Independent journalist Matt Taibbi warned the House Judiciary Committee that a key player in the deep state censorship cartel could continue its nefarious activities in government.
Taibbi, known for his work on The Twitter Files, testified at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on “The Censorship-Industrial Complex” Wednesday. During the hearing, Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI) asked Taibbi about the current status of the infamous Global Engagement Center (GEC), a State Department Program responsible for pushing for censorship on social media and giving $100,000 to the anti-free speech Global Disinformation Index (GDI). Taibbi made clear that State Department bureaucrats were trying to continue the GEC’s work after losing funding.
“[GEC was] set to expire and be defunded, but essentially what happened was they took the same amount of employees, they renamed themselves [Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference or] R/FIMI and they scattered the employees physically throughout the building in different places to make it impossible or make it more difficult to eradicate the agency,” Taibbi said.
Taibbi added that he didn’t believe these bureaucrats would ultimately be successful under Trump. “Now I’m not sure how that all panned out,” Taibbi said. “My understanding is that ultimately this will be defunded, but those personnel and that money still exist and they still have exactly the same mission that was delineated for them in 2018 by legislation.”
During this exchange, Taibbi and Rep. Fitzgerald also discussed how a program ostensibly targeted at foreign threats turned to focus on freedom-loving populists around the world including in America itself. Taibbi said that one of his sources told him that the GEC’s mission switched from “counterterrorism to counter populism.” Later Taibbi added that the GEC would demonize politicians in allied countries as agents of Russia, China or Iran.
The House Judiciary Committee also discussed a number of other threats to free speech during the hearing. Taibbi, his fellow Twitter Files journalist, Michael Shellenberger, and Free Press writer Rupa Subramanya all additionally warned that censorship outside the U.S. can have consequences not only on other countries but also on Americans.
Subramanya called out the Biden administration for silence in the face of EU censorship through the draconian Digital Services Act (DSA), saying “that sent a strong message to the rest of the world that the U.S. could not be relied on to retaliate against governments that suppress the free speech rights of Americans.”
Taibbi noted that such laws eventually impact the free speech of Americans as well, saying that American citizens have been “harassed” and “arrested” because of such laws.
In his testimony, Shellenberger said that he had personally been targeted by Brazil for reporting on USAID’s support for Brazilian censorship.
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