As part of the “all-government” offensive on creating departments to identify “Disinformation,” along the lines of George Orwell’s dystopian “Ministry of Truth,” the Department of Homeland Security rolled out their Disinformation czarina, Nina Jankowicz. She is described as a “Disinformation Fellow” at the Woodrow Wilson Institute. Yesterday, The Nation posted Lev Golinkin’s article on the “Disinformation czarina,” where he usefully exposed Jankowicz’s role with StopFake. Golinkin highlights a January 29, 2017 segment, in which Jankowicz provides a rather disquieting mixture of smirks and snarkiness as she makes her way through a takedown of Russian disinformation. (https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/meet-the-head-of-bidens-new-disinformation-governing-board/) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mb_RrC2F5bM)
The ostensible “fake” in question is Russia’s allegations that Ukraine’s newly-established national holiday, “Volunteer Day,” celebrates neo-Nazis. She disposed of that allegation with a time-worn cover story: In March 2014, the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) were too weak to take on the Donbas citizens who didn’t go along with the February 2014 coup d'état in Kyiv. So, volunteer militias had to step in to put down the opposition. Jankowicz makes no mention of the role of the self-proclaimed neo-Nazi “Azov Brigade,” the other armed gangs (Right Sector, Aidar, etc.), and their funding by Ukraine’s wealthiest oligarchs. The Ukraine government is clear that “Volunteer Day” celebrates March 14, 2014, the day when the first 500 volunteers showed up for training in arms and deployment aginst the Donbas. The core of these first volunteers were the armed provocateurs who had just turned the Maidan demonstrations violent.
Of some note, the UAF certainly has a lot more weapons than in 2014, but they were at the time still much stronger than the anti-Maidan citizens of the Donbas. Their problem was that they weren’t prepared to shoot at their fellow citizens, while the neo-Nazis were. In fact, most of the arms that the Donbas citizens obtained in 2014 actually came from sections of the UAF that joined cause with the Donbas.
