Former 'disinfo' czar Nina Jankowicz tells Europeans to take a stand against the US, double down on social media regulation

Nina Jankowicz, the former czar of the Biden administration's short-lived Disinformation Governance Board and briefly also an adviser to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, addressed the European Parliament this week, telling members to "stand firm against another autocracy: the United States of America."

Fresh off telling the House Foreign Affairs Committee that the "censorship industrial complex is a fiction," Jankowicz concern-mongered before foreign leaders about the Trump administration's fight against censorship efforts at home and abroad.

Jankowicz stressed that Europeans should persist in their efforts to regulate content on social media, claiming that doing so while also throwing additional support behind Ukraine would be "the clearest signal the European Union could send to Russia and other adversaries that it will not stop fighting to preserve democracy at home and around the world."

Like Democrats in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election and those European elites challenged in recent years by ascendant populist parties, Jankowicz appears to use "democracy" to denote a state of play preferable to the ever-weakening liberal establishment.

'Rubio gleefully announced he was obliterating the office.'

Jankowicz, who previously emphasized that "freedom of speech does not necessarily mean freedom of reach" and registered as a foreign agent in 2022, appeared especially concerned about the threats supposedly posed to "democracy" by the Trump administration. In particular, she is vexed by the administration's opposition to the European Union's Digital Services Act, which critics have dubbed a "censorship law," as well as by the administration's shuttering of the censorious Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Hub, formerly the Global Engagement Center.

"Just last week in the United States, Secretary of State Marco Rubio gleefully announced he was obliterating the office tasked with tracking and responding to foreign information, manipulation and interference," complained Jankowicz, referring to Rubio's April 16 announcement that the Hub was no more.

The Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Hub was a rebrand of the Global Engagement Center, a multi-agency entity housed within the U.S. State Department that was credibly accused of working with domestic and foreign organizations to silence conservative voices.

Jankowicz tried gaslighting Congress about the GEC during an April 1 hearing, claiming, "There was no censorship going on at the Global Engagement Center at the State Department."

Contrary to the foreign agent's suggestion, Rubio noted last week that the GEC "cost taxpayers more than $50 million per year and actively silenced and censored the voices of Americans they were supposed to be serving."

The GEC worked with Jankowicz's fellow travelers in the censorship industry, backing, for instance, the Disinformation Index Inc. — the American component of the British think tank Global Disinformation Index — and NewsGuard Technologies.

Blaze News previously reported that these two outfits generated blacklists of supposedly misleading news outfits with the aim of getting them demonetized and directing funds to news organizations that parrot approved narratives. While liberal publications like the Washington Post and NPR were labeled as the "least risky sites," Blaze News, Reason, the Federalist, the New York Post, and other websites carrying content apparently unpalatable to the liberal establishment made the top-10 list of "riskiest sites" and were smeared as having the "greatest level of disinformation risk."

'We will never restrict our citizens' right to free speech.'

"Many other U.S. government institutions have been similarly dismantled in the months since President Trump took office under the guise of protecting free speech and allegedly 'ending censorship,'" continued Jankowicz in her address this week to the European Parliament. "Now the European Union has become the subject of the Trump administration and tech executives' ire."

During his Feb. 11 speech at the Paris Artificial Intelligence Summit, Vice President JD Vance declared that social media platforms developed and/or based in the U.S. would remain free from ideological restraints, stating, "We will never restrict our citizens' right to free speech."

One of the key European censorship initiatives at issue is the EU's Digital Services Act, which is touted as part of a regulatory strategy to "prevent illegal and harmful activities online and the spread of disinformation."

The European Commission has taken aim at Elon Musk and X for supposed content moderation violations under the DSA and has threatened monster fines. The commission slapped Meta and Apple with hundreds of millions of dollars in fines on Tuesday with parallel tech regulation, the Digital Markets Act.

'The Trump administration is undoubtedly preparing a pressure campaign to force EU institutions to roll back regulation like the DSA.'

Ten days after Vance's speech, President Donald Trump signed a memorandum "to defend American companies and innovators from overseas extortion," in which he noted "regulations that dictate how American companies interact with consumers in the European Union, like the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act, will face scrutiny from the Administration."

Despite this threat, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen recently told Politico that Europe is going after American companies anyway.

"We apply the rules fairly, proportionally, and without bias. We don't care where a company's from and who's running it. We care about protecting people," said von der Leyen.

Jankowicz, apparently enraged by the Trump administration's refusal to allow the regulation of American content by foreign powers, stated, "Neither Washington nor the social media platforms at his capture are interested in protecting democracy. They are interested in maintaining their power and hoarding profits."

"The Trump administration is undoubtedly preparing a pressure campaign to force EU institutions to roll back regulation like the DSA, to end support for Ukraine, to stop holding Russia to account. Do not capitulate. Hold the line," said the self-described "Mary Poppins of disinformation."

According to Jankowicz, social media regulation and cooperation from platforms are needed especially because the Kremlin is supposedly taking "advantage of decreased tech platform regulation and attention to foreign influence campaigns" and "using emerging technologies, including generative artificial intelligence, to infect our public discourse."

"If Europe wishes to stand firm against Russia and defend its democracy and sovereignty, it must start by standing up against the bullies in the White House," concluded Jankowicz.

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