the Weaponization of the Federal Government, Before the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government,” 118th Congress, US House of Representatives Committee Repository, March 9, 2023, https://docs.house.gov/Committee/Calendar/ByEvent.aspx?EventID=115442.

78 Andrea Bernstein, “Republican Rep. Jim Jordan Issues Sweeping Information Requests to Universities Researching Disinformation,” ProPublica, March 22, 2023, https://www.propublica.org/article/jim-jordan-disinformation-subpoena-universities.

79 Jim Jordan refused to cooperate with the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, commenting, “This request is far outside the bounds of any legitimate inquiry, violates core constitutional principles and would serve to further erode legislative norms.” He subsequently defied a subpoena from the committee, writing, “Public statements by members of the Select Committee indicate that it seeks to use its subpoena authority for improper motives and for the self-aggrandizement of its members.” See Luke Broadwater, “Jim Jordan Refuses to Cooperate with Jan. 6 Panel,” New York Times, updated October 13, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/09/us/politics/jim-jordan-jan-6-panel.html; Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan), “Response to the January 6th Committee,” Twitter, May 25, 2022, 4:00 p.m., https://twitter.com/Jim_Jordan/status/1529598191854923776/photo/3.

80 Rep. Dan Bishop (@RepDanBishop), “To be sure, @MikeBenzCyber and @FFO_Freedom have made themselves indispensable in bringing to light the largest government censorship scheme in US history,” Twitter, May 11, 2023, 8:38 a.m., Internet Archive, https://web.archive.org/web/20230920235530/https://twitter.com/RepDanBishop/status/1656760668911988774.

81 Michael Shellenberger, “‘The Most Dangerous People in America Right Now,’” Public (blog), March 23, 2023, Internet Archive, https://web.archive.org/web/20230323150149/https://public.substack.com/p/the-most-dangerous-people-in-america; Michael Shellenberger, “Why Renee DiResta Leads the Censorship Industry,” Public (blog), April 3, 2023, Internet Archive, https://web.archive.org/web/20230403185119/https://public.substack.com/p/why-renee-diresta-leads-the-censorship.

82 America First Legal, “Jill Hines & Jim Hoft v. Alex Stamos, et al.,” blog post at https://aflegal.org/litigation/jill-hines-jim-hoft-v-alex-stamos-et-al. A copy of the lawsuit can be found at https://dockets.justia.com/docket/louisiana/lawdce/3:2023cv00571/199277.

83 Mike Masnick, “The Good, the Bad, and the Incredibly Ugly in the Court Ruling Regarding Government Contacts with Social Media,” Techdirt, July 6, 2023, https://www.techdirt.com/2023/07/06/the-good-the-bad-and-the-incredibly-ugly-in-the-court-ruling-regarding-government-contacts-with-social-media.

84 “Stanford University Files Amicus Brief in Missouri v. Biden Appeal,” press release, Stanford University Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, July 28, 2023, https://fsi.stanford.edu/news/stanford-university-files-amicus-brief-missouri-v-biden-appeal; Missouri v. Biden, 3:22-CV-01213 (W.D. La. Mar. 20, 2023).

85 Kate Starbird, “Addressing Falsehoods and the Manipulated Narrative of House Judiciary Committee Majority Document: ‘The Weaponization of CISA: How a ‘Cybersecurity’ Agency Colluded with Big Tech and ‘Disinformation’ Partners to Censor Americans,’” University of Washington Center for an Informed Public, August 23, 2023, https://www.cip.uw.edu/2023/08/23/starbird-house-judiciary-committee-report.

86 Jonathan Blitzer, “Jim Jordan’s Conspiratorial Quest for Power: How the Ohio Republican Built an Insurgent Bid for Speaker on the Lies of Donald Trump,” New Yorker, October 21, 2023, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/10/30/jim-jordans-conspiratorial-quest-for-power.

87 Steven Lee Myers and Sheera Frenkel, “G.O.P. Targets Researchers Who Study Disinformation Ahead of 2024 Election,” New York Times, June 19, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/19/technology/gop-disinformation-researchers-2024-election.html.

88 Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010), 34.

89 Michael E. Mann, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 61.

90 Ibid., 200.

91 Post from Medhi Hasan documenting this interaction is at Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan), “Me: ‘It’s just error after error, Matt?’ @mtaibbi: ‘Well, that is an error.’ Watch me confront Matt Taibbi with multiple, unacknowledged, and glaring mistakes in his Twitter Files reporting…,” Twitter, April 6, 2023, Internet Archive, https://web.archive.org/web/20230407052848/https://twitter.com/mehdirhasan/status/1644064242419617803. Media summary with embedded video can be found here: Justin Baragona, “MSNBC Host Makes Matt Taibbi Squirm over His ‘Twitter Files’ Errors,” Daily Beast, April 6, 2023, https://www.thedailybeast.com/msnbc-host-mehdi-hasan-makes-matt-taibbi-squirm-over-his-twitter-files-errors.

92 Brandy Zadrozny, “Michael Benz, a Conservative Crusader Against Online Censorship, Appears to Have a Secret History as an Alt-Right Persona,” NBC News, October 6, 2023, https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/michael-benz-rising-voice-conservative-criticism-online-censorship-rcna119213.

93 Richard Spencer (@RichardBSpencer), “The notion that ‘frame game’ was engaged in ‘de-radicalization’ is absurd. Though he obviously was trying to channel the AltRight in a certain direction for an outside player,” Twitter, October 6, 2023, 8:04 p.m., Internet Archive, https://web.archive.org/web/20231009184131/https://twitter.com/RichardBSpencer/status/1710491232487854111.

94 Excerpted from a thread that Frame Game (sometimes “framegames”) posted to Twitter and then archived to his Steemit blog. The post appears with the title “Thread 1: A Jewish Perspective on Jewish Influence” and the following description: “Below is a repost of my viral Twitter thread with over 5 million total impressions over the course of a week. With Twitter’s speech bonfire fully underway, this thread is being archived here in eternity’s bosom. It is reproduced with no edits, and was bound by Twitter’s 140 character limit at the time of its writing, in August 2017.” See framegames, “THREAD 1: A Jewish Perspective on Jewish Influence,” steemit, https://web.archive.org/web/20231007003239/https://steemit.com/blog/@framegames/thread-1-a-jewish-perspective-on-jewish-influence-on-the-west.

95 We were sued in May 2023 in Texas as “de facto government agents” by the “New Civil Liberties Alliance” on behalf of activists alleging they were injured by their COVID-19 vaccines. See Dressen v. Flaherty, “Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief,” 3:23-cv-00155 (S.D. Tex. 2023), https://nclalegal.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Dressen-Complaint-Filed-5.22.23.pdf.

96 Naomi Nix and Cat Zakrzewski, “U.S. Stops Helping Big Tech Spot Foreign Meddling Amid GOP Legal Threats,” Washington Post, November 30, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com /technology/2023/11/30/biden-foreign-disinformation-social-media-election-interference/.

97 Darius Tahir, “The NIH halts a research project. Is it self-censorship?,” CBS News, August 5, 2023, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nih-halts-research-project-is-it-self-censorship/.

98 Zach Greenberg, “Chilling open records request targets University of Washington faculty, threatens academic freedom,” The FIRE newsdesk, November 15, 2022, https://www.thefire.org /news/chilling-open-records-request-targets-university-washington-faculty-threatens-acade mic-freedom.

99 Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conpiracism and the Assault on Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019), 9.

CHAPTER 9: THE PATH FORWARD

1 Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin and the Great Depression (New York: Vintage Books, 1983), 97.

2 Ibid., 143.

3 Forrest Davis, “Father Coughlin,” The Atlantic, December 1935, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1935/12/father-coughlin/652107.

4 Clyde Haberman, “Today in History: The Father Coughlin Story,” PBS, March 9, 2022, https://www.pbs.org/wnet/exploring-hate/2022/03/09/today-in-history-the-father-coughlin-story.

5 Thomas Doherty, “The Deplatforming of Father Coughlin,” Slate, January 21, 2021, https://slate.com/technology/2021/01/father-coughlin-deplatforming-radio-social-media.html.

6 Tianyi Wang, “Media, Pulpit, and Populist Persuasion: Evidence from Father Coughlin,” American Economic Review 111, no. 9 (2021): 3064–3092, https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20200513.

7 “Father Coughlin Blames Jews for Nazi Violence,” History Unfolded: US Newspapers and the Holocaust, https://newspapers.ushmm.org/events/father-coughlin-blames-jews-for-nazi-violence.

8 Davis, “Father Coughlin.”

9 Doherty, “The Deplatforming.”

10 Diane Cypkin, “A Rhetorical Critical Analysis of Father Coughlin’s Radio Broadcast, November 20, 1938, or Call It What You Will… It’s Still Anti-Semitism!,” Journal of Radio Studies 4, no. 1 (1997): 134–150, https://doi.org/10.1080/19376529709391688.

11 “Father Coughlin Blames Jews,” History Unfolded.

12