Originally published on www.sayerji.substack.com
Accountability Has Finally Arrived--and It Will Not Stop Here.
Read, share and comment on the X post for this breaking story.
Within hours of the United States taking the extraordinary step of barring and moving to remove key European figures like CCDH founder Imran Ahmed involved in transnational censorship campaigns, the backlash was swift--and revealing.
European leaders and aligned media outlets rushed to invert reality.
French President Emmanuel Macron, EU officials, and advocacy groups condemned the U.S. action as "coercion," "intimidation," and--most implausibly--censorship. The Guardian framed the move as an American assault on "European digital sovereignty," quoting officials who claimed that Washington was silencing defenders of democracy rather than confronting its abusers.
This framing is false.
What the United States did was not suppress speech. It enforced a necessary existential boundary.
Foreign nationals do not possess a right to coordinate pressure campaigns against American citizens, influence U.S. platforms to punish lawful speech, or launder censorship through NGOs while demanding immunity from consequence. When such conduct occurs, the response is not censorship--it is jurisdictional self-defense.
To describe accountability as repression is not a misunderstanding. It is an admission.
The Context Europe Omits--But Cannot Escape
Yesterday, I published a detailed report documenting the U.S. State Department's action barring and moving to remove the UK-based head of the Center for Countering Digital Hate for what the government formally described as egregious extraterritorial censorship of American speech.
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That report laid out something unprecedented: the first explicit recognition by the U.S. government that a foreign NGO-driven censorship operation had crossed from advocacy into unlawful interference.
Shortly after, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. amplified the news (along with a retweet from Elon Musk) with a statement that cut through the noise:
"Once again, the United States is the mecca for freedom of speech."
That single sentence matters.
Because it clarifies what Europe's critics are attempting to obscure: this action was not taken to punish dissent, but to defend a constitutional order in which speech rights belong to the people--not to regulators, NGOs, or foreign ministries.
The U.S. response was also notably restrained. Deportation is not prosecution. Visa bans are not indictments. For conduct of this scale, the measures taken so far represent leniency, not severity.
And that leniency should not be mistaken for weakness.
Our Case Has Moved from Disputed to Validated
When I refer to "our case," I am not speaking rhetorically. I am referring to a live federal civil-rights lawsuit now pending in the Middle District of Florida. The case alleges that a transnational network of foreign NGOs, U.S. government actors, and major technology platforms engaged in a coordinated, multi-year campaign to suppress constitutionally protected American speech through defamation, coercion, and reputational warfare--outside the bounds of due process and democratic accountability
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At the center of the complaint is the UK-based Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) and its UK intelligence services-affiliated CEO, Imran Ahmed, whose organization authored and promoted the now-discredited "Disinformation Dozen" report. That document--neither peer-reviewed nor scientifically valid--was not merely commentary. It was operationalized. It was used to label American citizens as public threats, to pressure platforms into deplatforming and financial blacklisting, to justify government-adjacent enforcement actions (including labeling COVID policy dissenters as akin to "domestic extremists"," and to export defamatory claims into foreign proceedings where U.S. citizens were given no notice and no right of reply.
The lawsuit does not argue that disagreement or criticism is unlawful. It alleges something far more serious: that speech was deliberately reclassified as "harm" in order to justify coercive action, and that this reclassification was coordinated across borders to evade constitutional limits. In plain terms, the case alleges that foreign actors designed reputational hit lists, U.S. officials and agencies echoed or relied on them, platforms enforced them under pressure, and Americans lost speech, livelihood, reputation, and association without due process.
For years, defendants and their institutional allies dismissed these allegations with a familiar refrain: no court had ruled this unlawful; no government had acknowledged coercion; this was just advocacy. That refrain has now collapsed.
The United States government has formally determined that the conduct at issue constituted organized, foreign-based coercion targeting lawful American speech, with direct implications for sovereignty and civil liberties. That determination does not merely support the lawsuit--it confirms its foundation. This was never about public health, safety, or combating hate. It was about pressure, coordinated across borders, designed to force American platforms to silence disfavored viewpoints while insulating the architects from accountability.
Legally, this is a status upgrade. What defendants once characterized as an aggressive or speculative civil-rights theory now aligns with an explicit executive-branch finding of extraterritorial censorship. That alignment matters--for discovery, evidentiary rulings, credibility assessments, and ultimately liability. The burden has shifted. We are no longer asking courts to imagine the harm. The United States has acknowledged it.
Funders Are No Longer Observers--They Are Accountable Actors
Censorship at this scale does not operate on ideology alone. It operates on capital.
U.S.-based foundations and philanthropic institutions funded, rewarded, and amplified CCDH after:
- Internal "black ops" documents became public
- Election-interference concerns were raised
- Congressional scrutiny was underway
- Civil-rights litigation had already begun
That timing is decisive. Funding an organization before red flags emerge may constitute negligence.
Funding it after constitutes reckless disregard. Charitable status is not a shield and moral language is not immunity.
Boards have fiduciary duties, and executives have legal obligations. Donors also bear responsibility for what their money enables. After this week, no funder can plausibly claim ignorance.
Sayer Ji · Nov 23
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Read, share and comment on the X post dedicated to this article here: https://x.com/sayerjigmi/status/1992704882969575682?s=46
Calls to Action -- Effective Immediately
This moment demands action, not commentary.
To Media Organizations
- Immediately retract all articles relying on CCDH's "Disinformation Dozen" or derivative claims
- Publish clear notices acknowledging reliance on a now-discredited and government-sanctioned source
- Cease citing CCDH and affiliated entities as authorities on American speech or democracy (this includes Wikipedia, Perplexity.AI, Google/Gemini), whose culpability in amplifying defamatory false material can no longer be denied.
To Funders and Philanthropic Institutions
- Suspend and withdraw funding from CCDH and affiliated entities
- Conduct transparent internal reviews of due-diligence failures
- Disclose whether donor funds were used in coordination with platforms, regulators, or government agencies
To Foreign Officials and NGOs Objecting from Abroad
- Understand this clearly: accountability is not censorship
- Continued interference with Americans' rights will carry consequences
- Jurisdictional lines are not optional, and they will be enforced
- The targeting of the constitutionally protected speech or lawful complaints of American citizens from foreign jurisdictions will not be tolerated, and will result in significant consequences (you know who you are)
The Line Has Been Drawn
Europe's protests are instructive--not because they are persuasive, but because they reveal how accustomed some have become to acting without consequence.
That era has officially ended.
The United States has now made explicit what should never have required clarification: no foreign actor gets to decide which Americans are allowed to speak.
Yesterday's action was not the end of this story. It was the beginning of enforcement. And those who mistook restraint for permission or weakness should recalibrate quickly.
History does not always announce its turning points. This one did.
To support our lawsuit, and our fight for justice and freedom for all Americans, make a contribution here.
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