Mike Benz, a former State Department official, argues that over the decades since World War II the U.S. has developed a huge intelligence system to spy and spread propaganda and influence elections in foreign countries. In about 2016 the U.S. government converted these intelligence systems elections to spy and censor and manipulate elections right here in the U.S. (Clarice Feldman already reviewed here Tucker Carlson’s interview of Mike Benz published on February 16, 2024 on the question of our national security state.)

I will be referring to the interview transcript at Happyscribe.com.

The idea that the government is spying on us right here at home would be nothing but a conspiracy theory but for The Twitter Files. If nothing else, Matt Taibbi & Co. clearly showed that the intelligence community was directing traffic during the late COVID unpleasantness through direct communication with social media companies and the disinformation/misinformation/malinformation ideology of the nation’s Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency.

Benz told Tucker that the U.S. has been rigging foreign elections since we stopped the Italian Communist Party from winning the Italian elections of 1948 with a spot of ballot-box stuffing. Eventually we graduated to the “color revolutions” that changed governments in Yugoslavia, Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, and the Arab Spring. Says Wikipedia:

[C]ritics have accused the United States of orchestrating these revolutions to expand its influence.

No, no, no. It was all about Democracy! Mike Benz:

So you had the systematic targeting by our State department, by our IC, by the Pentagon, of groups like Germany's AfD, the alternative for Deutschland there, and for groups in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania.

Then came Brexit in June 2016, and within a month NATO changed its policy from tank warfare to information warfare. NATO?

[Because] the entire rules based international order would collapse unless the military took control over media, because Brexit would give rise to Brexit in France with Marine Le Pen, to spexit in Spain with the Vox party, to Italy. Exit in Italy to Gregson in Germany to Grexit in Greece.

And Trump Russia here at home!

Let’s say it again. Back in the day the national security state was busy defending democracy from authoritarians around the world. Then in 2016 the government turned around the entire intelligence apparatus to protect Our Democracy from the authoritarian Trump right here at home.

Saving democracy. Benz again:

Where they took all of this censorship architecture spanning DHS, the FBI, the CIA, the DoD, the DoJ, and then the thousands of government-funded NGO and private sector mercenary firms were all basically transited from a foreign predicate, a Russian disinformation predicate to a democracy predicate, by saying that disinformation is not just a threat when it comes from the Russians, it's actually an intrinsic threat to democracy itself.

I have to admire the execution of The Predicate Shuffle, from the Russian predicate to the democracy predicate, “saying that disinformation is… an intrinsic threat to democracy itself.” Just in time to curate the election of 2020.

Oh, by the way, there’s Google.

Google began as a DARPA grant by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were Stanford PhDs, and they got their funding as part of a joint CIA NSA program to chart how, quote, birds of a feather flock together online through search engine aggregation.

And Google Maps got its start “by purchasing… CIA satellite software.” But there is no mention of the CIA or DARPA at about.Google or Wikipedia. So, is it true?

I went and looked at my blog on the Benz interview and I saw that I missed a key point. It’s not just Trump. It’s the entire populist nationalist movement that has to be stopped.

Because? You can understand the point of view of the global ruling class. Populist nationalism overthrows the whole post-WWII American/West European regime, the world that makes its pilgrimage every year, borne on the wings of private jets, up the Magic Mountain to hear prophecies from the Oracle of Klaus at the Temple of Davos about liberal democracy and the global order. The only thing missing is the Corinthian columns.

It all leads me to think again about January 6. For sure, Nancy Pelosi and the Capitol Police didn’t have a clue how to fake up an “insurrection.” But I am sure that the Intelligence Community and the IC-adjacent NGOs, with skills honed from dozens of color revolutions and ballot-box stuffing successes, were up to the mark.

These people believe that they spent the last century saving civilization. First they saved us from the Kaiser, then they saved us from Hitler. Then they saved us from the Soviets. And now they are going to save us from the far-right populists.

They know that populist nationalism will take us back to the Dark Ages. And they know that they have to stop it.

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.

Image: Wannapick Studio