The Hydra Of Government: How The Global Engagement Center Lives On Through Rebranding

Authored by Roger Kimball via American Greatness,

If you visit the State Department’s website for the Global Engagement Center, you will read that “The Global Engagement Center closed on December 23, 2024.”

Not really.

As has been often observed, the nearest thing to immortality this side of the pearly gates is a government initiative. I have noted in this space and elsewhere that the innocuous-sounding “Global Engagement Center” was actually (in Vivek Ramaswamy’s accurate summary) a “key node of the censorship industrial complex.” According to its mission statement, the GEC was supposed to be focused on “foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining or influencing the policies, security, or stability of the United States, its allies, and partner nations.” I thoughtfully added the italics to the word “foreign.”

The point is that the GEC—like the State Department as a whole (like, indeed, the CIA and the rest of the alphabet soup that makes up our “intelligence” services tout court)—is supposed to be focused outward: on foreign threats. Thanks in part to reporting by people like Matt Taibbi, we know that much of our government has been weaponized against the American people, at least against those of whom the regime disapproves. On issues ranging from COVID to Hunter Biden’s laptop, Taibbi has shown that “every corner of government”—“the FBI, DHS, HHS, DOD, . . . even the CIA”—has leaned on virtually all social and traditional media companies to toe the approved government line. The GEC has played a small but not insignificant role in this clandestine effort to monitor opinion and suppress entities and individuals emitting “Wrongthink” (what George Orwell called “Crimethink”).

Item: Because the GEC could not operate against Americans directly, it did so indirectly by funding entities like the British-based Global Disinformation Index, which compiled a list of publications and individuals that said things the regime did not like. That list was consulted by advertisers wary of winding up on the wrong side of the government. The Washington Examiner made the list. So did RealClearPolitics, Reason, The New York Post, Blaze Media, the Daily Wire, the Federalist, the American Conservative, Newsmax, and many conservative entities. Result? Millions of dollars of ad revenue dried up, imperiling the future of those outlets.

Funding for the GEC was in the original 1500-page obscenity that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson had the temerity to bring to his colleagues as a “continuing resolution” last month. That monstrosity instantly drew some portion of the contempt and ridicule it deserved, not least from Elon Musk, whose fingers got a workout on the platform formerly known as Twitter. A 120-page, slimmed-down version of the bill was hastily cobbled together minus the GEC funding and other objectionable features (a raise for the legislators, for example). That passed, and so a putative “government shutdown” was avoided.

There was modified joy over this seeming victory. The fact that funding for the GEC was cut was one of the principal goads to celebration. Here at last was proof that a bad government activity could actually be zeroed out. No money, no activity.

But the joy was short-lived. Deploying a pragmatic version of the Juliet Principle (“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”), the deep staters in the State Department just cooked up a new name.

Allow me to introduce you to the “Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Hub,” a polysyllabic, “rebranded” version of the GEC. Many of the people employed by the GEC are now employed by the new “hub.” They’ll need new business cards, stationery, and signs for their offices. Doubtless, there will be other expenses. But since much of the GEC’s budget has been “realigned” to the new shop, that won’t be a problem.

That’s not the end of the story. Donald Trump takes office in two weeks.

As The New York Post reported, news about the rebranding of the GEC has sparked outrage. Said one GOP aide, Trump and incoming Secretary of State Marco Rubio will have “to track every single office, down to every single staffer, if they want to end the weaponization of the federal government against conservatives.”

The question remains: will that happen? How serious is Donald Trump about rooting out the ideologically driven waste in government? How serious is he about reining in the surveillance apparat of the deep state, about surfacing the deep state as a destroyer surfaces an enemy submarine?

The truth is that we do not know. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have made a splash with DOGE, the “Department of Government Efficiency.” Will they actually be able to accomplish much? At first, I thought the news that the GEC had been zeroed out and shuttered was proof that DOGE could actually make a difference.

News that they were instantly reconstituted under a different name gives me pause. What if the National Endowment for the Arts and other left-wing playgrounds are zeroed out but then rebranded under other names? Not “The National Endowment for the Arts” but “The Creative Center for Gender, Equity, and Narcissistic Self-Indulgence.” Not the “Department of Education” but “The Department of Reeducation.” Will it be the same thing under different names?

That brings me to the big question facing the republic as we await Donald Trump’s second term. Among Trump’s supporters, there has been a lot of justified euphoria. There has also been a lot of talk about a “vibe shift,” a change in the Zeitgeist in the culture at large, as more and more Trump skeptics become former Trump skeptics and embrace the MAGA agenda. All of that is encouraging. But now for the hard part: moving from talking the talk to walking the talk. It may well be that the woke consensus that has gripped the culture like a boa constrictor is disintegrating. Maybe what just happened with the GEC is just the twitching of a dead or dying animal, the anatomized frogs’ legs of an exploded ideology.

But we don’t know yet what will happen. Hercules, when he set out to kill the Lernean Hydra, found the beast surprisingly robust. It was not enough to smash its many heads. Hercules had to enlist the services of his nephew Iolaus to cauterize each stump with a torch; otherwise, two new heads would burst forth to take the place of the one that was destroyed.

We know how to decapitate the hydra-like monstrosity that is the woke-inspired administrative state. Completely defund its activities. I believe Donald Trump has the gumption to do that. We will know within days of his taking office whether he does.

But even if he comes riding into Dodge with a satchel of world-changing executive orders, the regenerative powers of Leviathan are awesome. Trump will need to find a way to let Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy be like Hercules and Iolaus. He will, in fact, need a battalion of such crusaders. Let’s see if they appear.