In his book Crisis and Leviathan, libertarian thinker Robert Higgs pointed out that states use crises to gradually increase their power and control over their people. With each new “crisis,” often caused directly or indirectly by the state itself, government expands and our freedoms contract.
For example, the root cause of the September 11, 2001 attacks was US intervention. As I said at a presidential debate a few years later, they came here because we were over there. But instead of looking at the root causes, it was decided that the real problem was that the government wasn't doing enough. So Congress took advantage of the crisis to create a Director of National Intelligence in the Department of Homeland Security and pass the Patriot Act.
The “Russiagate” crisis was concocted by the Hillary Clinton campaign as a dirty trick to use against Donald Trump during the 2016 election campaign. It may not have defeated Trump, but it hampered his presidency. As a result of fabricated claims that the Russians (and the Chinese, Iranians, etc.) are interfering in our affairs and manipulating our elections, the federal government has decided that the First Amendment no longer applies to our country. I made the decision.
They decided that certain media should not be allowed for our own safety, and they granted Americans the right to access media from countries that the U.S. government considers “enemies.” Not yet. It is Americans who feel their rights are being curtailed in the name of fighting imaginary foreign interference in our elections.
Shortly after the fake “Russiagate” operation was launched, they created an entire government agency within the State Department to “recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda.” The Global Engagement Center (GEC) was established. Disinformation efforts aimed at undermining or influencing the policies, security, or stability of the United States…”
After all, this “center” wasn't meant to fight foreign “bad guys” but to silence Americans whose opinions the powers-that-be in Washington, D.C., didn't like. As Roger Kimbell wrote in a recent article on the GEC, “GEC was unable to act directly against Americans, so it was based in the UK and compiled a list of publications and individuals who spoke out.・Disinformation index The administration didn't like it, and the list was referenced by advertisers who were wary of getting on the government's bad side. Dollars of advertising revenue dried up, putting the future of those media outlets at risk.”
And, as Kimbell further points out, even when they were caught red-handed violating our rights, they simply hid the beast inside Leviathan. So, even with funding for the GEC cut from Speaker Johnson's 1,500-page omnibus spending bill, the beast lives on. The Biden administration renamed the center the “Counter Foreign Information Operations and Interference (R/FIMI) Hub” and retained the former GEC staff.
But now that this switch has been exposed, we have a chance, for the first time, to finally destroy bad government programs. It turns out Elon Musk was one of the first to expose the evils of GEC and is now working with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to curtail exactly this type of government overreach. Government censorship programs no longer need to be hidden behind new names or new brands. Not another dollar should be spent censoring Americans!
Ron Paul is a former U.S. Congressman from Texas. This article originally appeared on the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity and is reprinted here with permission.
