The Ministry of Truth already exists, and was revealed to the public this week. That this is under the purview of a law enforcement agency is frightening.
Thanks for pointing that out. It's interesting. Calling it the ministry of truth is hyperbolic to start as it's mandate seems to be fighting on the information fronts and it seems have been formed to be an anti foreign propaganda organization. Of course we'll have to see how it evolves...
What happens when a citizen states an opinion that the government deems misinformation or disinformation? When a law enforcement agency has the power to "fight" your opinion, the democratic process will inevitably be destroyed. The whole purpose of free speech is the freedom to think out loud, point out errors, and let others do the same to you.
If the government can decide your free speech is illicit because it doesn't conform to the government's stated position there is no free speech.
The proof that this power will expand is found in the history of the DHS itself. It was formed after 9/11 to make sure knives and explosives didn't get on planes. Now, it governs public discourse. This is unbelievable scope creep. So to say its governance of public discourse is limited to only a few topics of conversation is unencouraging.
>It was formed after 9/11 to make sure knives and explosives didn't get on planes.
That is the TSA. DHS was formed as a major reorganization of existing government agencies dealing with immigration, customs, border patrol, and many other functions, including the new TSA.
The DHS was billed as a solution to the problem of the FBI, CIA, and other organizations not communicating with each other. The scope creep had already started happening decades before; this just made it more efficient.
True. However DHS is largely composed of relatively essential government functions that go far beyond the remit of the terrorism preventers. Customs, Coast Guard, Border Patrol, Immigration, ...
Ever since H. Clinton called Gabbard a "Russian asset," Gabbard sued, and the suit was dismissed because it was determined that a "Russian asset" didn't have to have any connection to Russians, they could just be a person who said things that Russians liked to have said; since then we're back in the age of "pinkos."
Having an opinion that patriotic Americans think that Russians would like you to have is the same as being a traitor. It's like an accidental terrorist. That's what a pinko was; a person who believed in civil rights, worker's rights, etc.. They weren't red, they were pink.
edit: this was greatly foreshadowed after 9/11 when the courts managed to jail some people for "material support" of terrorism for simply expressing approval of terrorism. You see, expressing approval of terrorism in public could lead to people being convinced that terrorism is good, and those people could join terrorist groups, and those terrorist groups could harm America with their help. Like gods, rendering the immaterial material.
That's always been the punchline of the Al-Awlaki case. We've been guided into focusing on the murders of his young children or his American citizenship because children are sympathetic and individualist nationalists are more concerned when things happen to Americans without a legal process than when things happen to others without a legal process. The punchline is that Al-Awlaki was drone killed for being a propagandist, not any terrorist act.
This was also back when the ACLU was a coherent organization, so they objected.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation_Governance_Bo...