Caitlin Johnstone – Caitlin’s Newsletter Sept 14, 2025
It’s probably worth flagging the fact that the president of the United States is promoting the establishment of a Ministry of Truth to restrict information in a suggested law called the “Charlie Kirk Act”.
President Trump’s Truth Social account posted a viral video from TikTok on Saturday in which a Trump voter named Elly May blamed the assassination of Republican political operative Charlie Kirk on the press, urging the president to push for legislation which would make “news corporations accountable for lying to the American people and spreading propaganda instead of truth.”
May frames the idea as a revisitation of the Smith-Mundt Act, but then goes on to describe authoritarian measures which have nothing to do with Smith-Mundt.
“President Trump, as a supporter who voted for you 3 times, I am hoping and praying that you will revisit what Barack Obama and Joe Biden got rid of back in 2013, which is the Smith-Mundt Act, which held news corporations accountable for lying to the American people and spreading propaganda instead of truth,” May says. “I think instead of bringing it back as a Smith-Mundt Act, you name it the Charlie Kirk Act, make it a law, and you make it damn near impossible for these people to continue to lie to the American public, which has brought chaos, hatred, division, and anarchy all across this country. Fines out their ass which will damn near bankrupt their companies should they lie to the American people ever again.”
“Because of their constant lies, a man lost his life, because of the constant hateful rhetoric of calling him a fascist, and a Nazi, and a white supremacist, and a bigot,” May said. “I think this would be a great legacy for him to have a law named after him to force journalists to finally start telling the truth and having the integrity that they have lacked for over a decade.”
“We are on a dangerous path right now with the constant lies and the propaganda,” May says. “And that doesn’t end just at news journalists. It needs to go to content creators who consistently spread lies and propaganda and half-truths across the internet. This needs to end, and people need to start being held accountable for baseless claims over absolute abysmal things.”
“Get this in front of Congress, get this passed as a law, and start holding these news corporations — be they right, left or center — accountable for their behavior,” May concludes.
May has been promoting a Change dot org petition to “Enact the Charlie Kirk Act to Restore Media Accountability,” which as of this writing has tens of thousands of signatures.
“This amended act will hold media outlets, radio stations, educators, and content creators accountable for the false narratives and erroneous information they spread deliberately or irresponsibly,” the petition reads, proposing heavy fines for those deemed to be in violation.
A couple of issues with this.
Firstly, the Smith-Mundt Act had nothing to do with holding “news corporations accountable for lying to the American people”; it was a Cold War-era law which prohibited official US government propaganda created by institutions like the State Department and the USAGM from being disseminated domestically. This law was controversially revised under the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 in the name of combatting Al Qaeda propaganda campaigns in the United States.
Returning Smith-Mundt to its original iteration would be a fine idea. American right wingers tend to make a much bigger deal about the changes made under the Obama administration than is actually warranted — anyone who remembers the lead-up to the Iraq invasion knows the US government had no trouble getting immensely consequential propaganda circulating throughout the American press prior to 2013. But anything that inhibits the US government’s ability to disseminate propaganda to Americans might be somewhat helpful, and couldn’t hurt.
But that isn’t what this “Charlie Kirk Act” push is advocating. Smith-Mundt placed restrictions on what the US government is allowed to do with regard to propaganda, while the proposed “Charlie Kirk Act” would give the US government sweeping new powers to decide what does and does not constitute propaganda and untruth and administer penalties accordingly. One limits the US government’s ability to manipulate public information, while the other explicitly expands it. Nobody anywhere is claiming that propaganda generated by the US State Department or USAGM projects like Voice of America got Charlie Kirk assassinated by calling him a Nazi; they’re talking about creating a new law to stomp out the free speech of “media outlets, radio stations, educators, and content creators.”
You know without even clicking on it that it’s going to be about something nightmarishly dystopian and authoritarian. pic.twitter.com/j8HMZjsQkl
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) September 14, 2025
https://twitter.com/caitoz/status/1967070398610370909
The other issue is of course that giving the government the authority to penalize propaganda and lies means giving the government the authority to determine what constitutes propaganda and lies. They could decide it’s a lie to say Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, for example, or that it’s propaganda to say the US shouldn’t be waging a proxy war in Ukraine. The “Charlie Kirk Act” is being pushed in the name of fighting propaganda, but it would actually be giving the US government unprecedented authority over what Americans are permitted to say on any platform.
This could of course turn out to be nothing and fizzle right away, but when the president of the United States starts pushing for the establishment of a Ministry of Truth to determine what Americans are allowed to say, I think that’s worth drawing attention to.
I’m just amazed at the virality of this whole thing. The American right’s frenzied emotional hysteria about the murder of Charlie Kirk has them promoting an initiative that is not meaningfully different from the Ministry of Truth proposed under the Biden administration’s “Disinformation Governance Board”, which was aborted after massive public outcry from the right. And that was just three years ago.
I’ve said it many times before and I’ll surely say it many times again: when everyone’s emotions are running hot, that’s when it’s most important to be intensely skeptical of everything your government does. We learned this lesson after 9/11, we were reminded again after October 7, and we may very well be getting another lesson with the killing of Charlie Kirk.
If Charlie Kirk shooting wasn’t fake, can someone please explain this to me?
We all know that bullet from the high powered riffle can easily go through human neck. Especially in such a sort range – about 100m or 300ft. So how is it possible that the tarp wall of that tent behind Kirk doesn’t have any motion while bullet is supposedly penetrating through it. (Let’s not forget by now bullet is most likely also in some way deformed) And I mean, there is no motion at all.
The wall is semi-loose or semi-tight, which ever way you want to say it. That is normal set up with this kind of tents. It allows some movement for the tarp and there is video material from that day which shows clearly how that tarp wall is flapping in the wind. So we know this is what we have here as well.
You would expect to see – in quick sequence – that first canvas gets tight, then it bounces back and then finally it flaps a few times. And you should be able to see this, or at least some of that motion, through out the whole canvas. But the canvas is completely motionless. There is no movement at all. And I mean there is NOTHING.
So yeah.
If Charlie Kirk shooting was not fake, then how is THAT possible? Can someone please explain this to me?
C’mon. It’s simpler than that.
The “Charlie Kirk Act” is being shoved through to make all sorts of things illegal to SAY.
Americans will no longer be able to complain about Israel, and likely as not, Holocaust Denial will be criminalized.
Americans will at last be even with Germany. The so-called winners and losers of WWII will be on an even footing. And even the morons left in the Eurozone will know who DID win.
LOL..
someone’s had one too many George Orwell’s and not enough to think…lol it’s so obvious…. freedom USA becomes the digital pre crime panopticon…and naming the jew will become punishable by death..
sound familiar?..1917…
Brandon gets you half way on the ‘left’ with troons and goons..and Drumpf finishes the same job on the ‘right’ with make isreal corp.inc. great.. meeting in the middle on toxic injectables and corporate feudalism..
..the ole one two..buckle my shoe..
what you might call a mop up operation…ask the rebbe..
It was Obama in his first 4 years that signed into law that made propaganda legal in the USA. Ever since then propaganda has reached to obscene levels, with millions of actors hitting the streets to stage fake events.
T2 needs to find that law first, scratch his head, then scratch his ass, then scratch his head again before he creates the C Kirk office of truth, which will receive billions in funding, and probably have guys walk around with guns to arrest people who violate the truth. He needs another agency other than Ice, who have rid our nation of immigrant tomato and cabbage pickers, in his war on people.
Subtle propaganda in article conditioning people that fascists, nazis or white supremacists are something bad. Sneaks in notion that its acceptable to assassinate someone if they’re a fascist, Nazi or white supremacist.
If MAGA turns on Trump he’ll feel like he’s been buried alive.
the evil always profits of the evil anywhere, anyhow .
seem to be the hidden ruling law of Satan, master of
this world . so, dont make a deal with him . he has
different messengers .
@ FRANZ
the WEF young global leaders further will
think that they are on the winnerside like
this bitch baerbock .
The YouTube channel “Hivemind Nation” carries a good presentation of Mrs Kirk’s antics at the microphone and at her alleged husband’s coffin. He has now had a strike against his channel and the video in question taken down. I don’t expect him to last too much longer on YouTube. But he carries other interesting material on this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qw8eutGPM9c
LMAO– There you have it, the Hegelian synthesis quickly appears, justified by fake assassination. It took less than a week!They could have at least had a longer lag period between the ‘death’ of Charlie Kirsch and announcing this proposed legislation, to avoid creating the appearance of an insidious agenda. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who will supervise those who sits on the panel that determine what’s accurate or what’s propaganda? No worries, everyone go back to drinking beer and watching football.
Following on from Chesterton:
“Brandon gets you half way on the ‘left’ with troons and goons..and Drumpf finishes the same job on the ‘right’ with make isreal corp.inc. great.. meeting in the middle on toxic injectables and corporate feudalism..”
I’m reminded of lines from WB Yeats:
“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity…”
It is challenging to be the quiet voice of reason when reason is hostage to what people feel energised by. This in part is to do with youthful energy that needs an expression of its perceived injuries and the darker purposes of those older manipulators – the sheep and the wolves absent the intercession of the shepherd.
@ Simon..
Good call..although well trodden and trodden on..’the second coming’ is actually a masterpiece..
of course he was a member of the golden Dawn along with Crowley ..and both were fond of a bit of pseudo biblical bombast..
But Yeats could actually write poetry and was a master of the idiom and metaphor… Liber Al..well, not so much..
It’s one of the reasons Crowley hated him… jealousy is always a precursor to hatred..
Jew filth must be removed from humanity asap or perish.