of medical data supporting the concept of natural immunity which, as it turns out, is stronger than any vaccine. Reference to “natural immunity” was treated as disinformation by the powers that be and censoring this vital data is, in and of itself, disinformation.

Recommended reading: The Real Anthony Fauci by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Pandemia by Alex Berenson.

So if the media and the MOT believe they should censor mis or disinformation the threshold question is who decides exactly what information should be banned or blocked. That is an incredibly powerful tool. It must be understood that the basis of each such decision will depend on the political bias of the censor or fact checker. It has become clear that the motivation is, more often than not, a fear of ideas that threaten the fragile belief system of people who have no intellectual confidence or maturity. On another level it is a tool designed to protect state propaganda. Neither should be acceptable because it imposes a governor on public debate. The MOT believes in the pervasive use of the Cone of Silence (a reference to the spy spoof Get Smart). The left agonizes over things they believe will cause the “death of democracy”…they fail to understand that censorship will accelerate that demise.

There is another dimension of this issue that must be explored. What happens when censored information has been incorrectly identified as disinformation? What is the mechanism for correcting the error? Take the example of the now fully discredited Steele Dossier. The media and the MOT aggressively promoted that Dossier as “proof” that Trump was a tool of Vladimir Putin and that he was an illegitimate President. Any dissent offered in rebuttal to this disinformation was censored. So how do we undo what we now know was disinformation propagated by these twin towers of political sedition. What is the penalty for misleading, with malice aforethought, the American electorate? That is an issue that must be addressed…or should we just agree going forward that all debate should be open and transparent? It is troubling to think that our self-nominated “elites” will forever refuse to trust the American people despite the fact that we have a “government of the people, by the people, for the people”.

Things to ponder:

Recommended reading: Canada in 1984 by Justin Orwell.

From the high IQ moron department: Bill Gates thinks that the state should require that we wear masks just as it is required that we wear clothes in public!

Is Anthony Fauci an ultracrepidarian?

Thomas Sowell argued in his outstanding tome, Knowledge and Decisions, that new political movements recruit from the masses of people that some political parties have “given up as too apathetic or too stupid for attention”. Note to Democrats…this would describe your view of the deplorables that used to be the backbone of your party. As such it could be argued that you actually delivered voters into the lap of Donald Trump.

Pop Quiz answers:

Who said: “The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.”? Chess champion and Russian dissident Gary Kasparov

What author observed: “Disinformation is duping. Misinformation is tricking.”? Toba Beta

What US politician said: “(O)ne reason the Russian misinformation campaign was successful was that our country’s natural defenses had been worn down over several years of powerful interests that sought to make it harder for Americans to distinguish between truth and lies.”? None other than Hilliary Clinton which suggests that we need to educate people on distinguishing between the truth and whatever she says

What novelist wrote: “When you tear out a man’s tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you’re only telling the world that you fear what he might say.”? George R R Martin author of Game of Thrones

What President said: “Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.”? Harry Truman, the last competent Democrat President