Federal Agencies Sending Employees Articles From White Nationalist & Conspiracy Websites For Months
Source: BuzzFeed
An arm of the Justice Department regularly sent summaries and links to articles from an online white nationalist publication over the last year, a BuzzFeed News investigation has found. In addition, similar newsletters sent to the Labor Department, ICE, HUD, and the Department of Homeland Security included links and content from hyperpartisan and conspiracy-oriented publishers.
In daily bulletins about media coverage for the departments Executive Office for Immigration Review, which runs the nations immigration courts, a government contractor sometimes included links to VDare, an anti-Semitic and racist site whose editor who has claimed that American culture is under threat from nonwhite peoples. That contractor, a Dade City, Floridabased company called TechMIS, also compiles newsletters for other agencies, including the Department of Labor, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Office of Housing and Urban Development.
While these newsletters typically shared articles from local and mainstream national news outlets including BuzzFeed News they also regularly delivered content from partisan publications touting anti-immigration rhetoric and conspiracy theories. Among these publications: the Western Journal, a hyperpartisan publisher whose founder once questioned if then-presidential candidate Barack Obama was Muslim, and the Epoch Times, a newspaper associated with the Chinese Falun Gong movement and whose related media properties have backed QAnon, a conspiracy theory claiming a group of high-ranking officials known as the Deep State is subverting President Donald Trumps goals.
On Thursday, BuzzFeed News reported that an immigration judges union sent a letter of complaint to EOIR for its inclusion in an August newsletter of a VDare blog post that attacked its members with anti-Semitic slurs. After publication of that story, an EOIR press secretary said that the Department of Justice condemns Anti-Semitism in the strongest terms and that the post should not have been included. A former senior DOJ official said that the email in question was generated by a third-party vendor that utilizes keyword searches to produce news clippings for staff. It is not reviewed or approved by staff before it is transmitted.
Read more: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/vdare-doj-dol-epoch-times
EveHammond13
(2,855 posts)RockRaven
(15,096 posts)against official policy and/or just embarrassing to be caught doing.
It is the right wing's go-to explanation, not matter how obviously disingenuous: "oops! it was an accident" (followed closely by their second favorite, the old George Costanza "Was that wrong?... I didn't know I couldn't do that." )
Skittles
(153,311 posts)it would have to auto-fill from a previous send, I imagine
Bernardo de La Paz
(49,075 posts)abqtommy
(14,118 posts)and there's so little time...
EveHammond13
(2,855 posts)the DOJ has things they want their lawyers to see --- and it's SO SO important, the DOJ doesn't even read it before it goes out?????
PatrickforO
(14,605 posts)legalizes the use of propaganda by the US government on the American public.
So, no surprise. These people are very much trying to destroy our institutions. Just one more thread being unravelled from the fabric that binds our Republic together.
Duppers
(28,134 posts)WOW!!
PatrickforO
(14,605 posts)Obama wanted, but they did do some things. If you look it up, I believe the sponsors of the amendment are both Republicans.
Lonestarblue
(10,170 posts)Our government is a mess of special interest laws that do not serve the people. It needs a thorough house cleaning, not only of white nationalists and religious extremists but also of bad laws like this one. Heres an article about the propaganda part. https://www.businessinsider.com/ndaa-legalizes-propaganda-2012-5
Plus an excerpt:
Davis defines IO as "the integrated employment of electronic warfare (EW), computer network operations (CNO), psychological operations (PSYOP), military deception (MILDEC), and operations security (OPSEC), in concert with specified supporting and related capabilities, to influence, disrupt, corrupt or usurp adversarial human and automated decision making while protecting our own."
IO are primarily used to target foreign audiences, but Davis cites numerous senior leaders who want to (in the words of Colonel Richard B. Leap) "protect a key friendly center of gravity, to wit US national will" by repealing the Smith-Mundt Act to allow the direct deployment of these tactics on the American public.
patphil
(6,258 posts)A form of official intimidation that has become common in the Trump Administration.
One other comment, I don't think that people who practice Falun Gong want to be associated with the Epoch Times.
The Falun Gong movement is a purely spiritual movement that is based on a moral philosophy of truthfulness, compassion and tolerance.
That is why the Chinese Government banned them, and persecutes them.
They don't want that kind of stuff taking hold in the population.
There may have been a time when the Epoch Times was not a political tool for the right wing, but now they are. The Epoch Times as it is now, is not really in harmony with the philosophy of Falun Gong.
Patrick Phillips
Bernardo de La Paz
(49,075 posts)Kid Berwyn
(15,073 posts)CBP agent just the other day was berating a visiting journalist as a purveyor of fake news.
Mind control. Its a beautiful thing. Not.