During the Brexit campaign, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) was founded in the wake of the 2016 murder of Labour MP Jo Cox by a right-wing extremist – an effort by people who had known and worked with Cox to tackle the forces that radicalised people to hateful violence.
Its founder, former Labour staffer Imran Ahmed, for a time ran the not-for-profit out of an office borrowed from Labour Together, the think-ank project that helped launch Keir Starmer to Labour leadership and into 10 Downing Street. CCDH became a transatlantic project, chronicling hate speech and disinformation on the internet, how it spread, and how it might be tackled.
Now, Imran Ahmed is one of five individuals “sanctioned” by the US Department of State, supposedly as part of a “war on censorship” launched at the behest of Donald Trump. All five have had their visas revoked, according to the announcement, and face deportation from the US.
Trump’s administration abuses its power daily and routinely, but its actions on free speech are truly Orwellian in their scope. Trump and the Republican Party have complained relentlessly about “censorship” ever since Trump was kicked off social media platforms for “violations” of their rules in the wake of the January 6 riots in Washington, DC.
And through a series of Congressional hearings, Republicans re-framed efforts by private companies and civil society organisations to stop dangerous misinformation as a sinister conspiracy to silence conservatives and stifle free expression.
Now, they have made the state-led censorship operation of their fantasies a reality, with themselves at the helm. Foreign students protesting on their campus about Gaza have faced deportation. The US government has threatened European nations with reprisals if they try to regulate social media. And now the Department of State is openly retaliating against private citizens for their campaigning and research effort.
Even for a president who seems to routinely flout the law, this is blatant disregard of the First Amendment, one of the Constitutional principles Republicans loudly and extravagantly claim to hold dear.
In recent months, Trump Administration figures called on anyone appearing to celebrate Charlie Kirk’s assassination to be kicked off social media, fired, or even deported. They cheered on Trump as he launched nuisance lawsuits designed to stifle journalism. And now they are embarrassingly silent as he overtly wields the power of the nation’s highest office against his critics.
Trump has scarcely been a friend of the truth, but the recent actions of his administration seem to be spiralling out of control. Even as the Department of State lashes out against his critics, his Department of Justice appears to be trying clumsily – and failing – to manage the release of the files with regards to Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump’s administration had to be forced by Congress to disclose documents relating to multiple federal investigations of Epstein, the disgraced financier, notorious sex trafficker and paedophile, and one-time self-described “best friend” of the current US president, although Trump says they fell out in the early 2000s.
It has spent the last week dribbling out those documents late, selectively, and with redactions that Democrats say clearly break the requirements of the law. The Department of Justice says redactions are necessary to protect potential victims.
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For years, Maga Republicans have engaged in paranoid conspiracy theories about a sinister Deep State, engaging in censorship of legitimate free speech while also covering up supposed crimes of the worst sort – the QAnon conspiracy theory, for example, imagined Hillary Clinton as the leader of a global Satanic child abuse cult.
Now, some of their very worst fears look to be happening: the Department of Justice has been accused of hiding evidence, while the Department of State is openly declaring war on the First Amendment – only it’s their guy in charge as it’s happening. Awkward.
Trump’s power is waning. His popularity is plummeting, his base is divided, and the days of his presidency are numbered. At some point, perhaps soon, the political calculus will change, and Republicans will abandon the Trump train.
Until then, they are left to decide what matters to them – the values they supposedly stand for, or the president they are clearly deeply afraid of. Americans will not judge them kindly if they continue to make the wrong choice.
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