While many believe that under the Trump administration the controversial National Endowment for Democracy (NED*) was defunded, dismantled, or otherwise dissolved, the reality is far less dramatic and far more dangerous.
An investigation by West Africa Weekly’s Editor-in-Chief, David Hundeyin, has raised serious concerns about foreign interference in Nigeria’s media landscape, particularly surrounding a popular emigration-themed content series published by Zikoko Citizen, a civic-focused vertical of the youth culture platform Zikoko.
They sell the dream of autonomy—self-governing, tech-powered havens untethered from old institutions. But look closer, and you’ll see that Network States aren’t a rebellion against centralized power. They’re a rebrand, a more sophisticated, digitally optimized iteration of company towns, where the people inside serve the system without ever realizing they were locked in from the start.
While much of the world’s attention is currently focused on the economic fallout of the tariffs imposed by the United States on allies and designated adversaries alike, they are only one part of a much wider strategy aimed at what U.S. policymakers themselves claim is a bid to maintain the U.S. as “the world’s dominant superpower.”
Wynn-Williams testified that Meta censored a Chinese dissident at the request of Chinese officials, and that the dissident was Guo Wengui, a federally convicted fraudster and MAGA-friendly ally of far-right activist Steve Bannon. Wynn-Williams said Facebook’s claim that a 2017 suspension of Guo’s account stemmed from a temporary glitch was a lie, and that the decision to temporarily kick him off the platform actuallycame as a result of pressure from a Chinese official.
Stone, the Meta spokesperson, said in a statement that Guo “faced account restrictions because he shared personally identifiable information such as passport numbers, social security numbers and addresses,” The Washington Post reported.
After downloading the book and searching for mentions of Palestine, the sole reference I found involved the author criticizing Facebook Maps for labeling a location in Israel as Palestine (p.71)—a claim I find dubious, given the platform’s well-documented history of censoring Palestinian content. Most Palestinian activists are likely aware of this pattern, as evidenced by countless reports and articles easily accessible through a simple Google search for “Facebook censorship of Palestine.”
Since the election of Donald Trump, a growing body of research has examined the role of digital technologies in new right wing movements (Lewis 2018; Hawley 2017; Neiwert 2017; Nagle 2017). This article will explore a distinct, but related, subject: new right wing tendencies within the tech industry itself. Our point of entry will be an improbable document: a German language dissertation submitted by an American to the faculty of social sciences at J. W. Goethe University of Frankfurt in 2002. Entitled Aggression in the Life-World, the dissertation aims to describe the role that aggression plays in social integration, or the set of processes that lead individuals in a given society to feel bound to one another. To that end, it offers a “systematic” reinterpretation of Theodor Adorno’s Jargon of Authenticity (1973). It is of interest primarily because of its author: Alexander C. Karp.
We often hear that the new Trump administration inaugurates the age of technofeudalism. Just look at Elon Musk, pontificating about so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) democracy from the Oval Office while undemocratically occupying the US Treasury payment system. But is the administration simply using bullying as a mode of power, as Adam Tooze recently diagnosed it, destroying institutions without measure or plan?
Such programs continued unperturbed during the First Trump Administration, when a touching project meant to increase transgender visibility in Ukrainian Fashion Week was funded through USAID’s program to “Enhance Non-Governmental Actors and Grassroots Engagement” (ENGAGE) in Ukraine:
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Don’t worry, homophobes and transphobes; as long as capitalism exists, there will always be a “non-governmental organization” that will be willing to exploit the LGBTQ+ community and “sex workers” for corporate interests.
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
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