The4PM

WHAT HAPPENED

The Department of Homeland Security has put the launch of the disinformation board on hold following a “disastrous” rollout and backlash from conservatives and others, The Washington Post first reported Wednesday.

• The Post’s tech columnist, Taylor Lorenz, broke the news, citing “multiple employees at DHS.”
• DHS decided to shut down the board Monday, and the would-be executive director, Nina Jankowicz, drafted a resignation letter by Tuesday morning, per Lorenz.
• But on Tuesday night, DHS instead suspended its work on “mis-, dis- and mal-information” and gave Jankowicz the opportunity to stay on while the fate of the board was determined.

DHS confirmed to CNN later Wednesday that the disinformation board was on pause and its work was under review.

• Jankowicz said she was resigning because she was unsure the board had a future after the “debacle” of the past few weeks.

WHAT THEY’RE SAYING

While critics celebrated the collapse of the so-called Ministry of Truth, DHS officials, and in turn Lorenz, framed the story as further proof of the need for just such a government regulator.

WaPo has the scoop that the Disinformation Board is getting shut down and, surprise, this is the framing pic.twitter.com/6qny6Ng7xT

— Alex Griswold (@HashtagGriswold) May 18, 2022

“The Board’s purpose has been grossly mischaracterized; it will not police speech,” a DHS spokesperson told Lorenz. “Quite the opposite, its focus is to ensure that freedom of speech is protected.”

• “The irony is that Nina’s role was to come up with strategies for the department to counter this type of campaign, and now they’ve just succumbed to it themselves,” said an anonymous person “with knowledge of the situation.” “They didn’t even fight, they just rolled over.”
• “We’re going to need another Nina down the road,” an anonymous DHS staffer said. “And anyone who takes that position is going to be vulnerable to a disinformation campaign or attack.

“Jankowicz’s experience is a prime example of how the right-wing Internet apparatus operates, where far-right influencers attempt to identify a target, present a narrative and then repeat mischaracterizations across social media and websites with the aim of discrediting and attacking anyone who seeks to challenge them,” wrote Lorenz of widespread mockery and criticism of the 33-year-old disinformation expert.

• “It also shows what happens when institutions, when confronted with these attacks, don’t respond effectively.”
• Lorenz did not specify which references to Jankowicz’s work were allegedly “right-wing disinformation.”

SAME ENERGY

Lorenz, 43, herself a frequent target of derision on social media, broke down crying last month while telling MSNBC about her “PTSD” from “online harassment.”

• She had previously complained in public that her former employer, The New York Times, didn’t do enough to support her “brand” or to defend her from critics.

WHAT HE SAID

According to Broome, Payton Gendron, the suspect in Saturday’s allegedly racist mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, is not “mentally ill,” “troubled” or “just a misguided teen.”

• “The truth is that he’s simply hateful in the same way that right-wing politics have instructed him to be,” Broome wrote.
• Both white supremacists and “popular right-wing conservatives” fear “losing the top spot” in America’s racial hierarchy, he suggested, and that fear “has mutated into an ideology known as the great replacement theory.”

Broome went on to say that the “same sort of thinking about race and birthrates now dominates the Supreme Court” and explains the recently leaked draft majority opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, a 1973 decision creating a constitutional right to abortion.

• “The leaked draft opinion isn’t about protecting babies. It is about protecting Whiteness. Specifically, White babies … The Supreme Court draft decision is about protecting what conservatives believe is a diminishing demographic and their most valuable resource: White people,” he said.
• “Critical race theory frightens conservatives for a related reason. They imagine that, if schools teach the real American history, White people will be as hated and reviled as the other races in this country. So, it’s best to teach a redacted version of the story.”

Broome denied that he was “engaging in conspiracy theories,” citing his “lived experience” as a black American as proof of his claims.

• “The real agenda here is to boost White birthrates, because among the biggest fears of conservatives is the fear of being outnumbered. It’s all over Gendron’s lengthy ‘manifesto,'” he concluded.

SAME ENERGY

Many prominent liberals have suggested the Buffalo shooter was a product of systemic anti-black racism, particularly on the right.

• “White people have told people who look like me … ‘It is fine to be a minority. You can do it!,” New York Times columnist Charles Blow said Monday on MSNBC.
• “The moment that white people sense that they can be on the verge of being a minority themselves, many of them are responding with terrorism and killing people.”