Rock Island Today

Moline-based U.S. Rep. Eric Sorensen (D-IL) was one of the votes against creating the United States House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. 

The subcommittee has been actively inspecting censorship of truthful information posted to social media websites that were removed by the Biden administration in what free speech advocates have deemed “The Censorship Industrial Complex.” The subcommittee was created on Jan. 10 on a 221-211 vote. 

All House Democrats voted against the subcommittee’s creation. The subcommittee has revealed damning information detailing a massive censorship domestic censorship campaign carried out by the federal government.

The increasing scrutiny of intelligence agencies began with the Twitter files exposing the role of intelligence agencies in successfully burying the New York Post’s bombshell reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop, The Intercept reported. That reporting, according to Peoria Standard, revealed a string of emails revealing questionable relationships, including millions of dollars received by the president’s son, along with photos of him in sexual situations with prostitutes and smoking what appears to be a crack pipe. It was censored from social media and the New York Post’s Twitter account was taken down altogether, limiting its traction before the 2020 presidential election. 

Eighteen months later – far after the election had been decided – the New York Times and other legacy media finally reported the story. More recently, the Twitter files have exposed the Biden administration’s zeal for an authoritarian spirit in censoring truthful information, including the so-called COVID-19 “lab leak theory,” which received new life a few weeks ago when endorsed by the Department of Energy and prompted the FBI to share its assessment that COVID-19 had been created in a lab from where it leaked into the general population. 

In the latest installment of the Twitter files, journalist Matt Taibbi characterized how the censorship effort transformed quickly from an attempt to remove demonstrably false content from social media platforms to censoring true commentary that did not fit political narratives.  

“This story is important for two reasons. One, as Orwellian proof-of-concept, the Virality Project was a smash success. Government, academia and an oligopoly of would-be corporate competitors organized quickly behind a secret, unified effort to control political messaging,” Taibbi wrote. “Two, it accelerated the evolution of digital censorship, moving it from judging truth/untruth to a new, scarier model, openly focused on political narrative at the expense of fact.” 

“THE BEGINNING: On Feb. 5, 2021, just after Joe Biden took office, Stanford wrote to Twitter to discuss the Virality Project. By (Feb.) 17, Twitter agreed to join and got its first weekly report on ‘anti-vax disinformation,’ which contained numerous true stories.” 

Stanford’s Virality Project was shown to have successfully pushed social media companies to remove truthful content regarding side effects from COVID-19 vaccines, social media users opining that vaccine passports were removing American freedoms, the deaths of celebrities post-vaccination and breakthrough cases of COVID-19 post-vaccination, among many other instances. Most notably, Taibbi revealed internal communications from the Virality Project in which the group notes it successfully sought the censorship of “true content which might promote vaccine hesitancy.” 

Taibbi has authored 10 books and currently publishes Racket News on Substack. In 2008, he was recognized with the National Magazine Award in the category "Columns and Commentary" for his Rolling Stone columns. He also won a Sidney Award in 2009 for his article, "The Great American Bubble Machine." In 2020, Taibbi was awarded the Izzy Award, which honors the independent journalism of I. F. “Izzy” Stone. Despite this long list of credentials, he was derided by Democrats as a “so-called journalist” doing the bidding of the Twitter owner and the world’s wealthiest individual Elon Musk.

In testimony before the subcommittee Taibbi and journalist Michael Shellenberger described the massive censorship project undertaken by intelligence agencies, which was greatly expanded under the Biden administration.

“American taxpayers are unwittingly financing the growth and power of a censorship-industrial complex run by America’s scientific and technological elite, which endangers our liberties and democracy,” Shellenberger said in testimony later adapted into a column for the New York Post. "The Twitter files, state attorneys general lawsuits and investigative reporters have revealed a large and growing network of government agencies, academic institutions and private groups that are actively censoring American citizens, often without their knowledge, on subjects including the origins of COVID, COVID vaccines, Hunter Biden’s business dealings, climate change and many other issues.” 

The law, Shellenberger said, "allows Facebook and Twitter and other private companies to moderate the content on their platforms, and I support the right of governments to communicate with the public, including to dispute inaccurate and misleading information.” 

Shellenberger said murky groups funded by the nation’s intelligence apparatus have been involved in “creating blacklists of disfavored people and demanding that the social media platforms censor, deamplify and even ban them.” Oftentimes the censorship is aimed at political conservatives, but also targets unbiased journalists who report on items that run counter to the federal government’s narrative.

“Past influence operations have involved convincing journalists and social media executives that accurate information is disinformation, that valid hypotheses are conspiracy theories and that greater self-censorship results in more accurate reporting,” Shellenberger said. “The censors are driven by the fear that the internet and social media platforms empower populist leaders and policies, which they view as destabilizing.” 

Shellenberger projected that “for that reason, in a few short years, federal government officials, agencies and contractors have gone from fighting ISIS recruiters and Russian bots to censoring and de-platforming ordinary Americans and disfavored public figures.” 

“And the censors have stepped up their efforts to influence and even control conventional news-media organizations,” he said. 

In 2008, Shellenberger was a recipient of Time Magazine’s Hero of the Environment – Leader and Visionary.

More recently, U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) suggested social media companies censor truthful information regarding the burgeoning banking crisis after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank and the recent takeover of Credit Suisse, Public reported.

Sorensen represents Illinois’ 17th Congressional District, which includes Henry, Warren and McDonough Counties; half of Mercer, Stephenson, Tazewell, McLean, Fulton and Peoria Counties; and all of Carroll, Rock Island, Whiteside and Knox Counties. All or parts of Canton, East Moline, Freeport, Galesburg, Kewanee, Moline, Peoria, Rock Island, Rockford, Pekin and Sterling are included in the district.