Here we go again: leftists have shown us again and again that they hate dissent and debate, which are the foundations of any free society. Now the U.K. is heading decisively toward authoritarianism as its crazy-left prime minister, Andy Burnham, has just announced that he plans to establish a "National Centre for Information Defence" in order to fight — you guessed it — "disinformation."
The “National Centre for Information Defence“ is a canny name. It beats Old Joe Biden’s abortive “Disinformation Governance Board” in couching the whole totalitarian move as “defense” (as we spell it in the land of the free and the home of the brave) rather than “governance.” This is intended to give Burnham’s hapless citizenry the impression that what’s being done to them is not more control from the ruling elites, but protection from the evil machinations of deceivers.
Yeah, Andy, the Mafia offered protection, too. Anyway, GB News reported Wednesday that Burnham, “the Prime Minister, addressing the United Nations, announced the centre to improve ‘community cohesion’ and prevent a ‘distorted and untrue narrative about Britain.’” As a result, Burnham “ordered security chiefs to set up the quango, which will detect, attribute and disrupt ‘hostile information attacks’ and ‘deepfakes’ which hurt British interests.”
A “quango” is an organization that receives government financing but is ostensibly an independent group. And we all know that the far-left British government will stay fastidiously out of the affairs of an organization that is charged with stamping out “hostile information attacks” that supposedly “hurt British interests,” now, don’t we?
GB News explained that this new National Centre for Information Defence “is initially being led out of the Office for the Prime Minister and Cabinet, with the new centre working alongside intelligence agencies, Government departments, the police and social media firms.”
What could possibly go wrong, with all those agencies that have nothing but the best interests of the British people at heart running this new center? Surely it will only censor genuine disinformation, and not what the political elites falsely claim is disinformation because it could harm them politically, a la Hunter Biden’s laptop, right?
Burnham insisted that this censorship agency was necessary because there was no "national security without a strong, cohesive society. That’s the starting point for everything we hold dear and everything we want to achieve. But the fact is that it has been under attack." From whom? Russia was the only attacker he focused upon, but once this monster is up and running, what is to prevent the Labour government from using it against the British patriots it smears as “far right”? Why, nothing, of course.
Burnham claimed that Russia was leading an "industrial-scale assault by hostile actors on the information environment.” He asserted that the Russians were using "every means at their disposal to spread lies and disinformation and prey on people's fears." The left is big on stamping out “fear.” They are, after all, relentless crusaders (jihadis?) against “Islamophobia.” They insist that patriots consistently exaggerate the threats of jihad, Sharia, open borders and more in order to exploit people’s “fears.” And so it’s no surprise that British leftists would want a government organ they can use to fight “fear,” by which they mean opposition to their agenda.
Related: What Happens When We Elect People Who Hate America to Congress? This.
"They’ve used bots and fake websites," Burnham thundered on. "Falsified newspaper articles and forged the branding of 28 British organisations – including universities and the BBC. They’ve amplified far right narratives. And we have evidence that they tried to interfere with the 2019 General Election." There you go: they’ve “amplified far right narratives.” And the Conservatives won the 2019 election, so it’s all right to suspect that it was stolen; if anyone suggested that about the 2024 election, which Labour won in a landslide, Burnham and his comrades would react much the way Democrats do at the suggestion that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
Burnham said that Russia was trying to "stoke tensions and unrest in the wake of horrific events," and termed what they were doing "repulsive." No, Mr. Prime Minister. Whatever the Russians may or may not really be doing, what is genuinely repulsive is your attempt to destroy the freedom of speech in one of the lands where it came to its first flowering, and bring Britain’s days as a free society to an end.
Future generations of free Britons, if there are any, will know very well who was really the repulsive one here. But make no mistake: if Burnham manages to pull this off, the U.S. will be next.