Disinformation, American style (3)

In its lead editorial this morning the Wall Street Journal turns its attention to President Obama’s performance at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics/Atlantic Disinformation Conference this week. The editorial is headlined “Barack Obama rewrites his Russia history.” It opens this way:

“As somebody who grappled with the incursion into Crimea and the eastern portions of Ukraine, I have been encouraged by the European reaction [this time],” Mr. Obama said at an event in Chicago. “Because in 2014, I often had to drag them kicking and screaming to respond in ways that we would have wanted to see from those of us who describe ourselves as Western democracies.”

As for Mr. Putin, the former U.S. President purports to be surprised by the Russian leader’s brutality. “I don’t know that the person I knew is the same as the person who is now leading this charge. He was always ruthless. You witnessed what he did in Chechnya, he had no qualms about crushing those whom he considered a threat. That’s not new. For him to bet the farm in this way—I would not have necessarily predicted from him five years ago.”

Mr. Obama managed to say all this with a straight face while speaking at an event about “disinformation” in politics.

Isn’t it ironic? It’s a helluva lot more ironic than anything Alanis Morrisette came up with in the song of that title. Chicago Thinker co-founder and managing editor Evita Duffy homed in on the point this way:

Have you ever wondered what it would feel like to attend a fire prevention speech delivered by an arsonist? Or perhaps a child safety seminar led by a pedophile? Well, that’s exactly what it felt like Wednesday during the University of Chicago’s “Conference on Disinformation and Erosion of Democracy,” featuring some of the greatest promulgators of disinformation and illiberalism in American history.

Former President Barack Obama had the nerve to help open the event, although his administration famously spied on the Donald Trump campaign with a secret court warrant backed by the Hillary Clinton campaign-funded Christopher Steele dossier which, in an ironic twist, was the product of Russian disinformation. Democrats used this disinformation to repeatedly smear President Trump and undermine the integrity of the 2016 election.

Former chief advisor to the Obama administration David Axelrod moderated two of Wednesday’s discussions. To this day, Axelrod still has the gall to repeat the debunked Russian collusion hoax. He even repeated it Wednesday.

Duffy’s excellent column adds this salient point: “The speaker lineup makes things clear: the conference seeking to combat ‘disinformation’ does just the opposite. It celebrates some of America’s biggest liars as they spread more lies.” Duffy observes that Obama et al. long to control the means of knowledge. As she puts it, they want to suppress “inconvenient information.” Read the whole thing here.

Obama peddled the revisionist history that is deconstructed in the Journal editorial in “a keynote conversation” with Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg late Wednesday afternoon. As the ladies and gentlemen of the Chicago Thinker exposed the new meaning of “disinformation” on offer at the conference, Goldberg did not take it well. What a cretin. They are to be congratulated for getting under his skin.

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