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Former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D) excoriated the Biden administration’s Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice for leveraging their power to punish individuals with dissenting views.
In a keynote address at the Western Conservative Summit in Denver on Saturday, Gabbard warned that the Biden administration’s campaign to fight “misinformation” is actually a veiled attempt to control information.
“One of the latest tactics that they are using, as you well know, is they claim they want to protect us from ‘misinformation,’ protect us from that which they claim is not true,” Gabbard told her audience.
“They do so backed by the most lethal force on Earth, as they appoint themselves as the sole authority and voice of the truth, of what is information.”
“So, they decide what is true and false. They decide what is misinformation and what is information. And those who don’t toe the line are accused of spreading misinformation and being targeted and smeared,” she added.
Gabbard highlighted the DHS’s efforts to frame “misleading narratives” as a domestic terror threat as the pretext to go after its political opposition, such as parents attending school board hearings to condemn critical race theory and gender ideology indoctrination programs.
“Biden’s Department of Homeland Security declared that we are facing a heightened domestic terror threat in this country, based on three factors, the first of which is ‘the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions.’ The number one threat,” Gabbard said.
“They’re the ones who get to decide what are false or misleading narratives – and, therefore, they get to decide who is targeted because of it.”
“You know, Biden’s attorney general charged his domestic terrorist unit with going after people who hold anti-authority views – including parents,” she continued. “Parents who dare to stand up to their boards of education and their schools because they care about their children’s education. Think about the impact of this from a practical standpoint.”
These bad-faith government efforts to control discourse in America threatens the First Amendment and democracy itself, Gabbard argued.
“How do We The People vote to choose a president when we don’t even have the freedom of engaging in a marketplace of ideas, or sharing our opinion, listening to other perspectives, assessing the information that we’ve gathered and making our own informed decision about who deserves the honor and responsibility of serving as commander-in-chief?” she asked.
“We can’t. We can’t do this – as long as we live in a society where we’re surrounded by intimidation and fear of being targeted, being canceled, and having to self-censor so we don’t lose our jobs and our ability to provide for our families,” she concluded.
Gabbard’s remarks come amid a 75-day “pause” on the DHS rollout of its “Disinformation Governance Board”, where the department will review how to make the public more receptive to its Orwellian “Ministry of Truth.”