We hear an awful lot about “systemic racism” in this country, but what about systemic censorship? Paid for by your tax dollars, no less.

That’s right, the U.S. State Department, via the National Endowment for Democracy and the Global Engagement Center, gave $330,000 to a British media-rating outfit called the Global Disinformation Index (GDI). That group, in turn, attacked the credibility of conservative news and opinion organizations, yielding decreased reach and revenue. Meanwhile, GDI rakes in the cash and wields immense influence, including at the UN.

The Washington Examiner, which broke the story in a series about “Disinformation Inc.,” reports: “Major ad companies are increasingly seeking guidance from purportedly ‘nonpartisan’ groups claiming to be detecting and fighting online ‘disinformation.’ These same ‘disinformation’ monitors are compiling secret website blacklists and feeding them to ad companies, with the aim of defunding and shutting down disfavored speech.”

Of course, the State Department-aligned National Endowment for Democracy denies that the goal or effect is censorship. Spokeswoman Leslie Aun insisted, “NED works to advance rights and freedoms around the world and our mandate does not involve U.S. democracy.” Instead, she says, “Our grant was for targeting disinformation used by China, Russia, Iran, and other authoritarian regimes.”

“Russian disinformation” like Hunter Biden’s laptop? Or like the Steele dossier? The laptop was true, and the Leftmedia suppressed it to help Joe Biden. The dossier was blatantly fabricated, and the Leftmedia did nothing but breathlessly report it as fact to hurt Donald Trump.

Moreover, this whole arrangement is outrageously incestuous. Leftists in the State Department pay for leftists at a media “watchdog” to discredit conservatives so that leftists at ad companies won’t pay conservatives anymore and leftists at Big Tech platforms will suppress conservative reach.

The game is heavily rigged in other ways, too. A review of the ratings in GDI’s “Disinformation Risk Assessment” gives away that game. Allow us to explain.

It lists “the ten lowest-risk online news outlets,” and — lo and behold — with the exception of The Wall Street Journal, they’re all left-wing hives: (taxpayer-funded) NPR, the Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post, ProPublica, Insider, USA Today, Huffington Post, and BuzzFeed (which targeted us in 2019 and originally published the phony Steele dossier). The GDI assessment gives points for transparency of funding, editorial standards that “prevent disinformation,” and content that remains “free of divisive or demeaning language.” That’s all laughable, of course, given the track record of these organizations, which we don’t have space to recount here.

By contrast, “the ten riskiest online news outlets” are all conservative or libertarian: The New York Post (remember Hunter’s laptop?), RealClearPolitics, Reason, The Daily Wire, The Blaze, The Federalist, One America News Network, Newsmax, The American Conservative, and The Spectator. Whereas the GDI gestapo bizarrely credits the aforementioned trustworthy Leftmedia sites with showing “minimal bias,” all 10 conservative sites are hammered for bias and lack of accuracy — by which GDI means expressing opinions with which leftists disagree.

NewsGuard, the seedy establishment run by former left-wing journalists, does the exact same thing on its way to finding new and inventive ways to dishonestly and unfairly target conservatives — like your humble team here. Other left-wing gatekeeper organizations are cropping up elsewhere.

In summary, these organizations hire left-wing former journalists to look at the standards and practices of Leftmedia outfits, declare them to be the gold standard, and then rate those organizations highly for having adhered to their own rules. Conservative outlets, which exist in the first place as a counter to mainstream media bias, often don’t adhere to those same standards and openly declare their bias in order to stand against the Left. So, the leftist journalists who declared themselves gatekeepers use their purported authority to give conservatives demerits for not adhering to left-wing rules.

It’s racketeering.

Not surprisingly, “The Global Disinformation Index did not reply to several Washington Examiner requests for comment.” That’s because leftist censors assume they’re accountable to no one.

Rather than honest debate, leftists use a convoluted web of mafia-like censorship claiming “false/misleading” information to squelch debate. And, again, your tax dollars are helping George Soros’s Open Society Foundations pay for it.

“It ought to scare everybody in this country, regardless of whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, that the government is that involved in censoring speech,” said Missouri Republican Senator Eric Schmitt. “The unholy alliance between government and big tech must be dismantled.” Indeed it must.

Finally, just a friendly reminder that this is all one big reason why The Patriot Post is funded not by advertising revenue but solely by the generous support of readers like you.

Update 2/22: The Washington Times reports, “The National Endowment for Democracy, a private foundation created by Congress whose annual funding is part of the State Department budget, said it will no longer provide grants to the [Global Disinformation Index] after pushback from the right, including congressional Republicans.” The NED chalks it up to GDI doing work here in the U.S. when NED wants “to work around the world and not in the United States.”

Also, for the record, here’s how GDI defines “disinformation”: “Adversarial narratives, which are intentionally misleading; financially or ideologically motivated; and/or, aimed at fostering long-term social, political or economic conflict; and which create a risk of harm by undermining trust in science or targeting at-risk individuals or institutions.”