Yesterday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced—
On X, the US Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy revealed that one of the five sanctioned individuals was Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center of Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).
The CCDH was founded in the UK, but is currently registered as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in the US. Ahmed, who was a campaigner for the UK Labour Party before founding the CCDH, reportedly resides in the US and runs the CCDH from its Washington DC office.
View: https://x.com/UnderSecPD/status/2003567950541058394
The CCDH’s Censorship Campaign
During Ahmed’s leadership, the CCDH has long attempted to deplatform and censor incels.
Back in 2022, the CCDH published a report titled, “The Incelosphere”. As part of a campaign tied to this report, the CCDH and a host of other nonprofits petitioned YouTube to remove incel channels, Google to derank our forums in searches related to body image or suicide, Cloudflare to cease providing services to us, and Twitter (now X) to shut down our account. This report prompted a wave of hysterical reporting on mainstream news outlets, and caused a group of Democratic officials—led by Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA)—to write to Alphabet to intimidate them into “crack[ing] down on dangerous incel content”.
Thankfully, YouTube, Google, Cloudflare, and Twitter did virtually none of these things. It is no surprise that the following year, at the Eradicate Hate Summit 2023 in Pittsburgh, Imran Ahmed suggested repealing Section 230, which would open the floodgates of litigation against, and quite possibly bankrupt, American tech companies, for a myriad of so-called “online harms”. Thankfully, that didn’t happen.
And earlier this year, the CCDH published a second report, this time focusing on Incels.is’ response to the Netflix propaganda show, Adolescence. There, the CCDH vaguely called for “urgent and coordinated action from policymakers, technology platforms, and parents to address the growing threat posed by incel ideology”.
The CCDH’s actions go far beyond targeting incels, of course. Leaked documents from the CCDH listed “kill Musk’s Twitter” and “trigger EU and UK regulatory action” as part of the organization’s annual priorities.
What Exactly was the CCDH’s Playbook?
Let’s start with the obvious: The First Amendment protects the vast majority of incel speech from government sanction. Any attempt by a state legislature or by Congress to criminalise “hate speech”, or to penalise tech companies and incel websites for hosting “hate speech”, would be blatantly unconstitutional, and would not survive judicial review.
Knowing this, radical left-wing nonprofits on both sides of the Atlantic have pressured tech companies to voluntarily censor incel speech (which is well within their right to do so as private companies). And for several years, much of Big Tech did their bidding. But much of Big Tech has gradually lost their appetite as their in-house legal teams realised that caving in only emboldened these nonprofits to make further and further demands. Arguably, the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk was the final nail in the coffin for such efforts.
That’s the reason these nonprofits turned to lobbying foreign governments to impose regulations on American tech companies, which in turn would give these governments leverage to demand censorship, under threat of heavy fines. In other words, radical leftists attempted to import a censorship regime into the United States because U.S. law wouldn’t allow them to censor their opponents.
The CCDH is—or was—perhaps the most bizarrely odious example of this dynamic. A British man moved to America, was upset by a website owned and operated by an American for speech that is perfectly legal under American law, so he invited his own government (and several other foreign governments) to censor the speech of his host country’s citizens. And in a memo to his staffers, he tells them to “kill” one of his host country’s most valuable tech companies. Talk about a rude house guest!
The Canceller becomes the Cancelled
Secretary Rubio’s order revoking Ahmed’s visa effectively means that he must immediately leave the United States. If Ahmed does not, ICE may initiate removal proceedings, and he will be detained and deported.
Incels.is applauds the decisive action taken by the United States Government to safeguard online free speech. This is an excellent first step that should have been taken months earlier—but better late than never.
However, Incels.is remains concerned that visa sanctions alone may be insufficient to safeguard American interests. It is likely that the CCDH will find another stooge to replace Ahmed, and/or that Ahmed will simply run the nonprofit from London and issue directives to US-based staffers.
If necessary, the US Department of State should consider the imposition of even more severe sanctions, such as those under the Global Magnitsky Act. This would prevent US entities from engaging in financial transactions with Ahmed and disrupt his ability to fundraise. Furthermore, financial sanctions would deter other radical left-wing nonprofits from attempting to intimidate American tech companies, and embolden American tech companies to stand firm in the face of such intimidation.
Good riddance!
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