Liberal journalists sound alarm: Government-driven 'disinformation' censorship is a threat to democracy

Establishmentarians in the West have long harped on the need to protect democracy. Notwithstanding their rhetorical support for a politically empowered citizenry, it appears there are forces, particularly in the intelligence community, that are unwilling to trust Americans to determine — on their own and in concert with one another — how best to wield their civic power.

On Thursday, investigative journalist Matt Taibbi distilled the problem down for Congress thusly: "Take away the highfalutin talk about countering hate and reducing harm, and anti-disinformation is just a bluntly elitist gatekeeping exercise. If you prefer to think in progressive terms, it's class war."

Taibbi further indicated that recent censorship efforts by the Biden administration and elements of the intelligence community have tended to "drift in one direction," amounting in some cases to what investigative journalist Michael Shellenberg also stressed was election interference.

Government weaponization

Since the first Twitter Files report last November, the Biden administration has been outed for assuming "a role similar to an Orwellian 'Ministry of Truth'" and for leaning on social media companies to both censor and cure narratives. There have, however, been recent indications that the depths of the government's weaponization have not yet been fully plumbed.

Hours after highlighting efforts by the Biden administration to pressure Google to "crack down" on undesirable communications during the pandemic, the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government convened a hearing to better understand the lengths to which the government has gone to mold public opinion and suppress free speech.

After Virgin Islands Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D) rushed out a comparison of former President Donald Trump to Nazis, the Weaponization Subcommittee heard testimony from Taibbi and Shellenberger, both of whom previously detailed the extent of the collusion between the American government and Twitter, and heard also from Rupa Subramanya, a Canada-based journalist.

Olivia Troye, a former Homeland Security adviser and ardent critic of Trump, also spoke, dismissing and on at least one occasion defending censorship efforts, and serving ultimately as a sounding board for Democratic lawmakers' grievances against the Republican front-runner in the 2024 presidential election.

Taibbi

In his opening remarks, Taibbi noted that "there has been a dramatic shift in attitudes about speech in this country, and many politicians now clearly believe the bulk of Americans can't be trusted to digest information on their own."

"This mindset imagines that if we see one clip from [Russian news], we'll stop being patriots; that once exposed to hate speech, we'll become bigots ourselves automatically; that if we read even one Donald Trump tweet, we will become insurrectionists," said Taibbi.

"Having come to this conclusion, the government agencies like the DHS and the FBI and the quasi-private agencies who do anti-disinformation work have taken upon themselves the paternalistic responsibility to sort out for us what is and is not safe," continued the journalist.

"While they see great danger in allowing others to read controversial material, it's taken for granted that they themselves will be immune to the dangers of speech."

Taibbi, who indicated he has voted Democrat all his life, underscored the need to defund projects like the government-linked Election Integrity Project "before it's too late."

Subramanya

Subramanya held up Canada as a case study in how bad censorship, government overreach, and leftist identity politics can go in the West, highlighting the northern nation's race-based punitive measures; online censorship efforts; de-banking of peaceful political dissenters; and selective application of speech controls, especially as it pertains to protesters.

Subramanya indicated that what is taking place in Canada is "a gradual suffocation of free expression," stressing that while "draped in a cloak of niceness, inclusivity, and justice ... it is regressive, authoritarian, and illiberal."

"I came here today not simply to warn you about what lies ahead, but to plead with you to do something about it," said the Canada-based journalist. "Now is not the time to be polite. Now is the time to defend, loudly, liberties and rights that have given us the greatest freedoms in human history."

Subramanya later told Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) that it doesn't take long to lose free speech, suggesting it more or less happened in Canada in under ten years.

Shellenberger

In his opening remarks and answers, Shellenberger made repeated reference to the "CTI League files."

Days ahead of the hearing, Shellenberger detailed damning findings from documents brought forward by a whistleblower concerning a so-called "anti-disinformation" group called the Cyber Threat Intelligence League "that officially began as the volunteer project of data scientists and defense and intelligence veterans but whose tactics over time appear to have been absorbed into multiple official projects, including those of the Department of Homeland Security."

The whistleblower was allegedly recruited to participate in CTIL "through monthly cybersecurity meetings hosted by DHS."

The documents appear to show that American, Israeli, and British intelligence contractors led by a former U.K. defense researcher, Sara-Jayne Terp, developed a sweeping censorship framework in 2019.

Wired touted Terp in 2020 as a data scientist who "uses the tools of cybersecurity to track false claims like they're malware. Her goal: Stop dangerous lies from hacking our beliefs."

Of course, "lies" might just amount to unfavorable truths or beliefs.

"Beliefs can be hacked," Terp told the magazine.

"The CTIL framework and the public-private model are the seeds of what both the U.S. and U.K. would put into place in 2020 and 2021, including masking censorship within cybersecurity institutions and counter-disinformation agendas; a heavy focus on stopping disfavored narratives, not just wrong facts; and pressuring social media platforms to take down information or take other actions to prevent content from going viral," Shellenberger noted further in his breakdown of the whistleblower's documents.

According to the documents, this censorship cabal attempted to shape public opinion by discussing ways of promoting "counter-messaging"; co-opting hashtags to advance preferred narratives; actively suppressing undesired ideas and trends; astroturfing online; and infiltrating private groups.

While not strictly governmental, Shellenberger noted that government employees were nevertheless "engaged members" of the cabal. Additionally, the whistleblower indicated that CTIL sought ultimately to become part of the federal government.

It did not become its own agency, but it certainly collaborated with extant U.S. agencies.

Shellenberger indicated during the hearing Thursday that government operatives who grew accustomed to "waging disinformation campaigns and psyops in foreign countries" have turned those tools against the American people.

When confronted about directing these campaigns homeward, the journalist suggested the agencies responsible have refused accountability. For instance, Shellenberger noted that Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas and FBI Director Christopher Wray "misled Congress" when claiming their agencies weren't involved in demanding censorship by social media platforms.

Shellenberger recommended making Section 230 liability protections contingent on social media platforms allowing adult users "to moderate our own legal content through filters that we choose and whose algorithms are transparent to all of us" as well as prohibiting government officials from asking platforms to remove content.

Should the Supreme Court ultimately determine in Missouri v. Biden that some government calls for censorship are permissible, the journalist urged Congress to require that such censorship requests are immediately reported publicly so that "such censorship demands occur in plain sight."

Hearing on the Weaponization of the Federal Governmentyoutu.be

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