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In late 2022, the Twitter Files began to reveal an extensive network involving government, NGOs, think tanks, academic departments, foundations, Big Tech, and more collaborating to suppress free speech on the internet. That network came to be known as the Censorship-Industrial Complex. From Covid-19 to Russia and the 2016 elections to the Hunter Biden laptop and beyond, the terms “misinformation,” “disinformation,” and “malinformation” have flooded the public sphere and been weaponized to justify speech controls and censorship.
Drawing on his experience mapping the Censorship-Industrial Complex for Matt Taibbi during the Twitter Files, Andrew Lowenthal lays bare this new system for managing public thought and action. He details how in the wake of the Brexit vote and 2016 Trump election the infrastructure built for counterterrorism was converted to countering violent extremism and then towards counter-populism, within which censorship played a central role.
He describes how liberals and progressives came to see free speech not as a path to liberation but a threat to be suppressed, and the Faustian bargain they made with government, the intelligence services, and Big Tech to suppress populist opposition on both the Left and the Right. It is the story of the Left’s betrayal of one if its most core values and the radical political realignment this betrayal ushered in.
The free speech fight is far from over. Lowenthal warns of the emerging new threats and lays out what it will take to defend free speech in the coming decade.
