When every major sector of elite society promotes censorship using the same words like misinformation and "information pollution," it almost seems like these people are working in tandem. The Twitter Files part 20 indicates that they are doing just that.
Former Executive Director of EngageMedia Andrew Lowenthal wrote this recent batch of The Twitter Files showing just how enmeshed academics, journalists, government workers and tech executives actually were.
“In a functioning democracy there’s dynamic tension between government, civil society organizations, news media, and industry, all advancing their own interests, in theory keeping one another honest. In the #TwitterFiles we find them all working together, cartel-style,” he wrote.
As MRC Free Speech America & MRC Business Director Michael Morris stated, “The evidence that continues to be unveiled via The Twitter Files demonstrating coordination between private companies, leftist media outlets and government agencies reads like a plot from a titillating if not startling movie, but sadly, it seems, it's a small glimpse of reality in 21st Century America."
Lowenthal noted that “The Files show an uncanny alliance of academics, journalists, intelligence operatives, military personnel, government bureaucrats, NGO workers and more.”
Perhaps the most shocking example of this was the Aspen Institute’s “hack and dump working group” which appeared to be a brainstorming drill on how best to interfere in the 2020 election. “The Aspen Institute combined WaPo, NYT, Rollingstone, NBC, CNN, Twitter, Facebook, Stanford, and ‘anti-disinfo’ NGOs like FirstDraft to practice an oddly prescient ‘hack and leak’ exercise on the Hunter Biden laptop BEFORE its release,” Lowenthal explained.
An August 2020 email from Aspen Institute’s current Director of Cyber Initiatives and Aspen Digital Garett M. Graff, noted the “confidential” attached “working scenario” for the event.
“We’re hoping that among us… we can iterate this, define it, complicate it, and polish a scenario that would help all of the group think through how they would respond to various twists and turns in a Burisma-focused leak incident this fall. Bring your most devious and cynical imaginations,” he wrote. “Please keep this document confidential to yourselves; for various reasons, we don’t want this to circulate widely.”
Lowenthal added that when the New York Post Hunter Biden laptop scandal broke, “the existence of the recent tabletop exercise became instant important news - but the journalists who’d attended stayed mum, perhaps granting off-the-record privileges to the organizers.”
However, this was one of many “off-the-record” workshops, according to Lowenthal.
A screenshot of another email shows the sender inviting Twitter Global Government affairs team lead Nick Pickels to an “off-the-record workshop” as early as 2018. “We’ve already received confirmations from several European countries that will be sending along teams, as well as EEAS’s East StratCom, Hybrid CoE, NATO CoE, DHS, State Department and Congressional staff,” the sender wrote. “This is in addition to the civil society representatives and journalist [sic] joining us from around the globe.” The sender went on to ask Twitter to send a representative to speak “about Twitter’s efforts to counter disinformation/misinformation in the platform.”
As Lowenthal put it, “The Files show an uncanny alliance of academics, journalists, intelligence operatives, military personnel, government bureaucrats, NGO workers and more.”
The Twitter Files also uncovered screenshots demonstrating coordination between nearly every major Big Tech platform across the tech industry as they all worked hand in hand with government agencies to censor Americans.
One August 2020 email shows Twitter’s former head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth reaching out to staff at Medium, Facebook, Microsoft [Corporate, External, and Legal Affairs (CELA)], LinkedIn and Pinterest to set up a “real-time comms channel during the election period.” He proposed two Slack channels, an “Industry Internal Discussion” channel for only a select group of executives and an “Industry + FBI Broadcast” channel.
Screenshots of two other emails show government agencies requesting to meet with high-level tech industry staff but only those who had security clearances. A June 2020 email revealed Facebook General Counsel Steven Siegel arranging a meeting with the U.S. Department of Defense, Roth and FBI to Twitter transplant James Baker. Siegel notes that he has been in communication with then DoD official Vic Mercado who allegedly “told [Facebook] that the [sic] needed to meet with people who have active security clearances in order to have a ‘helpful and meaningful’ conversation.” A similar sentiment was reiterated in a July 2020 email from the San Francisco FBI to multiple Facebook executives.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact Twitter at (415) 222-9670 and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on so-called hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
