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Brownstone Institute

The Many Layers of the Canada-India Diplomatic Dispute

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35 minute read

From the Brownstone Institute

BY Ramesh ThakurRAMESH THAKUR 

Canada–India relations have been trapped in a downward spiral following an explosive statement in Parliament by Prime Minister (PM) Justin Trudeau on  September 18. He alleged involvement of Indian agents in the June 18 killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a prominent British Columbian (BC) Sikh leader who was on India’s most wanted watchlist.

India has rejected the charge as “absurd” and denounced Canada as a “safe haven” for “terrorists, extremists and organized crime”—language normally reserved for Pakistan.

To understand the unexpected diplomatic tensions between the two Commonwealth parliamentary democracies, we need to recall the historical context, the democratic backsliding in both countries even while each prides itself on being a leading exemplar of democracy, and the shifting global order in which the existing normative architecture is simultaneously challenged by voices from the Global South and being reconfigured by hard-nosed geopolitical calculations.

Historical Baggage on Both Sides

Canada’s first major disillusionment with independent India was the latter’s refusal to frame its approach to world affairs through the West’s moral lens in the three Indochina control commissions set up after the Geneva Agreements of 1954, which India chaired and which was the subject of my PhD dissertation.

There has been similar long-simmering resentment in Ottawa at the perceived ‘betrayal’ by India when it used Canadian-supplied reactors to conduct a nuclear test in 1974, adding insult to injury by calling it a “peaceful nuclear explosion.” Pierre Trudeau, the current PM’s father who was PM in 1968–79 and 1980–84, was also irritated by Indian PM Indira Gandhi’s propensity to moralize.

Today it is Indians who are put off by the younger Trudeau’s virtue-signalling self-righteousness over race and gender-obsessed identity politics. Nothing illustrates this better than his bizarre apology on September 27 for the way in which 98-year-old Ukrainian-Canadian Yaroslav Hunka was honoured by Canada’s Parliament on September 22, in the presence of visiting President Volodymyr Zelensky, with a standing ovation.

It turns out he had fought as part of a Ukrainian Waffen-SS unit against the Soviet Union that was a Western ally at the time in World War II. As well as causing grave offence to Holocaust victims and Jews, Trudeau said in a belated apology: “It also hurt Polish people, Roma people, 2SLGTBQI+ people [don’t ask: I can’t be bothered], disabled people, racialized people” [another woke linguistic innovation of the Trudeau government].

Sikhs number around 25 million in India and are spread all over the country but concentrated in Punjab. Although just under two percent of India’s total population they are the majority community in Punjab. In a Pew Research Survey in 2021, a stunning 95 percent of them said they were extremely proud of their Indian identity; 70 percent said anyone who disrespects India is not a good Sikh; and only 14 percent said Sikhs face significant discrimination in India.

The armed insurgency for Khalistan as a separate homeland for Sikhs died out in India thirty years ago but left a bitter legacy. The Indian Army assault on the Golden Temple in Amritsar—the holiest site for all Sikhs—and the killing of 3,000 Sikhs in the pogrom following Indira Gandhi’s assassination by Sikh bodyguards in 1984 inflamed anti-India passions among Sikhs that remain raw, around the world as well as in India.

Numbering 770,000, Sikhs account for two percent of Canada’s population—a higher proportion than in India—and a little under half of Indo-Canadians. Canada is home to 5 percent of diaspora Indians and 13 percent of Indian overseas students who make up 40 percent of foreign students in Canada. It accounts for 5 percent of India’s foreign tourists but under 0.7 percent of its trade and foreign investment.

Canada-based Sikh extremists blew up an Air India plane in 1985 killing 329 people: the biggest mass murder in Canadian history. In 1982, India’s request to extradite Talwinder Singh Parmar was reportedly rebuffed by Canada. He was one of the architects of the Air India bombing.

Trudeau’s 2018 India Trip

An early indication that Trudeau is a show-pony who lacks policy nous and political street-smarts came with his week-long trip to India in February 2018. It was a PR disaster at home because it looked like an extended family vacation at taxpayer expense, and a political disaster in India. He was ridiculed for the occasional demonstration of Bhangra dancing skills and nonstop display of sartorial splendour more suited to lavish Bollywood wedding scenes than quotidian Indian lifestyle.

More seriously, Jaspal Atwal, convicted in Canada of attempting to kill a visiting Indian cabinet minister in 1986, posed with Trudeau’s wife in Mumbai and was invited to the official dinner at the Canadian High Commission in New Delhi. National security adviser Daniel Jean mooted the conspiracy theory that Atwal’s presence was arranged by factions within the Indian government. Trudeau backed him.

India’s Farmers’ Protest, 2020–21

In September 2020, the Modi government passed three farm reform laws to open up the agricultural sector to market forces and discipline, encourage scale economies by creating a national market, deregulate trade in agricultural produce, and facilitate private investment. Farmers worried that the reforms would leave them vulnerable to large and predatory agri-conglomerates.

Fearing price volatility and loss of stable income, many Sikh farmers launched a mass protest that included blocking traffic in and out of Delhi with trucks and farm vehicles. “Canada will always be there to defend the right of peaceful protest,” Trudeau unnecessarily and unhelpfully declared on November 30. When India denounced the “ill-informed” remark, Trudeau doubled down and urged “dialogue.” Modi capitulated to the farmers in December 2021 and the protest ended peacefully.

Setbacks to Democracy in India and Canada

Both countries’ leaders are open to charges of violating liberal democratic norms and the rule of law. Modi, for pandering to militant Hinduism, eroding minority rights, muzzling the media and silencing critics. Trudeau, because of a reputation for being an unserious dilettante who never grew up or into the leader of a G7 country.

I have previously criticised India’s growing democratic deficit on Modi’s watch, decried efforts to erode Muslims’ equality of Indian citizenship, and warned of the danger of turning India into a Hindu Pakistan. In addition, however, for many of us who were and remain shocked and appalled at the extent of Canada’s assault on citizens’ rights and liberties in its lockdown, mask, and vaccine mandates, there is an undeniable element of schadenfreude at Trudeau’s fall from the virtue signallers’ pedestal.

In early 2022, Canada’s truckers became icons of a larger struggle for freedom and liberty against growing state power that transcended Canada. The Freedom Convoy was the largest, longest, and noisiest honk-fest of a demonstration against a Canadian government in decades. It was mostly peaceful, good-humoured, supported by large numbers of Canadians and also inspired other countries to take up the cause, including America and Australia.

Yet, the world’s emoter-in-chief solemnly intoned in Parliament on February 9 that the truckers were “trying to blockade our economy, our democracy and our fellow citizens’ daily lives.” Trudeau refused to meet and talk to them (“dialogue” for thee, Mr Modi, but not for me). The government froze the protestors’ bank accounts and of anyone linked with the protests, without due process, appeals process, or court order.

On February 21, Parliament approved the declaration of emergency and authorized Trudeau to use force against the protestors. Justice Minister David Lametti boasted: “We took measures that had been applied to terrorism and applied them to other illegal activity.” Western leaders responded with studied silence. Trudeau revoked the emergency on the 23rd, proving they weren’t needed in the first place. His hypocrisy vis-à-vis his support for India’s farm protests was duly noted in India.

We Know You are Guilty. Now Help Us Prove It.

Canada has levelled grave charges against a friendly government without tabling any supporting evidence. Trudeau’s choice of words was curious. Canada’s security agencies, he said, were “actively pursuing credible allegations of a potential link” to Indian agents, not credible “evidence” of “involvement.” In effect Trudeau said to Modi: We believe you are guilty. Now help us prove it. In any joint investigation, both sides will want to protect sources and methods, limiting the scope for collaboration.

The statement covers an extraordinarily wide range of possibilities. At its most innocuous, some Indian embassy personnel might have held meetings with third persons who were in contact with the killers. At its most serious, Indian agents were the prime organizers of the hit on Nijjar or were themselves the assassins.

Key questions for outsiders are: At which point in the continuum should Canadian agencies expect to be informed by the Indians of what was happening? Which is the threshold of unacceptable complicity by Indian agents? Which is the crossover point at which Canada moves from behind-the-scenes efforts to resolve the differences and goes public with the charge of Indian involvement?

Having chosen to raise the allegation in Parliament, the onus is on Trudeau to convince India, allies, and Canadians, not on Modi to prove the negative. Arindam Bagchi, a foreign ministry spokesman, says India is “willing to look at any specific information that is provided to us. But so far, we have not received any.” The failure to provide more detail and evidence has generated disquiet even in Canada with the opposition leader, the centre-left Globe and Mail and the centre-right National Post all saying that Canadians deserve the full truth.

The correct procedure would have been to let the police complete investigations, charge alleged killers, provide evidence of official complicity in the form of forensic analysis, witness testimony, CCTV and/or surveillance photo, audio and video corroboration, and only then request Indian assistance in joint investigations and, if required, extradition to facilitate court proceedings in Canada.

Instead, Trudeau has patented a unique blend of lack of due diligence and incompetent governance. The latest manifestation of this was the Hunka fiasco. The kerfuffle has underlined the dangers of diaspora politics, the lax standards of background checks on migrants, and the keystone cops nature of the Trudeau government’s foreign policy competence. This too has magnified the international and domestic damage from the tiff with India.

“Tails You Lose:” If We Didn’t Do It, You Are Wrong

It is clear from what has been said publicly that Canadian intelligence agencies do not, at this stage, believe that this was a direct Indian hit squad operating on Canadian soil. If they had become aware of an independent plot to kill Nijjar, in light of Canada’s decades-long inaction against Canada-based financing and training for terrorist and criminal actions on Indian targets, Indian officers might have felt no obligation to warn the relevant Canadian agencies.

Only the naïve would believe the Five Eyes club of Anglosphere countries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and the US) doesn’t conduct human and electronic surveillance and share intelligence. David Cohen, US ambassador to Canada, confirmed that “shared intelligence among Five Eyes partners” had informed Trudeau of possible Indian involvement. As India’s global interests and national capabilities grow, it too will invest in increasing intelligence gathering and covert operational infrastructures. But democracies do not perpetrate acts of violence on one another’s citizens and territory.

At present, the geographical focus of India’s external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, is its own neighbourhood and the tools of its tradecraft are bribery and blackmail. Although some would like to copy the example of Israel’s Mossad, for now RAW lacks the training, assets, and authority to kill enemies of the state sheltering in foreign lands. (It may act through domestic rivals.)

Modi has been willing to expand the limits of the militarily possible against hostile militant groups based in Myanmar and Pakistan. But India is not believed to have sanctioned state killings even in Pakistan, despite public pressure to do so.

In a conversation at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on September 26, eight days on from Trudeau’s public accusation, rather than duck and weave, India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar was unequivocal in saying that India had told Canada that assassinations is not government policy, but that it would look into specific and relevant information provided by Ottawa. His denials have been firm enough that if he is gaslighting, he will pay a high individual reputational price, which adds to the presumption of credibility to his statement.

There is an additional political calculation. On the one hand, at best India would have only a rudimentary capability to carry out such missions in Canada. Although possible, it’s highly implausible. On the other hand, after Edward Snowden’s revelations of the US as a surveillance state and the international headlines about how the National Security Agency had eavesdropped on then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s and other European leaders’ conversations for decades, India would be stupid to believe it could escape detection by a Five Eyes country with sophisticated human and signals intelligence capabilities. The risk of seriously damaging relations with all five countries seems too high for state sanction of Nijjar’s murder. It could also fatally undermine India’s international campaign against Pakistan as a state sponsor of terrorism.

The failure to provide more detail and evidence has generated disquiet within Canada. The opposition Conservative Party is comfortably ahead in polls. The latest poll would see it winning 179 of the 338 seats, to the Liberal’s 103. Opposition leader Pierre Poilievre has urged Trudeau to reveal more details. His support for a tough response was qualified with “If true.” He also contrasted Trudeau’s softer actions in earlier dealings with China that had held two Canadian citizens hostage for many months. Both the centre-left Globe and Mail and the centre-right National Post say Canadians deserve the full truth.

India in turn holds fast to the allegation that Canadian authorities have been soft on diaspora terrorism, too tolerant of anti-Indian activities and rhetoric because of the electoral importance of the concentrated Sikh vote in BC and Ontario. Trudeau has been surprisingly indifferent to the sensitivity of the Sikh factor in Canada–India relations and unwilling to vigorously target terrorist financing from Canada. During Trudeau’s 2018 trip to India Amarinder Singh, Punjab’s Sikh premier (2002–07, 2017–21), gave him a list of wanted terrorist fugitives that included Nijjar’s name. Nothing happened.

As noted by Omer Aziz, a former foreign policy adviser to Trudeau, diaspora-courting domestic politics often distorts foreign policy priorities. Trudeau’s minority government is reliant on the support of the New Democratic Party (NDP) to stay in power. Its Sikh leader Jagmeet Singh is viewed in India as “a known Khalistan promoter and supporter:” a sympathiser at best and an activist at worst. His public statements in response to an alleged Indian link to Nijjar’s killing referenced acts of “violence, persecution,” “torture and even death” by Indian authorities. This will not assuage India’s concerns that Trudeau is captive to domestic diaspora politics.

Many Canadians feel growing unease at migrant communities importing the troubles of their homeland into Canada. In a widely-circulated video, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, Nijjar’s US-based lawyer, has urged Hindu Indo-Canadians to go back to India. Disinterest in policies to encourage and assist immigrant groups to adopt cultural norms and core political values of their new country can, for some groups, create isolated, self-contained parallel worlds in which they import all the prejudices and conflicts from their home countries.

Trudeau is going to have to put up or shut up. He has gone too far on a limb to survive prevarication and backtracking. If the allegations are not substantiated, he will damage his standing in Canada and internationally and worsen already strained relations with India.

Attention will focus on the foreign policy risks of diaspora communities and Canada’s lukewarm efforts to rein in their excesses. Allies will not be happy at being put in the middle of a bilateral spat to which Trudeau has contributed by failing to recognize the complexities and magnitude of India’s internal security challenges and not taking its concerns seriously.

Nijjar was a shady character who entered Canada illegally on a false passport in 1997. Eleven days after his claim to refugee status was rejected, he married a woman who sponsored him for immigration. That too was rejected, indicating a marriage of convenience. There is also an undated video (at about the 18-minute mark), of uncorroborated authenticity, of him at a training camp somewhere in BC with an illegal assault rifle. Despite this background, he was granted citizenship in 2015. This doesn’t seem like a mature and responsible approach to conferring citizenship.

An intra-Sikh quarrel in Canada, and in particular the occasionally violent “gurdwara [Sikh temple] politics” in BC, is another possible explanation for his murder. Indian intelligence had linked Nijjar to a hit on a local Sikh rival last year, raising the question: was he killed in a tit-for-tat assassination in the civil war?

Trudeau’s star power has faded. He has been buffeted by allegations of Chinese interference in Canada’s last election and criticised for the tardiness and softness of his response.

Payment on the Covid-era economic shutdowns and subsidies has come due in the form of inflationary pressures. Carson Jerema, a National Post editor, writes that at a time of sinking popularity, almost “everything this government does is calculated for political gain.” Creating “an international incident” with the allegation that India “is behind the murder of a Canadian citizen could be exactly the point.”

Nevertheless, if an uncooperative India is proven guilty in the world court of public opinion, it will deserve unqualified condemnation.

“Heads We Win:” If We Did It, We Are Right

States using targeted assassination as an instrument of national security policy is rare but not unknown, especially by major powers. President Barack Obama ordered assassination-by-drones of several suspected anti-American terrorists in the Afghanistan–Pakistan badlands. Most of those killed were not high-value targets in whose names the strikes were justified, but low-level combatants and civilians (16 percent of those killed in drone strikes 2004–12, according to data compiled by the New American Foundation).

Moreover, Obama also ordered a hit—without any due process of trial and conviction—of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American of Yemeni descent. Awlaki’s 16-year-old son was killed in a follow-up strike.

I have no doubt whatsoever that Obama had no intention of capturing Osama bin Laden alive. For practical purposes it was a targeted assassination whose morality did not trouble too many people, all things considered. For major powers, including Western powers, lethal action against grave threats based in foreign jurisdictions, if it is operationally feasible, will be judged to be morally permissible if the government is persistently unable or unwilling to take effective action.

Many Indians are exasperated with Trudeau’s pandering to diaspora “vote bank” politics. An editorial in the Indian Express concluded: “Trudeau appears to be engaging in toxic domestic politics by playing to the extremist fringe of the Sikh diaspora.” Amarinder Singh dismisses Trudeau’s allegations of Indian involvement in the killing and non-cooperation in the investigation as “a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black.” He adds: “It is common knowledge that Nijjar was killed because of rivalry over local gurdwara [Sikh temple] politics.”

Thus the net result is that Canada too finds itself in the international spotlight as a safe haven for extremists who use Canada as a base of operations against the interests of their countries of origin. Another example from South Asia is the presence in Canada of significant numbers of Sri Lankans and their role, often under coercion from activists, in financing the Tamil Tigers in that country’s civil war.

Modi has cultivated a strongman persona as a muscular nationalist. In the unlikely event that it is confirmed that India executed a successful hit on a wanted alleged terrorist in Canada, international reputational costs notwithstanding, it would give a big boost to his popularity leading into next year’s elections. In the context of how Western-based diaspora communities can encourage covert operations and military interventions, as in Iraq in 2003, it could also cement India’s reputation in the Global South as a country able and willing to stand up for its interests.

The Moral Rebalancing in a Shifting Global Order

Canada’s mainstream media would appear to be blind, still, to the grave global damage caused to the country’s liberal democracy brand and the international cynicism when Trudeau invokes commitment to the rule of law and human rights. In an editorial, the Globe and Mail noted that Canada’s “embarrassed allies” have essentially “averted their gaze” and refused to voice strong public condemnation of India. In the geopolitical reordering underway, the Globe explained: “The U.S. is clearly prepared to swallow Mr. Modi’s well-documented assaults on liberal democratic values.”

It’s past time that Western commentators woke up and smell the coffee. The era of the West being the arbiter of the moral compass for itself and for everyone else is over. The new assertiveness of several prominent countries among the rest reflects a self-confidence rooted in a position of strength.

In sharp contrast with Trudeau’s lightweight persona, Jaishankar has a deserved reputation for intellectual depth and gravitas to go with this his decades of experience as a career diplomat and then an articulate (but not angry) champion of India’s non-Western (but not anti-Western) perspectives. All these traits, plus the easy manner in which he connects to a policy audience in Washington, can be seen in this video of his interactive conversation at the Hudson Institute in Washington on September 29.

Jaishankar has been polite but firm in calling out the double standards of Western countries for their criticisms of India’s stance on the Ukraine war. In India’s annual statement to the UN General Assembly on September 26, he decried the reality that “it is still a few nations who shape the agenda and seek to define the norms.” Rule-makers cannot go on subjugating rule-takers indefinitely and we must not “countenance that political convenience determines responses to terrorism, extremism and violence.” Jaishankar’s pointed remarks on the persisting imbalances in the global order would have played well throughout the Global South.

Canada’s Soft Power Righteousness Has Collided with India’s Growing Hard Power Geopolitical Heft

So far, as noted by the Washington Post and also by Canada’s main national newspaper the Globe and Mail, Canada’s allies have offered only tepid support while attempting to walk the tightrope between an old ally and a growing strategic partner. Canada is a dependable ally but not a first-tier global power nor one with realistic alternatives to continued national security dependence on the US. Its soft-power credentials are a liability when the world has pivoted into a hard-power moment.

India is the anchor of the West’s Indo-Pacific strategy. Canada is outside both the Quad and AUKUS as the main bulwarks of the emerging anti-China resistance front. More than putting India in the dock, Christopher Sands, director of the Canada Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, told the BBC that Trudeau’s allegations have exposed Canada’s “moment of weakness.”

Jaishankar is in great demand at the world’s major foreign policy platforms and used his trip to the opening of the UN General Assembly to speak to multiple influential audiences in the US. As a result, for the first time, key American audiences will have been exposed to the decades-long Indian complaint about the operating space that has been given to extremist and criminal elements from India by a very permissive Canada that has its own political compulsions.

Jaishankar noted at the Hudson Institute event that while most Indians know this, not many Americans do. His comment about the relative knowledge and ignorance of Indians and Americans is illustrated in this video podcast on September 29 of an in-house discussion at the Woodrow Wilson Center. At around the 10-minute mark, Sands, an American, recalls the 1985 Air India bombing only to make two astonishing gaffes. He says it was a Montreal-Bombay flight over the Pacific and “almost all” the victims were Indian citizens. In fact Air India flight 182 was blown up over the Irish Sea en route from Montreal to Delhi via London.

The overwhelming majority of passengers were Canadian citizens and residents, albeit of Indian ancestry. But in the Canadian collective consciousness this seems to be remembered as a bombing in which the victims were mainly Indians, not Canadians.

The bigger picture that has been in existence for some considerable time provides the necessary context to the current Canadian charges. As a vibrant democracy, India doesn’t need lessons from others on the meaning of free speech. But freedom of speech does not extend to “incitement to violence.” That’s not a defence but “an abuse of freedom,” Jaishankar insisted.

It is not therefore simply a matter of other countries overriding their normative principles to accommodate policy to geopolitics. Rather, India is gaining some sympathy for its charge that Canada too has a case to answer and needs to put its own house in order. In other words, as far as Western democracies are concerned, ignoring the problem of migrant communities engaged in hostile activities in home countries is not a long-term solution to the policy dilemma.

Author

  • Ramesh Thakur

    Ramesh Thakur, a Brownstone Institute Senior Scholar, is a former United Nations Assistant Secretary-General, and emeritus professor in the Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.

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Brownstone Institute

Zuckerberg openly admits the US government’s involvement in aggressive violation of the First Amendment

Published on

From the Brownstone Institute

By Josh-StylmanJosh StylmanJeffrey A TuckerJeffrey A. Tucker 

Benjamin Franklin warned that those who would surrender essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety

History will remember this era as the moment when America’s most sacred principles collided with unprecedented institutional power – and lost. The systematic dismantling of fundamental rights didn’t happen through military force or executive decree, but through the quiet cooperation of tech platforms, media gatekeepers, and government agencies, all claiming to protect us from “misinformation.”

Meta’s sudden dismantling of its fact-checking program – announced by Zuckerberg as a “cultural tipping point towards prioritizing speech” – reads like a quiet footnote to what history may record as one of the most staggering violations of fundamental rights in recent memory. After eight years of increasingly aggressive content moderation, including nearly 100 fact-checking organizations operating in over 60 languages, Meta is now pivoting to a community-driven system similar to X’s model.

In his announcement, Zuckerberg first suggests that the censorship was purely a technical mistake, and then changes his tune near the end and admits what has long been litigated: “The only way that we can push back on this global trend is with the support of the US government. And that’s why it’s been so difficult over the past 4 years when even the US government has pushed for censorship. By going after us and other American companies, it has emboldened other governments to go even further.”

In many court cases costing millions, involving vast FOIA requests, depositions, and discoveries, the truth of this has been documented in 100,000 pages of evidence. The Murthy v. Missouri case alone uncovered substantial communications through FOIA and depositions, revealing the depth of government coordination with social media platforms. The Supreme Court considered it all but several justices simply could not comprehend the substance and scale, and thus reversed a lower court injunction to stop it all. Now we have Zuckerberg openly admitting precisely what was in dispute: the US government’s involvement in aggressive violation of the First Amendment.

This should, at least, make it easier to find redress as the cases proceed. Still, it is frustrating. Tens of millions have been spent to prove what he could have admitted years ago. But back then, the censors were still in charge, and Facebook was guarding its relationship with the powers that be.

The timing of the shift is telling: a Trump ally joining the boardMeta’s president of global affairs being replaced by a prominent Republican, and a new administration preparing to take control. But while Zuckerberg frames this as a return to free speech principles, the damage of their experiment in mass censorship can’t be undone with a simple policy change.

The irony runs deep: private companies claiming independence while acting as extensions of state power. Consider our own experience: posting Mussolini’s definition of fascism as “the merger of state and corporate power” – only to have Meta remove it as “misinformation.” This wasn’t just censorship; it was meta-censorship – silencing discussion about the very mechanisms of control being deployed.

While tech platforms maintained the facade of private enterprise, their synchronized actions with government agencies revealed a more troubling reality: the emergence of exactly the kind of state-corporate fusion they were trying to prevent us from discussing.

As we’ve covered before, we didn’t just cross lines – we crossed sacred Rubicons created after humanity’s darkest chapters. The First Amendment, born from revolution against tyranny, and the Nuremberg Code, established after World War II’s horrors, were meant to be unbreakable guardians of human rights. Both were systematically dismantled in the name of “safety.” The same tactics of misinformation, fear, and government overreach that our ancestors warned against were deployed with frightening efficiency.

This systematic dismantling left no topic untouched: from discussions of vaccine effects to debates about virus origins to questions about mandate policies. Scientific discourse was replaced with approved narratives. Medical researchers couldn’t share findings that diverged from institutional positions, as seen in the removal of credible discussions of Covid-19 data and policy. Even personal experiences were labeled “misinformation” if they didn’t align with official messaging – a pattern that reached absurd heights when even discussing the nature of censorship itself became grounds for censorship.

The damage rippled through every layer of society. At the individual level, careers were destroyed and professional licenses revoked simply for sharing genuine experiences. Scientists and doctors who questioned prevailing narratives found themselves professionally ostracized. Many were made to feel isolated or irrational for trusting their own eyes and experiences when platforms labeled their firsthand accounts as “misinformation.”

The destruction of family bonds may prove even more lasting. Holiday tables emptied. Grandparents missed irreplaceable moments with grandchildren. Siblings who had been close for decades stopped speaking. Years of family connections shattered not over disagreements about facts, but over the very right to discuss them.

Perhaps most insidious was the community-level damage. Local groups splintered. Neighbors turned against neighbors. Small businesses faced blacklisting. Churches divided. School board meetings devolved into battlegrounds. The social fabric that enables civil society began unraveling – not because people held different views, but because the very possibility of dialogue was deemed dangerous.

The censors won. They showed that with enough institutional power, they could break apart the social fabric that makes free discourse possible. Now that this infrastructure for suppression exists, it stands ready to be deployed again for whatever cause seems urgent enough. The absence of a public reckoning sends a chilling message: there is no line that cannot be crossed, no principle that cannot be ignored.

True reconciliation demands more than Meta’s casual policy reversal. We need a full, transparent investigation documenting every instance of censorship – from suppressed vaccine injury reports to blocked scientific debates about virus origins to silenced voices questioning mandate policies. This isn’t about vindication – it’s about creating an unassailable public record ensuring these tactics can never be deployed again.

Our Constitution’s First Amendment wasn’t a suggestion – it was a sacred covenant written in the blood of those who fought tyranny. Its principles aren’t outdated relics but vital protections against the very overreach we just witnessed. When institutions treat these foundational rights as flexible guidelines rather than inviolable boundaries, the damage ripples far beyond any single platform or policy.

Like many in our circles, we witnessed this firsthand. But personal vindication isn’t the goal. Every voice silenced, every debate suppressed, every relationship fractured in service of “approved narratives” represents a tear in our social fabric that makes us all poorer. Without a full accounting and concrete safeguards against future overreach, we’re leaving future generations vulnerable to the same autocratic impulses wearing different masks.

The question isn’t whether we can restore what was lost – we can’t. The question is whether we’ll finally recognize these rights as truly inviolable, or continue treating them as inconvenient obstacles to be swept aside whenever fear and urgency demand it. Benjamin Franklin warned that those who would surrender essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. Our answer to this challenge will determine whether we leave our children a society that defends essential liberties or one that casually discards them in the name of safety.

Here is the full transcript of Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement, January 7, 2024:

Hey, everyone. I wanna talk about something important today because it’s time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram. I started building social media to give people a voice. I gave a speech at Georgetown 5 years ago about the importance of protecting free expression, and I still believe this today. But a lot has happened over the last several years.

There’s been widespread debate about potential harms from online content, governments and legacy media have pushed to censor more and more. A lot of this is clearly political, but there’s also a lot of legitimately bad stuff out there. Drugs, terrorism, child exploitation. These are things that we take very seriously and I wanna make sure that we handle responsibly. So we built a lot of complex systems to moderate content, but the problem with complex systems is they make mistakes.

Even if they accidentally censor just 1% of posts, that’s millions of people. And we’ve reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship. The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech. So we’re gonna get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms. More specifically, here’s what we’re gonna do.

First, we’re gonna get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with community notes similar to X starting in the US. After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote nonstop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy. We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth, but the fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the US. So over the next couple of months, we’re gonna phase in a more comprehensive community note system. Second, we’re gonna simplify our content policies and get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse.

What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it’s gone too far. So I wanna make sure that people can share their beliefs and experiences on our platforms. Third, we’re changing how we enforce our policies to reduce the mistakes that account for the vast majority of censorship on our platforms. We used to have filters that scanned for any policy violation. Now we’re gonna focus those filters on tackling illegal and high severity violations.

And for lower severity violations, we’re going to rely on someone reporting an issue before we take action. The problem is that the filters make mistakes and they take down a lot of content that they shouldn’t. So by dialing them back, we’re gonna dramatically reduce the amount of censorship on our platforms. We’re also going to tune our content filters to require much higher confidence before taking down content. The reality is that this is a trade-off.

It means we’re gonna catch less bad stuff, but we’ll also reduce the number of innocent people’s posts and accounts that we accidentally take down. Fourth, we’re bringing back civic content. For a while, the community asked to see less politics because it was making people stressed. So we stopped recommending these posts, but it feels like we’re in a new era now and we’re starting to get feedback that people want to see this content again. So we’re gonna start phasing this back into Facebook, Instagram and Threads while working to keep the communities friendly and positive.

Fifth, we’re gonna move our trust and safety and content moderation teams out of California and our US-based content review is going to be based in Texas. As we work to promote free expression, I think that will help us build trust to do this work in places where there is less concern about the bias of our teams. Finally, we’re gonna work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world that are going after American companies and pushing to censor more. The US has the strongest constitutional protections for free expression in the world. Europe has an ever increasing number of laws institutionalizing censorship and making it difficult to build anything innovative there.

Latin American countries have secret courts that can order companies to quietly take things down. China has censored our apps from even working in the country. The only way that we can push back on this global trend is with the support of the US government. And that’s why it’s been so difficult over the past 4 years when even the US government has pushed for censorship. By going after us and other American companies, it has emboldened other governments to go even further.

But now we have the opportunity to restore free expression, and I am excited to take it. It’ll take time to get this right. And these are complex systems. They’re never gonna be perfect. There’s also a lot of illegal stuff that we still need to work very hard to remove.

But the bottom line is that after years of having our content moderation work focused primarily on removing content, it is time to focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our systems, and getting back to our roots about giving people voice. I’m looking forward to this next chapter. Stay good out there and more to come soon.”


Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
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Authors

Josh-Stylman

Joshua Stylman has been an entrepreneur and investor for over 30 years. For two decades, he focused on building and growing companies in the digital economy, co-founding and successfully exiting three businesses while investing in and mentoring dozens of technology startups. In 2014, seeking to create a meaningful impact in his local community, Stylman founded Threes Brewing, a craft brewery and hospitality company that became a beloved NYC institution. He served as CEO until 2022, stepping down after receiving backlash for speaking out against the city’s vaccine mandates. Today, Stylman lives in the Hudson Valley with his wife and children, where he balances family life with various business ventures and community engagement.

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Brownstone Institute

The Trump Administration Must Bring Moderna to Heel

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From the Brownstone Institute

Moderna’s European filing also revealed that the company withheld trial results demonstrating that children under 12 who received the vaccine were ten times more likely than those who received the placebo to suffer “serious side effects.”

Last week, independent journalist Alex Berenson reported that a preschool-aged child died of “cardio-respiratory arrest” after taking a dose of Moderna’s Covid mRNA vaccine during its clinical trials. Despite federal requirements to report all trial information, the company withheld the truth for years as it raked in billions from its Covid shots.

The extent of the cover-up remains unknown, but Moderna, headed by CEO Stéphane Bancel, disregarded federal law requiring companies to report “summary results information, including adverse event information, for specified clinical trials of drug products” to clinicaltrials.gov. The company, not the government, is responsible for posting all results, and failure to report the death of a child constitutes a clear breach of US law, which threatens civil action against any party that “falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact.”

To this point, pharmaceutical companies have remained largely immune for their role in perpetrating globally-scaled deception resulting in thousands of vaccine injuries and billions in profits. They have enjoyed a liability shield courtesy of the PREP Act, which offers protections for injuries resulting from vaccines; that indemnity, however, does not extend to non-compliance with federal regulations, material misstatements or omissions of fact, or other offenses.

The death of the child only became known because of an obscure European report released last year, which revealed that Moderna has known about the death for over two years while it continues to advertize Covid shots to children as young as six months old.

Moderna’s European filing also revealed that the company withheld trial results demonstrating that children under 12 who received the vaccine were ten times more likely than those who received the placebo to suffer “serious side effects.” Without any evidence, Moderna claimed that the side effects, including the death of a child, were unrelated to the shots. 

The incoming Trump administration offers a rare opportunity to hold pharmaceutical companies accountable and to investigate the depth of the cover-up.

The FDA is responsible for enforcing the reporting of vaccine trial results, but recent heads of the agency such as Scott Gottlieb and Robert Califf have been fanatical supporters of Big Pharma. Trump’s choice for FDA, Dr. Marty Makary, presents a stark contrast to his predecessors. Makary has criticized the US Government’s reluctance to acknowledge the role of natural immunity in preventing Covid infection, and he opposed the widespread vaccination of children. He testified to Congress, “In the U.S. we gave thousands of healthy kids myocarditis for no good reason, they were already immune. This was avoidable.”

President-elect Trump has tapped Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., perhaps the most well-known critic of the Covid vaccines, to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the FDA. He has named Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, an author of the Great Barrington Declaration, as his choice to head the National Institutes of Health. Further, Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) told Berenson that he plans to subpoena the FDA once Republicans become the majority party in the Senate this month.

President Trump’s first term was ultimately defined by his failure to fulfill his pledge to “drain the swamp.” A corrupt bureaucracy, personified in many ways by Dr. Anthony Fauci, aided and abetted by advisors like his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, hijacked the president’s agenda. Now, the Trump administration has an unlikely yet monumental opportunity for health reform, which can start on January 20 with an investigation into Moderna’s cover-up.

The Covid response doomed Trump 1.0. Whether one regards this as a monumental error, the betrayal of a president by his advisors, an event beyond the president’s control, or a deeper and more complex plot involving everything and everyone associated with the government, both in the US and around the world, there is no question of the scale of the calamity for the public. The shots are part of that, the capstone failure of a long line of foreshadowing with lockdowns and all that was associated with pre-pharmaceutical interventions. The antidote came not as a cure but, for many, the disease itself.

There must be truth if not justice.


Brownstone Institute

Articles by Brownstone Institute, a nonprofit organization founded in May of 2021 in support of a society that minimizes the role of violence in public life.

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