By Jo Nova
One of the most extraordinary interviews I’ve ever heard. Take everything you thought you knew …
Tucker Carlson talks to Mike Benz who worked in the cyber portfolio at the US State Department. He calmly lays out the dark power of the US intelligence network. This is the inside story of how and why the military industrial censorship complex grew in the last thirty years.
It’s obviously hard to confirm what he says, but we already know Twitter and Facebook were effectively acting as arms of the US government. We’ve got the emails showing they were colluding with US state agencies and the legacy media on a daily basis to cover up government failures and corruption, and to censor Americans. We know the CIA withheld a report on China because it might have helped Donald Trump, and we know the CIA has been feeding the media “misinformation” for 50 years because another insider told us so.
Mike Benz seems to be able to explain so many details on the forces that shaped history.
At first the agencies liked free speech
In 1991 the apparatus of the US State thought the internet and free speech was a great tool. It made it easier to fuel revolutions in foreign countries and overturn inconvenient governments. And so the CIA worked out that if they controlled the social media and legacy media in “problem” countries they could put sympathetic governments into place. It was cheaper than sending in tanks. Thus a giant specialist program of expertise in censorship grew in order to control elections.
Given that this foreign interference was unprincipled, being undemocratic and anti-free speech, it is no surprise that a generation later the same expertise would morph into a malignant agency (or two) used against “Americans who threatened democracy”.
Then they started to fear the rise of the populist right
By 2016 the internet was vastly more mature and influential. Instead of being a tool of the intel agencies it was a tool of the masses, and they were voting the wrong way. The spooks could not “pull a story” by leaning on one editor, or asking friends at Facebook to de-amplify a meme.
Then Brexit lit a fire in the intelligence world — they feared France, Spain and Italy would also leave, the whole EU would disintegrate and worst of all, NATO and the “rules based international order would collapse” (which is another way of saying these meddling people would lose their jobs, their grants and their power). Then of course, months later, Mr Trump was unexpectedly elected, and the world teetered on the edge of functional democracy. A disaster…
Ep. 75 The national security state is the main driver of censorship and election interference in the United States. “What I’m describing is military rule,” says Mike Benz. “It’s the inversion of democracy.” pic.twitter.com/hDTEjAf89T
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) February 16, 2024
There is a transcript which is 29 pages for people who don’t like to watch — but Benz is an exceptional speaker — cutting to the point, without wasting time. It makes a great podcast converted into mp3.
Notice here, in his list of the great fears of the intelligence agencies — the point of NATO is to be the army, essentially, of the global bankers.
- Brexit would give rise to “Frexit” in France with Marine Le Pen, to “Spexit” in Spain with a Vox party, to “Italexit” in Italy, to “Grexit” in Germany, to “Grexit” in Greece.
- The EU would come apart so NATO would be killed without a single bullet being fired.
- And then, not only that, now that NATO is gone, now there’s no enforcement arm for the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, or the world Bank.
- So now, the financial stakeholders who depend on the battering ram of the national security state would basically be helpless against governments around the world.
They have redefined democracy
Instead of the “will of the voters” — they are trying to define democracy as the infrastructure and the institutions of democracy. So anything that threatens “trust” in the institutions is a threat to democracy. See how this works? If you criticize mail-in-voting you are undermining elections. If you criticize your rulers you are a cybercriminal, a terrorist.
Mike Benz runs an organisation now called Foundation for Freedom Online
h/t David E. also Ed Dowd, and Richard C (NZ)
Art by Mohammed Hassan