The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH)
Imran Ahmed founded CCDH in December 2017. He promotes himself to be an expert in unacceptable online behaviour including identity centred hate, misinformation, extremism, fake news and trolling.
He is a trustee of Victim Support and was recruited to the Steering Committee of the UK Government’s Commission on Countering Extremism Pilot Task Force in April 2020.
The CCDH has emerged as a significant player in the debate over online censorship.
At that time the organisations little known founders, Imran Ahmed and Morgan McSweeny cut their political teeth conspiring with other centralist figures in the Labour Party to destroy the political career of Jeremy Corbyn. The successful assault brought rewards ensuring their retention as advisors to Starmer and with it significant influence shaping the policies of the Labour Party.
McSweeny remained with Starmer and the newly elected Labour Government, whilst Ahmed relocated to Washington DC, the seat of power of the Biden administration. With a shared political vision he speedily established himself and his fledgling organisation in an advisory role to the President.
Ahmed, a man with a mission did not hang about and ruthlessly attacked Biden’s political opponents through the now infamous and discredited,“Disinformation Dozen” campaign.
(https://counterhate.com/research/the-disinformation-dozen/)
But activity incurs risk and opponents hit back with leaked emails revealing Ahmed’s unpublished association with and financial backing from Israeli Government officials.
Information also surfaced which showed his liaison with the Israeli’s was not new but was deeply entrenched in the organisation’s operational routine and included financing, victim targetting and assistance with information gathering and reporting.
Facebook was targeted by CCDH and forced to ban Palestinian members from posting any criticism of Israel labelling it antisemitic under the contentious IHRA definition. Ahmed delivered for Israel and silenced Palestinian solidarity movements
The CCDH continues to post financial gains confirming the guarantee of significant profits from supporting the State directed silencing of free speech and censorship.
Money makes the world go around but who is funding the CCHD
Schwab Charitable manages the financial investment portfolios of ultra wealthy clients and provides complimentary advice and services including the use of tax rewarding charitable donations through donor-advised funds (DAF’s).
Donor-advised charitable funding routed through Schwab Charitable, ensures donor privacy thus providing the means through which anonymized contributions can be given over to controversial organizations, such as the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).
Schwab Charitable, is always at or near to the top of the grant givers in the United States, collecting over $4 billion annually in contribution, releasing around $2 billion each year to charity.
The organization employs some 30 staff and pays salaries up to $800k to asset managers and executives. Other staff members are rewarded with salaries ranging between $100-150K.
Ahmed’s CCHD, receives around $1.5 million annually from the Schwab Charitable Fund.
There is increasing political concern in the US about the level of secrecy cloaking the activities of the CCHD but requests for information are being stonewalled using the charitable status as justification benefitting the Democratic Party.
McSweeney resigned from the CCDH board to become chief of staff for Labour Party leader Starmer but the CCHD retains a close working relationship with Starmers Labour Party.
Board members are closely linked to leftish progressive organizations favoured by Starmer:
Simon Clark, is a non-resident senior fellow with the Democratic establishment-aligned think tank Centre for American Progress.
Kristy McNeill, serving as (MP) for Midlothian. A member of the Labour and Co-operative Party, she is also the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland.
Johnny Oates, is a Member of the House of Lords for the Liberal Democrats party.
Ayesha Saran, who is committed to social change is a migration program manager for Cadbury Trust, an independent charitable foundation. Her work is focused on migration, inclusion, countering extremism and hate. She also serves boards of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, British Future, and Larger Us. Previous experience includes secondment from the Foreign Office working for intergovernmental organisations in policy roles and senior management, in the UK and Albania.
Game show host Rachel Riley is listed as a, “patron.
Ahmed with financial support, recognition and expansion plans in place extended the influence of CCDH bandwagon when he established an base in the US.
Ahmed and his CCDH responded to a Biden administration invitation to set up in the US and with obstacles conveniently removed carved out an influential niche in the Washington DC political swamp gaining formal recognition and registration, as a British NGO. with non profit status
With the favoured organisation status of CCDH in place Ahmed, now CEO firmly ensconced himself with a number of influential Democratic Party politicians and their supporters, including the State Department’s Global Engagement Centre and former House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA).
He was also invited to join the “Council for Responsible Social Media” a group that included on it a former CIA director, a former NSA director, and other former US military and intelligence officials.
He shared tactical plans with the influential Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), chairwoman of the antitrust subcommittee and lead officer for matters pertaining to information technology.
Only days folllowing registration CCDH launched a sustained attack on Elon Musk’s recently established social media channel”X”. Documents later revealed that CCDH officers had plotted with Democratic officials to destroy the fledgling enterprise because of its declared support of the Trump presidential campaign.
Not to be outdone Ahmed’s erstwhile friend McSweeney was tasked by Starmer to attend the Democratic National Convention where he discussed and agreed tactics for her campaign with Kamala Harris and her advisors.
He later returned to the US accompanied by a small army of around 100 Labour Party stalwarts and campaigned for Harris in many of the battleground States.
McSweeney’s support of the Democratic Party leadership did not go unnoticed by the Trump team who accused Starmer of meddling in the campaign and filed a formal complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
Ahmed piggy backs and hijacks the fears of the “Great Replacement” and expands the influence of CCDH taking in the US
The “Great Replacement” theory is a phrase first used to describe uncontrolled mass immigration into France and occupies a significant and increasing public profile being actively promoted by its proponents through social media platforms. and is weaponised by an increasing number of mainstream politicians.
Ahmed and McSweeney formed CCDH to combat what they believed to be unacceptable extremist ideology narratives on social media sites. Radically pro-censorship their non-profit organisation abhorred the “free speech” policies of a number of social media providers and actively solicited the support of left leaning politicians and their academic supporters in a crusade the successful outcome of which was designed to be the elimination of free thinking social commentary.
The relocation of CCDH to the US and political association with the Democratic Party brought with it opportunities to expand the political influence of Ahmed and the CCDH who aided the Biden administration by publishing a censorship hit-list known as the “disinformation dozen,”a group of twelve “free thinking” social media users including Robert F. Kennedy Jr, they alleged to be primary spreaders of “COVID misinformation.”
Influential activists soon rallied to the tax-exempt non-profit status organisation, including:
Cynthia Miller-Idris: A director of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Laboratory (PERIL) at American University. An organisation partnered with Google’s Jigsaw anti-extremism laboratory, which experiments with Orwellian methods of narrative control.
Research by the Foundation for Freedom Online revealed CCDH to be collaborating with Biden’s government officials and former senior officials of the US military and intelligence community including sharing joint board memberships, anti-disinformation and anti-online hate planning summits, and other activities, including:
A current US special envoy.
A contractor for DHS and the State Department.
Two former secretaries of defense.
Two former directors of the CIA.
A former director of the NSA.
A former director of Homeland Security.
Two former vice chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Two former directors of the National Security Council.
A former FCC commissioner.
A former director of National Intelligence.
CCDH had close ties to the former House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) who took a leading role in generating public panics over, “disinformation.”
CCDH worked with influential lawmakers including former Democrat head of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA)
Jenna Galper, formerly a senior communications advisor for Rep. Schiff, worked for CCDH’s policy team and promoted CCDH’s May 2022 Global Summit to “Address Online Harms and Misinformation.”
In December 2022, Rep. Schiff wrote a letter urging “X” CEO Elon Musk to combat rising “hate speech” on the platform, citing research from CCDH.
Schiff, in August 2023, along with Reps. Lori Trahan (D-MA) and Sean Casten (D-IL), sent a letter to Musk, ridiculing Musks’s lawsuit against CCDH.
In September 2024 a CCDH document cited a Schiff-sponsored bill, the “Digital Services Oversight and Safety Act,” as a bipartisan bill to strengthen transparency requirements for social media companies.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s (D-MN) an anti-Elon Musk advocate took the lead on the bulk of the left’s tech policy. Her office staff attended CCDH’s “Kill Musk’s Twitter” meetings.
Klobuchar was also the chair of the Senate Judiciary Sub-committee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights. Some say, she was the most powerful Democrat on technology policy.
In 2019 she introduced the Digital Citizenship and Media Literacy Act, establishing a censorship program at the Department of Education.
In 2021, she proposed a bill to crack down on alleged vaccine misinformation and sent a letter to CEOs referencing CCDH’s “dirty dozen” report, which noted that 12 people were most responsible for the proliferation of alleged vaccine misinformation.
An America First Legal (AFL) Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request found that the State Department’s “Global Engagement Center” (GEC) encouraged federal employees at the State Department to pay attention to CCDH’s work, and revealed that the CCDH was directly briefing White House officials.
The CCDH increased contacts with the State Department. An invite only CCDH gala in Washington, D.C. included an invitation for Erica Mindel, an employee of the consultancy firm, “Guidehouse” seconded to the State Departmen as a “Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism.”
“Guidehouse” also had $2.6 million contract to provide “misinformation, disinformation, and mal-information analysis,” for the “Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
Ahmed participated in the activities of the “Council for a Responsible Social Media”, a bipartisan group that aimed to influence social media content policy. It membership included major national security officials, namely:
Leon Panetta, former Secretary of Defense, director of the CIA, White House chief of staff.
Congressman Bill Owens, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and US Navy.
Admiral, Michael Rogers, former director of the National Security Agency (NSA).
US Navy Admiral, Nicole Tisdale, former director of the National Security Council.
Tom Wheeler, former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), who led the Obama-era net neutrality regulations through the agency.
R.P. Eddy, CEO of Ergo and former director of the White House National Security Council.
caltonjock 