In the quietness of last Sunday afternoon, the always essential ZeroHedge posted The Censorship Hegemon Must Be Stopped, by Tyler Durden, June 11, 2023.
This reproduced an essay of the same name: The Censorship Hegemon Must Be Stopped, by Aaron Kheriaty, Brownstone Institute, June 11, 2023.
"Less than one year into their existence, CISA decided that their remit also should include protecting our “cognitive infrastructure” from various threats."
— Brownstone Institute (@brownstoneinst) June 11, 2023
~ Aaron Kheriaty @akheriaty https://t.co/o6giEj3cHY
Put plainly, after the election of Donald Trump in late 2016, an astonishing array of Federal agencies began a stampede to seize control of the information flow to the American public. What they targeted was the internet. (The MSM had long since been brought to heel.)
Kheriaty writes:
There is hardly a topic of recent public discussion and debate that the US government has not targeted for censorship…
…censorship is now a highly developed industry, complete with career-training institutions in higher education (like Stanford’s Internet Observatory or the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public), full-time job opportunities in industry and government (from the Virality Project and the Election Integrity Partnership to any number of federal agencies engaged in censorship)...[Links in original throughout]
As is the way with bureaucracies, these political police outfits are experiencing Mission Creep—or, more accurately, Mission Landslides. As Kheriaty announces:
My fellow citizens, meet the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency—better known as CISA—a government acronym with the same word in it twice in case you wondered about its mission.
This agency was created in the waning days of the Obama administration, supposedly to protect our digital infrastructure against cyberattacks from computer viruses and nefarious foreign actors. But less than one year into their existence, CISA decided that their remit also should include protecting our “cognitive infrastructure” from various threats.
Cognitive Infrastructure? What on earth is “Cognitive Infrastructure”? Kheriaty explains:
“Cognitive infrastructure” is the actual phrase used by current CISA head Jen Easterly, who formerly worked at Tailored Access Operations, a top-secret cyber warfare unit at the National Security Agency. It refers to the thoughts inside your head.
As Kheriaty points out,
In prior precedent-setting cases on censorship, the Supreme Court clarified that the right of free speech guaranteed by the Constitution exists not just for the person speaking but for the listener as well: We all have the right to hear both sides of debated issues to make informed judgments. Thus all Americans have been harmed by the government’s censorship leviathan, not just those who happen to post opinions or share information on social media.
Thus Kheriaty and his colleagues have
…joined the states of Missouri and Louisiana and several other co-plaintiffs to file a suit in federal court challenging what journalist Michael Shellenberger has called the censorship-industrial complex. While much of the press cooperated with the state’s censorship efforts and has ignored our court battle, we expect that it will ultimately go to the Supreme Court, setting up Missouri v. Biden to be the most important free speech case of our generation—and arguably, of the past 50 years.
Unsurprisingly, the Biden Regime is fighting this case tooth and nail. But…
The judge presiding over the case, Terry Dougherty, asked on Friday in court if anyone had read George Orwell’s 1984 and whether they remembered the Ministry of Truth. “It’s relevant here,” he added.
But no doubt woke High Schools are purging Orwell’s works right now.
Of particular interest to VDARE.com was this information:
Which other federal agencies are involved in censorship? Besides the ones you might suspect—the DOJ, NIH, CDC, Surgeon General, and the State Department—our case has also uncovered censorship activities by the Department of the Treasury (don’t criticize the feds’ monetary policies), and yes, my friends, even the Census Bureau (don’t ask). [My emphasis]
What exactly the Census Bureau was doing is not (to me) clear from the hyperlink. But it does supply the reference for this delicious line:
Jen Easterly [Tweet her] head of CISA actually said the following (this is a direct quote): it is “really, really dangerous if people get to pick their own facts.”
VDARE readers on LinkedIn might want to ask Jen Easterly (right) what she means by this.
Of course, the most obvious and important matter on which the Census Bureau generates data is the Great Replacement. Since the Treason Lobby is trying very hard to ban this concept [What is ‘great replacement theory’ and how does it fuel racist violence?, by David Bauder, Associated Press, May 16, 2022], it is reasonable to presume the Census Bureau is helping.[Census Partners With Social Media Platforms, Community Organizations, the Public to Stop Spread of False Information, by Zack Schwartz, Census.gov, February 10, 2020]
Another thought occurs. Recent VDARE.com engagement on Twitter has been very similar to the pattern on Facebook right before we were zapped: an initial surge, followed by a stall, possibly after the commissars notice. Elon Musk has notoriously not got complete full control of his commissars. But a similar pattern has appeared on the usually much livelier Gab, and we are confident Andrew Torba has no malign intent towards us.
Could this be the Federal Government, here to help us?
Email Patrick Cleburne.
