Thursday, February 23, 2023

The Rise of the Censorship-Industrial Complex

Since the First Amendment outlaws censorship by the U.S. government, our modern censors can't actually call themselves censors. They prefer to be known as "disinformation" specialists, whose mission is to "disrupt" any narratives and opinions that they don't like. They are particularly averse to criticism of their proxy war in Ukraine.

They operate under many different names and they get their funding from many different sources: various government agencies, the public-private war machine known as NATO, philanthropies, academia, and  corporations. Whenever the professional disinformation warriors inevitably get exposed as the blatant and often clumsy censors that they are, they retreat for about a minute before regenerating themselves under a new foundation, a new consortium, a new think tank. 

Last spring, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was forced to abandon its "Disinformation Governance Board" when it was called out as Orwellian by various civil liberties groups.

A couple of weeks ago, journalist Matt Taibbi exposed the German Marshall Fund's  "Hamilton68 Dashboard" as a Twitter-FBI partnership of a scam fed to a complicit establishment media in order to further the equally fraudulent "Russiagate" narrative. It turned out that hundreds of Twitter accounts flagged as belonging to Kremlin bots mostly belonged to innocent people.

 A couple of days ago, the government finances behind an outfit called the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) were revealed by columnist Jonathan Turley. With GDI's publication of the top ten allegedly most dangerous news sites, the State Department hastily cut off its own illegal funding - even though the GDI had tried to make a cute end-run around the First Amendment by declaring itself to be based in Great Britain, which doesn't have the same press freedoms as America supposedly does.

What the top ten most dangerous sites all have in common is that they are right-leaning, and they have been critical of the war in Ukraine. What the top ten "least dangerous" sites listed by GDI have in common is that they are generally liberal, and they have been non-critical of the war in Ukraine. Many of them, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Buzzfeed and HuffPo, had  also helped to amplify the Russiagate narrative in the years since Donald Trump took office. (Buzzfeed also had the unique distinction of being the first "safe" outlet to publish the fictional Steele Report, linking Trump to the Kremlin). The safe sites were also users of the discredited Hamilton 68 Dashboard. Their ongoing anti-Russia narratives not only served to generate and amplify the Trump hatred, it helped glean Democratic voters' support for the CIA, the FBI, and the US proxy war in Ukraine.

The GDI website comes right out and admits that its idea of "disinformation" includes any critical discussion of the US-fomented 2014 Ukraine coup and the US's role in instigating Putin's invasion last year: 

GDI has observed a number of ad tech companies monetising anti-Ukrainian and anti-democratic disinformation.

This deck includes examples of ad-funded stories promoting a range of harmful adversarial narratives: ● Western aggression: Under President Biden’s watch the U.S. has instigated a war with Russia. There was an anti-constitutional coup d'etat in 2014 in which Western-backed extremists overthrew the democratically elected government. ● NATO bioweapons threat: The U.S. and other NATO allies have military biological projects in Ukraine. ● Legitimate intervention: At the request of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, the Russian Federation started a ‘special operation’ to protect them. These disinformation narratives have been identified across multiple websites in multiple languages.

GDI practices its "name and shame" censorship by putting pressure not only on the tech platforms which publish ads next to the antiwar discourse, but also on the corporations paying for the ads. They aim to squelch dissent by cutting off the financial wherewithal to publish it.

As an example of this indirect censorship, GDI posted a screenshot of a Zero Hedge article which lambasted Joe Biden's goading of Vladimir Putin into invading Ukraine. It named and it shamed Best Buy, Acer and other corporations for funding this "disinformation." It also prominently circled in red an ad for Harvard Medical School that was placed next to the antiwar piece.

GDI is careful not to accuse its media antagonists of actually lying about the coup, the war and about other topics. It's not so crass as to label critics disloyal or un-American. Instead, it defines the "disinformation" that it fights as the use of "adversarial language." It does not at all subscribe to the traditional notion that journalism is supposed to "afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted." 

To hear them tell it, the security/war state is the afflicted one. Because they are just not comfortable with free speech.

Journalism, according to these current and former "intelligence community" apparatchiks, should strive to protect "institutions" and "established wisdom," as well as protecting such vulnerable groups as trafficked children and immigrants. Adversarial reporting - no matter whether those attacked are the powerful or the powerless -  can only sow divisions in society and cause the sort of "harm" that they never quite get around to specifying, but which can lead to "violence, illness and death."

The censors identify the following categories of potential victims that writers must avoid annoying or attacking, either implicitly or explicitly.

 ■ at-risk individuals or groups ■ current scientific consensus ■ democracy and key institutions ○ Most importantly, these adversarial narratives create a risk of harm. ● This definition transcends false binaries and identifies disinformation explicitly by adversarial narrative topic, such as anti-immigrant, misogyny, anti-vaccination, etc.

It's hard to overstate this essential insanity: the censors actually conflate genuinely at-risk individuals and groups with the very same powerful institutions that put people at such risk in the first place, with their wars and their savaging of domestic social contracts. GDI and its spider web of a cohort represent and protect themselves through the coercion and oppression of their own victims - and now, their media critics. It's a classic case of Freudian projection. The Disinformation Police are themselves the prime purveyors of disinformation.

And First Amendment be damned, because the killing of critique and dissent is a global enterprise, and other countries do, or at least they should, have censorship laws on the books to keep the masses in order and render free-speakers mute.

On the GDI to-do list:

GDI calls for effective policy enforcement This enforcement should prioritise the following areas at an EU and global level: ● Risk assessments: Guaranteeing that all systemic risks (e.g. disinformation, election manipulation, harms to minors online etc.) are catalogued by the Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs), rather than only the most prominent, recurrent risks. ● Data access: Ensuring civil society has access to relevant and timely platform data in order to provide third party scrutiny. ● Oversight: In the case of the Digital Services Act, establishing a multistakeholder advisory group to oversee implementation, with experts drawn from civil society. ● Effectiveness: Adversarial narrative framing of disinformation should be included within regulatory regimes to tackle the scope of harmful content. An urgent, long-term and industry-wide solution is needed to end the monetisation of harmful disinformation.

And to be effective, censorship and the murder of independent thought (not to mention the destruction of creative joy) has to start early, as soon as children learn how to read. They first have to be shielded by the censorship-sympatico Inclusivity Squad from harmful divisive words like "fat" and "ugly," which the late author Roald Dahl used to describe his lovably hideous fictional characters.

All I can say is, if the Speech Cops can stoop so low as to mangle a dead writer's words, then so can I! Apologies to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (or should I say Slenderperson?)

Thou, too, sail on, O Censorship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!is th the majority of disinformation on the web is motivated by financial gain, the result of the dominat attention-driven business models that drive today’s intern

The Sinkable Crew of the Good Ship Global Disinformation

9 comments:

  1. All the evil entities of “We the people” (and as you are well aware there are way to many of them ) can only continue to operate with one necessary ingredient. Money! Stop the funding kill the evil doer’s and there actions

    ReplyDelete
  2. 'How the press misled the public on Russiagate —
    Veteran New York Times reporter Jeff Gertz dissects the role of the media in concocting a false narrative portraying Trump as a ‘Russian asset’ rather than a homegrown horror.'

    'A new four-part investigation for the Columbia Journalism Review by Jeff Gertz examines the role of the media in pushing the “Russiagate” narrative that dominated headlines during the Trump administration. Doubts about the veracity of claims of Russian interference from the FBI and even the CIA were repeatedly ignored and pushed aside by mainstream media outlets in their push to hold the narrative together. Jeff Gertz joins The Chris Hedges Report for a deep dive into the role of the Hillary Clinton campaign and individual press outlets in the media show we’ve come to know as “Russiagate.”'

    'Jeff Gertz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who worked as a New York Times reporter for three decades. He spent the last two years investigating the Russiagate claims in preparation for his four-part piece in the Columbia Journalism Review.'

    https://therealnews.com/how-the-press-misled-the-public-on-russiagate
    February 24, 2023 ~ by Chris Hedges

    ReplyDelete
  3. This did not spring into being whole and complete. It developed.

    It grew from the Team Hillary Russiagate project and its censorship efforts to control the narrative, so Americans would hear the Team Hillary story as "true" and anything else as a presumptive lie unworthy of consideration.

    We slid down into the bog. We are deep in it now, but our media and the Democrats had long clear warning and just did it on purpose.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Matt have anything to say about the speech rights of Tesla workers?
    https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/tesla-workers-at-new-york-plant-fired-after-labor-push-union-says

    ReplyDelete
  5. Obama's baby, the Global Engagement Center, is going to be the focus of the next Twitter Files release by Matt Taibbi today at noon Eastern time.

    ReplyDelete
  6. For alternate to Twitter, try Taibbi's site:

    www.racket.news/p/twitter-files-gec-new-knowledge-and

    ReplyDelete
  7. Twitter address is
    twitter.com/mtaibbi

    You don't have to sign in or register or anything to read anyone's tweets.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Twitter Files #17 - The Global Engagement Center has spawned a new cottage industry using dark 'engagements' with dark entities using dark money. Some of this money is transferred from the Pentagon budget in addition to funds appropriated by Congress.

    Speaking of money, Twitter was found to have received millions in a short period of time as 'compensation' from the FBI for the extra work involved in complying with massive numbers of ban requests they were forwarding. Where did that money come from really? GEC? Pentagon?

    The FBI referred to itself as the 'belly button' of this Twitter ban operation, serving as coordinator for other entities and individuals in and outside of Gov't for ban requests. When an "OA" (Other Agency, aka CIA) requested to be directly involved, FBI kept tight hold on the reins. While GEC seems structured for this type of thing, they usually out$ource and stay hidden, plus the FBI provides the facade of legality and legitimacy.

    In the latest files release, it was found that GEC 'engaged' 34 entities at one point in the mission of killing off enemies, so to speak. It's hard to get a read on them because they use cutouts and keep their affairs secret but it does appear that their weapon of choice is hiring others to demonetize (and demonize) the enemy - meaning any entity spreading the truth. The goal is to kill them off financially by pressuring advertisers/investors to pull out.

    Coincidentally or not, that's similar to Empire's failing hybrid proxy war against Russia using sanctions and trying to hurt countries economically who won't get on board. But at least they know who they are and what to do.

    Coincidentally, it's also similar to the pressure on Twitter advertisers to drop out post-Musk's purchase/opening up the files "because Twitter will probably fail"(they wish) and "Don't waste your advertising money."

    Both the effort and the resulting message are chilling. If you rely on advertisers or investors and dare to write the truth, you could be toast. Worse still, you won't even know where that threat comes from. Big Brother is a good guess, or rather one of their big media stenographers via spoon fed falsehoods. Just ask Donald Trump. (6 ways to Sunday)

    Conservatives smelled a rat awhile ago. Here's their recent take on GEC shenanigans in two parts. I've just glanced at it so far and it looks pretty solid and informative. It's scary though. If GEC would do it to them, they will do it to anyone in the name of Empire. Too much dark, off the books money to pass up. I wonder if they deliver in pallets like in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    'Disinformation Inc: Meet the Groups Hauling in Cash to Secretly Blacklist Conservative News'

    https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/equality-not-elitism/disinformation-conservative-media-censored-blacklists

    'Disinformation Inc: State Dept Bankrolls Group Secretly Blacklisting Conservative Groups"

    https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/equality-not-elitism/disinformation-group-secretly-blacklisting-right-wing-outlets-bankrolled-state-department

    Let's recall that we were NEVER supposed to know this stuff just as we were NEVER supposed to know about Ed Snowden's revelations and those of Wikileaks, Seymour Hersh, Bradley Manning, et al. (add Elon Musk) Many suspected much, but to see proof is something else. Over time what was once said to be mere 'conspiracy theories' have mostly been proven true.

    In conclusion, Taibbi includes a tweet quote about the Global Engagement Center that sums it up:

    11. “It’s an incubator for the domestic disinformation complex,” says a former intelligence source. “All the shit we pulled in other countries since the Cold War, some morons decided to bring home.”

    ReplyDelete
  9. Moon of Alabama’s recent post about similar topic:

    https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/03/reality-based-people-can-fact-check-the-fact-checkers.html

    ReplyDelete