In a testimony before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, investigative reporter and free speech advocate Michael Shellenberger revealed what he calls a pervasive "Censorship Industrial Complex" across Western nations.
"The Censorship Industrial Complex remains almost entirely intact in Europe, Australia, Britain, Brazil," said Shellenberger, warning these regions are "continuing to seek new forms of censorship and information control, including digital identification tied to social media."
Shellenberger spoke of his own encounter with censorship after releasing the "Twitter Files Brazil," saying, "After I published the Twitter files Brazil last spring, the attorney general of Brazil opened a formal criminal investigation of me, which is still ongoing."
Shellenberger also called-out the European Commission's approach to speech regulation, saying, "(It) appears intent upon using its powers granted through the Digital Services Act, to demand that X, Facebook, and other platforms censor speech."
He highlighted the commission's threat to "fine X up to 6% of its annual global revenue for failing to crack down on so-called false information and not handing over its data to small committees of experts chosen by the commission to decide what is true and false."
Despite several victories in the battle for free speech, Shellenberger said, "Many governing and media elites worldwide view expanding censorship of online platforms as a must-have, not a nice-to-have feature of global governance."
He listed several influential entities and individuals pushing for censorship, including "NATO, NATO-backed think tanks, the European Commission, former President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Bill Gates, the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the World Economic Forum," and various U.S. government agencies.
Shellenberger further detailed the U.S. government's role in global information control, saying, "Deep state agencies within the U.S. government have for two decades sought to gain control over the production of news and other information around the world as part of ongoing covert and overt influence operations."
Shellenberger called for decisive action, saying, "I strongly urge Congress to defund the Censorship Industrial Complex and seek a proper accounting of the various efforts to fund it, including secretly through pass-through organizations and shell organizations like the ones employed by USAID."
He also advocated for protecting American users from international censorship, saying, "I further urge Congress to seek other ways to reduce the exposure of American social media users and companies to the threat of censorship from Europe, Britain, Brazil, and other nations."
