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The Firehose of Falsehood Hits Flynn, Gorka, and King

First they came for General Mike Flynn, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a truth-telling military officer who contradicted the worldview of Max Boot and Jennifer Rubin and David Ignatius and others on the Washington Post payroll.

Then they came for Sebastian Gorka, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not the son of an anti-Nazi Hungarian freedom fighter tortured by the Communists, nor was I someone who had the slightest semblance of the wits to challenge the brain-dead “bipartisan” foreign policy establishment consensus.

Then they came for Steve King, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not an authentic, pro-life conservative representing the people of rural Flyover Country; I was a RINO, terrified to be anywhere near the epithet “white supremacist” even as it was maliciously, libelously splattered all over Steve King.

Then they came for me—

And there was no one left to speak or vote or pour millions of PAC dollars into my consultants’ bank accounts as I and my fellow cowards lost in a landslide to Joe Biden and the supermajorities of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.

Inscribed on the Political Tomb of the Unknown RINO, November 4, 2020 (with apologies to Martin Niemöller)

***

They” are the NeverTrumpers and the Democratic/Corporate Media Complex.

It is now evident that crimes of the foulest were committed not by, but against General Flynn. Everyone now knows he was falsely called a traitor.

It’s also worth remembering that as soon as he was named as the incoming national security adviser, the Left/RINO propaganda machine began calling Flynn a “white supremacist”—a category that had nothing to do either with the content or the context of his long, honorable service in America’s least racist major institution, the Army.

“White supremacist?” General Flynn? It’s patently absurd, but it was one of the first of the many false accusations made against Flynn in an orchestrated campaign.

Sebastian Gorka committed the unforgivable crime of lèse-majesté against the foreign policy establishment. This establishment had comfortably inhabited every corner and crevice of both the Obama administration and the John McCain-Jeb Bush-Marco Rubio ascendancy that feigned opposition to Obama; and it wanted to keep things that way.

Gorka wrote a very sensible book, published in 2016, called Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War. Its style was accessible to a popular audience, while it put forward trenchant criticism of David Petraeus, the hitherto unchallengeable oracle of the pre-Trump, Demo-publican national security consensus.

Until Gorka came along, all Petraeus had to do was belch, and his eructations would be deodorized and reported by Bill Kristol and David Ignatius and NPR and the PBS “NewsHour.” Lazy commentators would lionize Petraeus as the second coming of Thucydides.

Foreign policy fiascoes caused either by Bush-Cheney or Obama-Biden would escape fundamental analysis and criticism. The latest banality uttered by Petraeus would be repeated by the network talking heads and the fattened “fellows” of this or that think tank. From both partisan sides of the Beltway trough, they assured us that nothing needed to change.

Gorka also had written a chapter in a scholarly book published in 2012, Fighting the Ideological War: Winning Strategies from Communism to Islamism. Both his popular and scholarly work are well-reasoned, and the scholarly essay is carefully referenced. In both books, Gorka criticized the Petraeus view that the radical Islamic jihadist threat is essentially a transnational “insurgency” that could be opposed effectively by an expanded application of the “counterinsurgency” tactics proposed in a celebrated, but unoriginal and platitudinous “manual” written years earlier by Petraeus.

Gorka insisted that the beliefs of ISIS, al-Qaeda, and other Islamic jihadist forces needed to be taken seriously. The few who bothered to listen carefully to Gorka and to understand him knew that he was not expressing any sort of bigotry against the Muslim faith nor against its hundreds of millions of devout adherents. Gorka was calling for understanding of the belief system of the jihadists who threaten both the non-Muslim West and the overwhelming majority of Muslims who do not want to live under the jihadists’ notion of a global caliphate.

After President Trump named Gorka to the White House staff, and after Flynn’s brief tenure as national security advisor ended, Gorka was the next to face a disinformation onslaught known by strategic analysts as the “firehose of falsehood” propaganda model.

This model was developed by the Soviet Union and still is used by post-Soviet Russia as well as by numerous other authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. It is in wide use because it is effective. It usually accomplishes irreparable damage to its targets before, if ever, it is halted. The RAND Corporation describes the firehose of falsehood as

  • High-volume and multichannel;
  • Rapid, continuous, and repetitive;
  • Lacking commitment to objective reality; and
  • Lacking commitment to consistency.

The disinformation campaign against Gorka accused him, falsely and without a shred of evidence, of being both an anti-Semite and a white supremacist.

The falsehoods against Gorka were sickening. A well-researched story in the Jerusalem Post demonstrated decisively that Gorka’s attackers have slandered not only Gorka but his deceased father, who had been one of Hungary’s brave anti-Nazi “righteous Gentiles” as well as a patriot tortured for his resistance to Communism.

The barrage was indeed high-volume, multichannel, rapid, continuous and repetitive. It also was lacking in commitment to consistency. Whenever the liars’ lies were exposed, they rapidly changed the subject and asserted, “that’s not what we’re talking about.”

The get-Gorka aggression went on relentlessly until then-chief of staff John Kelly, who was an intellectually shallow follower of Petraeus, came to think a great annoyance would go away if he got rid of Gorka. Gorka left the White House in August 2017.

“White supremacist” is today deployed as “fascist” used to be deployed by the Soviets: Meaninglessly against every non-Communist, a useful “devil term” that is used by totalitarians and other enemies of freedom.

The phony “evidence” purporting to show that Gorka was a white supremacist was a statement he made denouncing white supremacism. Gorka was pointing to the obvious fact that white supremacism simply does not exist anywhere in Congress, in the judiciary, in the executive branch, or in any meaningful forum in the United States. Gorka pointed out the plain truth that white supremacism is an insignificant fringe movement, and he clearly was expressing his deep disdain for white supremacism. But because the Left and the RINOs did not want to hear the truth that white supremacism is a fringe movement, and especially because they were out to destroy Gorka—the truth be damned—they denounced Gorka as a white supremacist!

Representative Steve King (R-Iowa) is also getting the treatment. He has represented the northwestern corner of his state in Congress since 2003. He was a stalwart conservative before the advent of President Trump, and he has been from the beginning of this presidency one of Trump’s core supporters on Capitol Hill.

A bible of the Left, Mother Jones, wrote of 11 U.S. House “Mini-Trumps” it was targeting for defeat in 2018. At the top of the list was Steve King, accused of—what else—white supremacism. Most of the congressmen on Mother Jones’s enemies list were re-elected, including King. For all of their blather about “democracy,” Mother Jones’ editors don’t seem to appreciate the fact that the most conservative members of Congress—those they hate the most—represent conservative constituencies who will reelect them even against Democratic tidal waves.

Close scrutiny of King’s 18 years in Congress turns up no evidence of actions he has taken against African-Americans or other racial minorities. His record most of all has been as a staunch pro-lifer and defender of the traditional family. He has been years ahead of most other Republican congressmen in warning about, and seeking legislation to curb, economic warfare waged against the United States by the Chinese Communist Party.

King has taken a hard line against illegal immigration. He was a leader against illegal immigration for a long time before this issue helped carry Donald Trump to the Republican nomination and the White House. This made him unpopular with the then-dominant and still powerful Wall Street/big corporation wing of the Republican Party.

Like Trump, King sometimes has used harsh and maladroit language when denouncing illegal immigration. I myself have cringed at certain things Trump and King have said, but about whom can that not be said? As citizens of Delaware know all too well, all politicians commit gaffes.

Fair-minded people who are not incurably afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome should have the discernment to know that, whether they like his personality or not, Donald Trump is no “white supremacist.” Neither is Steve King. Truly reasonable people can disagree reasonably with Trump and King’s immigration policies. But no reasonable or honest person can call either man a white supremacist.

Commitment to objective reality is no concern to “firehose of falsehood” propagandists, and so the campaigns against “white supremacists” Trump and King go on and on.

Not only is King not a white supremacist, neither is any other member of Congress. To go further on the point that Sebastian Gorka made with the result that he got smeared as a white supremacist, it is impossible for a white supremacist to get elected to Congress or any high office in our land at this time. Every honest person knows this. Many congressmen, of course, are dishonest, but I am certain that even the dishonest members in their deep cynicism know that Steve King is not a white supremacist. This is simply an epithet that helps King’s enemies to injure him and to injure President Trump.

Calling Flynn, Gorka, King or Trump white supremacists is, in the deepest sense, hate speech. It is libel at its worst. The Jewish people admirably know how to fight and to defend themselves and their ancestors against “blood libel.” It is high time for “right-of-center” Republicans to fight back ferociously against the devastating libels leveled against decent men who may be to the Right of their own positions on the issues.

President Trump polls better among African-American and Hispanic voters than Mitt Romney did in 2012. Common sense suggests that many in these minority communities do not consider Trump’s forceful actions, or even his sometimes harsh rhetoric against illegal immigration, to be racist. To the contrary, they see him as standing up for them.

There is no serious “white power” movement in northwest Iowa. The mere suggestion would be absurd. Northwest Iowa has not, and would not, elect a white supremacist to Congress. The population is heavily conservative, Republican, devoutly religious, and predominantly engaged in the business of producing crops and livestock that feed our nation and much of the world.

King’s good deeds are getting punished by Republicans and Democrats alike.

Because they lack the brains and the guts to recognize that King has been slandered, establishment Republicans have shunned King. House Republicans have covered themselves in shame cutting him off from congressional committee assignments. All of King’s Republican colleagues committed the profound dishonesty of denouncing a colleague whom they know is no more a white supremacist than any one of them. This was Washington cynicism at its disgusting worst—and it happened in my political party.

Republican establishment cynicism against Steve King is arguably worse than the pro-abortion Democrats’ protection of their minstrel-show governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam.

Did anyone notice the pro-abortion Left launch a high-volume, multichannel campaign to take out the racist Northam?

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce hates Trump and King’s immigration policies. It can’t work overtly to elect Biden, so its means for undermining Trump is to try to defeat King and hope that Trump would take that as a lesson to become softer on illegal immigration.

The Chamber, the NeverTrumpers, and assorted RINOs from outside Iowa are pouring enormous sums of money into a primary campaign against King. An ambitious Iowa state senator and his now-rich campaign consultants have accepted their largess.

Unsurprisingly, in the hugely pro-Trump district, King’s foe is campaigning as a “Trump Republican.” This is false on its face. If he really were a Trump Republican, he would not be accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from NeverTrumpers and RINOs, nor would he be running against Steve King. King’s opponent and his RINO financiers are employing another firehose of falsehood.

Another totalitarian method that the Washington establishment and the NeverTrumpers are using against King is a Stalinist tactic called “anti-parasitism.” Under the Soviet Union, persons considered insufficiently Marxist were fired from their jobs. It was illegal not to work, so they were hauled into court for show trials and imprisoned for “parasitism”—failing to work in a workers’ society.

The only discernible distinction that King’s RINO opponent makes in his campaign is to say that he will stand for everything that Trump and King stand for, but that he will be more effective because, unlike King, he will be a member of House committees.

Does anyone remember the Republican voters of northwest Iowa conducting a plebiscite to strip King of his committee assignments?

The RINO assault on Steve King is a show trial, but who are the real parasites?

It is no mere coincidence that Gorka also was hit with the anti-parasitism ammunition. Even as the get-Gorka mob were hollering that Gorka should be removed from the White House because he was having a dangerous effect as a powerful anti-Semite and white supremacist, the same apparatchiks were saying Gorka should be removed because he had been marginalized and was doing nothing on his job.

RINOs, of course, have never been known for their commitment to consistency.

The primary election is June 2, only two weeks away. An Orwellian outcome is not inevitable. King always has been popular in his district, and most of his reelection victories have occurred when he was significantly outspent. King won reelection in the general against a Democrat in 2018 when he was the principal target of the Pelosi machine.

Still, the current RINO challenge is a tough one. Good men and women everywhere should come to King’s aid.

The firehose of falsehood campaigns against Flynn, Gorka, and King have a number of things in common.

First is that each of their targets is a devout and ardently pro-life Catholic. As such, the propaganda campaign can be seen as an extension of the struggle for control of the judiciary and other social issues venues onto another, seemingly unrelated battleground. Hatred of Brett Kavanaugh spills over into hatred of Flynn, Gorka, and King.

Second, as we have seen in detail, is that “white supremacist” is lavishly used against each of these men, even though two of them have never had anything remotely to do with domestic policy or anything else concerning race relations, and the third also is demonstrably innocent of white supremacism.

Third is that the agitators against Flynn, Gorka, and King fit Mary McCarthy’s description of Lillian Hellman: Every word they write is a lie, including “and” and “the.”

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About Joseph Duggan

Joseph Duggan is the author of Khashoggi, Dynasties, and Double Standards (Encounter). He is a former White House speechwriter for President George H. W. Bush and a former Reagan State Department appointee, as well as an international business and public affairs consultant. He lives in St. Louis.

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