Have you noticed the narrative around “disinformation” changing recently?

In his new, self-styled outlet Racket News, Twitter Files journalist Matt Taibbi examines three, interrelated streams of activity by the U.S. government, private consultants, and social media giants from 2015 to the present that – taken jointly – paint a troubling picture of efforts to “de-platform” voices it smeared at suspicious.

This analysis provides a new context in which to consider Sen. Angus King’s campaign reaching out to Twitter in 2018 to provide an “enemies list” of hundreds of “suspicious” accounts, many of which were Mainers and supporters of King’s opponent, State Sen. Eric Brakey (R-Androscoggin), in that year’s election.

By the time King’s campaign did it, conspiring with social media firms to blacklist, de-platform, and smear political critics had become a cultural norm within the Washington-Palo Alto circuit.

In his reporting Thursday, Taibbi looked at the Global Engagement Center (GEC), an internal sub-agency within the State Department created under the Obama administration. The U.S. developed the GEC as a tool for better monitoring what the rest of the world says about us and correcting misperceptions. But what began as Uncle Sam’s PR firm morphed into an information weapon used by the political establishment against its enemies.

Following the election of Donald Trump in 2016, GEC’s focus shifted from Islamic extremism to “fighting disinformation.” A new breed of “disinformation warriors” was born – young people with minimal world experience who were somehow able to make calls about what was probable Russian interference, or – once that chestnut had been played for well more than it was worth – domestic extremists.

There were, for example, GEC-funded activities The Maine Wire reported on last month that commingled financing with left-wing billionaire philanthropist George Soros’ Open Society Institute to create a “Disinformation Index” that included a number of prominent conservative news sites in the U.S.

Taibbi’s report shows how a diverse array of interests…