Once upon a time, the CIA and allied agencies pushed free speech as a norm.
Overseas.
The rationale? Without some free speech and press rights, it was too hard to organize a populace to overthrow their government. Our spooks exported freedom of speech abroad not because they were so gung-ho American; it was all about seeding revolutions.
But not here!
The CIA couldn’t let others take advantage of American free speech like its agents leveraged free speech abroad. A change in government might mean … loss of jobs. Mission. Money.
What to do? Disinform at home. By corrupting journalism.
The Operation Mockingbird efforts in the 1960s helped intel insiders control information and manage “the consent of the governed,” and these early efforts grew into the close ties between the Deep State and credentialed journalists today.
The connections, I’m told are many: it’s not just Anderson Cooper’s internship at the CIA.
During the Cold War, the disinformation element found a plausible justification. Then, the Soviets had us at a disadvantage: we had trouble extracting reliable information from within the Iron Curtain, but they could grab all sorts of useful information from our open, comparatively free speech realm.
Disinformation: a strategic necessity. But the consequences?
“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete,” William Casey explained to President Ronald Reagan, “when everything the American public believes is false.”
In the early days of the Internet, the Deep State pushed online speech platforms, the better to allow for foreign coups. Is there a social media space that hasn’t received surreptitious government subsidy? It’s hard to be sure. We’re supposed to assume our government protects us rather than controls us.
But, increasingly, Internet-connected Americans see government officials chiefly as manipulators.
Which is why the Deep State’s most ardent partisans (neocons; Democrats; plutocrats) now routinely attack free speech here, and why allies overseas are so thoroughly cracking down on “de-stabilizing” opinions. It’s why Rumble is no longer available in Brazil and why Musk is pulling out Twitter personnel … and why France has arrested the CEO of Telegram.
Us catching on to the psy-op game places the Deep State in a corner. All the disinformation agents have left is censorship and repression.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with Midjourney and Firefly
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