Executive Summary
In Part 1 of this report, the MRC Censorship Investigation Project uncovered how the Biden administration used the federal government to silence Americans who don’t support its leftist agenda through a year-long series of State Department seminars that trained teachers to use censorship tools in their classrooms. Now in Part 2, we detail how the federal government is using taxpayer money from the Department of Homeland Security’s terrorist prevention program to censor conservatives nationwide.
Like the State Department before it, the DHS is using the University of Rhode Island’s Media Education Lab (the “Rhode Island Lab”) to accomplish its anti-American goals of training teachers to use censorship tools in the classroom and silence political dissent. Biden’s DHS approved a three-phase censorship strategy, set to culminate close to the 2024 presidential election.
The DHS funded this endeavor through the Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention (TVTP) Grant Program. MRC Free Speech America previously reported on this controversial program and how it has been weaponized to target Christians, conservatives and the Republican Party.
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Phase 1 of this strategy was the launch of a public awareness campaign, featuring DHS-commissioned blog posts attacking former President Donald Trump, “MAGA supporters,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, free speech and the Second Amendment. The campaign also included controversial podcasts, panel discussions and community events to generate support for censorship. The blog-post portion of the campaign used incendiary language disparaging Biden’s political opponents, all funded with taxpayer dollars. Examples include:
- “We are all living in a darker, scarier, angrier, less hopeful country thanks to Mr. Trump’s influence. Are we on the verge of civil war?”
- “Donald Trump was also adopting the shock-jock style that Rush Limbaugh built into a cultural phenomenon, including his misogynistic and racist comments, conspiracy theories, and grievances.”
- “It won’t be easy, but we really have to reduce Trump’s influence”
- “[I]t's tempting and entertaining to tune into the circuses of the Marjorie Taylor Greenes, Louis Farrakans [sic], and MAGA supporters.”
- “It turns out even Fox Media has limits on how much misogyny and racism it will tolerate from its stars–witness the canceling of Tucker Carlson’s show last week.”
Phase 2 of the strategy finances the current and ongoing, nationwide expansion of the seminars initially established by the State Department. These seminars train educators across the country on how to divert students away from conservative ideas and media sources skeptical of the administration’s agenda. While these seminars are now closed to the public, it is highly likely that the same censorship methods introduced during the State Department-funded seminars continue to play a central role in the DHS seminars since the same organizations continue to lead the effort. These tactics include pushing educators to put censorship tools from for-profit media ratings firms Ad Fontes and NewsGuard into American classrooms.
- It is telling that before being allowed to participate in the DHS-funded seminars, educators must declare their political ideology. One teacher who declared herself “conservative” reported that she was confined to a breakout group controlled by the director of the Rhode Island Lab so as to limit her access to the most damning material.
Phase 3 of the recently launched strategy provides cash prizes of up to $1,000 for children who create social media posts to increase demand for “media literacy” mandates — a euphemism for censorship. The program mimics the German socialist model introduced as part of the Rhode Island Lab’s partnership with the State Department, which focuses on pushing teachers to turn children into “media producers.”
- To enhance this astroturf campaign, Biden’s DHS selected the leftist lobbying group “Media Literacy Now,” which lobbies state legislatures for laws requiring “media literacy.” Media Literacy Now has a revenue-sharing agreement with Ad Fontes, the company that provides the “Media Bias Chart” used to disparage conservative media. Because the two organizations also have overlapping board members and staff, they essentially function as a single enterprise.
Now DHS is paying - *paying* - leftist academics to create “counter-propaganda” on “immigration, racial justice” and COVID. This from the people who brought you the Disinformation Board. Another reason Mayorkas should be gone 👇 pic.twitter.com/TQGbRavh3S
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) January 17, 2024
For the complete report visit NewsBusters.
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