Hello from Heathrow. I’m headed back to the US today. Sorry I haven’t posted much this week — I’ve been giving talks in Brussels and in Utrecht, and I’m still trying to absorb how radically my life has changed. I have missed a step or two this week, for sure.

News this week from the world of Soft Totalitarianism: the Biden Administration’s Department of Homeland Security has announced a federal panel to combat “disinformation.” That’s right: the government has taken upon itself the task of instructing the people what’s true and what isn’t. From the Washington Post:

The Department of Homeland Security’s creation of a Disinformation Governance Board has set off a backlash on the right — even as it’s not entirely clear what the perhaps unfortunately named board will do.

Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas mentioned the creation of the board in multiple congressional hearings this week. In one, he linked it to efforts to combat misinformation from human smugglers. In another, he said it would be used to counter Russian cyber and election misinformation: “We have just established a mis- and disinformation governance board in the Department of Homeland Security to more effectively combat this threat, not only to election security but to our homeland security.”

Amid growing anti-censorship fervor on the right, a bevy of Republicans have suggested that the initiative amounts to policing speech. Elon Musk declared it “messed up.” Many on the right likened it to the Ministry of Truth from George Orwell’s book “1984.”

They’ve also questioned the fitness of the board’s executive director, Nina Jankowicz, who has in the past supported Democrats, praised efforts to crack down on coronavirus misinformation on social media and expressed skepticism about the provenance of Hunter Biden’s laptop.

About Nina Jankowicz:

When a Minister of Truth came to America of course it was going to be a smug, condescending white woman. And of course she looks and sounds exactly like this. pic.twitter.com/5fcFeDNex4

— Chadwick Moore (@Chadwick_Moore) April 29, 2022

Something similar is going on now in the UK:

The Culture Secretary @NadineDorries just admitted that a totally opaque “disinformation unit” in government works day in day out to *extrajudicially* remove lawful speech the government doesn’t like from the internet.

The unit should be shut down. Now!pic.twitter.com/2cXF2AFgmu

— Silkie Carlo (@silkiecarlo) January 6, 2022

The ruling class really is setting itself up for a takedown. Look at this from Nellie Bowles’s TGIF newsletter, in which she comments on the progressive establishment freakout over Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter:

The White House is furious. Here’s Jen Psaki on the acquisition: “The president has long been concerned about the power of large social media platforms, the power they have over our everyday lives, has long argued that tech platforms must be held accountable for the harms they cause.” Senator Ed Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, announced that he wants to pass laws to control social media company algorithms to promote justice: “We must pass laws to protect privacy and promote algorithmic justice for internet users.” Algorithmic justice!

It goes without saying that the mainstream media is in an uproar, but some of the claims are wild enough to still surprise. MSNBC host Joy Reid claimed the acquisition is an effort to bring apartheid to America: “Elon Musk, I guess he misses the old South Africa in the 80s. He wants that back,” she said. On The View, Sunny Hostin said Musk only wants white men to have free speech: “So when Elon Musk says, ‘wow, this is about free speech,’ seems to me that it’s about free speech of straight white men.” This was echoed by grifter/activist Shaun King, who said: “It’s about white power. The man was raised in Apartheid by a white nationalist.” The bestselling author Anand Giridharadas talked about the need for “equitable speech” rather than plain-old free speech. Times Columnist Charles Blow announced he would quit the platform in protest. Bloomberg’s Max Chafkin came out swinging: “Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter has sealed his bond with the American right.”

The Times ran raging op-eds one after another like “Twitter Under Elon Musk Will Be a Scary Place.” Funny how no one is upset that Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post. Or that Marc Benioff owns Time Magazine. Or that Laureen Powell Jobs owns The Atlantic.

But my absolute favorite was MSNBC’s Ari Melber warning about what might happen with Musk at the helm: “You could secretly ban one party’s candidate . . . secretly turn down the reach of their stuff and turn up the reach of something else and the rest of us might not even find out about it until AFTER the election.” Which is . . . sort of what Twitter already did.

→ Brief list of things that could get you kicked off Twitter over the past few years:

• Saying Covid-19 was made in a lab.
• Saying cloth masks don’t work that well.
• Saying vaccinated people can spread Covid.
• Misgendering someone, even in satire.
• Reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop.
• And my personal favorite: Saying the phrase “learn to code” derisively to someone.

Bowles goes on to catalog the hysterical, borderline-personality-disorder meltdown within Twitter, as the wokesters come to terms with the fact that a Bad Man is coming to take away their censorious wubbies.

Meanwhile, did you see the Madison Cawthorn gay story? Holy Elton John’s tea cozy! The Millennial right-wing tool has allegedly had a surprising person fiddling with his tool:

New video of scandal-ridden GOP Rep Madison Cawthorn having his crotch felt by a close male friend and staff member is at the center of a complaint calling for an investigation into him and filed with the Office of Congressional Ethics today, DailyMail.com can reveal.

The extraordinary footage, obtained exclusively by DailyMail.com and seen here for the first time today, shows Cawthorn, 26, in a car with his close aide and his scheduler Stephen Smith, 23.

Cawthorn sits in the driver’s seat apparently filmed by Smith as he adopts an exaggerated accent and says, ‘I feel the passion and desire and would like to see a naked body beneath my hands.’

The camera then pans back to Smith who says, ‘Me too’ as Cawthorn can be heard laughing. Smith then films himself reaching his hand over and into Cawthorn’s crotch.

You gotta read the whole thing to see the sexy comments on the sketchy Venmo payments the embattled GOP Congressman made to Smith — who lived at home with Cawthorn during Cawthorn’s brief failed marriage. Well, golly, I’m sure there’s a good explanation for how the clean-cut, all-American, family-values conservative got himself into this mess.

OK, I need to focus on some more serious stuff. But let me toss you some more Dreherbait:

In the total state breakfast cereal grooms your children pic.twitter.com/efG8teapnv

— Auron MacIntyre (@AuronMacintyre) April 29, 2022

In Live Not By Lies speeches, I’ve used this example — the transgender children’s propaganda cereal box — to explain the nature of soft totalitarianism. From the book:

One of contemporary progressivism’s commonly used phrases—the personal is political—captures the totalitarian spirit, which seeks to infuse all aspects of life with political consciousness. Indeed, the Left pushes its ideology ever deeper into the personal realm, leaving fewer and fewer areas of daily life uncontested. This, warned Arendt, is a sign that a society is ripening for totalitarianism, because that is what totalitarianism essentially is: the politicization of everything.

Infusing every aspect of life with ideology was a standard aspect of Soviet totalitarianism. Early in the Stalin era, N. V. Krylenko, a Soviet commissar (political officer), steamrolled over chess players who wanted to keep politics out of the game.

“We must finish once and for all with the neutrality of chess,” he said. “We must condemn once and for all the formula ‘chess for the sake of chess,’ like the formula ‘art for art’s sake.’ We must organize shockbrigades of chess-players, and begin immediate realization of a Five-Year Plan for chess.”

Our ruling class is so obsessed with LGBT that it can’t even let the kids eat a bowl of damned breakfast cereal without being groomed. Mickey Mouse, Tony the Tiger, and Toucan Sam — groomers all. Gives new meaning to Froot Loops, I tell you what.