Rejections of US ‘Truth Ministry’ Reach Top of Twitter As Musk Calls Proposed DHS Panel ‘Messed Up’

As the establishment's attacks on alternative news outlets ramp up, the new Twitter owner’s condemnation of the Department of Homeland Security’s new “Disinformation Governance Board” was welcomed by independent journalists and free speech advocates alike.

Elon Musk has sharply criticized a proposed new US government panel aimed at regulating Americans’ speech in a post on Twitter Friday, describing the Department of Homeland Security’s “Disinformation Governance Board” as “messed up.”

The new board, which social media users quickly began disparaging as a “Ministry of Truth,” aims to address “coordinate countering misinformation related to homeland security.” At least, that’s according to the new head of the government speech oversight panel, Nina Jenkowicz, whose tweets announcing the board’s commission were met with equal parts outrage and mockery.

Elon Musk on Twitter

© Photo : Twitter/ @elonmusk

Musk first signaled his alarm over the speech regulation panel Thursday night, describing its creation as “discomforting” in reply to a tweet by conservative commentator Steven Crowder. Since then, an array of free speech activists, alternative media outlets, and prominent politicians have expressed their dismay at the body’s establishment.

“Nina Jankowicz, Biden's 'Disinformation Board' Chief, Must Be Placed in an Ankle Monitor,” demanded a particularly fiery National Review headline.

“I assume the creepy new DHS “Disinformation Governance Board” is going to be tasked with spreading disinformation,” wrote US Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) Friday, noting that “the person chosen to lead it suggested, just before the 2020 election,” that “Hunter’s laptop was fake and social media was to blame for the Gov. Whitmer kidnapping plot.

Hundreds of users seized on Jankowicz’s previous suggestion that the notorious laptop belonging to Hunter Biden was a Russian disinformation ploy to suggest that the new “Ministry of Truth” chief had, herself, willingly disseminated disinformation.

Jankowicz also drew major ridicule for a bizarre TikTok video from 2021 which has since gone viral, in which the new disinformation czar refers to herself as “the Mary Poppins of Disinformation” and sings a shrill–albeit extremely enthusiastic–Russian disinformation-themed rendition of “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” The performance was widely pilloried by Twitter users who jeered that the Biden administration had been occupied by “theater kids.”

Elsewhere, The Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal–whose independent outlet was dismissed by Jankowicz as “not a reputable source” in a 2020 tweet that accused the publication’s writers of ‘creating their own hysteria’–condemned Jenkowicz as a “demented karaoke singer moonlighting as the new Minister of Truth.”

In a comment given to Sputnik, Blumenthal greeted the news of Musk’s denunciation of the board with tacit approval, noting: “This initiative is clearly aimed at suppressing alternative media that interfere with the imperatives of her regime change industry, and is a clear attack on the first amendment. It therefore must be neutralized–even if by a transhumanist billionaire like Musk.”