BACK-END: Our Modern Day Pretorian Guards and Canada's Censorship Regime

The third in a series focused around the challenges of modern journalism including censorship, circulation, technology, monetization and competition.

Tucker Carlson’s Episode 75, initially released on “X” on February 16th, 2024, features an in-depth interview with cybersecurity expert Mike Benz, the Executive Director of the Foundation For Freedom Online.

This episode is significant for its discussion of the role of the US Pentagon, the American intelligence community and international intelligence agencies in coordinating highly influential censorship campaigns intended to drive regime change.

Benz provides detailed insights into how these entities, including the Five Eyes intelligence agencies and The Atlantic Council, worked with corporate media and major tech platforms to suppress information.

The intelligence agencies essentially acted as modern day Pretorian guards, complete with palace intrigues, the ability to both overthrow existing governments and anoint their successors.

The campaigns resulted in regime change in the Ukraine in 2014, worldwide lockdowns during the 2020 - 2022 COVID-19 pandemic and the election of Joe Biden during the 2020 US presidential election.

The episode is considered one of Carlson's most important interviews due to the depth and breadth of the topics discussed, particularly the implications of the intelligence community's actions on the principles of freedom of speech and the US Bill of Rights.

Some media outlets, but not a lot, have begun commenting on the interview:

• The February 21st, 2024 Real Clear Politics post “Mike Benz: The Dirty Trick Behind Framing Trump As A ‘Threat To Democracy’,“ discusses the CIA's 1948 effort to rig the Italian elections as the context for the US foreign policy establishment’s public statements that the reelection of of former US president Donald Trump in 2024 “would mean the end of democracy.”

• The February 20th, 2024 The Federalist post, “Government-Backed Censors Who Rigged The 2020 Election Are Now Stealing 2024,” calls Carlson’s interview with Benz, “ a wake-up call for all Americans that our government is waging war on us.”

• The February 18th, 2024 Business and Politics post, “‘That’s the dog not barking’: Greg Gutfeld is ‘clear’ on national security state driving censorship,” notes that Benz is quickly “becoming a household one, thanks to an explosive interview he did with Tucker Carlson in which he detailed the what, why, and when of online censorship,”

• The February 8th, 2024 Brownstone Institute post, “Government Funds AI Tools for Whole-of-Internet Surveillance and Censorship,” notes the “Internet-wide surveillance and censorship, enabled by the unimaginably vast computational power of artificial intelligence,” currently being rolled out to support government control.

Do Canadian national security agencies and issues drive censorship and propaganda in Canada?

Of course, they do. Here’s the overview.