Digital Information, Political Control and the New Language of Censorship

The struggle over political information on the internet has become far more than a dispute between individual media outlets and their critics. At its centre lies the question of who decides which reports remain visible, which opinions are considered dangerous and which explanations of political events are permitted in public debate. Governments, intelligence services, large technology corporations and politically connected research institutions increasingly justify intervention by referring to the protection of democracy. At the same time, many observers fear that the fight against foreign influence is being used to establish a broad system for limiting dissenting views.

The issue is not whether deliberate deception, foreign interference or violent propaganda should be challenged. The central concern is whether these terms are being defined so broadly that they can be applied to ordinary political disagreement. If private companies receive public pressure to remove, reduce or conceal information, the formal existence of free speech may remain intact while its practical reach becomes much narrower.

The Language of Internal War

During an American Senate hearing on extremist content and alleged Russian disinformation, representatives of Facebook, Twitter and Google were questioned about political information on the internet. Much of the attention focused on the later part of the hearing, when most senators had already left the room.

At that stage, Clint Watts was given the opportunity to present his assessment in considerable detail. Watts was a former American officer and FBI agent and was then associated with the Alliance for Securing Democracy.

He described the political conflict inside the United States in the language of warfare. Civil wars, he argued, did not begin with shooting but with words. The American struggle against itself had already begun, and everyone would have to take part on the battlefield of social networks.

According to this interpretation, information uprisings had to be suppressed because they could quickly lead to violent conflict. If they were not controlled, the country might become permanently divided.

Users of social networks were described as being exposed to a barrage of false information. The barrage could supposedly be stopped only if the channels spreading invented reports were silenced.

The military vocabulary was striking. Political arguments became battles, reports became artillery fire and communication channels became weapons. Once this language is accepted, censorship can be presented not as a restriction of public discussion but as a defensive operation.

Foreign Enemies and Domestic Opponents

Such alarmist statements are not part of every political debate, yet the tone of public conflict has become increasingly harsh in many Western countries. This development is particularly visible in the United States, whose political changes often influence debates in Europe and Germany.

Watts did not merely use the language of war. He also represented a familiar tendency among major powers to explain domestic problems through hostile forces operating from outside.

External troublemakers are connected with internal opponents. Citizens who reject the official interpretation are no longer treated simply as people with different political opinions. They are portrayed as instruments of a foreign government.

This method is old. Governments have often found it easier to explain social tension, economic hardship and political dissatisfaction by blaming an external enemy.

The population is then warned not only about a foreign threat. It is also encouraged to distrust citizens who question the official account.

The effect is politically powerful. A disagreement can be transformed into evidence of disloyalty, and criticism can be treated as a security problem rather than as part of normal democratic life.

Manufacturing Political Consent

The escalation of political language is not a new phenomenon. What has changed is the speed with which accusations spread and the extent to which governments, private companies and research institutions cooperate in shaping public opinion.

The objective is to establish political consent at home and to support the foreign policy of the state abroad. The population is expected to accept a particular interpretation of events, while competing explanations are associated with danger, manipulation or foreign control.

The American linguist Noam Chomsky described this process as the manufacture of consent. The idea refers to the creation of public agreement through selection, repetition and exclusion rather than through open and equal debate.

When older methods become less effective, stronger measures are introduced. Alternative media are no longer merely criticised. They are associated with foreign governments and accused of serving hostile interests.

Shortly after the American presidential election of 2016, the Washington Post published a report in which more than two hundred alternative media outlets were accused of cooperating with Russia or serving as useful instruments of the Kremlin.

The accusation affected left-wing, conservative and libertarian platforms. Well-known websites such as CounterPunch, Truthdig and Consortiumnews were included in the wider suspicion.

The Attack on Alternative Media

The list came from an obscure organisation called PropOrNot. The group revealed little about its origins, its methods or its political connections, yet its accusations were given prominent attention.

The campaign represented a particularly crude attack on alternative media. Instead of examining the arguments and sources of individual publications, it treated a large number of independent outlets as part of one hostile network.

The procedure recalled the political suspicion associated with the McCarthy era. People were not necessarily condemned because of what they had written. They were condemned because of where their work appeared or because their interpretation did not fit the dominant political narrative.

The Washington Post later weakened some aspects of its presentation. By then, however, the political damage had already been done. The affected outlets had been publicly associated with a foreign power.

Clint Watts was mentioned in the report. He had therefore already become involved in the campaign against alleged Russian influence before his later appearance before the Senate.

The controversy surrounding the so-called Russia affair did not begin only with investigations by state agencies. It had already developed through media reports that placed alternative publications under suspicion.

The Alliance for Securing Democracy

Another initiative appeared during the following year under the name Alliance for Securing Democracy. Clint Watts was connected with the organisation and later spoke before the Senate on its behalf.

The initiative was supported by the German Marshall Fund. One of its declared aims was to demonstrate that Russian automated accounts were influencing political discussion in the United States.

To support this claim, the organisation created a daily digital overview known as Hamilton Sixty-Eight. It presented a large number of accounts as Russian automated tools.

The apparent technical precision of the project later became doubtful. The organisation eventually had to admit that most of the accounts it had initially identified were neither clearly automated nor demonstrably Russian.

A political suspicion had first been transformed into something resembling a scientific measurement. When the underlying information was examined more closely, the reliability of the system proved far weaker than the presentation had suggested.

The case illustrates how technology can give political accusations an appearance of objectivity. A list, a diagram or an automated classification may look neutral even when the assumptions behind it are uncertain.

The Atlantic Council and Information Sovereignty

The Atlantic Council also entered the debate. A conference involving senior representatives from the military, police and business sectors was held at the American Defence Department to discuss sovereignty in the information age.

Little was initially known about the discussions. Some months later, the Atlantic Council published a detailed report on the conference and the political problems it addressed.

The report described two developments that were said to reinforce each other. Trust in political and state institutions was declining, while public disagreement and opposition were increasing.

At the same time, the state was said to be losing its ability to control political communication. National sovereignty appeared weakened because the internet allowed information and dissent to circulate beyond the reach of traditional institutions.

The report presented the internet as a major force in this transformation. Divergent views could now reach large audiences rapidly and with very limited financial resources.

From the perspective of established institutions, this opening was dangerous. The traditional gatekeepers were losing their ability to determine which interpretations entered the public sphere.

The Comparison with the Printing Press

The Atlantic Council compared the destabilising effect of the internet with the invention and spread of the printing press. The printing press had weakened the feudal order and contributed to a period of political and religious conflict.

A similar transformation could now be taking place through digital communication. Until recently, professional intermediaries controlled much of the movement of political and media information.

Editors, publishers, broadcasters and established experts decided which reports were distributed and where the boundaries of public debate lay. The internet weakened their exclusive position.

Small groups and individual writers could reach large audiences without the support of major publishing houses, broadcasting corporations or established newsrooms.

This change created a more open information environment, but it also reduced the power of traditional institutions. Reports that had previously been excluded could now circulate widely.

The political response was therefore not limited to improving journalism. It increasingly involved attempts to restore control over the technical systems through which information was distributed.

The New Role of Technology Corporations

The proposed solution does not necessarily involve direct state control. Instead, large technology corporations are expected to accept greater political responsibility for the information that passes through their systems.

Google, Facebook, Twitter and other companies are told that they can no longer describe themselves as neutral platforms. They are expected to assume responsibility for the material made available to their users.

In practice, this means deciding what users see and what remains hidden. Companies can promote certain content, reduce the visibility of other material and remove information considered dangerous.

The crucial question is who determines the standards. If the decision is made by governments, intelligence-linked organisations or politically connected research groups, private moderation can become a substitute for public censorship.

Content that supports the established political order is likely to be treated as reliable. Material that crosses the accepted boundary can be labelled false information, hate speech, Russian propaganda or foreign interference.

The distinction between legitimate criticism and manipulation then becomes a political decision. The reach of a report depends not only on its factual quality but also on whether it agrees with the expectations of powerful institutions.

An Existing Structure of Suppression

The infrastructure for restricting unwanted content is not merely a proposal for the distant future. Technical systems capable of lowering visibility, removing accounts and monitoring political communication already exist.

The measures are becoming more systematic, while the language used to justify them is becoming more aggressive. The debate is no longer limited to disagreements between established and alternative media.

Reports from the Atlantic Council and statements by Clint Watts refer to war, civil war, battlefields, artillery fire, division and information uprisings.

They also speak of silencing the opposing side and disarming its communication channels. These expressions should not be dismissed as harmless figures of speech.

When political opponents are described as weapons of a foreign enemy, measures that would normally appear excessive can be presented as necessary defence.

Military language changes the moral character of a debate. A political disagreement becomes a security conflict, and restricting speech becomes comparable to disabling an enemy weapon.

Hidden Restrictions on Reach

During the later part of the previous decade, reports emerged that Google and other social network companies had altered search and recommendation systems in ways that greatly reduced the reach of selected left-wing and anti-war websites.

Some affected pages reportedly lost most of their previous access. They were not necessarily removed entirely. Instead, they became difficult for ordinary users to find.

Eric Schmidt, who was then chairman of Google’s parent company, expressed opposition to direct removal in favour of a more elegant form of demotion.

Demotion is less visible than deletion. The material remains technically available but reaches few readers. To the public, it may appear that interest in the website has simply declined.

An internal Google document later became known in which the transition from unrestricted expression towards forms of censorship was described openly.

The importance of such systems lies in their lack of visibility. A government does not need to issue a public ban when an algorithm can quietly reduce the audience for an unwanted view.

Information can remain online while becoming practically inaccessible. This form of control is difficult to challenge because the affected users may not know that their reach has been restricted.

Is This Censorship?

A common objection is that the term censorship should not be used because censorship is a state activity. Facebook, Twitter and Google are private companies and may therefore decide which content is allowed on their services.

At first glance, this argument appears convincing. Private companies do have legal rights to manage their own platforms. Yet the argument becomes less persuasive when those companies possess communication power on a scale once held only by governments and major broadcasters.

The American writer Caitlin Johnstone has argued that the separation between corporate power and state power is not clear in a political system dominated by large corporations.

When companies cooperate closely with government agencies, corporate censorship can produce effects similar to state censorship. This is especially true of the large technology corporations based in Silicon Valley.

These companies possess the technical ability to make information visible or invisible across the world. Governments can apply political pressure, create legal incentives and invite corporations to become partners in the struggle against alleged foreign influence.

The result may be censorship without a formal censorship office. A private company performs the practical act, while political institutions influence the environment in which the decision is made.

Julian Assange as a Symbol

The struggle against independent information does not always begin with the complete prohibition of a report. It is often more effective to attack a particular person or organisation and use that case as a warning to others.

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, became the most prominent example. He endured a long and damaging legal and political ordeal whose consequences remained uncertain for years.

In 2012, Assange sought refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. He remained there for several years under difficult conditions and experienced growing health problems.

Many established media organisations that had previously benefited from WikiLeaks publications later turned against him. Some alternative outlets also distanced themselves.

The Australian journalist John Pilger, a friend and compatriot of Assange, expressed shock at this response. In his view, he had never witnessed a comparable abandonment of a journalist during his long career.

The treatment of Assange demonstrates how quickly an investigator can become an enemy when publications that were once useful begin to threaten powerful institutions.

The Political Meaning of the Assange Case

If Ecuador had surrendered Assange to authorities in Britain or the United States, he could have faced serious political prosecution. The central concern was not only whether he would receive a fair trial but whether the process would be used as retaliation.

The case therefore concerns more than the freedom and health of one person. It also concerns the future of independent journalism.

WikiLeaks published information that had been supplied by other people. If the publication of truthful information becomes a criminal offence because of its political consequences, a dangerous precedent is created.

Journalists could then be accused not of spreading false information but of assisting a hostile power by revealing accurate information that governments wished to conceal.

If Assange can be portrayed as an agent of a foreign government and punished accordingly, future journalists may avoid publishing material that exposes military operations, intelligence work or political misconduct.

His case demonstrates how a government can attack the messenger instead of answering the information. The punishment of the publisher then becomes a warning to every potential source and every media organisation.

Foreign Broadcasters Under Pressure

Other targets include foreign English-language broadcasters. In the United States, the Russian channel RT, the Latin American channel Telesur and the Qatari channel Al Jazeera have been treated with particular suspicion.

These broadcasters are vulnerable because established Western media organisations rarely show solidarity with them. In an atmosphere of strong hostility towards Russia, official pressure against RT produces little public resistance.

Western journalists often do not defend colleagues working for disfavoured broadcasters. Some even justify the official measures by referring to protection against foreign influence.

Julian Assange warned the editor of RT at an early stage that attempts would be made to silence the channel. Later developments made this warning appear less implausible.

Political leaders in the United States and Britain increasingly treated RT as a threat because the channel challenged foreign policy explanations that were commonly presented as self-evident in other major media.

The Russia Affair and RT

An investigation commissioned by President Obama into alleged Russian interference devoted unusual attention to RT. The work involved selected employees of the FBI, the CIA and the NSA.

A large portion of the assessment concerned the Russian broadcaster. Some of the arguments were weak because they referred to programmes that had already been discontinued long before the American election.

Nevertheless, the presentation conveyed the impression that RT had deliberately attempted to influence the election. The fact that several cited programmes were no longer being broadcast received little attention.

RT America was later required to register under an American law concerning foreign agents. The law had originally been created to address propaganda connected with the National Socialist regime in Germany.

Applying such a law to a foreign media organisation marked a serious escalation. RT America was effectively placed in the category of a hostile propaganda institution and was subjected to substantial political pressure.

The measure also created a precedent for treating foreign-funded journalism as a security operation. A broadcaster could be judged not by the accuracy of individual reports but by the nationality of its funding and ownership.

The Expansion of Suspicion

The campaign did not target RT alone. It also affected people who refused to follow the foreign policy preferences of the American government without question.

A research organisation based in the Czech Republic and partly financed by George Soros compiled a list of so-called useful idiots. The list contained more than two thousand people who had given interviews to RT or the Russian news agency Sputnik.

Being included did not mean that a person supported Russian interests. It was enough to have spoken to a particular broadcaster.

This created a politics of association. Instead of examining what a person had said, critics examined which media organisation had provided the platform.

A journalist could therefore be discredited through contact alone. The content of the interview became less important than the identity of the broadcaster.

Such methods encourage intellectual isolation. Experts, writers and politicians may avoid speaking to certain outlets not because the questions are illegitimate but because the association could damage their reputation.

Alex Jones and the Easy Target

Alex Jones was a comparatively easy target. He promoted extremist and conspiratorial positions, and his internet company Infowars was not a credible source of political information.

Yet the coordinated action of several large technology companies against Jones and his organisation created a wider problem. The question was not whether his claims were reasonable but whether corporations should be allowed to decide collectively which political voices could reach the public.

It is short-sighted when established media celebrate such restrictions merely because the first target is unpleasant. The systems created to remove one extreme outlet can later be used against less extreme organisations.

American Senator Chris Murphy described Infowars as only the visible part of a much larger structure of hatred and falsehood operating through Facebook and YouTube.

He argued that the companies had to do more than remove one website and that the survival of democracy depended on stronger intervention.

This justification is dangerous because it does not stop at the examination of individual claims. It presents broad control over political content as a necessary condition for democratic survival.

Once that principle is accepted, the removal of one offensive outlet can become the foundation for a much wider system of political control.

Facebook and the Atlantic Council

Facebook later entered into a partnership with the digital investigation laboratory associated with the Atlantic Council. The declared purpose was to identify false information and foreign influence.

Because Facebook operates worldwide, the political consequences were not limited to the United States. Company representatives also met with the Israeli government to discuss which Palestinian accounts should be closed.

The journalist Glenn Greenwald described the process as an uncontrolled expansion of censorship. Political actors and a global technology corporation were working together to decide which voices could remain visible.

The difficulty is that affected users often have no meaningful opportunity to challenge the decision. An account may be removed without an independent court examining the evidence or the political context.

A private company can therefore impose a form of political punishment without the procedural protections normally expected from a state institution.

Cooperation with Political Organisations

Facebook also announced cooperation with the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute in the fight against false information.

Both organisations are presented as independent non-profit institutions. In reality, they belong to a political network connected with the National Endowment for Democracy.

The National Endowment for Democracy is a conservative foreign policy organisation that has supported political movements and government changes in various countries. It receives substantial funding from the American Congress.

The National Democratic Institute has been led by senior figures from the Democratic Party, while the International Republican Institute has close relationships with Republican politicians.

When Facebook cooperates with such institutions, content moderation cannot be described as politically neutral. The assessment of alleged false information becomes connected with party politics and American foreign policy.

This arrangement creates a serious conflict of interest. Political organisations help define which information is false, while a private corporation uses that judgement to determine which information remains visible.

The Removal of Opposition Pages

Facebook later removed hundreds of opposition pages and accounts in a major coordinated action. The affected pages had large audiences and represented different political positions.

Some were critical of police power, others opposed military interventions and some promoted conservative or nationalist ideas. The political orientation of the pages was therefore not uniform.

What connected them was their position outside the established media system and their ability to reach substantial audiences. The measures did not merely remove isolated posts. They dismantled established political communities.

The public was given little opportunity to examine the evidence for each removal. The companies referred broadly to violations of standards, coordinated behaviour or false information.

When a platform removes a page that has taken years to build, the effect is comparable to shutting down a newspaper, a broadcaster or a political organisation. The difference is that the decision can be made privately and without a public hearing.

Empire and Domestic Suppression

An American internet forum observed that such suppression would not be necessary in a healthy democracy. In a democratic system, political sovereignty should belong to the people.

The argument continued that an empire is held together by force and must therefore suppress domestic critics. Imperial ambitions eventually damage democratic life because criticism is interpreted as a threat to national power.

This view recalls the work of the historian William Appleman Williams, who emphasised the destructive effects of imperial expansion on American democracy.

The argument can also be reversed. The new political McCarthyism is no longer directed only at the internal exchange of opinions in the United States.

It operates internationally. American political institutions increasingly place large technology corporations under pressure to restrict information that threatens official foreign policy.

The companies respond with cooperation. Through their global systems, they can influence political communication far beyond the borders of the United States.

The result is a form of worldwide information management in which content may be removed, reduced or marked as suspicious wherever it challenges the interests of powerful institutions.

Facebook as an Instrument of Foreign Policy

The expanding measures of Facebook have often been carried out in cooperation with official or semi-official American institutions and research organisations.

This cooperation suggests that Facebook is becoming an instrument of American foreign policy. The company is not formally part of the government, yet it can impose political decisions with global consequences.

There is also a danger that the company will become integrated into the structures of what is commonly called a deep state. This term refers to networks involving intelligence services, security agencies, military contractors and political decision-makers that are only partly subject to public oversight.

Every individual connection may be presented as a limited partnership. Taken together, however, repeated cooperation changes the balance of power in the public sphere.

Private networks begin to perform functions that were once more directly controlled by governments, courts and elected institutions.

The public is then expected to accept political decisions made by corporations whose internal procedures remain largely secret.

Democracy as a Justification

Few officials would openly describe their measures as censorship or as restrictions on freedom of expression. Instead, they claim that every intervention serves the protection of democracy and the defence against its enemies.

This argument has emotional force. A democracy should indeed be protected against foreign interference, deliberate deception and extremist violence.

The decisive question, however, is who defines foreign interference, deliberate deception and extremism. If the definitions are established by governments, intelligence-linked organisations and politically connected corporations, independent control is missing.

The language of democratic protection can then be used to weaken essential democratic rights. These include the right to disagree, the right to express unpopular opinions and the right to distribute information that challenges the official interpretation.

A society in which only approved explanations remain visible may appear stable. Its stability is then based not on public consent but on the restriction of what citizens can see, discuss and publish.

The Need for Open Standards

No democratic society can function without rules against direct incitement to violence, deliberate fraud and genuine threats. Yet such rules must be clear, transparent and subject to independent review.

Political disagreement must not be confused with foreign control. A critical journalist is not automatically a foreign agent, and a media outlet does not become propaganda merely because it receives funding from outside the country.

Technology companies should explain why content is removed, which standards are applied and how users can appeal. Secret agreements with governments and political organisations should not determine the limits of public debate.

Independent courts and public institutions must be able to examine moderation decisions when they affect political communication on a large scale.

Without such safeguards, private companies acquire the power to determine the practical boundaries of free speech without carrying the constitutional responsibilities imposed on public authorities.

Conclusion

The struggle over information on the internet is ultimately a struggle over political power. Governments seek to protect their authority, intelligence services want to control hostile narratives, corporations manage the systems through which information circulates and politically connected organisations provide the language of democratic defence.

The greatest danger does not come from every false report or every radical website. It comes from a system in which the same institutions define the threat, identify the guilty sources and decide which information the public may still see.

When political opponents are described as foreign weapons, when alternative media are collectively branded as agents and when technical companies quietly reduce the reach of dissenting views, the boundary between protection and control disappears.

A free society must therefore defend itself against deception without destroying the right to question those who claim to defend it. Democracy cannot survive when public debate is treated as a battlefield on which only approved voices are allowed to remain visible.