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After eight years of operation, the State Department’s Global Engagement Center will cease operating as an entity at midnight on Monday. Like many government agencies, the GEC proved that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Established by Obama’s Executive Order 13584 in 2011, its original purpose was to “recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining or influencing the policies, security, or stability of the United States, its allies, and partner nations.” In the context of aggressive Russian, Chinese, and Iranian propaganda efforts targeting the US and its allies, this seemed reasonable. In 2016, this temporary effort became permanent with the creation of the GEC, which was charged with the responsibility to “lead the coordination, integration, and synchronization of Government-wide communications activities directed at foreign audiences abroad in order to counter the messaging and diminish the influence of international terrorist organizations, including the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), al Qa’ida, and other violent extremists abroad;” see Executive Order 13721—Developing an Integrated Global Engagement Center To Support Government-wide Counterterrorism Communications Activities Directed Abroad and Revoking Executive Order 13584.
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What developed was not a defense of public discourse but a poisonous brew of overreach by a federal agency combined with the fascistic tendencies of so many Silicon Valley staffers. The natural tendency toward censorship would have been hard enough to avoid under the best of circumstances, but when combined with a polarizing Trump administration that arrived with Russia-gate dogging it and the equally polarizing COVID scamdemic, and a hotly fought 2020 presidential campaign, the Global Engagement Center became actively involved in “suggesting” topics for social media platforms to “moderate.”
4.The GEC flagged accounts as “Russian personas and proxies” based on criteria like, “Describing the Coronavirus as an engineered bioweapon,” blaming “research conducted at the Wuhan institute,” and “attributing the appearance of the virus to the CIA.” pic.twitter.com/a4xBotQZ2m
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023
Eventually, the GEC started using its authority to award grants to bankroll leftist efforts like the Global Disinformation Index, which worked with Big Tech to limit advertising on disfavored outlets; see Exposed: State Department Funds Media Outlets to Promote Propaganda – RedState.
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🚨Today, the State Department’s Global Engagement Center is officially set to terminate eight years after it was authorized during the Obama administration.
The GEC, which almost earned a lifeline under the first CR version, is already scattering its employees to other agencies… pic.twitter.com/PBxxHrF5A3
— Gabe Kaminsky (@gekaminsky) December 23, 2024
Like so many zombie-like federal agencies, the GEC was nearly reanimated last week when it was given a new lease on life in the 1500+ page continuing resolution that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy went to war over; see Congress Releases Continuing Resolution Ahead of Government Shutdown Deadline and Elon Musk Issues Ominous Threat to Any Member Who Votes for the ‘Cramnibus’; Vivek Also Weighs In.
The GEC’s authorization under the National Defense Authorization Act for 2017 expires at midnight on December 23, 2024. The staff has new jobs to report to after Christmas, so this one small challenge to free speech has been brought up short. However, the people who managed the effort are still employed by the federal government. The networks that identified people and ideas to be silenced still exist. And the attitude that common people should shut up and do what they are told is as strong as ever.
