From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Roderick Law

President Donald Trump has hit the ground running, issuing a flurry of executive orders. Two of them are particularly welcome.

The first, “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship,” mandates agencies across the government cease funding and end any activities that would “unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen.” The other, “Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government,” requires agencies “to identify and take appropriate action to correct past misconduct by the Federal Government related to the weaponization of law enforcement and the weaponization of the Intelligence Community.”

Each order is necessary, and their issuance so soon after the inauguration shows that Trump understands that censorship and “lawfare” were rampant under his predecessor.

Former President Joe Biden himself (or whoever gave him words to read) gave us a stark reminder of his comfort with censorship in his farewell address, when he warned of the “potential rise of a tech-industrial complex that could pose real dangers for our country.”

But Biden was referring to the rise of social media that do not enforce speech codes dictated by one side of the political divide. He went on to complain that we are getting “buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation,” while “[s]ocial media is giving up fact-checking.”

It’s true: Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg saw the election results and realized public toleration for censorship has reached its limit. He is dismantling Facebook’s “fact checking” apparatus and following X’s “community notes” model.

Worse, Zuckerburg is telling tales out of school, recalling how during the pandemic Biden officials would “scream” and “curse” at Facebook employees to remove posts that countered the government line. Tech-industrial complexes are dangerous things if you do not control them.

We can’t forget that government censorship, and its support for research into censorship technologies, is broad and deep. Consider the Cybersecurity Advisory Committee of the U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). The committee was composed of academics and tech company officials working very closely with government personnel. The Functional Government Initiative (FGI) discovered they also worked with left-wing activists. The committee was created ostensibly in response to misinformation campaigns from foreign actors, but it evolved toward domestic “threats.” It had a “Mis-, Dis-, and Mal-information” subcommittee. “Mal-information” is info that is true, but contrary to the preferred narratives of the censor. Trump’s order directly calls such efforts a “guise” to censor speech “in a manner that advanced the Government’s preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate.” Unfortunately, the committee was the tip of the iceberg. The Pentagon and the State Department had their own ties to censorship initiatives.

The same impulse that fostered censorship weaponized Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice(DOJ). Ask pro-life activists facing prison sentences for peaceful demonstrations outside abortion clinics.

Going back further, talk to parents who, FGI discovered, were called racist and transphobic by teachers unions and the Biden Education Department. Or the concerned parents who dared to speak up in school board meetings around the country. Their reward was being called a threat and singled out by the DOJ and FBI. We can be thankful to whoever it was that leaked the FBI memo recommending infiltrating Catholic Mass enthusiast cells.

Trump’s executive order on weaponization will hopefully right some of these wrongs and remind the DOJ and intelligence services that they work for the people. (The president also stripped security clearances from the 51 former intelligence officials who, without evidence, dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop story as a “Russian information operation.”) If nothing else, it will make clear to all, no matter their party, that there are no grey areas and no workarounds when it comes to fundamental constitutional rights.

The federal government has strayed far from its purpose of securing the God-given rights of its citizens. Trump received a mandate from the voters to move it back to the true path, and these orders bring vital reforms. Ideally, Congress will follow suit and pass legislation doing the same, but permanently. As Americans, it is the least we should expect from our government.

Roderick Law is the communications director for the Functional Government Initiative.

From the Brownstone Institute

By  Robert Malone 

Information disorder is a term coined in 2017 in a report titled “Information Disorder Toward an interdisciplinary framework for research and policymaking” that was drafted for the Council of Europe. (Derakhshan & Hossein, 2017). Information disorder refers to the sharing or developing of false information, categorized as misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation. Of interest, the original 2016 election of President Trump triggered the commission of this report.

From the report:

This concept has been further developed by think tanks, academics, NGOs, governments, and others now invested in the vast fact-checking and industrial-censorship complex. We have all become well-versed in these concepts over the past few years.

A 2020 peer-reviewed study took this concept further and made information disorder into a mental health condition.

Abstract: 

Many of us may be unknowingly suffering from information disorder syndrome. It is more prevalent due to the digitized world where the information flows to every individual’s phone, tablet and computer in no time. Information disorder syndrome is the sharing or developing of false information with or without the intent of harming and they are categorized as misinformation, disinformation and malinformation.

The severity of the syndrome is categorized into three grades. Grade 1 is a milder form in which the individual shares false information without the intent of harming others. Grade 2 is a moderate form in which the individual develops and shares false information with the intent of making money and political gain, but not with the intent of harming people. Grade 3 is a severe form in which the individual develops and shares false information with the intent of harming others.

The management of this disorder requires the management of false information, which is rumor surveillance, targeted messaging and community engagement. 

Repeated sufferers at the Grade 1 level, all sufferers from Grade 2 and 3 levels need psycho-social counseling and sometimes require strong regulations and enforcement to control such information disorder. 

The most critical intervention is to be mindful of the fact that not all posts in social media and news are real, and need to be interpreted carefully.

From this paper, the idea of “information disorder syndrome” quickly jumped into the lexicon of both the censorship-industrial complex and the mental health industry. It is important to note that the terms syndrome, disease, and mental disorders are often used interchangeably. In this case, it has been determined by organizations such as First Draft and the Aspen Institute that the way to cure this syndrome is to stop the flow of misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation online.

Is it just a matter of time before the American Psychiatric Association puts this new “syndrome” into the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)?

Is this a possibility?

The American Psychological Association is at least considering how to fit “information disorder” or even “information disorder syndrome” into their modalities. The APA has developed a consensus statement report on fighting health misinformation, which we taxpayers paid for. The CDC paid the APA $2 million for this project.

Next up will be the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) developing a funding program to research how to cure or manage this new mental health disorder; considered a new syndrome because of the pernicious tendrils of the internet.

As information disorder syndrome is not a formally recognized mental health condition yet, so far, specific NIMH funding has been absent. However, suppose information disorder syndrome continues to evolve by the medical establishment into a mental health condition. In that case, it is conceivable that NIMH could support studies in the future, particularly for the “sufferers from grade 2 and 3 levels who need psycho-social counseling and sometimes require strong regulations and enforcement to control such information disorder.”

This is yet another example of how the government can and has previously exerted control over individuals. What happens when the APA stigmatizes people who have contrarian views or lifestyles or posts mis, dis or mal-information repeatedly online? The APA has a long history of discriminating and labeling categories of people who differ from the norm, such as when being gay became a mental health disorder in the 1950s.

This lasted for decades, and the APA endorsed many medical treatments such as surgical interventions, including castrations, vasectomies, hysterectomies, and lobotomies, drug therapies (including aversion therapy, which included inducing nausea, vomiting, or paralysis when exposed to same-sex erotic images or thoughts) and even chemical castration, sexual depressants and stimulants, LSD, estrogen and testosterone and also electroconvulsive therapy—which involved administering electric shocks to patients.

Taking this back to the topic at hand, making information disorder a syndrome affecting the individual allows the state through the medical and insurance industries to step in and force the individual to conform to societal norms. As shown in the example above, this is within the realm of possibilities.

Is this a future that is going to happen? Who knows, but it could. And we have to be prepared for this future manifesting in various planning stages. This is why terms such as “information disorder” and “information disorder syndrome” are being propagated throughout new media and must be rejected at all levels.

”Free speech is the most pragmatic tool we have for ascertaining truth. Only by examining all sides of an issue can the truth be chiseled out like a statue out of marble. But the underlying reality is that there can be many truths; we each have our own experiences, values, mores, and life. That is the beauty and wonder of being an individual. There can be no free speech without free and open access to ideas, knowledge, truths, and untruths. Without free speech, we are little more than slaves.

We must defend all speech—whether untrue, hateful, or intolerable, as that is the only way to protect our rights and abilities to understand the world. As soon as free speech is restricted, that restriction will be used to sway public opinion. As soon as one person can be defined as a heretic for uttering words, then soon everyone opposing the “officially approved” side of an issue will be labeled as a heretic. The next logical step will be for the state to define acts of heresy as criminal offenses. As soon as governments and those in power can sway public opinion by restricting free speech, democracy and even our republic of United States will be lost.”

(From “PsyWar: Enforcing the New World Order”)

Republished from the author’s Substack

Author

Robert Malone

Robert W. Malone is a physician and biochemist. His work focuses on mRNA technology, pharmaceuticals, and drug repurposing research.