“Propaganda can also be used for socially beneficial purposes,” government-funded “media literacy” group claims.
The Department of Homeland Security provided federal grants to “media literacy” groups to create self-described “propaganda” to attack conservatives, according to a bombshell report.
Public records requests filed with the Media Research Center found the DHS used a grant program earmarked for terrorism response, called the Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention (TVTP) Program, to pay activists $700,000 to write blog posts that criticized former President Donald Trump and other conservatives under the guise of “media literacy.”
University of Rhode Island’s Media Education Lab asked the DHS for funding to run “community-created counter-propaganda” against conservatives, claiming that “propaganda and misinformation concerning topics including immigration [and] racial justice” had become “disruptive.”
“Propaganda can also be used for socially beneficial purposes. Indeed, because the public has long been recognized as being suggestible, the United States has long made use of beneficial propaganda during WWI, WWII, and the Cold War,” the grant application said.
From the MRC:
The blog-post portion of the campaign used incendiary language disparaging Biden’s political opponents, all funded with taxpayer dollars. Examples include:
- “We are all living in a darker, scarier, angrier, less hopeful country thanks to Mr. Trump’s influence. Are we on the verge of civil war?”
- “Donald Trump was also adopting the shock-jock style that Rush Limbaugh built into a cultural phenomenon, including his misogynistic and racist comments, conspiracy theories, and grievances.”
- “It won’t be easy, but we really have to reduce Trump’s influence.”
- “[I]t’s tempting and entertaining to tune into the circuses of the Marjorie Taylor Greenes, Louis Farrakans [sic], and MAGA supporters.”
- “It turns out even Fox Media has limits on how much misogyny and racism it will tolerate from its stars–witness the canceling of Tucker Carlson’s show last week.”
“The Biden administration is able to get something quite special with its $700,000 TVTP grant,” the MRC concluded in its investigation. “Harnessing the Media Literacy Now ‘network’ and, ultimately, paying children to advocate for ‘media literacy’ mandates ensnares the whole of the American public school system in its agenda.”
“With just two grants — first from the State Department, and now from the DHS — the Biden administration has been able to artificially create a perpetual ‘[p]ublic demand for media literacy in public education,’ supercharging a censorship industry devoted to an inherently anti-American philosophy hidden beneath the asinine monicker of ‘media literacy,’” it wrote.
“Congress must defund all domestic censorship programs, including the TVTP program that targets Sec. Mayorkas’s critics and finance anti-American activism,” MRC added.
In response to the revelations, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Ark.) wrote a letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas demanding the firing of DHS employees who doled out the taxpayer-funded grants to these propaganda groups.
“Your Department has consistently weaponized the federal government to attack conservatives using taxpayer dollars, first by colluding with private social media companies to censor conservative viewpoints and now by funding private actors to create affirmative propaganda to ‘counter’ conservatives,” Hawley wrote.
Now DHS is paying – *paying* – leftist academics to create “counter-propaganda” on “immigration, racial justice” and COVID. This from the people who brought you the Disinformation Board. Another reason Mayorkas should be gone ? pic.twitter.com/TQGbRavh3S
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) January 17, 2024
“This is an outrageous use of federal funds and abuse of power. All these funds should be clawed back by the federal government immediately, and anyone involved in making this grant should be fired.”
“This amounts to the use of government funds to further President Biden’s political agenda,” Hawley added.
This comes as the House Republicans’ second impeachment hearing into Mayorkas’ dereliction of duty of the open southern border is scheduled for Thursday.
This is Part 2 of the MRC’s investigative report. Part 1 detailed how the Biden State Department and DHS were funding schools to propagandize students against conservative ideas and train teachers to leverage censorship tools in the classroom.