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Operatives erode First Amendment to censor you

Mike Benz says Rick Stengel is a prime example (Updated 3/24/24)

Foundation for Freedom Online director Mike Benz tells Tucker Carlson about stifling Americans’ speech (video above at 8:30):

The two most censored events in human history, I would argue, are the 2020 election and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Why would anyone want to censor people questioning these issues?

It’s because the election was thrown to Biden, say critics, to implement a large scale border invasion and injection campaign, both aimed at wiping out primarily White Americans and stealing their businesses and property.

If Covid injections and the migrant invasions of Europe and America are run by [redacted] military intelligence as claimed by a whistleblower scientist and a journalist, respectively, then media censorship of these issues, including on social media, is surely also controlled by the same group.

They don’t want people looking too closely at mail-in ballots, voting machine software, Covid’s manmade origins, what’s in the shots, or how many people have been injured or killed by them, notes Benz.

So they censor you and control much of the opposition.


Rick Stengel’s censorship role

Tucker Carlson (at 0:00):

Can you give us an example of how it happens — just pick one among countless examples — of how the national security state lies to the population and censors the truth in real life?

Mike Benz:

Yeah, we have this State Department outfit called the Global Engagement Center, which was created by a guy named Rick Stengel, who described himself as Obama's propagandist in chief.

He was the Undersecretary for Public Affairs, which is essentially the liaison office role between the State Department and the mainstream media.

So this is basically the exact nexus where government talking points about war or diplomacy or statecraft get synchronized with mainstream media

Carlson:

May I add something to that? I know Rick Stengel. He was at one point a journalist.

And Rick Stengel has made public arguments against the First Amendment and against free speech.

Benz:

Yeah, he wrote a whole book on it, and he published an op-ed in 2019.

And he made the argument that essentially the Constitution was not prepared for the Internet, and we need to get rid of the First Amendment accordingly.

He described himself as a free speech absolutist when he was the managing editor of Time magazine.

And even when he was in the State Department under Obama, he started something called the Global Engagement Center which was the first government censorship operation within the federal government.

But it was foreign facing, so it was “okay.”




Stengel was a member of Joe Biden’s presidential transition Agency Review Team to support transition efforts related to the U.S. Agency for Global Media.

And as President Obama's Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs from 2014 to 2016, Stengel was required to take this oath:

I, Richard Stengel, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

Yet Stengel has long argued the First Amendment should be abolished so Americans’ speech can be muzzled by the government.

In other words, he apparently violated his oath to support and defend the Constitution.

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In a 2020 National Review article, David Harsanyi wrote:

Considering Stengel’s animosity towards free expression this seems quite a poor fit. You might remember his infamous 2011 Time cover piece, featuring a picture of the Constitution with the headline “Does It Still Matter?”

In it he argued:

We can pat ourselves on the back about the past 223 years, but we cannot let the Constitution become an obstacle to the U.S.’s moving into the future with a sensible health care system, a globalized economy, an evolving sense of civil and political rights. The Constitution does not protect our spirit of liberty; our spirit of liberty protects the Constitution. The Constitution serves the nation; the nation does not serve the Constitution.

This malleable view of foundational law, one that allows partisans to reimagine the Constitution in any way that suits them, is pretty popular these days. It is, in essence, an acknowledgment that the contemporary left-wing can’t function under traditional American principles.

Stengel went even further, arguing in a 2019 Washington Post op-ed that the state should begin policing speech:

But as a government official traveling around the world championing the virtues of free speech, I came to see how our First Amendment standard is an outlier. Even the most sophisticated Arab diplomats that I dealt with did not understand why the First Amendment allows someone to burn a Koran. Why, they asked me, would you ever want to protect that?

Even sophisticated diplomats from Middle East theocracies and autocracies can’t wrap their minds around the principles of free expression! So, asks Stengel, why not be more like Saudi Arabia or Egypt? This is not exactly the reasoning you’d expect from a former journalist, though perhaps these days you should.


Who do you think told Biden and Obama to appoint Stengel, who works to ensure Americans are censored more?

Who is censoring you today?


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