It's literally the title of the article.

Equivocating is not the same thing as stating the equivalence of two things. Equivocation is "deliberate evasiveness in wording" and more particularly using one word but switching between two different meanings of that word in a tricky way.

If this article is equivocating (I haven't read it), then it isn't in the title. The title makes a clear claim that doesn't even equate disinformation and dissent. It rather makes the claim that the war is dishonest with its stated goal.

It just so happens that I think that's accurate.

> Equivocation is "deliberate evasiveness in wording"

Framing anti-disinformation as anti-dissent is about as deliberately evasive as it gets.

No, it's not. The article's point is that the war on disinformation is being wrongly used to squash dissent. If anything, the author agrees with your position that dissent is not the same as disinformation.

Do you really not understand the logic here, or are you making an ideological argument?

Try this analogous title, perhaps from an article arguing that exaggerated fear responses are all rooted in X or Y:

"Fear of mice Is Fear of spiders"

Surely, whether you agree or disagree with the article's thesis, you'd not argue that the article is implying that mice == spiders?

> "Fear of mice Is Fear of spiders"

Another good example of a title that tries to conflate two concepts and ends up being nonsense as a result. Thanks for helping prove my point.

> Surely, whether you agree or disagree with the article's thesis, you'd not argue that the article is implying that mice == spiders?

That is indeed what that title implies: that the root causes are the same and that therefore both fears - and the subjects thereof - are equivalent. And that implication is not just wrong, but - I'd argue - deliberately misleading and in bad faith.

And unsurprisingly, the people who disagree with that assessment are also apparently the ones who appear eager to frame said assessment as somehow "illogical" or "irrational" - you know, as is characteristic of bad-faith argumentation.

> Another good example of a title that tries to conflate two concepts and ends up being nonsense as a result.

You must have really struggled with poetry in school.

On the contrary;

Poetry at least makes sense,

unlike those headlines.

Yes, but saying "supporting/opposing X is really about supporting/opposing Y" does not imply "X and Y are the same".

Many people, who would ordinarily understand the logic of your comment, simply turn off the rational part of their brains when engaging in political content.

And so they are rendered immune to logic-based arguments.

Again, the title literality states an equivalence: "The War on Disinformation Is a War on Dissent".

If you want to level some relevant criticism of the OP then you are better off with the "read the actual article and not just the title" line.

It isn't, it states that THE war on disinformation, not any war on disinformation. You can see a similar headline here:

> The War on Drugs Is a War on Racial Justice

This article isn't saying that Drugs is Racial Justice.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/40971924?seq=1

That's because the article's point is that the war on disinformation is being wrongly used to squash dissent. If anything, the author agrees with your position that dissent is not the same as disinformation.

The article is equivocating the war on disinformation with a war on dissent. That does NOT, in any way, mean that dissent and disinformation are the same thing.

If I were to write an article saying "the war on terrorism is a war against us all", would that mean that I'm accusing everyone of terrorism? Or claiming that terrorism doesn't exist?