On Monday October 31st at 9am Ken Klippenstein and Lee Fang of The Intercept published a long detailed article with sources titled "TRUTH COPS; Leaked Documents Outline DHS's Plan to Police Disinformation", see here. As of midnight on November 1st -- after two full news days -- the news bias website Ground.news shows (backup) a total of 31 news sources covering the story, of which just 1 is left-leaning.
This is damning. Alternative media like Tim Pool did a rare live breaking news segment to cover this story, which he breathlessly described as possibly the biggest of our lifetime. Even foreign alternative media like Lotus Eaters did a video segment on this in podcast 514 titling it "Biden's Watergate Moment" in reference to how big this news is. Canadian conservative media Rebel News covered it. Beltway libertarian publication Reason covered it. So of course did domestic right-wing media including Hannity, DailyWire, NewsMax, NY Post, Breitbart, and Just The News, among others.
I've been tracking censorship issues very closely since 2015. The blockbuster article from The Intercept didn't actually break much news, except that they'd been leaked a draft of the once-every-four-years 2022 DHS "Homeland Security Review" document. The primary materials underlying their reporting has been known for weeks or months via previous reporting on the incident. I uploaded copies of the key information underlying The Intercept article as it became available, starting September 2nd 2022 -- two months ago -- reporting on the biweekly meetings between the federal government and big tech. On September 8th I published the 711 page collection of discovery information from big tech on this issue. On October 14th the lawsuit which produced the key discovery filed an amended complaint with additional information learned from discovery, and again I reported it. I went through hundreds of pages of documents to extract key information about their efforts to interfere in elections, as well as the actions of specific people like Rob Flaherty, Deputy Assistant to President Biden, and Laura Dehmlow, Section Chief for the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force. I provide this background to make it clear that anyone who is paying attention had ready access to the information reported by The Intercept for weeks or months (see the context links here for full details). When it's finally covered in long-form detail by an establishment-friendly outlet and generates massive coverage from their huge bombshell story, all we hear from left-wing media: crickets.
Where's CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, USA Today, The Hill, Reuters, etc? They provide no coverage of The Intercept's bombshell story, and embarassingly minimal coverage of anything related to this topic. Why? Because this information is harmful to Democrats and to the administrative state (or the "permanent government" or "deep state" if you prefer). Information which could lead to reduced power or increased repucrussions for Democrats / the administrative state is excluded from the information bubble that left-wing partisans are trapped in so that they're not given reason to question the false narratives they've come to accept. Left-wing partisans are treated like mushrooms.
If Americans knew the full unvarnished truth about the efforts of the US federal government to shape what they see and hear it would cause protests and law changes, at a minimum. Consider this gem:
“There’s another word for master narratives, it’s called history. Basically, every country creates their own narrative story. And, you know, my old job at the state department is what people used to joke as the chief propagandists job. We haven’t talked about propaganda. Propaganda — I’m not against propaganda, every country does it, and they have to do it to their own population, and I don’t necessarily think it’s that awful.” -former Editor at Time Magazine Richard Stengel, at a CFR (Council on Foreign Relations) event. Published May 3rd 2018 on the CFR YouTube channel titled “Political Disruptions: Combating Disinformation and Fake News"
It’s that same Mr. Stengal quoted above who is behind the TikTok influencer scheme to spread false narratives about Jan 6th 2021, the 2020 election, and Trump / MAGA generally as reported here.
Another key player in the narrative control business is Obama's propagandist Cass Sunstein and his "nudge" concept. About his book (named "Nudge"):
The book draws on research in psychology and behavioral economics to defend libertarian paternalism and active engineering of choice architecture.
The words "paternalism" and "active engineering of choice" should really stand out. This is mind control, done gently.
Democrat activists are pretty good at using "social proof" (a psychological and social phenomenon wherein people copy the actions of others) to persuade left-partisans into accepting or even desiring what Democrats want. Part of how this is achieved is via bot farms where activists make certain ideas seem much more or less popular than they really are. If you Tweet or post on Facebook or Reddit something the bot farm doesn't like you'll instantly get replies that seem to show nobody agrees with you, to discourage you and reduce the reach of your post. If you say something th bot farm does like they will engage positively and boost your reach to a larger audience. Truly massive bot farms operating under "#bluecrew" and "#DemCast" are used by Democrats to influence elections and increase racial tension as reported here.
I've touched on how the left-wing information ecosphere is curated like a cult to keep members from engaging with people from outside the cult. On top of this news curation we also have bot farms and sophisticated government propaganda efforts meant to keep you in line via lies and trickery. We also have the US federal government censorsing citizens. What I've outlined here is just the tip of the iceberg. Though it's enough to get a sense for why some things are the way that they are. Underlying the specific efforts are goals based the desire to preserve or gain power over others. This is a great evil that's very dangerous. I'll end with a quote from Michael Hanby. I'm not a Catholic and don't agree with everything he says, though there's much to like:
Now the digital revolution has irreversibly transformed the very nature of human sociality, bringing the sexual revolution to a decisive triumph with astonishing speed [...], propelling us breathlessly toward a posthuman future, and capacitating new forms of political action without political responsibility and new mechanisms of enforcement operating completely outside the traditional channels of political deliberation and decision. Riots can now be conjured up instantaneously around the globe in response to any provocation before our politicians can brush their teeth in the morning. The furies can be called down without notice upon anyone, anywhere, at the first indication of wrongthink—not by the state, or even by anyone in particular, but as the emergent effect of a vast stimulus-response mechanism and a system of mutual surveillance of all against all that has taken on a life of its own. The very possibility of being caught up in this mechanism suffices to “keep us in awe,” ruling by inducing what Shoshana Zuboff calls “anticipatory conformity.” The Hobbesian ambition of modern politics, to erect an artificial God imbued with quasi-divine attributes, has been realized on the plane not of political but of technological order and will almost certainly become more total still as biometrics fuses biotechnology and information technology together with the “internet of things”—tracking, predicting, and controlling the details of even our bodily life.
Almighty Google, to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid, is more interior to us than we are to ourselves. Compared with such awesome new powers, having a few hundred people gather under a dome for part of a year to deliberate policy seems positively antiquated. The maturation of this technocratic power signals not another form of political order, transparent to the categories of classical political theory, but the end of politics, the beginning of a post-political age that indeed may already be upon us—and the need for a profound renewal of Catholic thinking.
Links to everyone who covered this story after two full news days according to Ground.news:
- https://www.makeuseof.com/leaked-documents-show-facebooks-collaboration-with-dhs-to-police-misinformation/
- https://therightscoop.com/ministry-of-truth-new-documents-reveals-that-facebook-and-twitter-have-been-working-with-dhs-to-censor-people/
- https://dnyuz.com/2022/10/31/feds-keep-facebook-censorship-portal-despite-dhs-disinformation-board-demise/
- https://rumble.com/embed/v1o8416/?pub=4
- https://www.rebelnews.com/alphabet_agencies_colluded_with_big_tech_companies_to_censor_disinformation_on_social_media
- https://hannity.com/media-room/big-tech-bombshell-twitter-facebook-had-regular-meetings-with-dhs-to-discuss-censorship/
- https://www.zerohedge.com/political/leaked-docs-reveal-shocking-extent-dhs-disinfo-collusion-twitter-facebook
- https://americanmilitarynews.com/2022/10/facebook-has-special-govt-censorship-portal-for-govt-to-request-takedowns/
- https://www.newswars.com/dhs-coordinated-massive-censorship-operations-with-major-big-tech-platforms-leaked-docs-confirm/
- https://www.audacy.com/knss/news/national/twitter-facebook-had-censorship-meetings-with-dhs
- https://www.nationalreview.com/news/leaked-documents-reveal-dhs-collaborated-with-facebook-to-target-disinformation/
- https://www.dailywire.com/news/big-tech-worked-closely-with-the-fbi-and-dhs-to-police-disinformation
- https://www.newsmax.com/loganratick/dhs-censorship-twitter/2022/11/01/id/1094383/
- https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/faith-freedom-self-reliance/dhs-quietly-expanding-efforts-to-combat-misinformation
- https://ijr.com/musk-right-bombshell-leak-reveals-fired-twitter-exec-biden-admin/
- https://nationalfile.com/report-twitter-and-facebook-held-regular-meetings-with-dhs-to-coordinate-censorship/
- https://tennesseestar.com/2022/11/01/government-officials-have-a-special-portal-to-flag-facebook-posts-for-censorship/
- https://thepostmillennial.com/dhs-leaks-starting-in-2020-dhs-began-meeting-with-twitter-facebook-wikipedia-and-more-monthly-to-coordinate-content-moderation-efforts
- https://nypost.com/2022/10/31/feds-keep-facebook-censorship-portal-despite-dhs-disinfo-board-demise/
- https://welovetrump.com/2022/10/31/dhs-leaks-completely-expose-facebook-twitter-microsoft-and-more/
- https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/report-dhs-regular-meetings-twitter-facebook-censoring-americans
- https://gellerreport.com/2022/10/tech-companies-incl-twitter-facebook-reddit-discord-wikipedia-microsoft-linkedin-verizon-met-monthly-with-fbi-dhs-and-other-govt-agencies-to-coordinate-censorship-operations-during-2020-ele.html/
- https://justthenews.com/nation/technology/twitter-facebook-routinely-met-dhs-censorship-report
- https://headtopics.com/us/feds-keep-facebook-censorship-portal-despite-dhs-disinformation-board-demise-31240363
- https://reason.com/2022/10/31/dhs-still-policing-disinformation-despite-dissolving-disinformation-governance-board/
- https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2022/10/31/report-twitter-and-facebook-had-regular-meetings-with-dhs-on-censoring-americans/
- https://twitchy.com/sarahd-313035/2022/10/31/report-facebook-and-twitter-worked-closely-with-dhs-and-fbi-to-censor-disinformation-aka-the-truth/
- https://www.lucianne.com/2022/10/31/report_twitter_and_facebook_had_regular_meetings_with_dhs_on_censoring_americans_96768.html
- https://fintechandmore.com/featured/leaked-documents-show-facebook-and-twitter-working-closely-with-dhs-fbi-to-police-disinformation-report/
- https://news.bitcoin.com/leaked-documents-show-facebook-and-twitter-working-closely-with-dhs-fbi-to-police-disinformation-report/