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The Shawn Ryan Show

#132 Mike Benz - Inside the Censorship Industrial Complex

19 Sep 2024

Transcription

Full Episode

5.482 - 29.667 Shawn Ryan

Mike Benz, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Man, I have been looking forward to this for a long time. I first saw you, I think, on Glenn Beck. Is that correct? May have been. Yeah, I think you first popped up on my radar on Glenn Beck, and then I saw you on Tucker a couple times. I've been trying to get in contact with you. And finally, we got you. So thanks for coming.

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30.148 - 40.546 Shawn Ryan

Thanks for having me. You have the most epic studio I've ever seen. Well, that means a hell of a lot. Thank you. You've been around at some really cool studios, so I appreciate that.

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41.067 - 48.921 Mike Benz

I don't know if you ever pan it, but everyone who's watching this, you have to see this. It's a museum here. Only the guests get to see it.

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50.032 - 81.83 Shawn Ryan

classified then. Yeah. Well, we'll start throwing some of this stuff out for the masses to see because there's some pretty historic stuff in here. But, well, I'm dying to talk to you about the stuff that's going on in Brazil right now and all the censorship stuff. You're the guy to talk to. And so before we get into the weeds, everybody gets an introduction and a gift. So Here we go.

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82.251 - 109.924 Shawn Ryan

Mike Benz, previously served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Communications and Information Technology at the U.S. State Department from fall of 2020 through 2021, served as White House speechwriter for President Trump and advised on tech matters, served as a speechwriter to Housing and Urban Development Secretary, Dr. Ben Carson, and was a policy advisor on economic development.

109.904 - 139.827 Shawn Ryan

You're the author of the unpublished Montrosity, Weapons of Mass Deletion. Today, you seek to provide nonpartisan insights and assistance to all peoples taking a stand for freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and the free exchange of ideas online through FFO, Foundation for Freedom Online, which you founded in 2022. Why did you found that? What prompted that?

141.022 - 165.223 Mike Benz

Well, I think it was a natural continuation of the spirit of what I felt our federal government needed to do while I was in it, which was bring to light and try to educate people around what's really driving internet censorship, the forces behind it, the abuses of government. The fact is, is several years ago, it was...

165.203 - 175.953 Mike Benz

a sort of unsubstantiated thing in many people's minds that the US government was putting pressure on the tech platforms to censor speech, all these open First Amendment questions about it.

176.133 - 191.967 Mike Benz

And I felt like there needed to be a venue to provide nonpartisan insights to educate people so that they had the language, they had the background, they had the stories, they had the ability to understand the world around them as it pertains to internet censorship.

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