Have you ever tweeted about Russia? You could be tarred as an “unwitting proliferator of Russian narratives” by US government scorekeepers.
Do you support the French “yellow vest” anti-lockdown protests? You are “Russia-aligned,” according to Uncle Sam.
Are you a Cuban immigrant to America?
A federal contractor might try to get you banned on Twitter because you’re a Hindu nationalist.
Journalist Matt Taibbi is back with perhaps the most bizarre installment yet of the Twitter Files.
Americans’ freedom of speech is increasingly endangered by a vast, federally funded Disinformation Industrial Complex.
The feds and their contractors are going on ever-more wild goose chases to suppress any views the Washington establishment disapproves.
Taibbi reveals the “devastating secret” behind the “sprawling complex of disinformation studies ‘labs’ at” top universities: “Most of these ‘experts’ know nothing.”
In 2016, President Barack Obama issued Executive Order 13721 to establish the “Global Engagement Center” to “counter the messaging and diminish the influence of international terrorist organizations.”
GEC is based in the State Department but also partners with the FBI, CIA, Department of Homeland Security, National Security Agency and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
What could possibly go wrong?
Everything.
Thanks to GEC, “America’s information warfare mechanism turned inward, against ‘threats’ in our own population,” Taibbi writes.
Disinformation became the most fashionable crusade.
Disinformation is so perfidious that the GEC tries to keep its operations secret.
The center has a budget of roughly $74 million and “reportedly gave to at least 39 different organizations, whose names were redacted” in an inspector general report.
GEC “funded a secret list of subcontractors and helped pioneer an insidious — and idiotic — new form of blacklisting,” as Taibbi puts it.
There are foreign-government Twitter accounts, the same as US-government secret accounts (aided by Twitter), that are used for propaganda purposes.
But GEC, whose motto seems to be “Close enough for government work,” relies on carpet-bombing vast numbers of Twitter targets in hopes of hitting the bad guys.
