Censorship by Any Other Name
misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation
In case you are concerned that you don’t really understand what MDM — that’s misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation, peasant — means, the federal gubmint’s Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency has figured it all out for you on its MDM page.
Misinformation is false, but not created or shared with the intention of causing harm.
Disinformation is deliberately created to mislead, harm, or manipulate a person, social group, organization, or country.
Malinformation is based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.
Yes, and the devoted public servants at CISA are fighting the bad guys, just for your safety.
I checked the Wayback Machine to see when CISA came up with this notion. Looks like early 2021. Wouldn’t you know that the gubmint got into the action after the war on COVID was over.
But when did “misinformation” become a Thing? Google Trends says that it really got started at the beginning of COVID in February 2020.
Isn’t it interesting that after the COVID thing died out the interest in misinformation has actually increased (Jan 2022 is the final bar on the right)! I wonder what that means?
The problem is that the MDM trinary — appropriately for something published by a gubmint agency — is all about the need for censorship in a national emergency. Like COVID. To protect the American people from people that want to harm us.
In a national emergency the ruling class knows — just knows — that we cannot have any distractions from its unifying and nation-saving narrative.
Thus, if some respected scientists issue a Great Barrington Declaration that threw shade on the official gubmint line on COVID… Well, it’s misinformation and must be suppressed. And, says La Wik:
The Great Barrington Declaration was sponsored by the American Institute for Economic Research, a libertarian free-market think tank associated with climate change denial.
But, La Wik, surely any declaration from respected scientists — during the Trump administration when the President emitted 30,000 lies, fact-checker experts agree — ought to be allowed the time of day.
And it turned out that the Great Barrington scientists were right and the Faucis and Birzes in the Deep State were wrong.
According to La Wik, one of the scientists of the Great Barrington Declaration, Jay Bhattacharya,
said that he received racist attacks and death threats during the pandemic, and he also claimed that "Big tech outlets like Facebook and Google" suppressed "our ideas, falsely deeming them 'misinformation'".
Golly, La Wik. I mean, old chap, aren’t you chaps dealing out “disinformation” here, with a deliberate attempt to “mislead, harm, or manipulate” people with regard to the climate-denier Great Barrington scientists?
For a start, I would say that using the pejorative “climate denier” is a case of “malinformation… used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.” Because “climate denial” has nothing to do with the case. To use a term from Viennese Jewish gay philosopher Wittgenstein. What are you, anti-semitic homophobes?
Let’s say that the MDM trinary is appropriatate when we are saving the world from the Nazis and the Japs under the holy leadership of a national saint like FDR.
But whatabout the Vietnam War under national scoundrel Richard Nixon? Or the invasion of Iraq under “selected, not elected” President Bush, when, experts agree, the security agencies lied about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction. In those cases, don’t we need free speech so that committed activists can mostly peacefully demonstrate and bring their message of justice and hope to the American people?
Hey, don’t worry, dear liberal friends. Go right on with your war against “misinformation.” There is no chance — not a chance in Hell — that one day you will be hoist with your own petard, and revealed to be peddling regime lies.
See, dear liberal friends, if you were only half awake, you would know of Lord Salisbury’s famous remark to “never trust experts.” And you would understand that he was writing about people like you: Stiltstockings in the administrative hierarchy that have an ax to grind.
But I get it. If you don’t repeat regime narrative then you won’t get the career-boosting leaks from high officials, and then you won’t have a job.