Progress Against The Political Establishment?
Leaving The Russia Hoax Behind
I had trouble coming up with a title for this post, which combines the two big political stories from yesterday. The first of those stories concerned the revelations about FBI/DHS collusion with Media companies to censor 1st Amendment protected viewpoints that fell/fall outside approved Establishment narratives. These revelations come from analysis done on court documents by The Intercept. The second story concerned the oral arguments at the SCOTUS in the two major affirmative action cases involving Harvard and UNC. I’ll try to connect these two seemingly very different stories.
To start with the censorship case, let’s first consider several tweets. The first, of course, links to The Intercept:
That should give you the general picture, and there’s some more detail if you follow this link, but here are key excerpts that deepen the picture provided in the tweets:
Leaked Docs Reveal Shocking Extent Of DHS "Disinfo" Collusion With Twitter, Facebook
In August, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted on the Joe Rogan podcast that the FBI approached the company warning of "Russian propaganda" shortly before the Hunter Biden laptop story broke at the NY Post.
"Basically, the background here is the FBI, I think, basically came to us- some folks on our team and was like, 'Hey, just so you know, like, you should be on high alert… We thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election. We have it on notice that, basically, there's about to be some kind of dump of that's similar to that. So just be vigilant," Zuckerberg told Rogan.
Mark Zuckerberg tells Joe Rogan that the FBI reached out to Facebook to put them on notice that the Hunter Biden’s laptop story was similar to the previous Russian Propaganda and to be on high alert. #joerogan #MarkZuckerberg #JRE pic.twitter.com/ojZHhK3isa
— Giuseppe Mercadante (@itsmercadante) August 25, 2022
Now, leaked documents provided to The Intercept reveal that government collusion with big tech goes much deeper.
The effort began in 2018, after former President Donald Trump signed the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Act in the wake of several high-profile hacking incidents, forming a new wing of DHS devoted to protecting critical national infrastructure.
The Department of Homeland Security is quietly broadening its efforts to curb speech it considers dangerous, an investigation by The Intercept has found. Years of internal DHS memos, emails, and documents — obtained via leaks and an ongoing lawsuit, as well as public documents — illustrate an expansive effort by the agency to influence tech platforms.
The work, much of which remains unknown to the American public, came into clearer view earlier this year when DHS announced a new “Disinformation Governance Board”: a panel designed to police misinformation (false information spread unintentionally), disinformation (false information spread intentionally), and malinformation (factual information shared, typically out of context, with harmful intent) that allegedly threatens U.S. interests. While the board was widely ridiculed, immediately scaled back, and then shut down within a few months, other initiatives are underway as DHS pivots to monitoring social media now that its original mandate — the war on terror — has been wound down.
Behind closed doors, and through pressure on private platforms, the U.S. government has used its power to try to shape online discourse. According to meeting minutes and other records appended to a lawsuit filed by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, a Republican who is also running for Senate, discussions have ranged from the scale and scope of government intervention in online discourse to the mechanics of streamlining takedown requests for false or intentionally misleading information. -The Intercept
"Platforms have got to get comfortable with gov’t. It’s really interesting how hesitant they remain," said Microsoft exec and former DHS official Matt Masterson in a February text to Jen Easterly, a DHS director.
FBI agent Laura Dehmlow was in communications w Facebook that led to the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020 over the false allegation that it was “disinfo.” This year, she met w/ Twitter/DHS to stress “we need a media infrastructure that is held accountable.” pic.twitter.com/17LqhEyMN0
— Lee Fang (@lhfang) October 31, 2022
Then, in a March 2022 meeting, FBI official Laura Dehmlow warned that the 'threat of subversive information on social media' could undermine support for the US government - stressing "we need a media infrastructure that is held accountable."
🚨 Representatives from JPMorgan Chase attended virtually all DHS meetings about federal government efforts to censor disinformation on social media.
Are they laying the groundwork for "de-banking" to become an (even more) mainstream strategy?
https://t.co/yTIeLvQjr2 pic.twitter.com/BFehCIupDQ
Here’s what I want to draw attention to—the overall context. And I want to frame a narrative to go with that context.
Think back to 2016. Recall that there was a presidential election that year and Trump won it. However, in the course of that election a massive hoax was staged against the American public and Trump—the Russia Hoax—by an unholy cabal of the US Deep State, the Clinton Campaign, and the DC Political Establishment. In the wake of that cabal’s defeat the cabal regrouped and attempted to continue the hoax, through the abuse of a legal mechanism (the special counsel): the Mueller Witchhunt. In other words, the DC establishment had joined ranks to keep Trump out of the White House, and refused to accept defeat. They were staging a coup. The big problem with this approach is that it relied upon a known hoax, and thus it all lacked predication and was grossly illegal. The same deficiency thwarted the faux impeachment hoax, and Trump refused to go along with having his wings clipped—to the chagrin of Mitch McConnell and other GOPe members of the DC establishment.
In the middle of all this, we thought we had some good guys come to the rescue. A new AG, Bill Barr, a new FBI Director, Chris Wray, and a new special counsel, John Durham. Hurrah! I was one of the cheerleaders—let’s hear it for accountability and the rule of law! Well, we’re four years on and, while we have learned quite a bit, there’s been precious little accountability. True, Barr shut down the Mueller Witchhunt, but the Mueller Witchhunt was, in essence, the last gasp of the unguided Clinton hoax missile—the Russia Hoax. As such, because of its hoax nature, it was a danger to anyone who handled it, including the DC Establishment that had enabled it.
Beginning in 2018, with a new bill signed by Trump himself, and implemented by the GOP led DoJ and FBI as well as DHS, we find a new initiative being deployed—the fight against dis/mis--information (please refer to the descriptors in the excerpts above). Of course, we saw this applied ham handedly during the Covid Regime—another hoax, but this time fully sponsored by the US government, rather than including a political campaign. We now know that this Covid hoax was, in effect, a test run for new “soft” authoritarian controls over society, including speech. It was advanced by an alliance between government and major corporations and media outlets—the very definition of fascism.
The latest revelations, via The Intercept, show that this operation, supervised by AG Barr, Chris Wray, and DHS—all GOP Trump appointees—targeted Trump himself during his reelection campaign and suppressed known reliable information of criminal activity by Zhou and his son. This had to be the biggest open secret in DC, at least among the elites. My suggestion is that what we’re seeing is simply the second chapter in the effort by the DC Establishment to reject Trump, the outsider. The first, Hillary’s Russia Hoax, was too transparently fraudulent and dangerous to its operatives. It was therefore replaced and forwarded by more sophisticated DC operatives who could cloak their work in legal hocus pocus. Just enough transparency, they calculated, to keep the populist masses from becoming unduly unrestive, but not enough to bring down the DC Establishment itself. Think about it. It’s a theory.
Now, for the interestingly hopeful part. Much of this is coming to light through the efforts of State attorneys general, led by MO’s Eric Greitens. Also by the willingness of a federal judge to enforce disclosure by the federal government. In other words, it looks a bit like separation of powers and the federal system is working and taking on the DC Establishment. How far this effort can go remains to be seen, but it certainly points up the importance of state governments, and the importance of the Midterm elections at the State level, not just the federal level.
That brings us to the SCOTUS and the oral arguments yesterday in the two affirmative action cases. I’ve been making a point lately of noting that the Trump SCOTUS has shown a willingness, even an eagerness to take on controversial cases and to overturn precedents that the DC political establishment had either considered long settled or had tried to sidestep—except for campaign rhetorical purposes, every so often. The 2A and abortion cases, as well as the warning shots at the administrative state, last term put paid to all that. By all accounts the pro-affirmative action partisans fared poorly yesterday, even in the face of the factual complications that this issue admittedly raised. What I thought was particularly telling was a comeback by John Roberts that was quoted by Steven Hayward (Chief Justice Roberts for the Win). It seemed to me to be an indication that Roberts rejected the CRT narrative of slavery and America as well as rejecting the argument that we as a country can do now better in addressing racial problems than rely on what has predictably become a clearly failed spoils system—affirmative action.
I quote Roberts for the tone of his comeback, which is spur of the moment and, thus, perhaps reveals more his attitude than a prepared argument would:
MR. WAXMAN: ...
There is no doubt that for … applicants who are essentially so strong on multiple dimensions, … that they are sort of on the bubble, that … being African American or being Hispanic or in some instances being Asian American can provide one of many, many tips that will put you in.
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Well, people say that, yes, but you will have to concede, if it provides one of many, that in some cases it will be determinative.
MR. WAXMAN: I do. I do concede that.
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Okay. So we’re talking about race as a determining factor in admission to Harvard.
MR. WAXMAN: Race in some –for some highly qualified applicants can be the determinative factor, just as being … an oboe player in a year in which the Harvard-Radcliffe orchestra needs an oboe player will be the tip.
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Yeah. We did not fight a Civil War about oboe players.
My point is not really about the specifics of these two affirmative action cases. Rather, it’s not note once again a newly assertive attitude on the part of the federal judiciary in taking on the shibboleths of the Prog establishment. Could this be separation of powers and federalism coming to the rescue of our republic?
Jonathan Turley re Twitter and Musk's thought of charging Blue Checks:
for full disclosure, I would first have to get a blue check to get charged for a blue check. I have been barred from being verified for years by Twitter despite being a columnist for newspapers like USA Today and the Hill as well as a legal analyst for CBS, NBC, BBC, and now Fox over the last two decades. I have been ranked in the top five law professors on Twitter, but I was still turned me down over a dozen times under multiple categories.
So here is a proposal from the great unwashed and unverified. Open up the digital files on both the censorship and verification decisions under the prior management. What these pundits most fear is exposure of how Twitter was used as a Clausewitzian corporation for the continuation of politics with other means. Open the files and customers will open their wallets.
https://redstate.com/bonchie/2022/11/01/wailing-and-gnashing-of-teeth-as-supreme-court-readies-another-landmark-decision-n652272
I don’t think anything will top the Supreme Court’s last term, where Roe v. Wade was overturned in favor of the Dobbs decision. Still, the fairly new conservative block on the court may just be getting started.
Wailing and gnashing of teeth commenced on Tuesday during oral arguments over whether college admissions can discriminate on the bias of race, i.e. affirmative action. All of the conservative justices expressed deep skepticism of the legality of such schemes.
One of the little-spoken facts about Justice Kentaji Brown Jackson is that she’s just not an impressive jurist. ...
Meanwhile, Justice Sonia Sotomayor continues to do Sotomayor things. ... [i.e., confuses de jure with de facto--duh!]