Chefredaktør Tom jensen vil i Berlingske Tidende ikke have at Danmark følger “Trump ind i ytringsfrihedens mørkeland“
Det er for mig at se ret indlysende, at flere europæiske lande er i færd med at gå ganske langt – også stærkt kritisabelt langt – i forhold til at håndtere ytringsfrihedens grænser i en tid, hvor alle borgere potentielt set har en stemme og kan offentliggøre deres meninger på sociale medier.
Af en eller anden grund, udfordres ytringsfrihedens grænser, i Tom Jensens statsstøttede hjerne, af at alle får adgang til den. Men mon ikke det er konkurrencens grænser, der skal trækkes hårdere op, hvis vi borer os lidt ind i Jensens sind? Jensens eksempler på Trumps ytringsfriheds-mørkeland er næsten alle fejlrepræsentationer, der hviler på den ide, som Berlingske selv har bildt sine læsere ind, at Trump nærtagende forfølger sine kritikere.
Næsten alle, for grænsen for ytringsfrihed på universiteter er ganske interessant, fordi institutionerne også skal opretholde et dekorum, der gennem de seneste årtiers grasserende hensynsbetændelse, med uddannelsesfordele og safespaces til stadigt flere identitets-definerede minoriteter, mens de jødiske studerende ikke er blevet beskyttet mod direkte intimidering af agiterede palæstinensiske sympatisører, der gentager Hamas slagord om udryddelse af den jødiske stat. Klimaet på campus dikteres af venstreradikale, hvor selv lærere overfalder studerende i nattelivet
Der ligger mange en god postering og venter i Jensens summering, men vi andre har levet og lever i en virkelighed, hvor censur på nettet var ganske reelt. Det er ikke blot de mange eksempler fra Europa, som Jensen også nævner, hvor folk arresteres for memes og kommentarer på nettet, i en stemning, hvor myndighederne hele tiden finder ud af at den ledende populist i et givent land tilfældigvis har overtrådt en eller anden lov, på et eller andet tidspunkt.
Den sti har USA også været på vej ned ad, men nu tager Trumps regering et opgør med ‘det censur industrielle kompleks. Som led i det, er Global Engagement Center (GEC) blevet opløst. Trumps udenrigsminister Marco Rubio forklarer i The Federalist
Over the past half-decade, bodies like GEC, crafted by our own governing ruling class, nearly destroyed America’s long free speech history. The enemies of speech had new lingo to justify their authoritarian impulse. It was “disinformation,” allegedly pushed by nefarious foreign governments, that was the No. 1 threat to “our democracy.” To protect “our democracy,” this “disinformation” had to be identified and stamped out.
GEC’s history shows the pernicious way Washington turns laudable public goals into a means of entrenching its own power and rolling back the freedom of regular Americans. GEC began life in 2011 as the Center for Strategic Counter Terrorism Communications (CSCC). CSCC’s purpose was to monitor the narratives of Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations and advise the American government on what counterterrorist narratives to use in response.
But this worthy purpose didn’t last long. In early 2016, the Obama administration renamed CSCC the “Global Engagement Center,” stripping away the explicit focus on international terrorism. Then, after Donald Trump’s historic victory in 2016 but before he took office, GEC’s mission was expanded to cover any and all “foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts.”
This pivot was no accident. Obama’s man in charge at GEC, Rick Stengel, touted his efforts to protect “democracy” while redefining it so that “democracy” came to mean silencing the part of the electorate he doesn’t like.
In 2019, Stengel directly equated President Trump’s campaign with foreign and terrorist propaganda, writing, “Trump employed the same techniques of disinformation as the Russians and much the same scare tactics as ISIS.” That same year, Stengel wrote an entire article about “why America needs a hate speech law.”
“I’m not against propaganda,” Stengel once said. “Every country does it, and they have to do it to their own population, and I don’t necessarily think it’s that awful.”
“Ultimately, the problem wasn’t that our government picked the wrong people and NGOs to police “disinformation.”” Pointerer Rubio “The problem is that they were picking anybody to do this at all”. Herunder er han i samtale med Mike Benz, der har beskæftiget sig intenst og pædagogisk med dette emne
Og så var Bidens regering selv “focused on speech, ideology, and the online flow of information” da den slags kunne lede til terror, skriver Reclaim The Net. De lagde en plan, som Tulsi Gabbard, der er Director of National Intelligence, nu har offentliggjort efter aktindsigt søgt af organisationen America First Legal
The plan does not call for explicit censorship, but it outlines a framework where suppression can operate quietly. Social platforms adjust algorithms, flag certain content, or apply filters, all while citing guidance from federal agencies. The result is a system of influence without direct orders, and coercion without fingerprints.
There is a real danger in normalizing these tactics. Speech becomes suspect. Criticism becomes radical. Dissent is confused with extremism. The government doesn’t need to shut anyone down when it can simply shape the environment in which opinions appear, thrive, or disappear.
What this document shows is not an overt crackdown. It reveals a softer, more technical form of control, driven by partnerships, filtered through educational campaigns, and masked as public safety. The language is bureaucratic. The effect is cultural.
One especially controversial component involved tying the United States into international speech governance schemes, including the Christchurch Call. Born from the horror of a mass shooting in New Zealand, the initiative originally focused on tackling online extremism. Since then, it has morphed into a global bureaucratic vehicle for content control. The previous Trump administration gave it a pass, citing the First Amendment. Biden’s team, however, embraced it, assigning the National Security Council and the State Department to get in the game.
The pitch was familiar. Join hands with the world, build resilient democracies, and pay lip service to respecting freedom of expression, just as long as that expression doesn’t offend the wrong algorithm. The declassified plan made no secret of its enthusiasm for these frameworks, even as other countries used them to pass actual censorship laws. The message was subtle: the best way to protect speech is to manage it.
Then came the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, GIFCT for short. It sounds like something out of a Tom Clancy novel, but it’s very real and very powerful. A cross-border partnership of Big Tech and government outfits, GIFCT operates a shared hash database used to flag and delete content before human eyes ever see it. It’s fast, opaque, and thoroughly insulated from public oversight.
Researchers and independent journalists have tried to access this database. They were denied. The same goes for civil liberties groups. Yet the database has reportedly swept up not just terrorist propaganda but satire, news reports, and dissenting opinions that diverge from mainstream policy positions. You don’t have to support violence to get swept into the net. You just have to be inconvenient.
The Biden strategy praised GIFCT and called for more of the same. More partnerships, more coordination, more invisible lines between state security and corporate enforcement. Intelligence sharing would increase both domestically and abroad, with federal agencies told to tighten cross-border surveillance and gather foreign intel that might “connect” to domestic threats. That’s a generous term, “connect.” It can mean almost anything with the right briefing memo.
Federal law enforcement would also be looped into new financial intelligence pipelines, a polite way of saying banks might one day help track the digital footprint of your unpopular opinion. The plan took care to frame all of this as “preventative,” a word that functions as a bureaucratic perfume for surveillance.
What really stretched the logic was how far this strategy drifted from any obvious definition of terrorism. Sections were devoted to civic engagement, voter turnout, and even pandemic responses. These were presented as social resilience measures. The theory was that if people vote more, wash their hands, and feel included, they’ll be less likely to fall into extremism. Whether or not there’s evidence for that, the document didn’t say. But it did make clear that nearly any policy goal could now be rebranded as counterterrorism.
The real sleight of hand comes with the plan’s fixation on “disinformation.” Over and over, the term is deployed without being defined. Page 5 hands the FBI, CIA, DHS, and the State Department marching orders to investigate how foreign disinformation might influence American minds. What it doesn’t clarify is where the boundary lies between propaganda and political argument, between foreign influence and domestic skepticism. That line, too, can be moved at will.
(…)
By page 9, the language sharpens. The strategy calls for an active partnership between federal agencies and online platforms, encouraging routine sharing of flagged content. The mission is to detect and neutralize “terrorist content,” a term so pliable that even basic political commentary has ended up on the wrong side of the filter.
The FBI, DHS, and the National Counterterrorism Center were chosen to take point. Their job isn’t just enforcement. It’s cultivation; nurturing closer ties with Silicon Valley in what amounts to a permanent public-private intelligence network.
The strategy also lays out an international expansion plan. Federal agencies are told to deepen participation in “global, multilateral fora.” That’s polite language for joint operations with foreign governments and tech firms, where content policies are hashed out away from the meddling eyes of the public.
Og ikke at forglemme, hvor konkret samarbejdet mellem staten og medierne er, så er her Mike Benz, der forklarer, hvorledes The Atlantic Council, hvor alle nulevende tidligere CIA direktører sidder i bestyrelsen, skoler medierne i, hvad der er sandt og hvad der er ‘bullshit’ – og fejler.
MONOKULTUR 
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