COINTELPRO 2.0: Project Esther, EO 14243, and Palantir

The pattern is familiar, and the escalation is predictable. I warned about this recently, and now it’s unfolding exactly as anticipated.

From my May 22 post:

Just as I anticipated, the blame is being directed at China. Marco Rubio, currently serving in the Trump administration, has previously targeted various leftist organizations for their funding connections to Neville Roy Singham, who has been accused of having ties to the Communist Party of China. These allegations originated from front groups linked to Stratfor, often referred to as the “Shadow CIA,” as well as the State Department and U.S. Intelligence. Additionally, the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) receives backing from the Israel lobby. Recall my previous post about Project Esther, which linked antisemitism to Marxism. Expect a crackdown on leftists and other antiwar activists who are protesting the Gaza war.

On May 28, the Heritage Foundation—architect of Project Esther—officially embraced the narrative linking pro-Palestinian activism to Chinese influence.

The Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther is more than a framework—it’s a blueprint for ideological suppression masquerading as national security policy. By tying anti-Zionism to antisemitism, then layering in foreign influence accusations, the initiative sets the stage for a sweeping crackdown on dissent. Under the guise of national security, any challenge to U.S. policy—whether in opposition to the Gaza war or broader leftist movements—can be framed as a foreign threat. This justification makes mass surveillance not just palatable but necessary.

Enter Palantir—the data engine that makes ideological suppression scalable. While Heritage Foundation shapes the narrative and justification for crackdowns, Palantir provides the technical apparatus to execute them. As I warned in my earlier post, EO 14243 and Trump’s Data Consolidation: The Hidden Agenda Behind Big Tech Surveillance, Palantir is embedding digital IDs across DHS, IRS, and Social Security, consolidating surveillance under the guise of fraud prevention. These tools, once presented as safeguards against fraud, now serve a far clearer purpose: streamlining the targeting and suppression of leftist dissent. Heritage Foundation supplies the blueprint—Palantir builds the machinery.

This isn’t new. The playbook remains the same—COINTELPRO weaponized bureaucratic surveillance to neutralize Black liberation and leftist movements under the guise of national security. Now, Project Esther will leverage EO 14243’s infrastructure to fuse ideological suppression with the mechanics of automated surveillance. Just as COINTELPRO framed activists as subversives to justify government crackdowns, Project Esther weaponizes accusations of extremism and foreign influence to achieve similar ends. The targets have shifted, but the machinery of repression remains intact.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Zelensky to Beg House Speaker McCarthy for More Taxpayer Money, While Biden Bullies Developing Countries to Betray Russia and China

Zelensky arrived in New York on Monday and will head to Washington after the UN General Assembly

House Speaker McCarthy to Meet With Zelensky This Week

Related:

Biden urges UN to not abandon Ukraine

Biden’s call was part of his long-running theme to rally democracies against the globe’s rising autocracies. On Tuesday, he went further, implicitly urging developing nations to turn their backs on Russia and China’s autocracies and join an inter-connected, rules-based order promoted by the U.S. and its allies.

Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, skipped the general assembly, as did China’s Xi Jinping, but Beijing’s presence loomed large on the east side of Manhattan. While much of Biden’s speech read as a pitch to the developing world, its true subject was China, although the president tried to publicly downplay tensions with Beijing, as he did just weeks ago at the G20.

Amash’s Successor Peter Meijer: Trump’s Deceptions Are ‘Rankly Unfit’

Amash’s Successor Peter Meijer: Trump’s Deceptions Are ‘Rankly Unfit’

I was sitting in my office watching the speech that he was giving to the crowd, encouraging them to come to the Capitol, where he continued to talk about how this was a landslide election and that it was stolen from him. He believed that the outcome on November 3 could be reversed by Congress. And I talked to a number of folks who believed that. And they believed that because they were being told that, right? They were being lied to. They were being misled. Some of my colleagues in Congress, they share responsibility for that. Many of them were fundraising off of this Stop the Steal grift. I don’t understand how you can look in the mirror and go to sleep at night without that weighing on your conscience, I fundamentally do not. I’m just at a loss for words about how some of them have acted in ways that are just knowingly, provably false. And they know they’re lying too.