Where We Are Now

No one wants to find oneself in an information war. But when it happens, over the long term, history shows that there is an undisputed champion: the truth. Four years ago, a major war began as nearly all  governments in the world built a bonfire for science, wisdom born of experience, limits on power, human rationality, free speech, rights, and liberties generally. 

Most of life since those days has been about the coverup. That has involved strange denials, redactions, data burns, communication deletes, limited hangouts, sock puppets, switchboarding between cutouts, favor call-ins, and every clever trick in the art of war to confound, confuse, and conspire – all in the interest of keeping the public in the dark. 

The good guys in this struggle only have one source of power: the ability to speak truth. It so happens that this method, while it certainly invites the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, is the most powerful one of all. That’s because truth is infinitely reproducible. It needs only to find ears to hear to contribute mightily toward ending the corruption and restoring what we’ve lost. 

It so happens that we are in an upswing period in terms of victories for the causes that are at the core of who Brownstone is as an institution. Because too often the fullness of our activities is not known – many people think Brownstone is just a website with great articles – we thought we would explain. 

In mid-March, on the four-year anniversary of the lockdowns, many of us were at the Supreme Court, both inside the courtroom and also on the sidewalk outside at the rally. At issue were our fundamental rights to free speech, guaranteed by the First Amendment. To our great alarm, we found evidence in the oral arguments that a third of the court doesn’t seem to understand much less believe in what is called free speech. Another third of them seem confused. The final third is with the cause completely and ready to upload the injunction against government agencies to stop them from working with universities and other third parties to further ruin the Internet as we know it. 

That was not good news but what happened after was wonderful. Having the Supreme Court just hear the case, merely being on the court docket and having the arguments made public, unleashed a huge torrent of news stories. Many top writers and commentators who had previously ignored the case became interested. Brownstone voices flooded the media with more articles and evidence concerning the problem. It became a massive topic of public debate. 

This is absolutely not what the censors wanted. They built their machinery in secret over many years, deploying it fully from 2020 onwards. They never wanted to be noticed and certainly did not want this debated. And yet there it was for the world to see. It became so extreme that the program called 60 Minutes slapped together a propaganda piece valorizing one of the topic censors working at the University of Washington, without pointing out that she also works for the government’s censorship offices as part of the Department of Homeland Security. 

Representative Jim Jordan jumped in to defend the right and true but of course the interview was chopped up to make him look a bit lost, exactly as we would expect. 

But that too backfired, as social media blew up with digital rotten eggs being tossed at 60 Minutes and the censor in question. No longer can they get away with these kinds of smears and propaganda. Much of the reason is that Elon Musk bought Twitter and turned it into X which now provides a means of countering the nonsense, broadcasting many podcasters who took apart 60 Minutes and many other corporate outlets that defend the censors. 

In other words, we have them on the run at least in terms of public messaging. This is precisely what we hoped. In this way, regardless of how the court case turns out – and it truly could go either way – we seemed to have gained some momentum in the right direction concerning public opinion. And that is essential regardless of what the law and courts say. 

Here is a case in which we have a brief window in time to weigh against the real goal. What is it? Based on all the evidence, the goal is the complete control of all information streams via digital technology. It’s strange how close they came to that until many people figured it out and started pushing the other direction, among them Brownstone.org and our 20 Internet properties. Despite all the throttling and attacks, we managed millions of readers in many different venues. So long as we have that, and so long as the censors do not finally succeed, we will stay at it. 

Much of the deeper research and writing here is being done by our Censorship Working Group, which meets regularly to share information and work on strategy, resources, and messaging. We’ve found that these smaller working groups have been extremely effective in inspiring productivity and quality in various subject areas. 

Another working group we have concerns pandemic planning and the World Health Organization in particular. In these efforts, we have partnered with Leeds University in the UK in order to take advantage of large databases and other resources. This team, known as REPPARE, has produced huge reports on the factual claims of the WHO and others and found them to be non-factual. These reports have gained the attention of many officials the world over and been reported in the Wall Street Journal. 

Working with only a handful of other experts, this team has served as one of the world’s only counterweights to the push for global government power to lock down whole populations. This is an incredibly serious threat, as we should know from very recent experience. It must be stopped if anything resembling freedom is going to stand a chance. 

A third working group concerns money and finance and the global drive for central bank digital currencies. The timeline on this plan keeps moving closer and yet there are ways in which our own work is pushing it further away. It has only recently become a major point of political controversy, such that Ron DeSantis, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Donald Trump have all sounded the alarm. Here again is another massively important topic about which hardly anyone knew anything a year ago but which has become a point of public controversy. 

In each of these cases, the goal and strategy is the same: shine the light of truth on the nefarious plans and actions. That light has more cleansing power than all the elections and court judgments, as much as those help. And this is precisely what we attempt daily with our editorial program, which pushes out three articles each weekday and three more on the weekends for a total of 70-plus pieces per month, or a book every thirty days. 

Truly that’s some powerful publishing. In addition, we inspire reprints the world over in all major languages, to which our site translates in real time, in addition to offering audio of everything in English. Many of these articles appear in huge venues like Zerohedge and Epoch Times, along with well-produced interviews and podcasts with the authors. 

In addition, we have indeed published ten books in a mere two and a half years, groundbreaking books that would otherwise not see the light of day because they would be buried in academic libraries or otherwise lost in the commercial thicket that grinds serious literature into consumable pleasantries to feed prevailing biases.

All of the above doesn’t address what is easily our main activity, which is granting fellowships to scholars, journalists, attorneys, and others who face professional disruption due to their writing. As you know, there is an ongoing purge of journalism and academics as part of the censorship campaign. The goal is to cleanse all information sources of dissident voices. Even from the very outset Brownstone dedicated itself to this mission. We’ve so far supported some 20 massive voices, each with a story of tragedy and triumph. We don’t tell the details of these cases publicly simply as a matter of discretion and respect for privacy but they are all remarkable. 

One such case occurred this past week. Dr. Kulvinder Kaur Gill of the Toronto area had come to our first annual conference and gala in 2021 and became inspired to oppose the lockdowns and then forced masking and jabs of the government. That landed her in huge trouble with the media, the medical association, and the government. She has been fighting to gain back her reputation and pediatric practice ever since. Last week it emerged that courts imposed on her a seemingly unpayable fine of $300K due in 7 days. 

She gave a call with a desperate sense of what could come next. Her home was threatened with repossession and she faced total bankruptcy. Following that contact, our network became seriously activated with interviews and articles plus a fundraising campaign that ended up raising $200K in a matter of days, if you can imagine it. Then Elon Musk got involved, promising to make up the difference and fund her court appeal no matter what, all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. 

The whole experience unfolded like a modern-day miracle of faith, hope, and generosity. 

We are currently hoping to raise the funds to put her on fellowship. In addition to Kulvinder, several other outstanding cases are awaiting funding that we cannot yet provide due to the limits of resources. We hope that can change. 

As part of the fellowship program, we also run private retreats for scholars, Fellows, and others. They are three-day sessions of information-sharing among experts to create a university-style environment that no longer exists but is absolutely essential for research and social support. Reflecting on the productivity and value of these, many agree that this might be the most significant program that Brownstone backs. 

Indeed, we are holding our first retreat for writers, creators, and scholars in Europe next month, with most every European country sending a representative. It is being held on the coast outside of Barcelona. These programs are expensive but not as much as one might think, given the output. We are also excited to introduce Brownstone-style thinking to a group of European intellectuals who have a proven record of standing up for principle when it matters most. 

Finally, we have our monthly supper club, which is now on its 34th monthly, and consistently selling all tickets for each meeting with a waiting list to get in. There is always an exuberant feel of coming home when it begins at 5:30pm and people stay so long as the restaurant stays open. We pack in 100 people for talks on medicine, health, media, tech, and a variety of other issues. People drive very long distances to get there! 

It’s all part of the driving ethos: sincerity of purpose, rigor of argument and research, broadness of spirit, and the desire to put the revelation of truth ahead of ideological bromides and browbeating. That might seem obvious but oddly, it is rare in research journalism today, especially in the current partisan environment. 

The influence of this work has been extremely broad and deep throughout the world. And keep in mind, we were only founded in May 2021 and still only have the tiniest of staff, with a budget that is a miniscule fraction of what major think tanks in Washington and elsewhere spend every year, to say nothing of the Gates Foundation and government agencies. The experience absolutely proves that one dedicated group of people can do so much with just a little. 

Thank you for being part of this amazing moment in history and for your own faith in our work and your generosity. We hope you have appreciated this “inside look” at the depth of our work, and we would be honored with your continued support. Please know of our gratitude for all you have done thus far. 

P.S. There are some immediate needs we would like to meet, including these new fellowships and organizing some more retreats. Please consider a generous gift now to help offset costs of these extra programs. If we can raise this now, we can greenlight these fellowships immediately. Regardless, please know of our appreciation of you as a reader and sharer of our content. It’s all we have to make it through this difficult period.