Truth, Inverted
Trump wants to decide what is true and what is not. This is by design. As it is for all autocrats.
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ALEX’S WEEKLY RANT
Well, that’s it, folks. We’re in it. There’s nothing to do but go through it. And what a slog it is going to be.
This week, I want to focus on the inversion of truth. This has been building for years, but it is going to get much worse very quickly, as I warned a few weeks ago.
It is through the inversion of truth that Russian interference in our elections became the “Russia Hoax,” that Trump’s loss in 2020 became “the stolen election,” and that a violent insurrection and attempted self-coup became “a day of love.”
Seriously, this is a good time to go read George Orwell’s 1984.
Among his first acts, Trump signed an executive order titled “Holding Former Government Officials Accountable For Election Interference And Improper Disclosure of Sensitive Information.” The EO strips security clearances from what he calls “the Dirty 51,” a group of former intelligence officials who warned in an open letter, correctly, that narratives surrounding Hunter Biden’s laptop were likely part of a Russian influence operation. (Again, what they warned in their letter proved to be correct, no matter what Trump and his minions tell you. For background, because it is way too complicated to provide a simple summary, see
’s post on it here and my post about how the Biden/Burisma corruption story originated with Russian intelligence here.)
Trump hates these 51 because they disrupted his plan to paint Joe Biden as corrupt. The executive order orders their security clearances to be stripped and calls on the director of national intelligence and the director of CIA to report to the White House about any other “inappropriate activities” related to the letter. The EO lists each of the 51 individually, by name.
At the same time, Trump pardoned or commuted the sentence of everyone who had been charged for their actions attacking the Capitol on January 6, 2021, including people who had been convicted of seditious conspiracy and others who had violently attacked law enforcement officers.
With those two acts, heroes (the 51 intelligence officers) became criminals and criminals (the January 6ers) became heroes.
The inversion of truth is only beginning.
As I warned, Trump also signed an executive order aimed at stopping speech that he doesn’t like (mostly because it might help society hold him accountable) under the guise of “free speech.” A rather cynical maneuver.
Titled “Restoring Freedom Of Speech And Ending Federal Censorship,” the EO declares in its first section that the Biden administration:
“trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech that the Federal Government did not approve. Under the guise of combatting ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and ‘malinformation,’ the Federal Government infringed on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens across the United States in a manner that advanced the Government’s preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate.”
The EO then calls on the government to investigate whether the Biden administration did exactly that which the EO already declared the Biden administration did, which seems a little like they’ve already determined the outcome.
To be clear: the Biden administration did not infringe on anyone’s free speech (as courts have decided). Furthermore, the EO does not address any other segment of the government for possibly infringing on people’s free speech rights. Conveniently, for example, it does not aim to protect anyone from Congress putting pressure on free speech rights, even though a congressional committee led by GOP Rep. Jim Jordan did pressure researchers who were studying misinformation and disinformation.
Those researchers were pointing out that manipulation of the information system is bad for democracy but great for autocratic movements. Apparently, government pressure to curb the speech of such researchers is A-Ok! I wonder why. For an excellent in-depth analysis of this EO, see this article from Just Security.
This is actually a pretty sick and perverted EO, because it will be used by Trump to do exactly what he accuses Biden of having done (which, again, Biden did not actually do): to exert government pressure on people to get them to moderate their speech out of fear. That is: under the guise of protecting free speech, Trump and his minions will actually censor speech they don’t like.
Those 51 intelligence officers? Their open letter was free speech. They are now being threatened (i.e. coerced) by Trump.
Those 1,600 January 6th rioters? They are criminals, found guilty by a jury of their peers. They are now pardoned by Trump.
Up is down and black is white as we fall deeper into the rabbit hole.
Rewriting January 6th
Trump is not alone in inverting the truth. On Wednesday, Speaker Mike Johnson announced the creation of a new subcommittee to investigate the investigation of January 6th. The stated purpose of this new investigation? “Exposing the false narratives peddled by” the original January 6th Committee, which placed blame for that day on Trump.
I wonder if Speaker Johnson’s son’s Covenant Eyes app buzzes every time Johnson fellates Trump.
As nearly 1,600 criminals began streaming out of their prison cells, judges who helped put them there in the first place did manage to exercise their free speech rights, slamming Trump for his attempt to rewrite what we all know happened that day.
Trump’s pardons “cannot whitewash the blood, feces, and terror that the mob left in its wake,” said U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, adding, “The historical record established by those proceedings [related to January 6th defendants] must stand, unmoved by political winds, as a testament and as a warning.”
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly wrote, “What occurred that day is preserved for the future through thousands of contemporaneous videos, transcripts of trials, jury verdicts, and judicial opinions analyzing and recounting the evidence through a neutral lens. Those records are immutable and represent the truth, no matter how the events of January 6 are described by those charged or their allies.”
Will Trump and his minions try to purge those records, too? Or will they simply convince enough people not to believe what they saw? As Orwell wrote: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
We’ve discussed many times here and in my Foreign Influence Operations course how a skewed information environment enables autocratic regimes. Rule of law requires a shared understanding of truth. Equality before the law simply doesn’t function without it. Trump is already showing us he plans to be the final arbiter of what is legal and what is not, what is true and what is not. He will use this skewed version of reality to consolidate his power. He already is.
THE WEEK’S LINKS
A roundup of things you should be reading
RUSSIAN FUCKERY IN THE SEA
Russian spy ship entered UK waters (Politico)
Intentional Or Not, the Shadow Fleet Is a Problem (
)Alex Finley is a former officer of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, where she served in West Africa and Europe. She writes and teaches about terrorism, disinformation / covert influence, and oligarch yachts. Her writing has appeared in Slate, Reductress, Funny or Die, POLITICO, The Center for Public Integrity, and other publications. She has spoken to the BBC, MSNBC, CNN, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, France24, and numerous other media outlets. She was also invited once to speak at Harvard, which she now tells everyone within the first ten seconds of meeting them. She is the author of the Victor Caro series, satirical novels about the CIA. Before joining the CIA, Alex was a journalist, covering Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, and the Department of Energy. She reported on issues related to national security, intelligence, and homeland security. Did she mention she was invited to speak at Harvard?
I agree with most everything written. However, an objective analysis of how we arrived here must consider the root cause. “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” The Democrats denied the very obvious fact the southern border was a major problem, a National Security problem. They failed to acknowledge that inflation was crippling families. And they asked us to accept that gender is a social construct as fact. Yes, the Party asked us to reject the evidence of our eyes, the Democratic party. The populace rejected the Democratic platform. The Republicans were all that was left. The Democratic platform was so weak, that the people, the citizens, had no choice but to vote for a narcissistic, sociopath and convicted felon. We deserve our fate.
It is frustrating watching Trump et al take down the USA and Putin win in Ukraine. Hopefully NATO minus the US adjusts to deny Putin any win. I cannot but hope that the global forces of good rise up to get rid of felon Trump and his good friend war criminal Putin. Thank you for your insight.