“The best way to combat disinformation is free speech,” the Secretary of State says.
On April 16th, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the closure of the Department of State’s office.
Written by Federalist Enforcer, Rubio denounced the counter’s foreign information manipulation and intervention office, formerly known as the Global Engagement Centre (GEC), and staff using taxpayer dollars to carry out censorship, particularly online conservative voices.
He also addressed the news in an interview that was live streamed on the department’s website, saying, “We have ended government-sponsored censorship in the United States through the State Department.”
Originally established in 2007 as a counterterrorism communications center, it became the GEC under the Obama administration in 2016, expanding its mission to expand efforts to combat foreign production, in order to eradicate narratives from al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.
According to a web page archived on the State Department website, the Center’s mission was to “direct, guide, synchronize, integrate and coordinate federal efforts to recognize, understand, expose and counter U.S. propaganda and non-information efforts aimed at policy, security and attack on foreign and non-state propaganda and non-state propaganda and counterargument efforts.
“We’re not targeting American audiences,” Center employee Daniel Kinmage said during a previous deposit. “The GEC concerns are about the actions of foreign propaganda actors. The GEC concerns lie there, not at all. They do not reach the speeches of Americans.”
The Epoch Times reported that the center is scheduled to close on the last day of the Biden administration in December 2024. This was at the heart of several legal cases due to its involvement in an initiative called the Election Honest Partnership (EIP), which concludes election disinformation on social media.
Rubio said in his manipulation that “GEC was supposed to be dead,” and that his predecessor under the Biden administration changed the name of the center to a foreign information manipulation and intervention office in hopes of surviving the transition while maintaining the same roster of employees.
He mentioned GEC’s work with EIP, saying in the introduction of his book, “The War on Information,” center director Richard Stengel compared the way President Donald Trump spoke to that of a terrorist or Russian disformation campaign.
In his manipulation, Rubio also denounced the GEC working during the Covid-19 pandemic, labeling speculations that the coronavirus is an engineered biological age or that it comes from research carried out in the lab of Uhan, as Russian disinformation and foreign propaganda.
Rather than reopening his office, Rubio opposed what he called the whole disinformation industry and the idea that Americans need to be protected from lies online.
At the same time, he said he was confident that his department could remain vigilant against communist China and other countries with an increase in authoritarian censorship without this office.
“The best way to counteract disinformation is free speech. To ensure that the truth has the same or more opportunities as what is not true,” Rubio said in an interview. “We’ve learned that’s the hard way.”
