At the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on the ‘Censorship Industrial Complex’ on Tuesday, U.S. Representative Keith Self (R-TX) quoted Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, saying: “I’ll leave you with this and I’ll yield back a little bit of my time. A direct quote from Joseph Goebbels, ‘It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion,’ and I think that may be what we’re discussing here, and yield back.”
Joseph Goebbels was a literal Nazi and one of Hitler’s closest allies.
To my Republican colleagues, it is probably best not to quote him during a congressional hearing. pic.twitter.com/qCTXbMEEUJ
— Congresswoman Julie Johnson (@RepJulieJohnson) April 1, 2025
Self walked out of the chamber while Rep. Julie Johnson (D-TX) was given her five minutes.
Johnson said: “I want to respond to what my colleague from Texas just said. When you’re quoting Joseph Goebbels about the role of [the] state in public debate, we have a big problem.”
She laughed grimly, and added: “I mean that’s alarming as hell to me, when that becomes the gold standard of Hitler and all that was going on in Russia — I mean in German atrocities during World War II — when that becomes the quote of this hearing.”
The hearing featured testimony from Nina Jankowicz, head of American Sunlight Project, an organization which works “to protect American democracy from the threat of disinformation,” and who briefly served as executive director of the Department of Homeland Security’s controversial Disinformation Governance Board, which was dissolved after four months in May 2022.
Note: Johnson speaks as if Self is quoting Goebbels because he agrees with the Nazi propagandist, but Self seems to be asserting that he believes left-leaning censors in government are trying to control public opinion. In this scenario, neither speaker actually praises Goebbels, but instead both express a wariness about government following in his footsteps.
As seen below at the hearing, Jankowicz said in her opening remarks: “The premise of this hearing — the so-called censorship industrial complex — is a fiction that has not only had profound impacts on my life and safety but on our national security.”
She added, “More alarmingly, this fiction is itself suppressing speech and stymieing critical research that protects our country.”
Nina Jankowicz gives opening remarks:
“The only reason the censorship lie has been perpetuated is because it’s politically and financially beneficial to those who peddle it. Actions like this hearing are a dangerous distraction from the real threats we face.” pic.twitter.com/7Al6TqCRme
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) April 1, 2025
Jankowicz noted the “irony” of the hearing given what she characterized as a level of “assault on the first amendment we have not seen in decades,” adding “the Trump administration has directed far more egregious violations of our Constitution than the imagined actions of the Biden administration on which this hearing is premised.”