Over the last year, we and others have documented the leadership and participation of United States military, intelligence and law enforcement agencies in demanding greater censorship of legal speech online by social media platforms. Over the last two weeks, we have traced the creation of a mass, public-private censorship effort called Cyber Threat Intelligence League (CTIL) to two separate U.S. Department of Defense organizations .
Adding to this large and growing body of evidence is the fact that there appears to be a limited number of interpretive frameworks used by the U.S. government, NATO and their allies for characterizing their populist enemies. From the Russia hoax to the COVID lab leak to the recent riots in Ireland, the news media, governments and leading NGOs have framed populists as foreign, crazy, harmful and undemocratic .
