This week, the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government issued a new report on the Biden Administration’s massive censorship system. The ongoing investigation has exposed the coordination in a system of blacklisting, throttling, and suspensions of targeted citizens and groups. Now, it appears that the Biden White House also pushed for Amazon to target dissenting books to suppress sales by blocking promotions. After all, why burn books when you can bury them?
The apparently successful effort by the White House was little surprise given what a federal court called Biden’s “Orwellian” and unprecedented censorship efforts. As I discuss in my new book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in the Age of Rage,” Biden is now unquestionably the most anti-free speech president since John Adams.
What is new is the details on how academic institutions are critical to this censorship system and the coordination with the government to deal with the backlash from the public. The disclosed emails show how government officials orchestrated media campaigns to shield the system, and their academic partners, from attacks over free speech. The report includes discussions in response to my own past writing denouncing this system.
Some of us have been raising the alarm over the role of universities in this censorship system. While faculty and students once opposed any academic research supporting the military industrial complex, there has been no such opposition to researchers supporting a censorship system targeting dissenting views and supplying blacklists to government and corporate partners.
There has long been a narrative in the media that portrayed academics working in this system as victims hounded by critics. For example, one article featured the work of Kate Starbird, director and co-founder of the UW Center for an Informed Public. The University of Washington is one of the most important partners in the academic-corporate-government triad. Other key institutions include Stanford University, University of Michigan, and the University of Wisconsin. The article discussed how “her attempt to promote factual information and strengthen democracy has gotten her sued, blasted by congressional inquiries and subjected to a death threat.”
The internal messages revealed by the House show how such media campaigns were coordinated to frame the coverage. While these researchers actively work to target others, they often object to criticism of their work as bullying and the work of disinformers.
Notably, in her communications disclosed by the House, Starbird cautions against giving examples of disinformation to keep them from being used by critics, adding “since everything is politicized and disinformation inherently political, every example is bait.”
She and others reached out to grant managers in dealing with the public spin. Wisconsin Journalism Professor Michael Wagner flagged one of my columns to Michael Pozmantier, a program manager at the National Science Foundation, an independent government agency. What is striking that the two suggest that the column was wrong but do not state a single mistaken fact. Indeed, the report confirms the extensive effort to coordinate the identification of those spreading what the researchers deemed disinformation. In another email, Pozmantier explained that “Track F is the NSF ‘Accelerator track focused on combating mis/disinformation.'”
Pozmantier also shows the sweeping agenda behind these grants, noting “Projects in Track F will pursue a convergence research agenda and leverage multi-sector partnerships to address issues of trust and authenticity in communication systems, including predicting, preventing, detecting, correcting, and mitigating the spread of inaccurate information that harms people and society.”
Other academic institutions in the report are shown marketing their own eagerness to become part of this censorship system. University of Michigan’s James Park is shown pitching that school’s WiseDex First Pitch program, promising that “our misinformation service helps policy makers at platforms who want to . . . push responsibility for difficult judgments to someone outside the company . . . by externalizing the difficult responsibility of censorship.”
These emails show the fluidity of what is deemed unacceptable viewpoints for these academics and their partners. The Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), during prior court testimony. CISA’s director, Jen Easterly, previously declared the administration’s intent to extend its role over maintaining critical infrastructure to include “our cognitive infrastructure” and combating not just mis- and disinformation but also “malinformation,” which CISA describes as “based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.”
For academic institutions, the central role played in this censorship infrastructure is alarming. Some of these programs have now pledged that they will no longer target content on the Internet. However, for years, the Biden Administration funded blacklisting systems as well as programs to target the advertisers of conservative sites.
For example, the federal government helped to fund the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), to discourage advertisers from supporting certain sites. All of the top 10 most risky sites are popular with conservatives, libertarians and independents. GDI warned advertisers against “financially supporting disinformation online.” Those top disinformation sites included Reason, a libertarian-oriented source of news and commentary about the government. However, HuffPost, a far left media outlet, was included among the 10 sites at lowest risk of spreading disinformation.
Universities should be places where false claims and conspiracy theories are debated and exposed. However, there is a dangerous line that is crossed when universities partner with the government or corporations in a system targeting individuals and groups for censorship.
Here is the report: NSF-Staff-Report_Appendix
It is deeply worrying that the reports from the foundation for freedom online deserve a read on your part.
https://foundationforfreedomonline.com/civic-listening-political-informants-and-citizen-spies-rebranded/
Looks like the national government is tampering with the human right to freedom of expression. Which existed before any government. Before the First Amendment. Let us recall Jeff Goldbum’s line from Jurassic Park: You spent so much time wondering if you could do it, you spent no time wondering if you should do it. Let’s carry that thought into the voting booth.
Obviously, the people in government doing the censorship it will never be punished. That is part of the Founding Fathers Big Plan.
However the proper remedy is to establish the fact that yes, “Big Books” did cave to the government and not demand a warrant. And because of that, those affected should be included in a national and costly class action. On J6 “Big Telecom” and “Big Banking” provided a data dragnet for the FBI with no warrant. Again, sue them into bankruptcy. We don’t need companies like them.
We do not punish political malfeasance of the ruling party because there is no money in it, dual justice issues no prison time, no catharsis. Their bubble is impenetrable.
It is time to reform our justice system and hang the worst of the worst. We are not their livestock to be cattle prodded and butchered.
Ah, but the shoe on the left foot doesn’t match the shoe on the right foot. Here’s an example of under-reported news, when the right shoe is placed on the left foot:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/amid-controversy-cook-county-prosecutors-drop-charges-against-students-accused-of-distributing-fake-daily-northwestern-page/ar-BB1hWFwW?ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover&cvid=e96ff54c1b294de286dcd3629d4aea72&ei=25
In sum, two students at Northwestern (Chicago) printed a fake front page for the student newspaper at Northwestern University, attached onto the surface of the real printed paper. A headline declared, “Northwestern complicit in genocide of Palestinians.”
Misdemeanor charges followed.
But when students, professors, and community members openly protested holding the students responsible, — as “an example of over-policing of Black students and an effort to silence pro-Palestinian voices that disproportionately affect people of color,”– the charges were dropped.
Whether it constituted student pranking or something intended to provoke, would charges have been dropped if the headline had been, -eh, maybe something like, “Biden complicit in under-the-table bribery scheme during poker game with media execs.” ???
How much money does the federal government funnel, directly and indirectly, to colleges? It all politicizes and thus corrupts those institutions to some extent. Massive funding leads to massive corruption. People employed by colleges want a comfortable life, with as little real work as possible, while enjoying prestige in their mileau. Government paid censorship of conservative media must seem very appealing.
This is all so the demoncrat state can get away with their immense crimes against humans.
At least half of Americans are still completely duped, many of those that aren’t have immense blind spots in other obvious areas.
Meanwhile they call themselves Democrats but they’re against democracy, that is, they don’t want people to be able to vote for their choice of leader. Where? Hawaii, where the Democrats in the state legislature voted in favor of a bill that would remove Trump from the ballot.
Censorship has an even more evil twin brother, propaganda (fabrications built out of falsehoods). Think about it….censorship attempts to manipulate by stopping the flow of information. Propaganda attempts mind-control by amping up communication designed to deceive.
Why these two forms of opinion-shaping are not treated as equally threatening to democracy is perplexing. What despotic regime doesn’t use both censorship and propaganda? Is it all that smart to pick only one to fight against?
What would be stupid would be to throw all our efforts against censorship, while leaving the power-seeking, conniving operators in government and politics unfettered freedom of push out whoppers. They wouldn’t flinch, because the false-narrative answers questions proactively, whereas censorship merely leaves questions unanswered.
In other words, to the deceitful infowarrior, well-crafted propaganda with “legs” is the manipulator’s tool of choice.
If we were smart, we would be looking at informatics in a free society as needing to embrace both freedom and responsibility at the same time. We need the truth to make sound public decisions, so any means used to block the truth or drown it out with falsehood is corrosive.
We need to evolve the legal tools to challenge both censorship and propaganda at the speed of internet information, to keep The People more powerful than government, candidates, campaigns, special interests, and I include political parties in the latter. Fast-response civil lawsuits seem like the way to go. These fast civil courts would be specialized to settle abuses of the public infospace, both censorship and public frauds.
The current system for challenging censorship is weak. And, leaving the barn door open for public frauds is just blind to the way the most manipulative amongst us think and operate.
As if it were self evident what is truth and what is falsehood in complex topics. The government should never be allowed to arrogate to itself the power to declare truth and falsehood in the context of a public debate on complex public policy issues. The best way to get at truth is through a robust public debate where all evidence and arguments can be aired freely, that is, without any censorship. Otherwise you get an Orwellian ministry of truth with Mary Poppins calling the shots.
“Censorship has an even more evil twin brother, propaganda ”
PinCA censorship creates super-propaganda, which is the worst because only one side can be heard: the side of the dictator.
Can you provide an example of the “public frauds” that is not already covered by civil law? Laws and the court system need to be tweaked, but you are suggesting something different.
Why are these not treated as equal – because they are not.
As progressive Justice brandeis said a century ago “The remedy for bad speech is more speach”
“If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
Or just look at Covid.
What we were told by purported expert public servants pretty much all turned out to be lies and propoganda,
But what was censored turned out to be mostly the truth.
Censorship requires someone to decide what is censored – and no one has ever demonstrated the skill necescary to do that.
“If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”
Would pbinCA have silenced Abraham?
There are absolutely no legal tools needed that we do not already have.
With very very few exceptions censorship by government is illegal and unconstitutional. PERIOD – that is the law, that is the constitution
We do not need new tools. We merely need those in our govenrment to follow the law and constitution.
As to propoganda – myriads of people combat that every day – as I am doing right here with you.
Your post is propoganda, and I am responding to it with facts, logic and reason.
You are free to respond – with facts logic, reason, or more propoganda.
And people are free to judge for themselves.
Those that make wise choices as to what and who to beleive will benefit from those choices, those who make poor ones will fail.
While Brandeis was was correct that A remedy for bad speech is more speech.
There is another – one we see all arround us today.
That remedy is failure.
People see the many failures of the propoganda of the current president and they judge accordingly.
This week, the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government issued a new report on the Biden Administration’s massive censorship system.
Would that someone, anyone, within Congress audit themselves and Bidenomics. Not surprisingly the MSM is not covering it, but the CBO released today their report on the economic outlook.
The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2024 to 2034
The deficit totals $1.6 trillion in fiscal year 2024, grows to $1.8 trillion in 2025, and then returns to $1.6 trillion by 2027. Thereafter, deficits steadily mount, reaching $2.6 trillion in 2034. Measured in relation to gross domestic product (GDP), the deficit amounts to 5.6 percent in 2024, grows to 6.1 percent in 2025, and then shrinks to 5.2 percent in 2027 and 2028. After 2028, deficits climb as a percentage of GDP, returning to 6.1 percent in 2034. Since the Great Depression, deficits have exceeded that level only during and shortly after World War II, the 2007–2009 financial crisis, and the coronavirus pandemic.
Debt held by the public increases from 99 percent of GDP at the end of 2024 to 116 percent of GDP—the highest level ever recorded—by the end of 2034. After 2034, debt would continue to grow if current laws generally remained unchanged.
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59710
“To lodge all power in one party and keep it there is to insure bad government and the sure and gradual deterioration of the public morals.”
― Mark Twain
Between the COVID relief spending blowout and the 2021 infrastructure bill, Congress has increased the federal debt by over $6 trillion in the last four years.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2024/02/07/cbo-federal-interest-payments-now-exceed-defense-spending/?sh=30c81b2249d3
Congressman Tom McClintock voted against the impeachment of Alejandro Mayorkas on moral grounds, calling it a “stunt.”
Tom does not want to win. Tom won’t fight fire with fire. Tom wants to lose. Tom is a loser. Who wants to vote for a loser. Tom is ethereal. Tom should train for the priesthood.
Tom McClintock concluded that LAWFARE is immoral when done by republicans while LAWFARE is wholly acceptable when committed by democrats.
Alejandro Mayorkas presided over the illegal invasion of America by 10 million Mexicans, Haitians, and various and sundry flotsam.
President Trump was immorally, incoherently and irrationally impeached TWO times.
Support McClintock’s opponents with financial contributions.
“Primary” McClintock for supporting the invasion of America by 10 million illegal aliens.
Free speech for me but not for thee.
Looks like Republicans were behind the recent fake Biden phone calls in NH.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/02/texas-firm-allegedly-behind-fake-biden-robocall-that-told-people-not-to-vote/
Wait, Republicans breaking the law? No Way. Trump just said the law doesn’t apply to him so by definition, there is no law to break.
To whom is thou saying “…free speech …but not for thee?”
1. Who says Monk is a Republican? Didn’t see it anywhere in the article you linked. Even if he is, he’s been nabbed. No one is defending him.
2. The AG is a Republican and he is investigating the situation.
3. Politicians from “both parties” have contributed to Monk’s company.
4. Finally, where does Trump factor in?
You do know that Biden was not in the New Hampshire Democratic primary ?
Biden wanted the SC primary first – despite New Hampshire law requiring NH to hold the first primary int he country.
I have no idea whether your reporting is correct.
But I find it hillarious that you think it is a crime to tell people not to vote for someone who was not on the ballot.
But I find it hillarious that you think it is a crime to tell people not to vote for someone who was not on the ballot.
Part of this trolls schtick.
Factual, (maybe) but total irrelevant. Drawing unfounded conclusions that have no bearing on anything.
“It’s the [Obama], stupid!”
– James Carville
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Do you seriously believe that Joke Biden has anything approaching the requisite energy for a movement of this magnitude?
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“We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”
– Barack Hussein “Barry ‘I-Have-A-Statue-In-Jakarta’ Soetoro” Obama.
Yep. This third term has been the worst.