Morgan McSweeney: The British Political Operative Behind 'Digital Hate' Group CCDH & America's "Disinformation" Wars

Inside the Dark Money Network, Intelligence Ties, and Foreign Government Funding Behind the War on Free Speech

Executive Summary

• A British political operative turned censorship architect: Morgan McSweeney, architect of Keir Starmer’s rise to Labour leadership, founding the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) in 2018, creating a transatlantic network that has redefined dissent as “digital hate” and weaponized anti-extremism frameworks against civil liberties advocates.

• From countering hate to silencing dissent: CCDH evolved from targeting genuine hate speech extremists to vilifying ‘vaccine skeptics’ natural health advocates, and policy critics—producing the infamous “Disinformation Dozen” report that the White House amplified despite Facebook finding its statistics exaggerated by a factor of 1300.

• NATO’s information warfare comes home: Through figures like Dr. Charles Kriel and organizations like the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), military-grade psychological operations developed for foreign adversaries have been redeployed against Western populations, treating social media as a battlefield and domestic dissent as enemy communication.

• Follow the money, find the power: This censorship-industrial complex operates through opaque funding streams linking British and American government agencies, intelligence-adjacent think tanks, tech billionaires, pharmaceutical interests, and foreign governments—all coordinating to shift the Overton window and redefine civil liberties advocacy as extremism.

Introduction: The Puppet Master’s Network

Morgan McSweeney, once a behind-the-scenes strategist in British politics, has emerged as a key figure in a transatlantic network influencing online discourse and silencing dissent. Best known as Sir Keir Starmer’s Chief of Staff—and the reputed “puppet master” behind Starmer’s rise—McSweeney’s influence extends far beyond Westminster. In 2018, he founded the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) and has cultivated ties linking British political operatives, intelligence-aligned think tanks, and legal intimidation campaigns reaching across the Atlantic.^{1 2}

This investigative report explores McSweeney’s role, tracing the evolution of CCDH from its early anti-hate mission into a politically weaponized entity, and mapping the broader constellation of organizations—from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and NATO’s StratCom psy-ops to royal foundations—that together are shifting the Overton window to label traditional civil liberties causes as extremist. The evidence reveals a coordinated narrative warfare effort, funded and steered in part by foreign governments and elite interests, that is redefining dissent as “hate” and pushing the boundaries of free expression.

The Unraveling: McSweeney’s Network Under Siege

As this report was being finalized, the Starmer government found itself “absolutely buffeted by a series of scandals,” with what observers describe as “a real sense of the government unraveling before our eyes.” In recent weeks, Keir Starmer has lost his deputy prime minister, his director of strategy, and now his ambassador to Washington—Peter Mandelson, who was sacked over his extensive ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The connection to Morgan McSweeney is direct and damning: Mandelson is widely reported to be McSweeney’s mentor, with McSweeney described as “mini-Mandelson,” modeling himself on the disgraced operative. According to multiple reports, McSweeney was “absolutely central” to getting Mandelson appointed to the Washington ambassadorship and defended him throughout the scandal—a decision that “calls into question McSweeney’s political instincts” and reveals the moral bankruptcy at the heart of this network.

A series of explosive investigations by Double Down News has exposed the methods behind McSweeney’s rise and the compromised figures he surrounds himself with. Watch their latest investigation here:

Double Down News: “The Mandelson Scandal Goes Right to the Heart of the Starmer Government”

The revelations about Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein are staggering. Bloomberg obtained 18,000 emails revealing that Mandelson—whom Epstein referred to as “Petey”—spent Christmases and birthdays with the pedophile, corresponded with him for years, and actively worked to help Epstein fight criminal charges in 2007-2008. In one email, Mandelson wrote to the then-imprisoned Epstein: “You need strategy, strategy, strategy. Remember The Art of War.” After Epstein’s conviction, far from distancing himself, Mandelson wrote: “Your friends stay with you and love you.”

Most disturbing, Epstein asked Mandelson to have then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown intercede with President Bush’s chief of staff on Epstein’s behalf. Mandelson didn’t refuse the request as inappropriate—he simply noted the meeting had already occurred. A suppressed memo shows Mandelson recommended that Tony Blair meet Epstein “for no particular reason”—he simply thought Epstein would be “an interesting person for Blair to meet.”

The security services raised concerns about Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador, but Number 10 overrode those concerns—almost certainly on McSweeney’s advice. This is the man McSweeney chose as his mentor, the figure he pushed into one of Britain’s most sensitive diplomatic posts, the operative whose “dark arts” methodology McSweeney has adopted wholesale.

This pattern—compromised figures, intelligence connections, opaque relationships, and ruthless methodology—extends throughout McSweeney’s career, including his founding of CCDH the following year.

Morgan McSweeney’s Rise: From Labour Strategist to CCDH’s Founding Director

Morgan McSweeney earned a reputation as a masterful political operative credited with engineering Keir Starmer’s leadership victory in the UK Labour Party. Often described as Starmer’s own Rasputin or “puppet master,” McSweeney operated in the shadows to overhaul Labour’s direction after the Corbyn era.³ In April 2020, two days after Starmer became party leader, McSweeney was promptly appointed Chief of Staff at Labour’s HQ—a move that coincided with McSweeney quietly stepping down as a director of the Center for Countering Digital Hate.⁴ This timing was no coincidence: McSweeney founded CCDH as its director in late 2018 alongside Imran Ahmed (a former parliamentary aide), embedding himself in a growing effort to police online speech.¹

---

CCDH’s creation gave McSweeney a vehicle to extend influence beyond traditional politics. It also positioned him at the nexus of British and American debates over “misinformation” and censorship. Internal documents later leaked in the U.S. suggested that British operatives close to McSweeney were advising U.S. Democrats—specifically, Vice President Kamala Harris’s circle—on how to “kill [Elon] Musk’s Twitter” in the lead-up to 2024.⁵ This implies a striking role reversal: instead of foreign interference from adversaries like Russia, it was a British network, co-launched by Starmer’s strategist, seeking to influence American social media and electoral discourse.⁵ McSweeney’s dual role—kingmaker for a UK political leader and co-founder of a transatlantic anti-”disinformation” organization—exemplifies how closely intertwined modern British political operatives are with global efforts to shape narratives and silence voices deemed undesirable.

Notably, McSweeney’s background also intersects with the lawfare tactics deployed against online dissent. As we will see, CCDH and its allies haven’t hesitated to use legal threats to intimidate opponents. McSweeney’s involvement in such a network suggests his influence is not limited to policy advice; it extends into coordinating aggressive strategies—including litigation and regulatory pressure—on both sides of the Atlantic. In short, Morgan McSweeney serves as a connective thread linking the UK Labour establishment, intelligence-adjacent “disinformation” campaigns, and transatlantic efforts to recalibrate the limits of acceptable speech.

CCDH: From Countering Hate to Silencing Dissent

The Center for Countering Digital Hate was originally framed as a noble endeavor to curb the worst manifestations of online hate speech and extremism. Imran Ahmed, CCDH’s CEO and McSweeney’s co-founder, has said he was “inspired to start the Center after seeing the rise of antisemitism on the left in the United Kingdom”—a reference to the 2016–2019 controversies around anti-Jewish sentiment in UK politics—as well as the tragic murder of MP Jo Cox by a neo-Nazi terrorist.⁶ In its early days, CCDH portrayed itself as a grassroots response to the proliferation of “digital hate,” focusing on combatting anti-Semitic tropes, racist abuse, and other forms of extremism online. This mission resonated in a Britain grappling with both Islamist terror and allegations of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party’s ranks. By invoking the fight against hate, CCDH gained political capital and moral authority.

However, what began as a targeted initiative against genuine hate groups soon morphed into a far broader—and more politicized—operation. After its founding in 2018, CCDH rapidly expanded its scope from neo-Nazis and racists to a new set of targets: dissenting voices on public health, science, and policy. Under the banner of fighting “disinformation,” CCDH pivoted to crusading against those who questioned establishment narratives on issues like pandemic management, vaccine safety, natural health, and parental rights.

The “Disinformation Dozen”: A Turning Point

The most infamous example of this shift was CCDH’s 2021 report on the “Disinformation Dozen.” In that report—released seemingly out of nowhere by a little-known British NGO—CCDH claimed that just 12 individuals (mostly American health bloggers, doctors, and activists) were responsible for “almost two-thirds of anti-vaccine content” online.⁷Those named included prominent figures such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Dr. Joseph Mercola, Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, and myself (GreenMedInfo founder Sayer Ji)—the latter two being outspoken natural health advocates.⁷ Overnight, CCDH’s focus had broadened from fighting hate groups to vilifying proponents of organic medicine and vaccine risk-awareness, lumping them together as purveyors of “digital hate.”

CCDH’s rebranding of medical freedom and vaccine skepticism as a form of public menace had immediate political utility. The organization’s report—despite its dubious methodology—was amplified at the highest levels of power in the U.S., validating the notion that anti-establishment speech is tantamount to physical danger. Within months, CCDH’s talking points were being repeated by U.S. government officials. In July 2021, the U.S. President even suggested that spreading misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines was “killing people,” effectively equating certain online speech with murder.⁸ This remarkable claim, fed by CCDH’s narrative, shows how far the Overton window had shifted: advocacy or information sharing that fell outside approved views on public health was recast as lethal criminality. The White House press secretary and U.S. Surgeon General echoed CCDH’s “Disinformation Dozen” concept, and a chorus of media outlets ran with the story, cementing these 12 individuals as alleged threats to public safety.^{9 10}

[Video description: On July 19th, 2021, President Biden stated at a White House press conference: ““Facebook isn’t killing people. These 12 people are out there giving misinformation… It’s killing people…60% of the misinformation came from 12 individuals.”]

Flawed Data, Lasting Damage

In hindsight, CCDH’s report was riddled with errors—Facebook’s own analysis found CCDH’s statistics were exaggerated by a factor of at least 1300, prompting a Facebook executive to deride the report as a “faulty narrative, without evidence.”¹¹ Yet neither CCDH nor the public officials who cited it ever issued corrections. Instead, the false narrative had already done its work: Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms swiftly moved to deplatform many on the list, and the stigmatization of those individuals was global and enduring. CCDH had demonstrated how a self-proclaimed “anti-hate” group could weaponize flawed data to trigger a censorship avalanche.

Crucially, CCDH’s evolution was accompanied by a broadening of the term “hate” itself. Whereas the group once focused on clear-cut hate speech (racial slurs, violent extremist propaganda, anti-Semitic incitement), it gradually applied the “digital hate” label to any content or worldview deemed contrary to establishment consensus. Climate policy critics, for example, have been branded as propagating “the new climate denial,” a phrase CCDH uses to malign those who accept climate change is real but question specific government policies.¹² Similarly, parents concerned about school curriculums or vaccine mandates have found themselves lumped in with far-right extremists in CCDH’s discourse. By stretching the definition of “hate” and “harm” to encompass contrarian political speech, CCDH turned itself into a catch-all censorship machine.

Observers note that CCDH’s roots in combating anti-Jewish bigotry gave it a shield against criticism that persists today. Any pushback against CCDH’s agenda is easily deflected—sometimes by insinuating that critics are sympathetic to hate or motivated by anti-Semitism. (Indeed, the very surname of CCDH’s most aggressive legal antagonist—Rothschild—seems almost engineered to provoke conspiracy-laced backlash, a dynamic we will explore later.) Imran Ahmed himself frequently conflates conspiracy theorists and extremists, arguing that “lies and hate are inextricably linked,” and painting a picture in which those who dissent from official narratives are driven by a “psychological need... to cause chaos.”¹³ Under this expansive framing, medical experts raising safety concerns, mothers advocating informed consent, or activists defending free speech can all be tarred as agents of ‘hate.’ CCDH’s transformation is essentially complete: it has become a politically weaponized entity, leveraging the moral authority of anti-racism and anti-fascism to wage war on a broad spectrum of dissenters.

ISD and the Elite Influence Network

CCDH does not operate in isolation. It is part of a wider influence network of think tanks and NGOs that have sprung up over the past two decades, ostensibly to counter extremism and disinformation, but which increasingly coordinate with governments and intelligence agencies to guide public discourse. One linchpin of this network is the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD)—a London-based “think-and-do tank” founded in 2006 that pioneered research into violent extremism, radicalization, and online propaganda. ISD’s evolution offers a revealing window into how high-level establishment interests are backing and directing the narrative-control agenda.

Intelligence and Military Pedigree

At first glance, ISD presents itself as a counter-extremism nonprofit, but its leadership and partnerships betray deep ties to Western intelligence and political elites. The institute’s founder and longtime president was Lord George Weidenfeld, a British publisher and prominent Zionist who served in Israel’s first post-1948 government.¹⁴ Weidenfeld’s personal network was a who’s who of Cold War diplomacy and pro-Israel advocacy—and he seeded ISD with a distinctly establishment DNA.

By 2010, ISD’s board and advisory councils were populated by figures with backgrounds in Western military, intelligence, finance, and government. For example, Baron Charles Guthrie (Field Marshal Lord Guthrie), former Chief of the UK Defence Staff, sat on ISD’s board; Guthrie was not only Britain’s top military officer but also a director at N.M. Rothschild & Sons investment bank and an ex-SAS commander.¹⁵ This is emblematic of ISD’s elite pedigree—a blending of defense, security, and financial clout.

Other ISD advisors have included Sir Richard Barrett, a former director of global counter-terrorism operations for MI6, Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s former chief of staff, and Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones, a former chair of Britain’s Joint Intelligence Committee. ISD’s funding and partnerships likewise span Western governments and powerful philanthropies. The institute has collaborated with the U.S. State Department, Britain’s Home Office and Foreign Office, the European Commission, NATO, and tech giants like Google and Facebook.^{16 17} It received grants from liberal mega-donor networks (George Soros’s Open Society Foundations is noted as an ISD supporter¹⁸), and it even helped launch the Strong Cities Network—a UN-backed global network of municipal leaders to counter “polarization”—which effectively exported UK counter-extremism frameworks worldwide.¹⁹

Incubating the Censorship Agenda

This matters because CCDH’s agenda and methodology did not emerge in a vacuum—they were incubated in an ecosystem shaped by ISD and its peers. ISD had been advocating “real-world responses” to online extremism long before CCDH existed, and often those responses involved partnering with state security agencies and tech platforms to monitor and suppress extremist content. By the late 2010s, ISD’s focus broadened from jihadism and far-right violence to include the nebulous threats of “disinformation” and “conspiracy theories.” ISD Senior Research Fellow Julia Ebner, for instance, wrote in 2019 about the need to “stop the online conspiracy theorists before they break democracy,” explicitly tying far-right conspiracy communities to electoral interference.²⁰ The language of pre-emptively neutralizing “conspiracy theorists”—essentially, thought-policing heterodox opinions—was already entering the mainstream through ISD’s work.

In this light, CCDH’s later campaigns (like the anti-”misinformation” crusades against vaccine skeptics or climate policy critics) can be seen as an outgrowth of the groundwork laid by ISD and similar think tanks. Crucially, ISD’s early leadership provides a blueprint for the alliances that drive these efforts. The presence of Lord Guthrie—a Rothschild-linked military man—on ISD’s board, and of executives like Michael Lewis, a financier deeply involved in pro-Israel charities, highlights the convergence of interests: national security, banking, and geopolitical agendas coalescing around the banner of combating “hate” and “extremism.”^{21 22}

In practical terms, this means that initiatives to regulate online speech often have quiet backing from powerful state and private actors who view unfettered digital information as a strategic threat. What might appear as independent civil society campaigns are frequently entangled with the objectives of Western governments (including the Five Eyes intelligence alliance) and even foreign governments like Israel’s (given the strong pro-Israel patronage in ISD’s history). These ties raise legitimate concerns: to what extent are ostensibly non-governmental censorship efforts actually extensions of state influence operations, skirting democratic accountability?

[Figure Above: In 2020, ISD in collaboration with BBC Click and Newsguard produced a report targeting sites like GreenMedInfo.com, claiming they were sources of “Far-Right exploitation of Covid-19 disinformation.” This absurd designation of my natural health resource (and my name) triggered a multi-year, internationally-orchestrated process of defamation, deplatforming, and lawfare.]

Operating alongside ISD in this ecosystem is Hope not Hate (HNH), another UK organization with deep state connections that targets dissenters. Like CCDH, HNH employs a charity/private company structure to circumvent rules against political campaigning—its charitable trust funnels money to HNH Limited, which conducts overtly political operations. McSweeney himself has campaigned with HNH, further demonstrating his integration into this network. HNH’s predecessor, Searchlight, worked directly with MI5 and was caught fabricating extremist threats to justify surveillance operations—most notoriously the “Column 88” hoax, where an MI5 operative created a fictional neo-Nazi paramilitary group that Searchlight then “exposed,” prompting parliamentary inquiries before being revealed as an intelligence services honeytrap. Despite a documented history of using fake passports and circulating hoax attack lists to the Home Office, HNH maintains privileged access to UK security agencies, with founder Nick Lowles providing testimony to the Intelligence and Security Committee and advising on counter-extremism policy. The organization received over £141,000 in government grants and helped shape the Online Safety Act—the same legislation CCDH championed. Like CCDH’s transatlantic targeting of Americans, HNH’s attacks on U.S. conservatives have created diplomatic tensions, with Washington increasingly viewing such UK organizations as threats to Anglo-American relations.

Royal Partnerships: Prince Harry, Archewell and the “Disinformation” Crusade

The reach of this influence network extends into celebrity and philanthropy, as seen with the involvement of Britain’s Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle. After stepping back from royal duties, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex launched the Archewell Foundation in the United States, championing causes like digital safety and mental health. In doing so, they tapped into the same circle of “disinformation” experts cultivated by groups like ISD and CCDH—a striking example of how narrative-management efforts are being mainstreamed and glamourized.

The ISD Connection: Jiore Craig

One key figure connecting Archewell to the disinformation policy world is Jiore Craig, a digital strategy expert who has worked closely with ISD. Public records show that in 2022 and 2023, the Archewell Foundation paid Jiore Craig a total of $266,500 for “programmatic strategic support” related to online safety initiatives.²³ Craig served as a senior advisor to Archewell and even authored a report on “digital safety” for the foundation.²⁴ Notably, Jiore Craig holds the title of Resident Senior Fellow for Digital Integrity at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, reflecting her deep ties to ISD’s disinformation and online harms work.²⁵ Prior to advising Prince Harry, Craig specialized in countering online misinformation during elections, and worked at a Democratic-aligned communications firm in Washington.²⁶ In essence, Archewell brought on an ISD insider to shape its digital initiatives.

Prince Harry’s engagement with the topic of online disinformation has been high-profile. He has spoken out about the dangers of social media hate and misinformation on multiple occasions, and even took on a role as a commissioner at the Aspen Institute’s 2021 Commission on Information Disorder. Through Archewell, Harry and Meghan have signaled support for efforts to pressure tech platforms to curb “harmful content.” For example, the couple publicly endorsed the “Stop Hate for Profit” campaign which sought to hold social media companies accountable for hate speech. In meetings and op-eds, Harry has drawn connections between online falsehoods and real-world violence, mirroring the rhetoric of CCDH and ISD. By enlisting a figure like Jiore Craig—whose pedigree connects directly back to ISD’s network—the Sussexes effectively plugged into the Anglo-American disinformation policy circuit. This gave CCDH/ISD-linked initiatives a celebrity boost and an aura of humanitarian legitimacy.^{27 24}

Partisan Questions and Political Alignment

The involvement of Prince Harry also underscores the transatlantic and trans-partisan appeal of the “counter-disinformation” cause. Here is a British royal working with a UK think tank veteran, deploying resources in the United States, and aligning (perhaps unwittingly) with a political agenda that has largely been advanced by Western center-left establishments (though not exclusively). Critics have noted that Archewell’s grants and partnerships skew toward organizations and individuals with partisan or ideological leanings. For instance, Archewell’s funding of the Women’s Wellness Initiative (founded by U.S. President Joe Biden’s daughter) and its hiring of Democratic strategists like Craig led some to question whether the ostensibly non-partisan charity is supporting a particular political narrative.²⁷ A spokesperson for the Sussexes denied any partisan intent and said the foundation is “rooted in social impact rather than politics.”²⁸ Yet, the pattern is clear: the fight against “digital hate” and “misinformation” has drawn in royalty and high society, further blurring the line between genuine civic initiative and elite-driven propaganda.

What is the significance of this royal tie-in? For one, it demonstrates how deeply the narrative around “online harms” has penetrated mainstream consciousness—to the point that it’s become a fashionable cause for global influencers. It also means vast new audiences (fans of the royals, charitable donors, etc.) are being exposed to the messaging crafted by groups like CCDH and ISD. Archewell’s involvement effectively launders the agenda through a philanthropic lens: defending children’s mental health, promoting “digital civility,” and so on. But underpinning these benign slogans is often the same call for greater regulation of speech and aggressive moderation of content, aligned with the standards set by CCDH/ISD. In sum, Prince Harry’s foray into the disinformation debate illustrates how the highest echelons of society are now intertwined with the push for expansive censorship regimes.

NATO’s ‘StratCom’ at Home: Charles Kriel and the Weaponization of Information

Perhaps the most unsettling facet of this network is its incorporation of military-grade psychological operations (psy-ops) techniques into domestic information campaigns. NATO, through its Riga-based Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence (StratCom), has explicitly studied and developed methods to counter “hybrid threats” in the information domain—essentially treating social media as a new frontline of warfare. It was likely only a matter of time before such tools, developed for battling ISIS or Russian info-warriors, were turned inward against segments of Western populations seen as destabilizing.

Dr. Charles Kriel: The StratCom Operative

A case in point is the work of Dr. Charles Kriel, a digital strategist who bridges the worlds of media, government, and military StratCom. Kriel served as a special advisor to the UK Parliament on fake news and was involved in shaping Britain’s Online Safety Bill—the sweeping internet regulation that mandates stricter platform policing of content.^{29 30} He has boasted of helping “take down” Cambridge Analytica and has cultivated an image as a champion against disinformation.³¹ But Kriel’s activities also reveal the deep influence of NATO-aligned thinking in domestic narrative control.

In 2022, Kriel co-directed a documentary film pointedly titled “Dis/Informed.” Marketed and distributed internationally as an exploration of “conspiracy mentality,” Dis/Informed zeroes in on the health freedom movement that arose during the pandemic—effectively casting women’s wellness groups and vaccine skeptics as subjects of radicalization.³² The documentary follows Kriel (and co-director Vicki Miller) as they investigate why online communities, including mothers’ groups, became hotbeds of “disinformation” during COVID-19.³³

Social Media as Battlefield

The framing of Dis/Informed lays bare the military mindset now applied to civilian discourse. The film’s narration explicitly describes social media as a battlefield and equates health advocates with extremist threats, saying women’s online spaces are being “radicalised.”^{33 34} Kriel—who by this time was deeply connected with NATO StratCom—effectively treats figures like Sayer Ji and other “Disinformation Dozen” personalities as enemy combatants in an info-war. This reflects what NATO slang dubs the “tanks with tweets” doctrine.³⁵ In traditional war, tanks and troops confront the enemy; in info-war, tweets and memes are the weapons, and unapproved narratives are the adversary. NATO StratCom’s philosophy blurs the line between military operations and information campaigns targeting citizens. As one analysis puts it, they view “online dissent as a form of enemy communication”—to be intercepted, disrupted, and neutralized.³⁵

The operational framework for this approach was formalized through DISARM (Disinformation Analysis and Response Mechanism), developed under NATO’s Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA). Originally presented as a tool for detecting psychological operations by foreign state actors, DISARM was rapidly repurposed for domestic deployment during COVID-19—enabling the mapping of influence networks, categorization of speech into threat taxonomies, and automated recommendations for deplatforming. As detailed in my analysis of the Narrative Kill Chain, this NATO-backed system was weaponized against the “Disinformation Dozen,” transforming military-grade psychological warfare tools into instruments of civilian speech suppression.

Kriel’s entanglement with StratCom is further cemented by his role at the Sympodium Institute for Strategic Communications, a UK-based think tank closely aligned with NATO’s influence initiatives. In 2023, Kriel became a Senior Fellow at Sympodium, focusing on AI and disinformation.²⁹ Sympodium functions as a conduit for applying NATO’s messaging tactics to civilian spheres, effectively importing battlefield strategies to peacetime democracies.³⁶Under Sympodium’s auspices, Kriel and colleagues push the idea that “malign narratives” (often just perspectives that diverge from government positions) must be treated as security threats. This has paved the way for legislation like the UK’s Online Safety Act, which Kriel helped advise.³⁰ The Act empowers authorities to demand removal of content deemed harmful, aligning with Kriel’s and CCDH’s goals of forcing platforms into strict compliance with state-defined truth.³⁷

Synergy with CCDH’s Campaigns

The synergy between Kriel’s media projects and the CCDH-led censorship campaigns is particularly noteworthy. In Dis/Informed, CCDH’s Imran Ahmed features prominently, spewing incendiary rhetoric against vaccine-critical figures. In a 2021 podcast, Ahmed went so far as to accuse individuals like Sayer Ji of “profiting from causing death,” suggesting they have a sociopathic urge to inflict harm.¹³ Such dehumanizing language—painting peaceful health advocates as murderous villains—mirrors classic psy-op techniques: create a moral panic about the target so that extraordinary measures against them seem justified.

NATO’s StratCom hand is visible here as well, as Ahmed’s messaging dovetails with government bulletins that started conflating anti-lockdown or anti-vaccine mandate activism with terrorism. In fact, between 2020 and 2022, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued advisories that equated “false narratives” about COVID-19 or election integrity with potential domestic terror threats.³⁸ This was unprecedented—effectively treating civil liberties protests and dissenting speech as incubators of violent extremism. It is hard to imagine such a leap without the influence of the StratCom paradigm, which seeks to “normalize the classification of dissent as a danger to stability,” as analysts observed about Kriel’s work.^{39 40}

[Pictured above: A screenshot of CCDH founder Imran Ahmed slander from Dis/informed.]

Dis/Informed ultimately serves as a case study in modern information warfare: a documentary nominally about public health conspiracies is, in practice, an info-weapon aimed at delegitimizing and silencing a social movement.⁴¹ It blurs documentary filmmaking with psychological operation, encouraging viewers (and policymakers) to see something nefarious in the mere act of citizens questioning authorities. Kriel’s role in this—straddling film director, parliamentary advisor, and NATO-aligned operative—exemplifies the disturbing fusion of entertainment, policy, and military strategy. Through such vehicles, NATO’s StratCom and its partners have exported wartime tactics to peacetime democracy, training the sights of “cognitive security” on their own populations.

Lawfare as a Weapon: Manufacturing the “Rothschild” Legal Crisis

Beyond media campaigns and policy lobbying, this network also employs lawfare—the strategic use of legal threats and litigation—to intimidate and silence dissenters. One particularly telling episode unfolded in 2021, in the wake of CCDH’s “Disinformation Dozen” hit list. As if being branded global mischief-makers by the White House and media were not enough, the targeted individuals soon faced the specter of civil litigation aimed at holding them personally liable for COVID-19 deaths.

That year, an attorney named Brian Rothschild announced plans to file a mass tort wrongful death lawsuit against the so-called disinformation dozen.² He publicly asserted that those who had questioned or criticized COVID vaccines were directly responsible for the pandemic deaths of people who believed them. One cited example was a U.S. firefighter who died of COVID-19 after allegedly being swayed by “anti-vax” misinformation.⁴² The implication: voices like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or Dr. Mercola could be sued for damages by families of COVID victims, essentially accusing the speakers of negligent homicide.

Legal experts immediately noted that such a case would be extraordinarily difficult to win—establishing a direct causal link between someone’s online posts and another person’s death from a virus is a far-fetched proposition. But winning in court was never the point. In a revealing NBC7 interview, Rothschild openly confessed his true strategy: ‘I can’t pass laws preventing misinformation, but I can make it expensive.’ The threat itself was the weapon—protracted litigation, ruinous legal fees, potential bankruptcy. As Natural News observed, ‘the idea behind this and similar suits was to make it seem as though individuals who question the safety and efficacy of the vaccines were guilty of negligence or intentional harm—so that these people would be too scared to continue.’ Rothschild had explicitly announced a campaign of financial terrorism: speak out and you could be hauled into court, bankrupted, maybe even jailed. Such lawfare complements the deplatforming pressure already applied by CCDH—it ensures that even if one retains a platform, the personal risk of dissent becomes unbearable.

The timing and symbolism of Rothschild’s intervention was no accident. Just one year earlier, in May 2020, ISD had produced a report with BBC Click explicitly framing any COVID-related discussions of “elites” - including “Bill Gates, George Soros, the Rothschilds and Jeff Bezos“ - as far-right extremist conspiracy theories. That report listed GreenMedInfo.com among 34 “disinformation-hosting websites” (provided by NewsGuard) and categorized such conversations as “unfounded claims without verifiable evidence.” When Brian Rothschild emerged in 2021 to threaten lawsuits against the “Disinformation Dozen,” the psychological trap was complete: if targets mentioned they were being sued by someone named Rothschild, they would sound exactly like the paranoid conspiracy theorists ISD had just spent months characterizing. The symbolism was weaponized—any attempt to identify the coordinated nature of the attack would be pre-emptively discredited as proof of extremist thinking. This was narrative entrapment: ISD creates the “Rothschild conspiracy theory” framing, then a Mr. Rothschild materializes to sue the same targets, ensuring that any acknowledgment of the pattern reinforces the smear.

The Symbolic Power of a Name

Interestingly, Brian Rothschild’s involvement raised eyebrows not just for its audacity but for his surname’s symbolism. In anti-establishment and populist circles, “Rothschild” is shorthand for the elite financiers historically alleged (in many a conspiracy theory, often with anti-Semitic undertones) to control world events. The Rothschild banking family has been the subject of countless conspiratorial narratives for centuries. Whether by design or coincidence, the fact that a Mr. Rothschild fronted the legal intimidation of the “Disinformation Dozen” was almost too on-the-nose. It was as if a caricature had come to life—a Rothschild attempting to silence dissidents—practically baiting those dissidents or their followers to cry “aha, it’s a Rothschild behind this!” Any such reaction could then be held up by CCDH and its allies as proof that the targets were not only spreaders of medical misinformation, but also trafficking in anti-Semitic conspiracy tropes. This dynamic would conveniently reinforce CCDH’s protective framing: that their opponents are motivated by hate, and thus any criticism of CCDH (or its partners) should be viewed as bad-faith, bigoted rhetoric to be ignored.

To be clear, there is no evidence that Brian Rothschild is related to the famous banking clan or that his actions were directed by anyone but himself. However, his connections to CCDH were strongly suspected—suggesting he did not simply act in isolation.⁴⁵ Indeed, his threat dovetailed perfectly with CCDH’s narrative of portraying the “disinformers” as grave dangers. In the end, Rothschild never filed the promised lawsuit; it quietly evaporated after achieving its initial publicity.⁴⁶ But the episode likely had a chilling effect. Even the specter of a multi-million dollar lawsuit may have caused some vaccine-critical writers, speakers, or organizers to self-censor or retreat, especially those without the resources to defend themselves in court. In strategic terms, the Rothschild legal gambit succeeded without ever needing to prevail before a judge.

Pattern of Transatlantic Intimidation

This pattern of transatlantic lawfare is now familiar. British and EU-based NGOs generate “hit list” reports and feed them to U.S. officials; U.S. officials amplify them, lending government credibility; then U.S. lawyers or officials undertake punitive actions (be it lawsuits, subpoenas, or regulatory threats) against the named individuals or platforms. Notably, in 2023 the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, under Rep. Jim Jordan, began investigating CCDH and subpoenaed the group for its communications with the Biden Administration, suspecting improper collusion in censoring Americans.⁴⁷ CCDH’s defense was that it even communicated with the Trump Administration on vaccine misinformation—a tacit admission that it works hand-in-glove with governments, regardless of party.^{48 49} Meanwhile, state attorneys general from 14 U.S. states have been probing how government officials partnered with groups like CCDH to pressure social media companies (a potential First Amendment violation).⁵⁰

These investigations underscore that CCDH’s activities, including lawfare proxies like Brian Rothschild, are not organic grassroots phenomena—they are components of a coordinated strategy involving government actors to quash dissent. And when direct government action is blocked by constitutional limits, outsourcing the dirty work to ostensibly private “anti-hate” groups or freelance attorneys becomes the tool of choice.

Learn more: 17 Dark Money Funders Behind CCDH’s “Kill Elon’s Twitter” Directive

Global Ties and Narrative Warfare: Follow the Money and Influence

A critical question arises: who funds and coordinates this sprawling censorship-industrial complex? Both CCDH and ISD are registered as non-profits, but their financial backing and partnerships reveal heavy involvement of foreign governments and opaque donors, raising issues of sovereignty and transparency.

“Foreign Dark Money Group”

U.S. Senator Josh Hawley flagged this in July 2021 when he publicly blasted CCDH as a “foreign dark money group” interfering in American speech.⁵⁰ Indeed, CCDH was founded in the UK and maintains offices in London and Washington, D.C., but it did not initially disclose its funders—prompting accusations that overseas or hidden interests were bankrolling its influence in U.S. policy debates.⁵¹ Subsequent investigations by independent journalists have partially unmasked CCDH’s funding streams. They reveal a patchwork of at least 17 funding sources, many of them “dark money” vehicles that obscure the original donor.^{51 52}

For instance, grants have flowed to CCDH through donor-advised funds like the Schwab Charitable Fund (which allows wealthy individuals to give anonymously).⁵² Other support has come from prominent liberal foundations and tech-aligned philanthropies; CCDH’s connections to entities funded by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar have been noted in watchdog reports, as has possible funding linked to pharmaceutical interests (a logical backer for a group that attacks vaccine critics).

Government Integration

Beyond private foundations, there are more direct ties to governments. The Centre for Countering Digital Hate’s leadership overlaps with UK government circles. For example, Damian Collins, a British MP, has worked closely with CCDH—even serving on its UK advisory board—while simultaneously shepherding online censorship legislation in Parliament.³⁷ Collins chaired the parliamentary committee that drafted the Online Safety Bill, effectively translating CCDH’s advocacy into law.³⁰ In this role, he echoed CCDH’s calls to hold tech companies “accountable” and frequently cited CCDH research to justify tougher regulations.

Meanwhile, Imran Ahmed of CCDH gained access to the highest levels of the UK government: after riots in August 2023, the new Home Secretary invited CCDH to an emergency meeting on online disorder, where Ahmed recommended expansive emergency powers to take down content deemed a public safety risk.⁵³ Such influence suggests that CCDH is regarded by parts of the UK establishment as a useful tool to achieve policy ends that might be controversial if pursued directly by government.

The Five Eyes Connection

In the broader Five Eyes intelligence alliance (US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand), similar NGOs and partnerships abound. The Centre for Information Resilience (CIR) in London, for example, is another “counter-disinformation” outfit—one that receives funding from the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office, the U.S. State Department, USAID, and even the Australian government.⁵⁴ CIR’s staff includes people like Nina Jankowicz, the former head of the short-lived U.S. Disinformation Governance Board, who registered as a foreign agent to work for CIR in 2022.⁵⁴ That means a former American official was literally on the payroll of the British government (via CIR) to influence information operations—a remarkable intertwining of national efforts. Jankowicz, notably, was a vocal advocate for censoring “medical misinformation” and has worked alongside Imran Ahmed and Charles Kriel in various forums. Through entities like CIR, British and American authorities effectively swap personnel and share tactics to control narratives, sidestepping domestic restrictions by operating under one another’s auspices.

The Israel Factor

Israel’s role is also worth noting. While not part of the Five Eyes, Israel’s government and affiliated organizations have a clear interest in countering online anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment, and they intersect with this network in multiple ways. ISD’s founding by an ex-Israeli government insider (Lord Weidenfeld) and the strong pro-Israel leanings of its leadership (e.g. chair Michael Lewis’s involvement in the Britain Israel Communications Centre) suggest a geopolitical motive to shape discourse on issues like Middle East politics.²¹

CCDH’s ties to Israeli state interests extend beyond ideological alignment into direct operational collaboration. Leaked emails obtained by The Grayzone in January 2025 revealed ongoing coordination between Israeli government officials and CCDH representatives, detailing “shared goals of monitoring and mitigating content deemed ‘anti-Semitic’ or critical of Israeli policies.” The communications exposed what investigators described as a “pay-to-play” dynamic where CCDH’s influence operations are leveraged by state actors under the guise of plausible deniability—a black operation model that mirrors CCDH’s partnerships with entities like Prince Harry’s Archewell Foundation. Several of CCDH’s dark money funders, including the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, maintain connections to anti-Semitism-related philanthropies and Israeli-linked initiatives, creating overlapping financial and strategic interests. These revelations confirm that CCDH operates as an unofficial arm of Israeli governmental propaganda efforts, systematically conflating legitimate political criticism of Israeli policies with hate speech to suppress dissent.

CCDH’s origins in fighting left-wing anti-Semitism further served interests aligned with pro-Israel advocacy when it targeted figures in Jeremy Corbyn’s orbit under the guise of “countering hate.” One of CCDH’s signature early campaigns was for the deplatforming of British rapper Wiley after his anti-Semitic social media posts in 2020—a campaign applauded by Israeli officials and demonstrating CCDH’s effectiveness as a censorship proxy.

There is thus a convergence where Western security agencies, transnational philanthropists, and foreign governments (like Israel) find common cause: all favor a tightly controlled information space where their preferred narratives face less resistance. Funding flows reflect this convergence; whether through direct grants, contracts, or indirect donations, money from government programs (e.g. U.S. State Department’s Global Engagement Center, UK Home Office counter-extremism budgets, and now confirmed Israeli government coordination) and aligned private foundations ultimately fuels these organizations.

The Narrative Warfare Coalition

All these linkages point to what can aptly be called a narrative warfare coalition. It is a coalition in which nominally independent NGOs supply intellectual cover—research reports, “hate” watchlists, ostensibly scientific studies of online harms—that governments and corporations can then act upon. The NGOs receive funding and intel tips from governments; governments get political air cover from the NGOs. Tech companies, for their part, often cooperate because it eases regulatory pressure and aligns with the preferences of powerful investors or advertisers.

In such a model, democratic accountability is minimal. An official in Washington can say, “An independent British watchdog says X content is harmful—we must do something,” even if that watchdog is quietly supported by the official’s own agency or allies. The public, caught in the middle, often cannot trace these connections in real time. Only after the fact do we learn, for example, that a virulent online censorship push originated in a think tank funded by a mix of U.S. billionaires and European governments, rather than a true groundswell of concerned citizens.

Redefining Civil Liberties as Extremism

Perhaps the most profound impact of this coordinated campaign is the shifting of the Overton window—the range of ideas tolerated in public discourse. Over just a few years, positions that were once considered mainstream expressions of civil liberties or common sense skepticism have been reframed as extremist, dangerous, or beyond the pale. This reframing has been achieved by relentless messaging from the likes of CCDH, ISD, and their governmental partners, who classify and publicly shame dissenting views as threats to society.

Medical Freedom Redefined as Extremism

Take the issue of medical freedom and vaccine safety. Traditionally, advocating for informed consent, pointing out pharmaceutical company misconduct, or choosing a different vaccination schedule were seen as personal health stances—perhaps controversial to some, but legitimate topics for debate. By 2021, that had changed dramatically. Figures such as Dr. Mercola or groups of concerned parents were labeled “anti-vaxxers” and then swiftly escalated to “public enemies.” In a Homeland Security Bulletin in early 2022, the U.S. government listed “false or misleading narratives about COVID-19” as a contributor to domestic violent extremism.³⁸

Think about that: distributing leaflets about vaccine side effects or organizing a protest against lockdowns was being tarred with the same brush as plotting a terrorist attack. The absurdity of the equivalence did not matter—the narrative had been set. When the President says “Facebook is killing people” by not censoring enough posts, when mainstream news segments equate vaccine mandate protesters with insurrectionists, the chilling effect is real. By 2023, even advocating for “parental rights” in education—normally a standard center-right position—was portrayed in some media as a dog-whistle for extremism, largely because activist organizations tied to ISD/CCDH pushed studies linking parental movements to far-right online forums.

Free Speech Advocates Under Attack

Similarly, consider free speech and privacy advocates concerned about digital surveillance or censorship. Not long ago, groups like the ACLU or EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) held mainstream respect championing civil liberties. Now, under the onslaught of narrative from “hate countermeasures” organizations, free speech absolutism is smeared as enabling hate and terrorism. Those raising alarms about government-big tech collusion are dismissed as cranks disseminating “misinformation” themselves. This very pattern occurred during the Twitter Files revelations in 2022–23: journalists who exposed how U.S. agencies pressured Twitter to censor content were attacked by CCDH and allies as spreading “Russian-style disinformation.” The Overton window had shifted such that exposing censorship was perversely cast as the malicious act.

The Long-Term Democratic Consequences

The result of these efforts is a climate in which core liberal values—open debate, bodily autonomy, parental authority, skepticism of concentrated power—are recast as extremist motifs. The network we’ve described plays a central role in that recasting. Through reports and media appearances, CCDH claims that anti-lockdown campaigners are aligned with white supremacists. ISD “studies” insinuate that conspiracy theorists (a label that often includes those questioning pharmaceutical lobbyists or government officials) pose as grave a threat as Jihadists. NATO’s StratCom specialists coin terms like “cognitive security” which treat one’s openness to alternative narratives as a vulnerability to be patched or a pathology to be cured. All of these messages steadily march the public toward accepting an idea that would have been abhorrent in free societies just a decade ago: that the government (or its proxies) should decide which ideas are too dangerous to be allowed to circulate.

By redefining normal dissent as hate speech or terrorist propaganda, these actors not only justify censorship—they also marginalize and demonize the dissenters to the point where repression against them seems not only acceptable but virtuous. A clear example was how health freedom activists were vilified during the pandemic. People protesting harsh lockdowns or school closures were painted as right-wing kooks indifferent to human life. When parents objected to mask mandates for toddlers, some commentaries portrayed them as tantamount to child abusers. This narrative didn’t arise organically; it was consciously amplified by “anti-hate” influencers and think tanks that had quickly repurposed to target pandemic policy critics. What used to be a reasonable disagreement over policy had become a security issue.

It is important to emphasize that shifting the Overton window in this manner has long-term consequences for democracy. Once previously normal views are exiled from respectable discourse, policy can be ratcheted in one direction without the counter-balancing force of opposition. For instance, vaccine mandate opponents were so effectively demonized that by late 2021, several Western countries enacted sweeping mandates or passports with surprisingly little parliamentary dissent—something that would have been unthinkable pre-2020. Politicians knew that opposing such measures risked being labeled anti-vax or pro-”misinformation,” which could be a career killer in the media environment shaped by CCDH/ISD narratives.

Similarly, tech companies, fearing regulation and bad press, now err on the side of over-censorship: better to ban one too many users than be accused by CCDH of harboring hate or disinfo. That’s why we’ve seen Facebook and Twitter aggressively purge not just violent extremists, but also journalists, scientists, and ordinary citizens whose only crime was challenging prevailing orthodoxies. The Overton window shift engineered by these influence networks acts as a soft-totalitarian mechanism—it doesn’t outlaw dissent outright; it just makes dissenting so costly socially, professionally, and legally that few will dare.

Conclusion: The Architects of a New Informational Order

What emerges from this investigation is a portrait of a sophisticated, well-resourced effort to redefine the boundaries of acceptable speech and thought in Western democracies. At the center is Morgan McSweeney, a political “fixer” who parlayed his campaign skills into building and guiding entities like CCDH that bridge partisan politics and state security agendas. Around him orbits a constellation of actors—from Imran Ahmed to Charles Kriel to Jiore Craig—each playing a role in a larger choreography of narrative enforcement. They operate through NGOs and charities, yet are intertwined with government strategy; they claim to fight “hate” and “extremism,” yet often target ordinary citizens championing civil liberties or alternative viewpoints.

This network’s links to intelligence and military influence operations are not incidental—they are its defining feature. Whether it’s ISD’s trustees with Rothschild-bank and MI6 résumés,^{22 55} or CCDH’s collaboration with UK and US officials behind closed doors,^{53 56} or NATO StratCom embedding its doctrine via documentaries and think tanks,^{35 36}the fingerprints of the deep state and its elite allies are all over the ostensibly independent “counter hate” initiatives. This is narrative warfare by coalition: a blending of public and private, of military and civilian, of domestic and foreign, to create a pervasive system of information control.

Real-Time Consequences

The consequences are already playing out in real time. Voices that challenge powerful interests in Big Pharma, Big Tech, or government—whether by questioning a vaccine, exposing an intelligence abuse, or dissenting from a war narrative—risk being smeared as dangerous purveyors of hate or disinformation. The machinery built by McSweeney and company is capable of broadcasting that smear from influential newspapers to Congressional hearings to Prime Ministerial statements, almost in unison. And as we saw with the “Disinformation Dozen,” the targets become ostracized, deplatformed, and even threatened with legal action in a concerted blitz.^{9 44}

Yet, shining a light on this “puppet master” network is the first step to countering its worst excesses. Democratic oversight and public awareness can begin to unwind the tangle of hidden funding and collusion. For policymakers, the lesson is to be wary of outsourcing censorship to cut-outs like CCDH or ISD, and to recognize how easily noble-sounding goals (fighting hate, protecting children online) can be co-opted into expansive repression of free speech. For the public, the lesson is to demand transparency: who is really behind that viral “disinformation study”? What financial or political interests might be driving the latest moral panic over “harmful content”? And importantly, to insist that fundamental freedoms—to speak, to inquire, to dissent—not be sacrificed at the altar of an ambiguous and ever-expanding notion of “digital hate.”

A Cautionary Tale

In the end, Morgan McSweeney’s rise from Starmer’s backroom to the heights of global narrative engineering is a cautionary tale. It shows how quickly the architecture of democracy can be bent toward controlling public opinion when guardians of openness are asleep at the wheel. The new alliance of political operatives, spies, princes, and lawyers described in this report is testing just how far the limits can be pushed.

Resisting that pressure—by reasserting the values of open debate and informed consent that undergird free societies—is imperative. Otherwise, we risk entering a future where truth is decreed by think tanks, dissent is equated with extremism, and the puppet masters of perception extinguish the very democratic lights that allow us to see them for what they are.

---

Footnotes

1. David Rose, “Inside the Center for Countering Digital Hate’s plan to ‘kill’ X,” UnHerd, October 23, 2024, https://unherd.com/newsroom/inside-the-center-for-countering-digital-hates-plan-to-kill-x/. ↩ ↩²

2. Cassie B., “CCDH agents threatened health freedom advocates and covid truthers with lawsuits to silence them,” Natural News, December 6, 2024, https://www.naturalnews.com/2024-12-06-ccdh-agents-threatened-health-freedom-advocates-lawsuits.html. ↩ ↩²

3. Rose, “Inside the Center for Countering Digital Hate’s plan to ‘kill’ X.” ↩

4. Rose, “Inside the Center for Countering Digital Hate’s plan to ‘kill’ X.” ↩

5. Rose, “Inside the Center for Countering Digital Hate’s plan to ‘kill’ X.” ↩ ↩²

6. “About — Center for Countering Digital Hate | CCDH,” Center for Countering Digital Hate, accessed January 2025, https://counterhate.com/about/. ↩

7. Sayer Ji, “9 ‘Dark Money’ Sources Funding CCDH: A Foreign ‘Digital Hate’ Group,” GreenMedInfo, October 22, 2024, https://greenmedinfo.com/blog/9-dark-money-sources-funding-ccdh-foreign-digital-hate-group-which-used-white-hou34. ↩ ↩²

8. Ji, “9 ‘Dark Money’ Sources Funding CCDH.” ↩

9. Ji, “9 ‘Dark Money’ Sources Funding CCDH.” ↩ ↩²

10. Ji, “9 ‘Dark Money’ Sources Funding CCDH.” ↩

11. Ji, “9 ‘Dark Money’ Sources Funding CCDH.” ↩

12. Rose, “Inside the Center for Countering Digital Hate’s plan to ‘kill’ X.” ↩

13. Sayer Ji, “Black Ops Go Digital: How NATO Operatives Deploy Military-Grade Psyops,” GreenMedInfo, November 1, 2023, https://greenmedinfo.com/content/black-ops-go-digital-how-nato-operatives-deploy-military-grade-psyops-transfor. ↩ ↩²

14. “Institute for Strategic Dialogue,” The GREAT WORK Decoded, December 6, 2019, https://thegreatworkdecoded.com/knowledge-base/institute-for-strategic-dialogue/. ↩

15. “Institute for Strategic Dialogue,” The GREAT WORK Decoded. ↩

16. “Institute for Strategic Dialogue,” The GREAT WORK Decoded. ↩

17. “Institute for Strategic Dialogue,” The GREAT WORK Decoded. ↩

18. “Institute for Strategic Dialogue,” The GREAT WORK Decoded. ↩

19. “Institute for Strategic Dialogue,” The GREAT WORK Decoded. ↩

20. “Institute for Strategic Dialogue,” The GREAT WORK Decoded. ↩

21. “Institute for Strategic Dialogue,” The GREAT WORK Decoded. ↩ ↩²

22. “Institute for Strategic Dialogue,” The GREAT WORK Decoded. ↩ ↩²

23. Kennedy Felton, “Prince Harry, Meghan Markle’s foundation scrutinized over political ties,” SAN News, February 17, 2025, https://san.com/cc/prince-harry-meghan-markles-foundation-scrutinized-over-political-ties/. ↩

24. Felton, “Prince Harry, Meghan Markle’s foundation scrutinized over political ties.” ↩ ↩²

25. “Jiore Craig - ISD,” Institute for Strategic Dialogue, accessed January 2025, https://www.isdglobal.org/isd_team/jiore-craig/. ↩

26. Felton, “Prince Harry, Meghan Markle’s foundation scrutinized over political ties.” ↩

27. Felton, “Prince Harry, Meghan Markle’s foundation scrutinized over political ties.” ↩ ↩²

28. Felton, “Prince Harry, Meghan Markle’s foundation scrutinized over political ties.” ↩

29. Ji, “Black Ops Go Digital.” ↩ ↩²

30. Ji, “Black Ops Go Digital.” ↩ ↩² ↩³

31. Ji, “Black Ops Go Digital.” ↩

32. Ji, “Black Ops Go Digital.” ↩

33. Ji, “Black Ops Go Digital.” ↩ ↩²

34. Ji, “Black Ops Go Digital.” ↩

35. Ji, “Black Ops Go Digital.” ↩ ↩² ↩³

36. Ji, “Black Ops Go Digital.” ↩ ↩²

37. Ji, “Black Ops Go Digital.” ↩ ↩²

38. Ji, “9 ‘Dark Money’ Sources Funding CCDH.” ↩ ↩²

39. Ji, “Black Ops Go Digital.” ↩

40. Ji, “Black Ops Go Digital.” ↩

41. Ji, “Black Ops Go Digital.” ↩

42. Cassie B., “CCDH agents threatened health freedom advocates.” ↩

43. Cassie B., “CCDH agents threatened health freedom advocates.” ↩

44. Cassie B., “CCDH agents threatened health freedom advocates.” ↩ ↩²

45. Cassie B., “CCDH agents threatened health freedom advocates.” ↩

46. Cassie B., “CCDH agents threatened health freedom advocates.” ↩

47. “Chairman Jordan Expands Censorship Investigation to Center for Countering Digital Hate,” U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary, accessed January 2025, http://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/chairman-jordan-expands-censorship-investigation-center-countering-digital. ↩

48. Anne Branigin, “A nonprofit fights GOP allegations that it supported a ‘censorship cartel,’” Washington Post, August 17, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/08/17/center-countering-digital-hate-gop-probe-twitter/. ↩

49. Branigin, “A nonprofit fights GOP allegations.” ↩

50. Ji, “9 ‘Dark Money’ Sources Funding CCDH.” ↩ ↩²

51. Ji, “9 ‘Dark Money’ Sources Funding CCDH.” ↩ ↩²

52. Ji, “9 ‘Dark Money’ Sources Funding CCDH.” ↩ ↩²

53. Ji, “Black Ops Go Digital.” ↩ ↩²

54. Ji, “Black Ops Go Digital.” ↩ ↩²

55. “Institute for Strategic Dialogue,” The GREAT WORK Decoded. ↩

56. “Chairman Jordan Subpoenas the Center for Countering Digital Hate,” U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary, accessed January 2025, http://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/chairman-jordan-subpoenas-center-countering-digital-hate. ↩