Documents released by America First Legal (AFL) reveal that the Biden administration offshored censorship requests to Imran Ahmed of the U.K.-based Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) and reappropriated infrastructure used during the war on terror to support CCDH's global censorship campaign.
Leveraging its hand from the uncertainty during the COVID-19 pandemic, from day one, AFL said, the Biden administration "mobilized the national security state to support its censorship program."
The veil of legitimacy through which the Biden administration stripped Americans' of their First Amendment rights was asserted in the name of their safety.
"Internet-based communications platforms" make Americans "vulnerab[le] to domestic terrorist recruitment and other harmful content," read the "National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism," report published June 15, 2021.
But the Biden administration didn't stop there. In Orwellian fashion, according to AFL, it effectively pulled from the resources of the "national security state," which had initially been set up to target foreign actors, and weaponized the apparatus to target and censor political opponents.
"All told," the report added, "a better, more holistic, and coordinated understanding of and information sharing on today's threat will allow a more effective and comprehensive response. That response will address not just current and imminent incarnations of the domestic terrorism threat but also its contributing factors before they can generate still more violence in the future."
This strategy outlined a comprehensive approach involving state, local, tribal, and territorial governments, foreign allies, civil society, the technology sector, and academia to build an industry around controlling the flow of information.
The administration Trojan-horsed its efforts to promote the censorship industry under the guise of protecting Americans from online "terrorism" through its endorsement of the "Christchurch Call to Action to Eliminate Terrorist and Violent Extremist Content Online."
Responding to a slate of communications (1,2) from members of the Biden administration calling to censor Americans, the executive director of AFL, Gene Hamilton, stated, "These documents demonstrate, yet again, the Biden Administration's drive to censor its political opponents.
"In the name of fighting 'domestic terrorism,' it eagerly partnered with foreign leftists to silence American citizens who questioned or challenged the government's irrational vaccine mandates and who dared to discuss the possibility of fraud during the 2020 election. The Biden Administration's National Security Strategy was a fraud, and its program of censorship an indefensible disgrace."
The report comes as the Supreme Court hears arguments in the Murthy v. Missouri case, which could decide the federal government's role in regulating speech online.