(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) Twitter CEO Elon Musk revealed Monday that the Global Engagement Center was the “worst offender” when it came to government efforts to censor everyday Americans, Fox News reported.
The worst offender in US government censorship & media manipulation is an obscure agency called GEChttps://t.co/z6h5975anw
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 6, 2023
The red-pilled billionare, whose Twitter Files blew the lid off the intelligence community’s collusion with Big Tech during the COVID pandemic and 2020 election, noted that the GEC, which falls under State Department purview, is not one that many would expect.
Nonetheless, it is “a threat to democracy,” Musk wrote.
Since December, the GEC has been headed by James P. Rubin, a former Clinton administration official who served as assistant secretary of state for public affairs.
According to its own “mission statement,” the center is a multicultural propaganda wing that works at home and abroad to spread leftist ideology.
Its purpose, per the website, is “to direct, lead, synchronize, integrate, and coordinate U.S. Federal Government efforts to recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining or influencing the policies, security, or stability of the United States, its allies, and partner nations.”
Namely, the GEC is deeply involved in toutung the imaginary Russian collusion that some on the Left have long used to undermine the former Trump administration and dismiss the bombshell revelations surrounding Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Independent journalist Matt Taibbi reported that the GEC led the way in exploiting pandemic fears to further push the Russia narrative.
https://t.co/BcFhHCvjAE February, 2020, as COVID broke out, the Global Engagement Center – a fledgling analytic/intelligence arms of the State Department – went to the media with a report called, “Russian Disinformation Apparatus Taking Advantage of Coronavirus Concerns.” pic.twitter.com/KjUeE8vejt
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023
“In February, 2020, as COVID broke out, the Global Engagement Center—a fledgling analytic/intelligence arms of the State Department—went to the media with a report called, ‘Russian Disinformation Apparatus Taking Advantage of Coronavirus Concerns,'” he wrote.
The GEC targeted social-media accounts that connected the dots between the Wuhan virology lab and the coronavirus, along with those speculating that Big Pharma companies might have had a hand in the creation of the virus.
They “flagged accounts as ‘Russian personas and proxies’ based on criteria like, ‘Describing the Coronavirus as an engineered bioweapon,’ blaming ‘research conducted at the Wuhan institute,’ and ‘attributing the appearance of the virus to the CIA,’” wrote Taibbi.
The GEC since has gotten itself deeply involved in the ongoing Russia–Ukraine dispute, acting as a cheerleader for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s resistance efforts.
The center’s work would seem to parallel the efforts of the Disinformation Governance Board, a failed offshoot of the Homeland Security Department that likewise sought to use the pretence of Russian propaganda to censor domestic speech.
The board, which was to be headed by outspoken left-wing operative Nina Jankowicz, quickly disbanded after facing widespread accusations that it was a glorified “Ministry of Truth” and scrutiny over Jankowicz’s own past social-media posts.
