It has been a "disturbing day" for freedom of speech, Glenn says. After exposing a Biden administration plan to control the internet, Glenn speaks with RealClearInvestigations editor at large Benjamin Weingarten, who has been investigating federal collusion with private actors to police speech. The scheme went as far as to deem Glenn a super-spreader of misinformation for warning about a well-documented leftist plan to influence the 2020 election using "color revolution" tactics. Weingarten exposes the "censorship-to-criminalization pipeline" that this "Censorship Industrial Complex" has built and what it would mean if it's allowed to continue targeting dissent.
Transcript
Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors
GLENN: Benjamin, Ben.
BEN: Glenn, thanks for having me.
GLENN: You bet. Boy, what a disturbing day on -- on freedom of speech, quite frankly. You have been doing investigation. And it's come out in dribs and drabs here and there. But you hit some things that I think is so important.
This report where I'm a super spreader of misinformation during the last election.
Is there something more nefarious, than just smearing me and TheBlaze TV?
BEN: Yeah. Well, you were in good company with dozens upon dozens, if not hundreds of other Americans ranging from the former president of the United States. Who was, actually, targeted for censorship.
Not only by this, quote, unquote, public/private partnership, that I'm sure we will talk about.
But actually, by subordinate in an executive agency, alongside journalists and everyday Americans, who had their social media posts in 2020 surveilled, en masse, to the tune of hundreds of millions of tweets looked at by people who probably don't share your politics.
And then, had masses of that content flagged to the social media companies.
To suppress that content.
And this public/private partnership was hatched in conjunction actually by interns who were working at a federal agency, in the national security apparatus. And this is the tip of the iceberg, I think.
To a censorship industrial complex, as it's been called or a public/private censorship regime. And what we've reported at Real Clear investigations, are new details about the inner workings of this so-called public/private partnership.
Who specifically was targeted by it? Which speech was targeted?
Namely, protected core political speech in this First Amendment assault. And then how intimately involved government agencies themselves were, in getting social media companies to censor Americans again, en masse, on election administration and election outcomes.
The purest political speech, protected First Amendment speech that there is.
GLENN: What's amazing to me is that in this particular narrative, that they were squashing, of mine.
I was warning in September. I did with it shows. In September and October about Colour Revolution, and how the playbook, literally the playbook from the Democrats, we had the copy of it.
I mean, I showed you the pages of it. Was -- was putting together what amounted to the same strategy as our State Department's Colour Revolution. Should Donald Trump win the election.
And I warned the president. I warned the people. Look for these things.
It wasn't to -- it wasn't to start a Colour Revolution. It wasn't to overthrow the government.
It was a warning that people were planning to destabilize the government, through some of these organizations. And it was their own plan.
How did that become a super spreader of disinformation?
BEN: Well, the national security apparatus, and its apparent cutouts and forced multipliers, doing business as academics or research entities or think tanks, have taken this idea. And put on steroids that wrong think, disfavored speech, about virtually anything of significance.
Itself, could pose a threat to our election system, to our public health infrastructure, to our financial services infrastructure, to virtually anything the government can conceive of.
And so if you propagate speech, that they deem to be delegitimizing, or undermining, quote, unquote, our democracy, that poses a threat to our democracy.
And that is why, I vote to not only be suppressed by the social media companies, that is by the digital media square, by what has become federally deputized speech beliefs, but you can actually go to jail for it.
And we have the perfect example of this, in the case of, I'm sure you're familiar with of Douglas Mackey, who puts out a tweet in 2016. Which says, text your number to vote for Hillary Clinton, to this number. #I'mwithher.
And it's clearly a satirical post.
Well, the Feds prosecuted him for the suppression of voting rights. Because somebody might have texted their number there to vote for her, not realizing, that it wasn't actually a vote.
Douglass Mackey was just sentenced a couple weeks ago, to seven months in jail for that satirical tweet.
And, by the way, that same law, is being hung around the neck of Donald Trump and the January 6th case. So there is a censorship to criminalization pipeline that's been built. And it's all premised on the idea, that if Americans hold ideas, that our ruling regime doesn't like. It possess a threat to that regime.
They'll say it possess a threat to democracy, and that it incites a domestic violence extremism.
And so there's a national security or pubic health. Or protecting of our critical infrastructure, justification for the censorship.
But what it's really dressing up is quashing of dissent, and chilling of dissenters.
GLENN: So, Ben, where are we headed?
I'm looking at all the stuff with Islamophobia. Where they're trying to convince the American people, it's Islamophobia, that's the trouble.
When we all know that it's anti-Semitism that is growing through the roof right now. And a real danger to our way of life.
And, you know, they didn't say anything, when they were trying to tear the gates don't even of the White House. And if you think, they couldn't get past that gate. They wouldn't have gone in and done all kinds of damage to the White House.
You're fooling yourself.
The White House didn't do anything about that. Nothing.
If they control all speech, and they can silence people like you or like me, when we're talking about the true nature of Hamas, and they decide that we're a problem, because we're spreading. By telling the truth. Islamophobia. They wipe us out.
And you got -- you got no protection for the Jews or anyone else, that they decide is on the wrong side.
BEN: You can apply this to basically any aspect of speech, that might not comport with what authorized opinions are, according to our ruling elites.
There's a very telling quote from Director of CISA, which is this DHS subagency, Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency.
It's a mouthful, but which is devoted to protecting our critical infrastructure. And the director of that subagency, which helped spearhead and was the tip of the spear of the national security state's efforts to surveil and censor speech directly and by proxy.
She has said that our most critical infrastructure is our cognitive infrastructure.
Translation: Mind control is an imperative of the national security apparatus. And it's going to engage in a whole society effort, to ensure the American mind is controlled.
Now, on this much more narrow point that you are making, and it's such an important one.
This -- this elevation of Islamophobia, which, by the way, Islamophobia is now being raised as the issue of our time, in response to the slaughter of Jews.
At a level of an equivalent of 50,000 Americans, with atrocities on par with, if not more disgusting with than what occurred during the Holocaust.
They're leveraging the slaughter of Jews to silence criticism of the administration and its partners in the Middle East.
Because let's not forget, of course, the entire Biden administration, policy towards the Middle East, which is really just a third term of the Obama-Biden administration, was to make Iran the strong horse.
Flood its coffers with millions of dollars. Not impose sanctions on it.
Let it build up Hezbollah, Hamas, its other proxies, and make it the dominant power, while putting the screws to Israel. So the Biden administration has blood on its hands, in the slaughter of Americans and Israelis in Israel.
And now they want to use Islamophobia as a way to shut up dissent that points to the disastrous consequences of their policies.
That's certainly a part of it. More broadly, if you look at what Islam says about speech, and you use Islamophobia as a pretext to shut people up, who want to speak freely and openly, honestly, about Islam and Islamic supremacism. It's basically imposing -- it's an attempt to impose Islamic speech codes on Americans. It's just totally anathema, antithetical to our system.
And what it points to, our ruling elites just cannot tolerate any form of dissent.
They had a near death experience with Donald Trump. They had a near death experience with Brexit. And they can't allow the people to think for themselves, speak for themselves.
They have to constrain us, and shut us up.
Using ever more disturbing and Orwellian Chinese Communist Party-style modus operandi to shut us up.
GLENN: So, Ben, I have about 45 seconds.
Who is taking this seriously? And is anybody working to dismantle this?
BEN: So Republicans in the House primarily, and some in the Senate as well.
Have tried to put forth legislation. To, first they did oversight to expose this regime, and second, they put forth legislation to try and freeze federal speech police from engaging with the social media companies, to shut up largely conservative Americans and dissenters on Covidian orthodoxy and a slew of other issues.
Beyond that, there's a massive Supreme Court case. It was called Missouri v. Biden. Now Mercy v. Missouri.
That is the preeminent case, going before the court, next term.
Where the Supremes are going to rule on whether federal agencies, including the Biden White House, violated our First Amendment rights.
To colluding, coercing, cajoling the social media companies to censor wrong thinkers.
And another question the plaintiffs, in the case have asked the court it take off, is whether or not these third party cutouts as well, should be barred from working with the feds to mass surveil and flag for suppression and censorship our speech.
So the legislative and judicial avenues are open. We'll see what happens.
GLENN: Ben, thank you so much.
Benjamin Weingarten, Federalist senior contributor and Real Clear Investigations editor-at-large. Appreciate it, Ben. God bless.
BEN: Thanks for having me, Glenn. Appreciate it.
