"In his Tucker interview, Mike Benz didn’t tell us anything about any new problem. He ably revealed a slow-motion disaster unfolding for a long time. The CIA’s dirty tricks only metastasized and took on a new form, responding to the new environment of social media and the Internet. “Conspiracy theorists” have been complaining for decades about media’s capture by government (see, e.g. ‘Project Mockingbird’) but there has never been any collective will to resist, change, or even admit there was a problem.
Probably because it didn’t seem to really affect regular folks. Well, that’s changed, hasn’t it?
It’s changed a lot. You have to work awfully hard to believe nobody’s doing anything. Now there’s a major Supreme Court case that is right on point (Missouri v. Biden). There’s relentless disclosure of Deep State’s dirty tricks like Tucker’s interview. There are citizens like Mike Benz and Joe Rogan and Elon Musk who are well-funded and working day and night to expose them.
And there is a growing group of millions of highly-concerned citizens who are not just willing to listen but are eager to learn. As of this morning, Tucker’s Mike Benz interview has nearly 25 million views. Tucker’s interview with Putin has surpassed 200 million views. Like antibodies assembling to resist a marxist mind virus, the culture is changing."
I am definitely with Yasha LevineSent from my iPad--On Sun, Feb 18, 2024 at 4:23 PM Raymond L McGovern via Salon <salon@listserve.com> wrote:Graham Fuller is right, in my opinion. rayOn Sun, Feb 18, 2024 at 3:36 PM Warren Coats via Salon <salon@listserve.com> wrote:--More on Carlson Benz interview Jonathan Rauch offered the comments below.Warren Coats
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Begin forwarded message:From: Jonathan Rauch <JRAUCH@brookings.edu>Subject: RE: [Salon] Tucker Carlson on X: "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 democracyDate: February 18, 2024 at 2:58:25 PM ESTTo: Warren Coats <wcoats@gmail.com>Thanks. I probably won’t have time to play this through for a while, but from a skim of the transcript, I’d say it lacks credibility. There’s no government plot to censor the internet, and the government couldn’t do that if it tried. Benz, Shellenberger, et al. have been dishonest in their attacks on Renee DiResta (e.g. that she’s connected to the CIA), the Stanford Internet Observatory (that it’s a cut-out for the USG), etc. The New Yorker had an article a few months ago about this campaign to create a conspiracy narrative about internet censorship. Might be worth a look. Also, this.Government communication with social media companies is legit but should be done in a transparent, procedurally regular way, instead of via jawboning. So that needs to be fixed. Content moderation (“gatekeeping”) is unavoidable for media companies and unavoidably controversial, and that’s just a hard problem. But there’s no grand conspiracy.FWIW.From: Warren Coats <wcoats@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, February 18, 2024 10:30 AM
To: Jonathan Rauch <JRAUCH@brookings.edu>
Subject: Fwd: [Salon] Tucker Carlson on X: "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 democracyJonathan,What do you think of this?
Begin forwarded message:From: Chas Freeman via Salon <salon@listserve.com>
Date: February 17, 2024 at 9:08:15 PM EST
To: graham <bozorgg@aol.com>
Cc: salon@listserve.com
Subject: Re: [Salon] Tucker Carlson on X: "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
Reply-To: Chas Freeman <cwfresidence@gmail.com>This is a major story and I think it will have large legs. It explains so much about what is now wrong with our democracy. I note that Carlson's interview with Putin appears to have achieved 1 billion views. This interview will be of far greater interest to Americans than to foreign audiences, many of which now regard us as evil and will, if they bother to view this at all, see it as corroborating their worst evaluations of our manipulation of both our own politics and the politics of other countries.ChasOn Sat, Feb 17, 2024 at 8:57 PM graham <bozorgg@aol.com> wrote:Hi Chas, don't know if you had a chance to listen to this whole thing, but I found it simply extraordinary. Dynamite. From things I know from here and there over the years both in the agency and later in Washington it rings very true I found very little of the conspiracy mentality in the interviewee, it has huge explanatory power for some of my perplexity at the sweeping scope of US domination of the western narrative on Ukraine and other issues.Do you yourself take this guys story seriously? Will it have legs, or simply be stifled?Graham
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