This article is a fuller rationale on the Department of Truth branding project, which you can see here.

In September of 2022, Giorgia Meloni was democratically elected by the Italian people as the next prime minister of Italy, and the first woman in history to hold that office. Three days later, U.S. President Joe Biden made the following statement:

“Democracy is at stake… You just saw what’s happened in Italy in that election.”

There is a ubiquitous trend in our society today to label every idea, belief, and even scientific finding that does not conform to secular, progressive values as hateful, harmful, conspiratorial, or otherwise dangerous. At times, this so-called disinformation has turned out to be at least credible, if not true (cf. Hunter Biden’s laptop; or the ineffectiveness of lockdowns). At other times, the science has contradicted The Science™ and been vilified as false and hateful.

In all of these instances, The Science™ has simply dismissed the facts with a disturbing obliviousness to its own totalitarian impulse and total lack of concern for coherence or reality. The disturbing trend has been that those who call for the illegality of certain speech are basing that not on actual laws, but entirely on their own fallible, uncertain, partial, shifting knowledge and moral sentiments. So one may be ostracized, marginalized, destroyed, and even prosecuted (if the elites had their way) for their speech today, but if The Science™ changes tomorrow, “Hey, sit down and shut your mouth; we didn’t know then what we know, ok?” Exactly.

Euphemisms are the most common tactic of all. Incredibly, as noted above, the democratic election of a small-government candidate is a “threat to democracy.” Or, those who hold otherwise reasonable beliefs—e.g., an unborn baby is a human being, and by virtue of that, he/she possesses life and his/her own inalienable rights and inherent dignity, and therefore should be protected, especially seeing how he/she is unable to protect him/herself (which is at least on par in principle with the notion that plants and animals have their own life, rights, and dignity)—are said to be “against women’s health.” And what kind of monster opposes women’s health? Yet they are, and they do. Because their opponents say so.

Similarly, the Dobbs decision is not a victory for constitutional limits on federal government power (power that was granted to it by fiat declaration of the Supreme Court and not the Constitution). Rather, it was a tyrannical threat to democracy and, again, an assault on women’s health.

Racism is the most pernicious euphemism of all. It has ceased to be active hostility against a particular race as such, and is now everything up from a subconscious mode of being that is virtually biological in white people only. And unless you affirm that definition of racism—even in spite of all facts and reality—you too are a racist. This present author (Mexican by ethnicity) was told personally by a (former?) friend that everyone who votes a particular way is a racist, period. Never mind the fact that some believe in small government, individual freedom, individual rights, and free markets, and never mind the fact that they are deeply concerned about big-government, totalitarian-leaning ideologues who view everything from the Constitution, to nuclear families, to religion as an existential threat. Never mind any of the nuance or principle behind the honest efforts of a thinking individual to make the best-possible voting decisions. Never mind any of that. If you vote a certain way, you’re a racist and you support white supremacy.

There is not a more efficient means of eliminating opponents than by identifying them as racists, extremists, oppressors, hateful, threats to democracy, threats to national security, enemies of the state, counterrevolutionaries, the vermin of the human race, or what have you. Just ask Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Xi Jinping, Putin, or Joy Reid. Of them the proverb is true: ‘they are ruthless scoffers who by a word make a man out to be an offender’ (Isaiah 29.20-21).

The totalitarian element in all of this is extremely troubling. While many in the West already believe in principle that free speech is or should be followed by an asterisk (cf. the quote from Jacinda Ardern), we have all been eye-witnesses to nearly three years of the effortless negation of constitutionally-enumerated rights entirely by fiat declaration. Since early 2020, western governments across the globe have enthusiastically, unhesitatingly suspended property rights, privacy rights, personal liberties, and all governing law and documents—all in the interests of public good.

But we need not worry, of course, because they know what they are doing—at least today they do; and if that changes tomorrow, then tomorrow they will know what they are doing. And they are clearly different from every totalitarian regime in human history, because while they all went under explicit banners of tyranny and never in the name of public good, our western elites today are doing everything in the name of public good. They say they are and they believe they are. So they are.

Solzhenitsyn observed that no comrade was committed enough to be safe from the revolutionary machinery, and so it is today. No one can be progressive enough to avoid becoming an enemy of the people. No nuance, no reasoned positions on case-by-case issues, no here-to-fore universally accepted human realities are allowed. Only those who subscribe to the entire party doctrine are safe, full stop. If J.K. Rowling, Elon Musk, and Joe Rogan—who are, in almost every single respect, “liberal” by all post-1960 metrics—if even they can become hateful, white-supremacist enemies of democracy, anyone can. From laptops, to masks, to transgenderism, to educated views on vaccinations—it doesn’t matter if you’re a cake baker in Podunk, USA or a stay-at-home mom in California—no dissent will be allowed to exist. All dissenters will be sniffed out, dealt with, and, as much as possible, eradicated.

The Department of Truth project is meant to articulate some of the dangerous, destructive elements that are at work in our society today. It is also meant to demonstrate the real potential for those elements to become prevailing societal norms if we do not have a society-wide return to simple, basic definitions of things like freedom, personhood, and rights—definitions that are not grounded in sentimentality or ideology, but in reality and in truth.

“The really chilling conclusion I draw is that, if what happened in Germany could happen among Germans, it could happen anywhere. And none of us should feel safe.”

–Thomas Sowell