The Global Censorship Movement: A Terrifying Trend

An Authoritarian Movement Has Been on the Rise Throughout the World.

The advent of the internet posed a threat for global leadership, as it was suddenly possible for dissenting ideas to travel around the world. Repressive countries quickly used their power to limit and control internet usage. The “Democratic” countries had a quandary. The media had created what Noam Chomsky called “a lively debate within a small spectrum of ideas”. This curtailed the independent thinking that elites fear most. This paradigm worked well because people did not have a platform or large community to exchange political ideas and concepts.

The internet, especially social media, provided such a platform. It allowed diverse opinions that Western global leaders were not comfortable with. They couldn’t legally ban access to the internet, so there had to be a more pernicious way of accomplishing the goal.

After Trump won the election in 2016, Democrats began the epically false Russiagate narrative, claiming in part that Russian “disinformation” in US social media was the cause of Hillary’s humiliating defeat. This gave birth to politicalization of the terms “disinformation”, “misinformation” and “malinformation”. To this day, no clear definition of these designations has been given. The only definition that seems to fit is “it means whatever those in power say it means at the moment they say it”. The great irony is that it’s hard to conceive of a greater example of the classic meaning of “disinformation” than Russiagate itself. It has been debunked by the Mueller report, The Senate report, Bob Woodward, Columbia Journalism, the Durham Report and by the Twitter dump given to

Matt Taibbi

from Elon Musk.

Russiagate was a three year long frenzy presented with no evidence ever provided, because there wasn’t any, except vague circumstantial evidence. For those hazy claims to be believed, it required that the reader wanted it to be true in the first place. Russiagate was the largest government sanctioned conspiracy theory in US history. It may have finally faded from the news, but disinformation has lived on and taken on a life of its own.

This prompts the bigger question of who “disinformation” applies to. It certainly doesn’t apply to our government which has lied to us continuously about each war, or the mainstream media that is in lockstep with them. When people have told me that “people have died from disinformation” I have answered with “Do you have any names of these people? I can give you names of people who died from the mainstream disinformation about Iraq or Syria”. We do have disinformation in the US, but it’s coming from the very institutions that claim to be fighting it.

When Biden became president, he began the bone-chilling, Orwellian “Disinformation Board”. The goal was ludicrous: a small selection of people hired to make decisions for a large nation on what’s considered objectively true or not and what information we are allowed to see or not. Biden later disbanded it, but not because he had an enlightened moment, but because he gave the task directly to the intelligence agencies.

Matt Taibbi

’s Twitter dump showed how intelligence agencies coerced social media companies to delete posts that disagreed with establishment positions. This covered a range of topics from Russiagate to Covid to any criticism of the Democrats from the Left or the Right. The Twitter dump also showed that US intelligence agencies were organizing their own disinformation campaigns to protect Biden. Despite comments from the media that it was a “nothing burger”, the Twitter dump led to a supreme court case, Mcmurtry Vs. Biden. A Federal judge called it “one of the most extreme violations of the first amendment in US history”. An appellate court upheld the ruling. At the time of this writing, the Supreme Court has heard the argument, and a decision is pending.

This type of censorship is not restricted to the United States. Just the opposite, in fact. It has spread to many “democracies” around the world. On its largest scale, the EU is preparing for an August 25th “go live” with their Digital Services Act (DSA). This act will demand that all large platforms must fight disinformation. The decree is vague and troublesome. This is directly from the DSA document:

This Regulation fully harmonizes the rules applicable to intermediary services in the internal market with the objective of ensuring a safe, predictable and trusted online environment, addressing the dissemination of illegal content online and the societal risks that the dissemination of disinformation or other content may generate, and within which fundamental rights enshrined in the Charter are effectively protected and innovation is facilitated.

Once again, no definition is given for “disinformation”. The term is used thirteen times in the bill without any specifics. This will allow the EU to have any social media post it doesn’t like removed. It’s not just “disinformation” that’s ambiguous, “safe and predictable”, “trusted”, “societal risks” can be interpreted in a myriad of ways. The punishment for these social media platforms for not adhering to this law? A fine of up to 6% of a company’s annual revenue.

And who is going to decide if it’s disinformation or not? The EU commission, in its own word’s said:

“an EU-wide cooperation mechanism will be established between national regulators and the Commission.”

In other words, A group of “regulators”, i.e. “bureaucrats” will get to decide the truth. Once again, it’s a few people getting to rule, this time for the EU (450 million people!), what information they are allowed to see or not see. The large platforms will have very little choice but to conform or risk a ruling against them.

Michael Shellenberger, an investigative reporter, author and Substack writer recently exposed the Brazil Twitter dump. Similar to the United States, it shows a massive abuse of power: The Brazilian equivalent of the Supreme Court, called the Superior Electoral Court is currently run by Alexandre de Moraes. De Moraes demanded personal details turned over from Brazilian twitter members who used hashtags he found offensive. One can only image what could be done with such data. It’s unthinkable that a one judge could get away with asserting so much power. Morase also demanded that Twitter censor posts against former president Bolsonaro.

Shellenberger also revealed that the FBI met with the Brazilian government to advise them on how to better censor social media. He also revealed that the US paid NGOs to assist Brazil as well. Considering how strongly censored Brazil is, it worth wondering if the FBI walked away with a few new tricks.

Shellenberger is now under criminal investigation by Brazilian president Lula. Recently, Shellenberger appeared in the US congress, predictably getting harangued, rather than congratulated for a job well done. The key takeaway was that the US government, especially the Democrats who revere and crave censorship so much, found the exposing of other countries censorship utterly repugnant.

Brazil is also planning to file criminal charges against Elon Musk. Say what you want about Musk, and he is far from perfect, but he does make a stand about censorship, which none of the other platforms have. Thats the reason he is despised by Democratic leaders, not because they think he’s a rising Hitler or a white nationalist. It’s because he refuses to be bullied by the censorship complex, though he has given in on some issues. As Michael Shellenberger said, “Twitter is the last defense against totalitarianism”. There is some truth to that because Facebook and other platforms capitulated to the censorship complex years ago.

Germany passed its own censorship law in 2018 called the NetzDG. It’s not much different than the DSA. It is vague, overbroad, legislation that can be interpreted and applied in just about any suitable way. Since it’s so broad, it leaves little room for defense. Like the DSA, NetzDG mandates corporations to remove illegal content, hate speech and disinformation or face stiff fines.

France demanded that Rumble remove Russian content from its site. Rumble runs as a censorship free platform and refused to give into French demands. France also has banned TikTok in New Caledonia in response to their quest for independence. France has its own censorship law which empowers judges to order the immediate removal of ‘fake news” during an election. This law can actually include a jail sentence if violated. Once again, any specific information on what constitutes “fake news” is evaded.

Other countries have gotten into the fray. England, Ireland and Canada all have ominous bills in the works. The United States currently has a bill that would treat any criticism of Israeli policy as a violation of the Civil Rights Act and threatens to cut funds from universities that don’t shut down anti-Gaza war protests.

It is not the job of any government to determine whether information is true or not. That is supposed to be the job of the media and the people. It’s safe to say that Western media has failed miserably at that job.

Another concern is that in all these cases, the public sector is coercing the private sector to remove content. The public sector forcing the private sector to act on its behalf of is one of the definitions of fascism. It’s a global fascism creeping up on us. Will these laws eventually turn into criminal prosecutions? It’s a serious possibility. The way the laws keep expanding, it seems plausible.

What we see is a global trend to control the narrative. It’s possible that the election of Trump, Brexit and the election of Bolsonaro was the breaking point for Western elites. It may have been the combination of these three that have convinced the West that the public cannot be trusted to make decisions and need to be censored - so that they make the “right” decisions.

In a democratic society, controversial issues should be debated, not stifled. The public should have access to a wide range of thought and ideas. Censorship crushes democracy by removing any real public opinion. Censorship creates suspicion and isolation. Censorship results in people yearning to be heard. Censorship radicalizes. Free discussion builds trust and engagement. Free discussion creates knowledge. Censorship systems can be broken if the public becomes aware and refuses to normalize it. It loses its grip when we form communities and discuss what we see and experience. We should debate more and judge less.