Originally published on www.childrenshealthdefense.org Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.

Sayer Ji, founder of GreenMedInfo and one of "The Disinformation Dozen" joined "The Defender In-Depth" this week to discuss revelations about the Center for Countering Digital Hate and what lies ahead now that the group's plans may have been derailed.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) -- authors of "The Disinformation Dozen" -- worked in tandem with U.S. and foreign governments and Big Tech to "launder the suppression of basic civil rights" and suppress free speech, according to an independent journalist who has investigated the group's activities.

Sayer Ji, founder of GreenMedInfo, was listed as one of "The Disinformation Dozen." He joined "The Defender In-Depth" this week to discuss revelations about CCDH stemming from his investigations and internal documents leaked last month, which were publicized by journalists Paul D. Thacker and Matt Taibbi.

According to those documents, CCDH planned to launch "black ops" against Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald J. Trump's nominee for secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and founder of Children's Health Defense (CHD). CCDH also sought to "kill [Elon] Musk's Twitter."

Ji said "the attempt to adjudicate and criminalize speech" is part of CCDH's "dark agenda." Such speech includes narratives about vaccine injury or references to peer-reviewed research that might point to unintended vaccine side effects, and targeting the people disseminating such information.

'Disinformation Dozen' authors sought to 'reenact seditious libel laws'

Ji said efforts to target so-called "misinformation" date back several years before the COVID-19 pandemic.

"The shot across the bow actually happened in 2013, when UNICEF published a report that identified several voices in the natural health space, including those who, of course, advocated for informed medical choice, as being sources of disinformation," Ji said. The report named GreenMedInfo.

Several other people and websites named in the UNICEF report were also included in the "Disinformation Dozen" list, Ji said, including Dr. Joseph Mercola and Ohio physician Dr. Sherri Tenpenny.

"We had already been targeted as so-called spreaders of misinformation … by sharing inconvenient peer-reviewed research that indicated there are unintended adverse effects of common pharmaceutical interventions. That advocacy is really what made us targets," Ji said.

Ji said CCDH initially entered the "misinformation" sphere as a "cutout" of the U.K. Labour Party that "popped out of nowhere, really as part of a Labour Party operation" composed of "intelligence-associated individuals."

"It was the U.K.'s Department of Digital Culture, Media and Sport which was largely behind this organization because they were pushing through legislation to essentially reenact seditious libel laws," Ji said, citing the U.K.'s Online Safety Act, voted into law in October 2023.

Ji said groups like CCDH are "using the newly passed legislation to target those who are simply expressing dissenting opinion on social media and speaking truthfully."

CCDH's efforts in this space also included publishing "The Disinformation Dozen" report in March 2021. Ji described the report as "a great example of how NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] and think tanks launder influence" and "participate in … illegal activities."

"The Disinformation Dozen" report claimed that those included on the list were responsible for nearly two-thirds of all "anti-vaccine" content on social media. But Ji noted that in 2021, Facebook disputed those findings. In an August 2021 report, Facebook said "there isn't any evidence" to support CCDH's claims.

"And yet, that lie was promulgated around the world," Ji said, noting that the Biden administration used the report as the basis for targeting supposed "misinformation" and "disinformation" about COVID-19 and the COVID-19 shots.

'Massive network of dark money flows' funds organizations like CCDH

Ji said "a massive network of dark money flows" underpins the operations of groups like CCDH, acting as "the hidden hand behind all these marionette cutouts." He said his investigation found a network of U.S. and U.K. philanthropic organizations funding CCDH, including one linked to investor George Soros.

Ji said:

"We have, once again, U.S. and U.K. dark money flowing into an intelligence-coordinated cutout that weaponized social media and government institutions against U.S. citizens in an extremely egregious manner that should never happen again."

This dark money network "tracks back to the State Department through the Global Engagement Center [and] the U.K. Department of Digital Culture, Media and Sport," whose Counter-Disinformation Unit gave the Biden administration "a masterclass on censoring U.S. citizens," he said.

"This is the most egregious example I could ever conceive of a foreign government using our own highest governmental apparatus as … a marionette to censor U.S. citizens," Ji said. "They actually gave them an entire roadmap of how they were using their own Counter-Disinformation Unit to suppress true information."

CCDH sought to 'criminalize free speech' and 'intimidate millions'

Ji referenced Thacker and Taibbi's revelations, stemming from internal CCDH documents leaked by an insider last month. He said the leak exposed CCDH's "Orwellian agenda," where "you're projecting that you're concerned about the public welfare" while targeting citizens who are "lawfully expressing their civil rights."

The documents show that CCDH is "operating in this gray area, which is known as 'black operations,' which are all about plausible deniability, leveraging military -- sometimes paramilitary, definitely intelligence assets -- to discredit, defame, disrupt, perhaps use lawfare [and] demonetization strategies," Ji said.

"In some cases, it even stretches into illegal activities, which could include harming that individual," Ji added. "This digital hit list [CCDH] published … was to intimidate millions of others who might have spoken out or might have questioned some of these authoritarian mandates and made better choices for themselves."

Ji said that, for organizations like CCDH, "the next step is legislation, and that's to criminalize free speech."

"A big part of what CCDH is attempting to do is to create the PR context for receptivity to legislative changes that are exactly identical to the U.K. online safety bill," Ji said. "That's a really serious problem because we have about eight bills presently being considered that are modeled after what they're proposing."

According to Ji, the recent leak of CCDH's internal documents may have derailed the organization's plans to pursue its censorship objectives, leading the group -- and its CEO, Imran Ahmed -- to delete their accounts on X, formerly Twitter.

Noting that CCDH is already facing a congressional investigation and several lawsuits, Ji said CCDH "already had a sort of perfect storm forming to initiate their collapse" even before the leak. He said the group's exit from X "indicates they're also trying to delete evidence that might surface to further implicate them."

For Ji, these developments are cause for optimism. "We're in a different era right now as far as free speech," he said. "Now we're seeing justice and it's a really beautiful moment."

"They violated millions of Americans' informed medical choice, which is a basic human right," Ji said. "And so, it's time for us to now have disclosure on this and to have congressional oversight."

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