The Grayzone can now reveal that YouTube’s financial censorship of Brand is the result of an effort waged by a former British government minister who was responsible for London’s crackdown on dissent during the Covid-19 pandemic. Her husband has also participated in that campaign of state repression as deputy commander of 77th Brigade, the British Army’s psychological warfare division.

New developments suggest YouTube’s censorship of Brand was driven by direct British government decree. On September 19, the social media companies TikTok and Rumble received a pair of almost identical letters dispatched from Caroline Dinenage, the head of the UK parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee. Dinenage informed the companies she was “concerned that [Brand] may be able to profit from his content” published on both platforms.

Caroline Dinenage served as the UK government’s Digital and Culture minister from February 2020 to September 2021, making her de facto chief of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).

In this capacity, she was personally responsible for overseeing construction of the repressive, World Economic Forum-endorsed Online Safety Bill, which has been criticized by rights groups for threatening the rights to free expression, and privacy.

Moreover, during this period, the DCMS was home to the shadowy, intelligence official-run Counter-Disinformation Unit (CDU), which policed “COVID-19 disinformation narratives” online.

Investigations by the civil liberties organization Big Brother Watch have revealed that instead of suppressing content that posed risks to public health, the CDU was preoccupied with censoring and deplatforming reasonable online criticisms of the British government’s Covid-19 response, including opposition to lockdowns and vaccine passports.

According to an official fact sheet, the CDU’s focus turned to the Ukraine proxy war in 2022, and particularly to targeting content suggesting “the Bucha massacre and the bombing of the maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, were both hoaxes.”

Dinenage’s husband is Mark Lancaster, a fellow information warrior dedicated to advancing the propaganda goals of the British government. Lancaster reportedly left his wife and four-month-old daughter in 2013 when he began dating Dinenage, who was herself married at the time to a British Naval officer.

A former Conservative MP and Armed Forces minister, Lancaster helped lead London’s blitz on pandemic dissent as deputy commander of the British Army’s 77th Brigade between June 2018 and July 2022.

Specialized in “behaviour and attitudinal change,” the 77th Brigade maintains a vast militia of real, fake, and automated social media accounts to disseminate and amplify pro-state messaging, and discredit domestic and foreign enemies.

During the pandemic, the 77th Brigade targeted people within Britain and across the West with advanced psychological manipulation strategies honed on battlefields against enemy militaries. The online profile of a 77th Brigade veteran notes they were deployed straight from a tour of the Middle East – where they “successfully implemented behavioral change strategies against ISIS” – to “countering dis- and misinformation during the Covid-19 crisis.”

However, in January, an ex-Brigade whistleblower revealed how the Ministry of Defence and RRU routinely circumvented British law to advance the government’s crusade against pandemic dissent:

“To skirt the legal difficulties of a military unit monitoring domestic dissent, the view was that unless a profile explicitly stated their real name and nationality, they could be a foreign agent and were fair game. But it is quite obvious that our activities resulted in the monitoring of the UK population…These posts did not contain information that was untrue or coordinated [emphasis added].”

  • @MrGG@lemmy.ca
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    139 months ago

    a) isn’t this nutbar still on YouTube, and thus not censored?

    b) you shouldn’t be able to profit from spreading disinformation

    c) laws regarding free speech / freedom of expression do not apply to private corporations such as Youtube

    d) the timing of this is trying to imply Brand being demonitised and the recent sex pest allegations are both orchestrated by the UK government

    e) this article seems just as nutty as Brand

    Fuck the UK government, but also fuck Russell Brand.

  • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝OPA
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    39 months ago

    It’s a weird article - throwing out a lot of data points but linking very few of them, just relying on having all the information adjacent to kind of nudge and wink at it. Are they implying the government have used this as an excuse to go after Brand for questioning Covid measures? I don’t think it’s entirely unreasonable that someone in her position would flag up the allegations against Brand to social media companies. Unless I’m missing something.

    • @mannycalavera
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      109 months ago

      Unless I’m missing something.

      I think you’re missing that this is conspiracy claptrap 😁.

      He’s getting called out because he’s a dick and has potentially sexually assaulted multiple women. Not that he criticised the government over COVID.

      • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝OPA
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        39 months ago

        I think you’re missing that this is conspiracy claptrap 😁.

        Oh I didn’t miss that. In fact the juxtaposing of “facts” rather than linking them in a coherent argument is a dead giveaway. It’s fascinating - I wonder if there are courses to write like this or is this just who their minds work?

        • @mannycalavera
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          59 months ago

          Hahaha I think it’s how their minds work. And scarily now how AI will work too 😅!