Free Republic

I wish I could go through a day without having to reference Orwell and Huxley when observing how the ruling class is able to manipulate, subjugate, and propagandize the willfully ignorant masses through lies, deceptions, disinformation, and fear. But here we are, living through a dystopian nightmare blending the worst aspects of Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World.

The term “gun violence” has been deliberately inculcated into the public debate over the last 20 years. It is common in news articles. It has been used in numerous court briefs. It appears in court decisions at the appellate level and in amicus briefs to the Supreme Court. George Orwell, in the novel 1984, explained how language can be structured to eliminate and curtail thought.“Gun violence” is an Orwellian term designed to structure and limit debate to pre-determined solutions. It is designed to hamper the ability to think about reality in certain ways. The purpose of Orwellian structuring of language...

A British journalist has been arrested by UK police for allegedly posting a “grossly offensive message” online. Officers from the UK’s Surrey Police force arrested journalist Caroline Farrow at her home. According to Farrow, police forced their way into her home, without a warrant, and raided the property. The officers reportedly seized Farrow’s electronic devices, took her into custody, and questioned her at Guildford Police Station. Farrow was later released but remains under investigation. The mother of five has denied posting the messages, however. She says that she was falsely accused of posting messages that were written by other people....

Two journalists surface today with two different aspects to the same big picture story. First, Julie Kelly notes the DOJ is using social media chat messages as evidence in court against J6 detainees: “DOJ and Big Tech are working seamlessly to excavate private messages and info from deleted accounts to use as incriminating evidence for J6ers.” (link) Second, Miranda Devine is writing in the New York Post about Facebook spying on private messages to identify people who questioned the outcome of the 2020 election (link) This ‘surveillance system‘ has been of great interest to CTH for several years, in part...

Yellen, who spoke following a tour of the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, touted the Democrat-led Inflation Reduction Act, the bipartisan infrastructure law and the CHIPS and Science Act as boons to the manufacturing sector and job growth. - - - Her speech came as Democrats aim to highlight their economic successes ahead of the midterm elections in November, which will determine whether Republicans can retake one or both chambers of Congress. President Joe Biden will travel to Ohio on Friday to promote the opening of an Intel semiconductor manufacturing facility.

SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — An individual who was arrested and taken into custody has a suspected case of monkeypox, the San Francisco Sheriff’s Office said in an email to KRON4 on Friday. The unidentified person will be in isolation in accordance with San Francisco Department of Public Health’s quarantine recommendation. The Sheriff’s Office said it has protocols to ensure that the infected individual is kept safe and does not infect others. No other information was provided on the infected individual.

“We need the tech companies to really jump in” One of Joe Biden’s senior advisors told a reporter this week that social media companies should be cracking down on and censoring anyone who speeds information critical of the administration’s so called ‘green energy transition’. National climate advisor Gina McCarthy made the comments in an interview with a reporter for Axios, stating “Now it’s not so much denying the problem. What the [fossil fuel] industry is now doing is seeding doubt about the costs associated with [green energy] and whether they work or not.” She continued, “We need the tech companies...

George Orwell’s novella ”Animal Farm” is regarded as one of the great books of Western literature. Orwell’s allegory reveals its epiphany when the pigs, symbols of the Communist ruling class, revise it’s seventh commandment from “All animals are equal” to “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” Meanwhile the Marxist-affiliated group, Black Lives Matter, is a prime example of life imitating art. Reports that BLM has $42 million in assets, while going on real estate spending sprees for mansions, stock market purchases and other luxuries, should raise the interest of the IRS and other law...

Top House Republicans are demanding answers from the FBI after court-ordered information came to light showing that the federal agency had collected the information of over 3 million Americans without a warrant. In a May 25 letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Mike Turner (R-Ohio) asked Wray to explain why his agency had wiretapped and gathered personal information on over 3.3 million Americans without a warrant (pdf). Limited authority to gather foreign intelligence information is granted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Specifically, section 702 of the bill says: “the Attorney General (AG) and...

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) on Wednesday announced plans to create a police unit designed to, in part, combat “hate speech” in the wake of the tragic shooting in Buffalo, promising to “confront this epidemic head-on.” “We’re proposing a comprehensive plan to combat domestic terrorism, strengthen state gun laws, & investigate social media platforms promoting violent extremism,” Hochul announced Wednesday. In wake of the racist act of terror in Buffalo, New York will lead the charge to confront this epidemic head-on,” she added:

Should people be tracked and put in prison for spreading what the powers that be deem as "misinformation"? A former reporter for the Fox News Channel thinks it might be time for that. Carl Cameron, the former chief political correspondent at Fox News, made the stunning remark during an interview Tuesday with MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace, as the topic centered on the political ideology of mass shooters. "What happens at Fox News when something like this happens?" Wallace asked Cameron. "I can't even imagine. It's partly why I ended up gettin' out of there," Cameron responded. "It really is kind...

If George Orwell had reduced The Three Slogans of the Party in Nineteen Eighty-Four to three words, he might have chosen Peace, Freedom, and Strength. But the absence of sentiments implied by these concepts would have left readers puzzled and angry. Orwell was too honest for this subterfuge and too clever, as well; hence, he launched his dystopian account with a pair of beguiling contradictions that require explanation, and an adage that applies to every totalitarian system. Thus, War is Peace means that conflict “eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and…helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a...

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Sunday pledged the White House's new Disinformation Governance Board will not be used to monitor American citizens, despite mounting Republican concerns that it will be a tool for censorship and surveillance. 'There are people in the department who have a diverse range of views, and they’re incredibly dedicated to the mission,' he said when pledging the board will not step on free speech. Mayorkas also defended the board's new head Nina Jankowicz, a Russian disinformation expert who previously advised the Ukrainian government, from a slew of Republican accusations of hyperpartisanship. He lauded her as...

Is this some of that disinformation the Biden administration is talking about? Jen Psaki on Friday twice claimed that the Biden administration’s Orwellian and ominous new Disinformation Governance Board isn’t really new at all, and in fact, was started not by Old Joe or his DHS hatchet man, Alejandro Mayorkas, but by one Donald J. Trump. Psaki delivered this whopper with a clear tone of What are all you racist, redneck, MAGA-hat wearing yahoos getting all upset about? This was all your guy’s idea. She offered no evidence, and there doesn’t seem to be any for her to have offered....

WASHINGTON, D.C.—In its first official act, the new DHS Government Disinformation Board ruled today that all criticism of the Government Disinformation Board is disinformation. This comes in response to sharp criticism from conservatives, which they say is untrue and unwarranted. “The new board has barely begun its work and already many have jumped to the entirely unwarranted conclusion that it will be used to quash free speech," said DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. "This could not be further from the truth, as everyone in this country has the right to say how much they support and agree with the Biden administration....

The Biden administration is freaking out over the truth being exposed. They are now launching a “Disinformation Governance Board” to go after what they claim is misinformation. The group will be specifically focusing on irregular migration and Russia.

Former President Barack Obama in a major speech on Thursday called for more regulation of social media content, in order to diminish “disinformation.” The former president delivered a speech on the issue at Stanford University after spending months studying the subject.

When the U.S. security state announces that Big Tech's centralized censorship power must be preserved, we should ask what this reveals about whom this regime serves. A group of former intelligence and national security officials on Monday issued a jointly signed letter warning that pending legislative attempts to restrict or break up the power of Big Tech monopolies — Facebook, Google, and Amazon — would jeopardize national security because, they argue, their centralized censorship power is crucial to advancing U.S. foreign policy. The majority of this letter is devoted to repeatedly invoking the grave threat allegedly posed to the U.S....

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. George Orwell, Politics and the English LanguageRep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, a member of the progressive “squad,” recently accused those who disagree with student debt cancellation of "policy violence." That is, to disagree with the left now is “violence.” This kind of linguistic legislation by the left is now common. Words mean whatever they want them to mean in order to achieve their far-left goals. Pressley’s statement is also an implied threat. Since violence is justified in response to violence, Pressley is letting American’s know...

I remember when 1984 rolled around, with the Cold War still going in high gear (in fact higher than ever after Reagan correctly called the Soviet Union “an evil empire”), and it was natural that the literary world would mark the occasion with a callback to George Orwell’s 1984. The anti-anti-Communist left at the time labored mightily to downplay or distract from Orwell’s anti-Communist message, offering convoluted takes about how 1984 was “really about us” in the democratic West. These were snortworthy takes, to be sure, but right now it is appearing that Orwell’s description of the tyrannical drive to...