How a remarkably effective censorship and governance empire was quickly assembled for the UK and beyond, and how it is being challenged
How a remarkably effective censorship and governance empire was quickly assembled for the UK and beyond, and how it is being challenged
A prime example of how lies, power-seeking and the creation of the hate speech narrative won the UK Prime Ministership and made great strides toward a 1984 scenario there and abroad.
Step One: Take 2 politically well-connected crooks who have no compunctions about selling their country down the river, and then expanding their empire outwards, even into the US.
Step Two: Add in a dupe to run for Prime Minister. (This story looks in many ways like the Karl Rove Svengali and the George W Bush dupe.)
Step Three: Create a non-profit, make a tidy profit, and use your war chest to buy loads of influence. Remake the Labour Party.
Step Four: Add in just the right narratives, preferably with plenty of dirt. In the case of operative Morgan McSweeney, his dupe Keir Starmer (ambitious, stupid and obedient might be a better descriptor than dupe) and Imran Ahmed (brought up a Pashtun Muslim), the winning narrative was playing the anti-semitism card. They identified Starmer’s chief rival for leader of the Labor Party in the UK, Jeremy Corbin (an Old Labor supporter of the working class), and then carried out a major smear campaign re his alleged anti-semitism, which killed his candidacy. They even expelled him from his party.
After I wrote the above, which was my own thinking, I found that the London Times had written something similar here about the steps this small team took.
McSweeney formed Labour Together, allegedly with only about a million dollars in initial donations. After running a failed local campaign, “The lesson he learnt,” says [his former colleague] Lawson bluntly, “is that you can only win by deceit.” McSweeney’s idea was to poll very aggressively, figure out what the people wanted, and promise to give it to them. He had no plans to actually deliver on the promises, however. As evidenced by Keir Starmer backtracking on his entire campaign platform.
In October 2023, The Times stated that “nobody without elected office wields as much power in British politics as McSweeney.”
McSweeney found a reflection of himself in Imran Ahmed and the two joined forces. Ahmed’s role was to frame their enemies in such as way as to justify completely silencing and deplatforming them, thus contributing mightily to the 1984 version of the Great Reset. And the two of them must have been paid to take this winning strategy to the United States after piloting it in Great Britain. It must have cost a great deal more than that first $1 million.
Subsequently, after propelling the feckless Starmer to become the Labor Party leader and Prime Minister, McSweeney was named Starmer’s Chief of Staff 14 months ago, and is widely credited as being the brains and decision-maker behind Starmer. Not that being Starmer’s brain means very much, since Starmer has not been able to express many coherent thoughts since becoming Prime Minister. Nor does McSweeney seem to have a coherent plan for governing; his singular talent is street-fighting.
Imran Ahmed is chief executive of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a group set up by himself and Morgan McSweeney to justify extremely serious levels of censorship, primarily by tarring their enemies with the “hate speech” moniker.
Imran Ahmed… was appointed to the Steering Committee of the UK Government’s Commission on Countering Extremism Pilot Task Force in April 2020. Imran holds an MA in Social and Political Sciences from the University of Cambridge and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Mr Ahmed, a Brit, set up CCDH offices in both the UK and US, where his tactics were remarkably effective at killing free speech. At some point, Ahmed married an American and moved from the UK to Washington, DC.
He simultaneously and aggressively led efforts in the UK and US to censor all dissident voices about COVID, and later censor other issues of interest, such as the question of election integrity. He created the “Disinformation Dozen” term, falsely accusing twelve people for being responsible for 80% of online misinformation about COVID. Others said it was more like 10%.
After the Republicans took the House in 2023, the Judiciary Committee investigated his Center for Countering Digital Hate. Ahmed’s work was critical in keeping differing opinions on the prevention and treatment of COVID out of the public’s eye in both nations, and making it taboo to question the integrity of US elections. But the investigation did not obviously impede CCDH’s work.
Finally, just in the past few weeks, the Trump administration began taking actions against CCDH and certain types of censorship—for example challenging the huge fine imposed by the EU on Elon Musk’s platform, X, for failing to impose censorship as the EU’s Digital Services Act demanded. And the USG is challenging the UK for attempting to impose its censorship rules on US companies.
During the past few days, the US issued a deportation order for Ahmed and refused US visas to several others who participated in censorship campaigns affecting the US. Imran Ahmed has a green card (allowing permanent residence) but is not a US citizen.
Ahmed just filed a lawsuit to thwart a deportation. It will be interesting to see where this goes.
[Imran Ahmed] was one of a group of people involved in campaigns to tackle disinformation and hate speech online who were hit with visa sanctions. Mr Rubio accused them of leading “efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose”.
Elon Musk’s X is among the online platforms they have sought to censor, senior state department figures have alleged.
Mr Ahmed, who lives in Washington DC, said: “My life’s work is to protect children from the dangers of unregulated social media and AI, and fight the spread of anti-Semitism online.
“That mission has pitted me against big tech executives – and Elon Musk in particular – multiple times.
“I am proud to call the United States my home. My wife and daughter are American, and instead of spending Christmas with them, I am fighting to prevent my unlawful deportation from my home country.”
Sarah Rogers, the US undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, said Mr Ahmed was sanctioned because he was a “key collaborator” with Joe Biden’s administration’s efforts to “weaponise the government” against US citizens.
She said the CCDH had called for social media sites to “de-platform” anti-vaccine campaigners – including the now health secretary Robert F Kennedy – and had backed measures, including the UK’s Online Safety Act, “to expand censorship” around the world.
At the same time, McSweeney is in deep trouble. The UK authorities have got him for not reporting accurately on donations to his Labour Together dark money organization. No doubt, however, there is plenty more corruption there, if UK authorities wish to uncover it. So far they haven’t. However, McSweeney has made a lot of enemies within the Labour Party, and his sneak attacks on other politicians, plus the reporting scandal, have suddenly thrust McSweeney into the UK spotlight, and it looks like he may go from being untouchable to becoming an untouchable. That would be a very good thing, hopefully putting his brand of especially nasty political maneuvering and false promises in the spotlight.
Whether McSweeney’s efforts at creating a censorship regime get much attention is another matter—that is not where the attention has gone so far. But perhaps the Trump administration’s attack on Imran Ahmed, on the EU’s Thierry Breton and other major proponents of overseas censorship will bring the chickens home to roost, finally.
Just a few hours ago, a judge ruled to stop Ahmed’s deportation from the US. In a twist of great irony, Ahmed has demanded his First Amendment rights, after spending the past 8 years working feverishly to deny them to others. We desperately need a good First Amendment case to be litigated in the US, to stick a knife into the heart of the censorship regime, but sadly, I don’t think this one will be it. Fingers crossed that the CCDH, Ahmed and McSweeney will soon get the treatment they so richly deserve.