Dear comrade of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs! Today, we ask you to review your documents to understand any communications you may have with unreliable elements that criticize our political parties and leaders. If you have contacted journalists, researchers, or other disruptors, we ask you to report these interactions to senior comrades responsible for important work on ideological vigilance. Also, please indicate if you have encountered any suspicious usage of the following terms…
In fact, this is not the way acting Secretary of State Darren Beattie conveys his request for information to a small office in the State Department, but he can, too. Beattie, one of President Donald Trump’s self-proclaimed ideological committees in the executive branch, appears to be engaging in a passionate duty.
according to MIT Technology ReviewOn March 11, Beattie circulated a document in the then Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Center (called R/FIMI), which had been closed since then "tracking and refuting foreign false information" activities. As MIT Technology Review Beattie wants all “employee emails and other records” or “persons and organizations related to other false information about foreign countries or about those and organizations”, as well as “all employee communications refer only to Trump or his tracks, such as Alex Jones, Glenn Greenwald and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and in addition, guided a search for for for Pece'Pece'Pece'Pece'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
Among the approximately 60 numbers and organizations Beattie targets are former U.S. cybersecurity official (and Trump-appointed) Christopher Krebs, entrepreneur Bill Gates, open source news group Bellingcat, commentator Bill Kristol Atlantic colleague Anne Applebaum.
Beattie's duties put R/FIMI under his terms of reference. The office itself is the successor to the State Department’s Center for Global Engagement, which was created during the Barack Obama administration to offset disinformation efforts abroad. As guardian "The GEC developed AI models to detect Russian propaganda efforts targeting Latin American public opinion conflicts against Ukraine and published reports on Russian and Chinese disinformation actions." Last year, Republicans allocated funds to the GEC - of course, they do have such records - R/Fimi replaced it.
Now, R/FIMI is gone too: Secretary of State Marco Rubio shuts it down after he accused it of trying to "silence and review the voices of Americans they were supposed to serve" two weeks ago. Rubio has provided no evidence of this “censorship,” but larger projects may be more closely linked to the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to prevent anyone from manipulating the American political system against foreigners, especially Russians.
According to anonymous State Department in its report at MIT, Beatty’s goal of trying to drag the information from his subordinates is to create “transparency” and presumably suggests that these people and groups join American diplomats in criticizing and criticizing Trump and his agenda. Beattie reportedly compared his efforts to Elon Musk's "Twitter Files" project: After taking over Twitter in 2022, Musk funded a group of journalists to review the company's early internal communications to reveal surface manipulation and censorship on the platform.
Strangely, Beattie chose to follow Musk's "Twitter Files" and eventually revealed very little, but perhaps Beattie never intended to find anything substantial. (Georgetown professor Renee Diresta wrote about "Twitter Files" Atlantic;She is also on Beattie's list. ) Instead, as a State Department official said, Beattie seems more like a "witch hunt" to look at state conversations with states outside the state and determine what they are talking about.
Such a project can achieve two purposes: One is that it will help Beattie and others to build a blacklist of people who should freeze and even government as the target of the enemy. (As Christol is about MIT Technology Review When he found out that he created a list like this: "What is the innocent reason for doing this?") Another possibility is that Beattie attempted to make any connection between his office and people or organizations that did not pass the government's political purity test.
Considering how obsessed by Trump’s top figures are about everything being called “communism,” it’s ironic that the entire business seems to be a page in Soviet history, and the party committees try to identify ideological disruptors in between. Under Stalin's leadership, this contact with unauthorized people, and even those trusted by those who were once suspected, could have fatal consequences. Trumpism is more like a later regime under Leonid Brezhnev: In those without new guidance or people who may be associated with people, they may find themselves unemployed, downgraded to mean jobs, and even prosecuted for minor violations against the law. As Daniel Fried's ambassador Daniel Fried is also on Beattie's list of information seeking MIT Technology ReviewBeatty's efforts reminded him of the "communist thinking, looking at the distrustful bureaucracy" in Eastern Europe.
Like many Trump’s appointments, Beatty has his own troubles. He received his PhD in philosophy from Duke University and taught for one year. He then worked as an aide and speechwriter at the first Trump White House, but left in 2018 after CNN revealed he attended a conference featuring famous white nationalists. In 2019, Beattie worked with then-Congressman Matt Gaetz, not a promotion after possessing the White House badge - and became Truther on January 6, deeming FBI agents as provocative in the crowd. (He also went on to make comments about racism and sexism: “If you want things to work, competent white people have to be responsible,” he wrote on X six months ago.)
In other words, he is an excellent Trump 2.0 appointee: being kicked out and brought back, full of ideological enthusiasm, determined to find enemies of intrigue and rooted in deep states, a true belief committee profile.
Now, U.S. officials have been explicitly required to contact other Americans for practical, legal or national security reasons. A list of words and names for federal employees is also provided, which may raise suspicion of infidelity among superiors, including those acting on behalf of the president himself. This should be a scandal, but instead, it may be just a file of many Americans (if they noticed this at all) just a clumsy zeal from secondary officials, rather than another attack on the freedom of the U.S. constitutional freedom by a Trump servant. Unfortunately, Trump’s manic loyalty is most important, almost guaranteed that Beatty’s shameful attempts will not be the last effort when it comes to the U.S. government’s political policing in Soviet style.