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How the Deep State is using the ‘Censorship Industrial Complex’ to crush free speech

Published

2 years ago

13 minute read

Renée DiResta is the research director of the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO)

From LifeSiteNews

By Andreas Wailzer

The Censorship Industrial Complex, dominated by organizations often run by ex-CIA agents, is working around the First Amendment to suppress dissent and promote a one-world government

Author and reformed climate activist Michael Shellenberger has coined the term “Censorship Industrial Complex,” an apparent reference to President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Farewell Address in 1961, where the former Army General warned about the influence of the “military-industrial complex.” 

In a recently published article, Dr. Joseph Mercola explored the Censorship Industrial Complex, how it works, and who some of the protagonists are. We will examine the following points regarding this nefarious network to understand how the censorship apparatus works:  

  1. A key figure: Renée DiResta  
  2. The Election Integrity Partnership and Virality Project 
  3. The Council on Foreign Relations and the One World Government 
  4. NewsGuard and the “middleware” approach 

A key figure: Renée DiResta 

Renée DiResta is the research director of the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO). Mercola fittingly described the organization’s purpose: “[Founded] in June 2019,” the SIO “promote[s] internet censorship policies and conduct[s] real-time social media narrative monitoring.” 

DiResta quickly climbed the career ladder despite being involved in a major election manipulation scandal. She previously worked for the CIA and is a member of the influential Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). 

DiResta is a prominent example of the connections between the intelligence agency and the censorship industry, but she is certainly not the only one. The organizations that are deciding what is deemed “misinformation” or “hate speech” (i.e., the Censorship Industrial Complex) are often run by former CIA agents. According to Shellenberger’s research, seven former CIA executives serve on the board of the Atlantic Council, an organization partnered with the SIO through several projects. 

“The Chief Strategy Officer and the Director of Federal Programs at Graphika, another DiResta partner organization, are former CIA officials,” Shellenberger writes. 

In 2018, DiResta organized a false flag online operation that influenced an Alabama Senate race. Before she worked at the SIO, DiResta was the research director at a small political consultant firm, New Knowledge LLC, which received $100,000 from Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, to help the Democrat candidate win the U.S. Senate race in Alabama. New Knowledge used that money to subscribe thousands of fake Russian bot accounts to Republican candidate Roy Moore’s social media campaign. Mainstream media reports at the time claimed Moore was “backed by Russia,” even though his “Russian backers” were fake accounts created by New Knowledge. Moore’s Democratic opponent, Doug Jones, went on to win the race by a slim margin. 

After the election, an internal report from New Knowledge, which detailed the Russian bot operation, was obtained by The New York Times. The report admits that: “We orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet.” 

This revelation gained national media attention and was so scandalous that even members of the Atlantic Council (an organization that now collaborates with DiResta) publicly criticized this egregious example of election interference by New Knowledge. 

Shellenberger said the reason that DiResta was made “the leader of the Censorship Industrial Complex,” next to her intellect and articulateness, is that “[l]ike other American elites, DiResta believes that it is the role of people like her to control what information the public is allowed to consume, lest they elect a populist ogre like Donald Trump, decide not to get vaccinated, or don’t accept whatever happens to be mainstream liberal opinion on everything from climate change to transgenderism to the business dealings of the president[‘s] family.” 

The Election Integrity Partnership and Virality Project 

The Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) was founded only months before the 2020 U.S. presidential election “to defend our elections against those who seek to undermine them by exploiting weaknesses in the online information environment.” 

Mike Benz, former State Department official in the Trump administration and executive director for the Foundation for Freedom Online, explained in a video that EIP was created as a “government cut-out,” a “private” organization that de facto acts as censorship arm for the things the government cannot censor because it lacks the legal authority to do so.

One of the “partners” of the EIP is DiResta’s SIO. Benz also notes that all of the EIP’s partners are at least partly funded by the government. 

In May 2020, a new organization with mostly the same “partners” as the EIP was created, the Virality Project (VP). The VP focused on censoring COVID-related content online, including factual information that “might promote vaccine hesitancy.” 

READ: New ‘Twitter Files’ show gov’t-backed Stanford initiative told Big Tech to censor ‘true’ info about COVID jabs 

A spokesperson from the SIO (one of the VP’s founding partners) claimed it “did not censor or ask social media platforms to remove any social media content regarding coronavirus vaccine side effects.” Perhaps the SIO did not censor content directly, but the VP that was founded by the SIO certainly did, as the Twitter Files released by Elon Musk have shown. 

According to the Twitter Files published by journalist Matt Taibbi, the VP pressured social media platforms such as Twitter (now X) and TikTok to remove or flag online content. Posts flagged by VP included:

  • True information that could fuel “vaccine hesitancy” 
  • Posts critical of vaccine passports 
  • True testimonies of people experiencing blood clots after receiving COVID shots 
  • People asking questions about possible adverse reactions from the jabs 

The Council on Foreign Relations and the One World government 

As mentioned above, DiResta, in addition to being a former CIA agent, is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a think tank specialized in U.S. foreign policy. The globalist CFR is partly funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. 

The CFR was founded in 1921 and has heavily influenced U.S. foreign policy ever since. Most CIA directors and U.S. secretaries of defense have been members of the Council. Mercola argues that the CFR’s ultimate goal “has been to bring about a totalitarian one world government, a New World Order (NWO) with global top-down rule.” 

According to the Centre for Research on Globalization, James Warburg, the son of one of the CFR’s founders, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1950: “We shall have world government whether or not you like it – by conquest or consent.” 

Moreover, CFR insider and former U.S. Navy Admiral Chester Ward stated the following in his 1975 book Kissinger on the Couch: 

“[The CFR has as a goal] submergence of U.S. sovereignty and national independence into an all-powerful one-world government … This lust to surrender the sovereignty and independence of the United States is pervasive throughout most of its membership … In the entire CFR lexicon, there is no term of revulsion carrying a meaning so deep as ‘America First.’” 

Mercola concludes that the Censorship Industrial Complex is part of the network that seeks to establish a one-world government. 

“Those who oppose America First policies do so because they’re working on behalf of a network that seeks to eliminate nationalism in favor of a one-world government, and DiResta is part of that club,” he writes. 

NewsGuard and the ‘middleware approach’ 

In another condensed video, Benz explains how the Censorship Industrial Complex is now using so-called “middleware” organizations like the news rating site NewsGuard to suppress dissent from the mainstream narratives.  

According to Benz, the Censorship Industrial Complex is anticipating a loss in the Missouri v. Biden Supreme Court case, which “threatens to ban all government coordination of domestic censorship with a few exceptions[.]” 

To circumvent these possible legal restrictions, the government is propping up “intermediary censorship mercenary firms like NewsGuard.”  

READ: Elon Musk slams leftist rating group NewsGuard as ‘scam’ that ‘should be disbanded immediately’ 

By funding these “private” organizations, the deep state government agencies can “effectively circumvent the First Amendment prohibitions on running a comparable thing out of the DHS [Department of Homeland Security].” 

However, the idea that NewsGuard is somehow independent from the government is wholly divorced from reality. In 2021, the Department of Defense awarded NewsGuard $750,000 for its project “Misinformation Fingerprints,” which aims to combat what it calls “a catalogue of known hoaxes, falsehoods and misinformation narratives that are spreading online.” 

Moreover, Benz notes that NewsGuard’s Advisory Board consists of “an all-star apex predator caste of the national security state,” including 

  • retired Four-Star General Michael Hayden, who was formerly the head of the CIA and NSA,  
  • Richard Stengel, former Undersecretary of State, 
  • Tom Ridge, former head of the DHS, 
  • and Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former head of NATO. 

By propping up “middleware” companies such as NewsGuard that are not technically part of the government, the Censorship Industrial Complex is able to work around possible First Amendment restrictions, as websites that receive a negative rating from NewsGuard will have reduced visibility on Big tech platforms and search engines. The negative rating by NewsGuard also provides a pretext for private Big Tech platforms to label outlets as spreaders of “misinformation” and censor them outright. 

“There’s no clear solution to this threat, other than to continue pushing back against any and all efforts to legalize, standardize and normalize censorship,” Mercola writes in his conclusion. “To vocally object, to refuse using middleware like NewsGuard, and to boycott any company or organization that uses middleware or engages in censorship of any kind.” 

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Bruce Dowbiggin

Integration Or Indignation: Whose Strategy Worked Best Against Trump?

Published on December 4, 2025

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““He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.” George Bernard Shaw

In the days immediately following Donald Trump’s rude intervention into the 2025 Canadian federal election— suggesting Canada might best choose American statehood— two schools of thought emerged.

The first and most impactful school in the short term was the fainting-goat response of Canadian’s elites. Sensing an opening in which to erode Pierre Poilievre’s massive lead in the 2024 polls over Justin Trudeau, the Laurentian elite concocted Elbows Up, a self-pity response long on hurt feelings and short on addressing the issues Trump had cited in his trashing of the Canadian nation state.

In short order they fired Trudeau into oblivion, imported career banker Mark Carney as their new leader in a sham convention and convinced Canada’s Boomers that Trump had the tanks ready to go into Saskatchewan at a moment’s notice. The Elbows Up meme— citing Gordie Howe— clinched the group pout.

(In fact, Trump has said that America is the world’s greatest market, and if those who’ve used it for free in the past [Canada] want to keep special access they need to pay tariffs to the U.S. or drop protectionist charges on dairy and more against the U.S.)

The ruse worked out better than they could have ever imagined with Trump even saying he preferred to negotiate with Carney over Poilievre. In short order the Tories were shoved aside, the NDP kneecapped and the pet media anointed Carney the genius skewing Canada away from its largest trade partner to the Eurosphere. We remain in that bubble, although the fulsome promises of Carney’s first days are now coming due.

Which brings us to the second reaction. That was Alberta premier Danielle Smith bolting to Mar A Lago in the days following Trump’s comments. Her goal was to put pride aside and accept that a new world order was in play for Canada. She met with U.S. officials and, briefly, with Trump to remind them that Canada’s energy industry was integral to American prosperity and Canadian stability.

Needless to say, the fainting goats pitched a fit that not everyone was clutching pearls and rending garments in the wake of Trump’s dismissive assessment of his northern neighbours. Their solution to Trump was to join China in retaliatory tariffs— the only two nations to do so— and to boycott American products and travel. Like the ascetic monks they cut themselves off from real life. Trump has yet to get back to Carney the Magnificent

And Smith? She was a “traitor” or a “subversive” who should be keel hauled in the North Saskatchewan. For much of the intervening months she has been attacked at home in Alberta by the N-Deeps and in Ottawa by just about everyone on CBC, CTV, Global and the Globe & Mail. “How could she meet with the Cheeto?”

Nonetheless conservatives in the province moved toward a more independence within Canada. Smith articulated her demands for Alberta to prevent a referendum on whether to remain within Confederation. At the top of her list were pipelines and access to tidewater. Ergo, a no-go for BC’s squish premier David Eby who is the process of handing over his province to First Nations.

It became obvious that for all of Carney’s alleged diplomacy in Europe and Asia (is the man ever home?) he had a brewing disaster in the West with Alberta and Saskatchewan growing restless. In a striking move against the status quo, Nutrien announced it would ship its potash to tidewater via the U.S., thereby bypassing Vancouver’s strike-prone, outdated port and denying them billions.

Suddenly, Smith’s business approach began making eminent good sense if the goal is to keep Canada as one. So we saw last week’s “memorandum of understanding” between Alberta and Ottawa trading off carbon capture and carbon taxes for potential pipelines to tidewater on the B.C. coast. A little bit of something for everyone and a surrender on other things.

The most amazing feature of the Mark Carney/Danielle Smith MOU is that both politicians probably need the deal to fail. Carney can tell fossil-fuel enemy Quebec that he tried to reason with Smith, and Smith can say she tried to meet the federalists halfway. Failure suits their larger purposes. Which is for Carney to fold Canada into Euro climate insanity and Smith into a strong leverage against the pro-Canada petitioners in her province.

Soon enough, at the AFN Special Chiefs Assembly, FN Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak told Carney that  “Turtle Island” (the FN term for North America popularized by white hippy poet Gary Snyder) belongs to the FN people “from coast to coast to coast.” The pusillanimous Eby quickly piped up about tanker bans and the sanctity of B.C. waters etc.

Others pointed out the massive flaw in a plan to attract private interests to build a vital bitumen pipeline if the tankers it fills are not allowed to  sail through the Dixon Entrance to get to Asia.

But then Eby got Nutrien’s message that his power-sharing with the indigenous might cause other provinces to bypass B.C. (imagine California telling Texas it can’t ship through its ports over moral objections to a product). He’s now saying he’s open to pipelines but not to lift the tanker ban along the coast. Whatever.

Meanwhile the kookaburras of isolation back east continue with virtue signalling on American booze— N.S. to sell off its remains stocks — while dreaming that Trump’s departure will lead to the good-old days of reliance on America’s generosity.

But Smith looks to be wining the race. B.C.’s population shrank 0.04 percent in the second quarter of 2025, the only jurisdiction in Canada to do so. Meanwhile, Alberta is heading toward five million people, with interprovincial migrants making up 21 percent of its growth.

But what did you expect from the Carney/ Eby Tantrum Tandem? They keep selling fear in place of GDP. As GBS observed, “You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you have lost something.”

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

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