By Jason Cohen
Daily Caller News Foundation
President Joe Biden’s administration awarded two grants to a U.K.-based think tank that routinely works to censor conservatives online for what it considers to be mis- and disinformation.
The State Department is sending the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) nearly $250,000 for a program combatting “hate and polarization” in Eastern Europe; the grant began in April and will end in March 2024. The ISD is a British nongovernmental organization funded by left-wing billionaires and European government agencies that collaborates with online platforms such as YouTube and Spotify to crack down on so-called misinformation.
The think tank often classifies ordinary conservative discussions and journalism as hate and/or disinformation, such as “abortion misinformation,” “COVID-19 disinformation” and “climate disinformation,” according to a Daily Caller News Foundation review of the organization’s materials. The Department of Defense (DOD) sent the ISD $80,000 in May, according to a grant for Air Force research “to prevent technological surprise to our nation and create it for our adversaries.”
The Daily Caller News Foundation first reported a 2021 State Department grant to the organization intended to “advance the development of promising and innovative technologies against disinformation and propaganda” in Europe and the United Kingdom.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee is investigating the ISD’s role in advocating censorship of speech “particularly by established conservative media and individuals,” according to a House Foreign Affairs Committee press release.
An ISD report in 2021 cited misgendering as an example of “anti-trans hatred” in a report on social media discourse on the topic of men’s participation in women’s sports. The organization’s report concluded by pushing platforms to take action by “actively monitoring accounts that have shown to be repeat offenders on this issue,” including prominent conservative figures.
The organization also called Libs of Tik Tok, a popular conservative Twitter account revealing examples of left-wing pedagogy like CRT and gender ideology, as a “prolific spreader of hate” in January.
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Furthermore, YouTube includes the ISD in its “Trusted Flagger program,” an initiative that collaborates with multiple nongovernmental organizations and government agencies designed to assist YouTube in enforcing its guidelines.
ISD lists left-wing billionaire Pierre Omidyar’s Omidyar Group, George Soros’ Open Society Foundations and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, along with several European government agencies, as funders.
The State Department, DOD and ISD did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
This story originally was published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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