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Joe Rogan recently had former US Department of State official Mike Benz as a guest in the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. Benz is the current executive director of the Foundation For Freedom Online, a watchdog organization dedicated to free speech and restoring a free and open internet.
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One of the interesting topics Benz touched on is former Barack Obama administration Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Richard Stengel, whom he now refers to as a proponent of unjust censorship on the internet.
On Stengel's work with the US State Department during the height of ISIS between 2014 and 2016, Benz said:
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"So this idea that ISIS was recruiting on Facebook and Twitter [now X] gave a license to the State Department to create this thing called the 'Global Engagement Center', which really was the first official cencorship capacity in the US government... That was 2014 to 2016. Set up by this guy Rick [Richard] Stengel who described himself as [Barack] Obama's 'Propagandist chief'. He is now on the advisory board of Newsguard, one of the largest cencorship mercenary firms in the world."
Benz continued:
"He described himself as a free-speech maximalist. Because before he started this, he was the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, he started this cencorship center. He was the former managing editor of TIME Magazine... He used to be a free-speech maximalist back when he was still in the media... But when [Donald] Trump won the election in 2016, he became convinced that, 'Actually, the first amendment was a mistake'".
Listen more to Mike Benz talk to Joe Rogan below (16:57):
Mike Benz explains to Joe Rogan about the origins of the censorship industry in the US
The podcast opened up with Joe Rogan joking that he wishes Mike Benz didn't exist due to the alarming things the former State Department official knows regarding US government censorship - although he's glad that Benz is around. Rogan then asked when the US government gets actively involved in internet censorship.
Benz answered (via Joe Rogan Experience, 2:07):
"It started in 2014 with the Ukraine fiasco - the coup and then the counter-coup. The coup was great for internet free speech. You really need to start the story of internet censorship with the story of internet freedom because promotion of cencorship is sort of the flip side of promotion of free speech. And we've had this free-speech government, diplomatic role for 80 years now."
Benz added:
"So we already had this sort of deep interplay between government, tech companies, universties, NGOs that dates back 80 years...promoting this free speech. But what happened was in 2014, we have had about 25 years of successful free speech diplomacy and then we tried to overthrow the government Ukraine."
Benz then further explained to Joe Rogan how the social divide that happened in Eastern Ukraine due to the US overthrowing their government led to media manipulation and censorship in the region.
