Following Christopher Wray’s failure to define the term “disinformation” this week, freelance journalist Glenn Greenwald blasted the FBI director.
Representative Mike Johnson (R-LA) asked for an exact definition of the term during Wray’s testimony before the House Judicial Committee, and Wray seemed to rebuff the request.
“The evidence demonstrates that you, your organization, and those who work directly for you blocked conservative-leaning free speech on issues such as the laptop, the lab-leak theory regarding COVID-19’s origin, the efficacy of masks and COVID-19 lockdowns along with vaccinations, speech concerning election integrity in the presidential election in 2020, the security when voting by postal mail, even parody regarding the president himself, and unfavorable posts concerning the economy,” according to Johnson.
He said, “The FBI ordered the social media sites to remove such content from the internet if it originated from conservative sources. They concealed their actions behind the pretense of ‘disinformation.’ What exactly is misinformation, please?”
“What I am able to tell you is that our concentration is not on misinformation, generally speaking,” Wray said in response to the query.
Johnson retaliated, but Wray steadfastly argued that the only “disinformation” under discussion came from “malign foreign actors” while omitting to define the term.
“Disinformation is a bulls***, invented term with no definite definition, which is why FBI Director Chris Wray is unable to define it even though that is the foundation for the FBI’s push campaign on Big Tech to suppress Americans. That is what gives it strength (much like ‘terrorism’),” Greenwald said on Twitter.
Greenwald continued by saying that the word’s ambiguity and seeming lack of a clear meaning was a feature rather than a flaw.
“There are many words that have no true, established meaning other than how people in positions of authority decide to use them on an as-needed basis. ‘Terrorism,’ ‘Hate speech,’ and ‘Disinformation.’ Their purposeful vagueness is what makes them vulnerable to exploitation,” he said.
“Despite how one defines ‘disinformation,’ it is undeniably true that the FBI has been and remains one of the most active disseminators of it. The same is valid for the corporate press and the charlatans that they have dubbed “disinformation experts.” Greenwald summed up.
