Fox News hosts were up in arms on Thursday over the Department of Homeland Security’s announcement of a newly formed Disinformation Governance Board.
The board will address disinformation and misinformation surrounding migrants and the southern border wall, Russia’s war on Ukraine, and COVID-19 vaccines, among other things, DHS says. Or, as Tucker Carlson characterized it, referencing George Orwell’s 1984, the “Ministry of Truth” will be “giving law enforcement power to punish people who think the wrong things.”
Such rhetoric was plentiful throughout the primetime hours. President Joe Biden “needs to make certain that nobody else can talk because if you were to hear the truth, you might not obey,” Carlson ranted while a chyron blared: “Disinformation Is Anything The Left Disagrees With.”
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Brian Kilmeade and Sean Hannity also referenced Orwell’s dystopian novel.
“Orwell’s book was meant as a warning to the world that this kind of society could become reality… if the wrong people were in charge,” Kilmeade began his monologue while filling in for Jesse Watters during the 7 p.m. time slot. “But it looks like the Biden administration is taking Orwell's work not as a warning but as their own manual.”
Kilmeade, like Carlson throughout the week, argued that Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter has liberals very concerned.
Democrats “have lost their grip over the one thing that helped them win in 2020 more than anything else, perhaps: control over Big Tech,” Kilmeade said. “So now they’re desperate and they’re willing to do anything to hold on to this power… even if it means creating a state-led censorship division.”
Hannity also called the disinformation board the “Ministry of Truth.”
Democrats “don’t seem to care about the First Amendment—only when it perfectly aligns with their own values,” Hannity said. The DHS board, he added, “is wrong, it is creepy, it is dangerous, it is 1984-ish, and it is yet another example that shows the Democrats’ real problem is with the concept of freedom itself.”
Hannity also made the incompatible claim that liberals simultaneously want to revive the Federal Communications Commission’s fairness doctrine and they want no room for disagreement.
“Democrats yearn for the days of the fairness doctrine,” Hannity said. “They want to shut talk radio down. They want Fox News out of business. They want Republicans run out of town. They want a world where there is no dissent.”
