{"id":156636,"date":"2024-07-26T06:30:15","date_gmt":"2024-07-26T14:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=156636"},"modified":"2024-08-17T15:02:02","modified_gmt":"2024-08-17T23:02:02","slug":"invisible-rulers-the-people-who-turn-lies-into-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=156636","title":{"rendered":"Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality"},"content":{"rendered":"

Renee DiResta writes in her new book<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n* when attorney – turned – speechwriter Michael Benz set his sights on convincing American conservatives that a vast collusion operation had deprived Donald Trump of his rightful victory in 2020…<\/p>\n

Despite his social media boasting, Benz hadn\u2019t actually \u201crun cyber\u201d at State. He\u2019d been the deputy assistant secretary for international communications and information policy in the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs for approximately three months, 2 following a year as a speechwriter for Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson. But no matter \u2014 after leaving government, Benz simply created an email address, reserved a domain name, and embarked upon a new career as a former cybersecurity expert.<\/p>\n

The man whose prior attributable online presence had been scrubbed down to little more than a Pepe – the – frog – throw – pillow Pinterest pinboard was now the head of what he called the Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO) \u2014 and also, seemingly, its sole employee. He reinvented himself as \u201cmikebenzcyber\u201d on social media and set about proclaiming that he was going to expose the crime of the century.<\/p>\n

The goal of the FFO, Benz wrote in a convoluted blog post, was to expose a vast collusion operation that he claimed had transpired between the government, academia, media, and tech companies. There had been a plot, he alleged, to create a \u201csocial media censorship bureau\u201d that \u201ctargeted\u201d the speech of millions of Americans \u2014 particularly those on the populist right. <\/p>\n

At the center of this plot \u2014 the keeper of an \u201cAI censorship death star superweapon\u201d \u2014 was the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP). And the Darth Vader figure in his Death Star analogy? That was me.<\/p>\n

In Benz\u2019s bespoke reality, the EIP, in cahoots with the Department of Homeland Security, his old employer the State Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and Big Tech, had colluded to censor tens of millions of tweets \u2014 twenty – two million to be precise \u2014 during our 2020 election work. In his more bombastic media appearances, the number ballooned to hundreds of millions, or even billions , of posts that we\u2019d supposedly gotten nuked from the internet via some sort of shadowy special access to \u201cinternal systems\u201d of government and tech. Government actors had supposedly told us, via these secret systems, what needed be suppressed, and we had supposedly passed their demands on to Big Tech companies. This effort, Benz claimed, had prevented people from seeing entire narratives during the 2020 election. We had \u201cpre – censored discussion that predicted the possibility of election fraud.\u201d<\/p>\n

If this sounds like word salad served up by someone in a tinfoil hat, that\u2019s because it is. Benz\u2019s theories were remarkable primarily for how utterly wrong they were. When we saw his early posts targeting EIP\u2019s work in August 2022, we laughed. His \u201csource\u201d for this list of crazy allegations was something we\u2019d written ourselves: a 292 – page final report describing our work, released publicly in March 2021, widely covered by the media and posted publicly to our website for a year and a half before he \u201cdiscovered\u201d it. 4
\n But accuracy wasn\u2019t Benz\u2019s objective; storytelling was. He was picking out random phrases and numbers from within our report\u2019s pages and reassembling them into a sordid spy thriller. Driving this drama was a compelling trope: the Man (or Woman) Behind the Curtain, secretly steering world events unbeknownst to the powerless targets. Benz\u2019s long \u201cexpos\u00e9s\u201d were the alternate history of a fantasy world. They included a specific set of villains: real people, reduced to avatars whose lives could be mined for further plot points to generate maximum outrage, engagement, and revenue. His followers and subscribers could enjoy the equivalent of a multiseason drama. But unlike with Star Wars or Game of Thrones , the audience could actually inhabit the universe, helping harass the villain online and off.<\/p>\n

Benz confidently presented his fantasy as fact and himself as the hero, drawing heavily on the Whistleblower trope to sell it. In some right – wing media interviews, Benz postured as an ex – government insider who\u2019d seen terrible abuses in his (very short) tenure at State; in others, he was a concerned citizen who had been \u201cinvestigating\u201d the rise of a vast censorship apparatus for nearly a decade ; in still others he was a diplomat offended on behalf of supposedly silenced global populist leaders (like India\u2019s president Modi) 5 or a chess champion who had seen the board several positions out and deduced that an \u201cAI censorship death star superweapon\u201d was about to destroy the First Amendment in America. <\/p>\n

Those of us who had worked on EIP noticed his sustained effort to get attention, but the attempt to retcon our very public work into some secret conspiracy screamed \u201ccrank,\u201d and we thought that no reasonable person would take it seriously.<\/p>\n

We were wrong.<\/p>\n

One challenge of refuting conspiracy theory propaganda is that its authors often present their claims in what\u2019s known as a Gish gallop : a litany of allegations so numerous that the target is temporarily paralyzed, unable to decide what to respond to first. It takes an extraordinary amount of time to address them point by point, since some are based on twisted or decontextualized grains of truth. And so it was with Benz.<\/p>\n

The Election Integrity Partnership work that Benz refashioned into a plot had taken place in 2020, when the government bureaucracies were run by Trump appointees. In Benz\u2019s alternate universe, the government had been in the tank for Joe Biden. There was no \u201csecret access\u201d to \u201cinternal systems\u201d or data portals. The 2020 EIP effort and 2021 Virality Project had no government funding, although Stanford Internet Observatory and the University of Washington did subsequently receive a National Science Foundation grant to study rapid responses to rumors in late 2021 \u2014 a grain of truth that Benz twisted to label us \u201cgovernment – funded censors\u201d and imply that we had been rewarded for helping Biden win. 7 The soon – to – be – infamous \u201c22 million tweets\u201d statistic he bandied about had nothing to do with anything getting \u201ccensored\u201d \u2014 it was a figure from a table in our report, calculated well after Election Day, that tallied the number of tweets discussing the prominent election rumors we\u2019d studied. This simple act of addition was refashioned into evidence of a plot in his alternate reality.<\/p>\n

Online cranks are a dime a dozen. But it quickly became clear that the Foundation for Freedom Online was linked to a broader network of right – wing advocacy organizations with ties to a small group of congressional partisans. The FFO\u2019s website footer, later removed, described it as \u201ca project of Empower Oversight,\u201d 8 an effort started by a longtime Republican combatant who\u2019d previously wondered if Senator Joe McCarthy \u2014 he of the 1950s Red Scare hysteria \u2014 had gotten a bad rap. 9 Empower Oversight primarily worked to procure \u201cwhistle – blowers\u201d for congressional hearings, 10 and FFO came to serve as the primary source for the now growing chorus of right – wing media and legislative rumblings about censorship. Benz had a limited understanding of the \u201ccyber\u201d topics he presented himself as an expert in, but with the backing of a partisan machine, he was able to step into the role of spokesperson for the grievance and was rewarded with glowing profiles that bolstered his credibility. <\/p>\n

And so, an absurd alternate history, overwhelmingly sourced to one man, proliferated. Far Right outlets, influencers, and media – of – one figures were thrilled to give Benz\u2019s claims airtime: Some people on the internet are saying that Stanford censored tens of millions of YOUR tweets! Some people are saying Stanford rebooted a CIA mind control project! 12 Steve Bannon, Sebastian Gorka, and John Solomon eagerly had Benz on as a guest. Narrative laundering began \u2014 a very old propaganda strategy in which claims attributed to a seemingly authoritative source appear in one small outlet, then propagate across a daisy chain of ideologically aligned outlets, each citing the last. It goes something like this: Outlet B repeats a baseless claim, but attributes it to A \u2014 \u201cOutlet A is reporting that the Election Integrity Partnership\u2026\u201d Outlet B is just reporting on the reporting, after all. Outlet C can then cite Outlet B, and so on. Very few readers will take the time to look at the original source material if they trust the outlet restating the claim. The repetition, meanwhile, gives the impression that the story is important and ensures it remains on the audience\u2019s mind.<\/p>\n

But today narrative laundering across propaganda rags is only half the ballgame. There\u2019s also the social media rumor mill. Indeed, several of the \u201crepeat spreader\u201d influencers described in EIP\u2019s report \u2014 the pivotal figures who\u2019d repeatedly helped election rumors go wildly viral \u2014 shared the coverage of Benz\u2019s claims. They reframed our work summarizing their demonstrated massive reach as preemptively targeting them, suppressing them , and alleged that we were motivated by anticonservative bias. These allegations, of course, went viral.<\/p>\n

As the lies spread, they ignited harassment from the influencers\u2019 fans. People who were turned into villains in this alternate history were battered with outrage, abuse, and sometimes threats. Meanwhile, growing interest from partisan politicians was setting the stage for harassment from another entity: the political machine. This was not accidental; Benz\u2019s avowed goal, very plainly stated on his blog, was to have a congressional committee \u201carmed with subpoena power\u201d investigate the villains he described in his reports. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s a term for the kind of material the FFO produced and the network boosted: bullshit.<\/p>\n

* Benz\u2019s cosplay as a cybersecurity whistle – blower would have real – world consequences for me and my colleagues. That\u2019s because even the people in the world best – equipped to understand the mechanics of these Kafkaesque claims have a difficult time refuting them. It takes an order of magnitude more effort to debunk bullshit than it does to produce it. 16<\/p>\n

* After right – wing media had picked up Benz\u2019s bullshit for several weeks in a row, we put up a detailed post on the Election Integrity Partnership\u2019s blog, on October 5, 2022, patiently explaining what he\u2019d gotten wrong. 17 But the outlets that covered the crank theory were undeterred.<\/p>\n

* It did not matter to Jack Posobiec (or to Mike Benz) what the cost of their lies was for the people they targeted and smeared. What mattered was keeping fans engaged, aggrieved, and subscribed.<\/p>\n

* Benz, who\u2019d been trying to make Taibbi notice him for weeks, seized the opportunity, effusively praising Taibbi\u2019s work for a long, embarrassing moment before letting the audience know that it was actually he, Benz, who had \u201call of the missing pieces of the puzzle\u201d detailing the evil cabal purportedly censoring right – wing speech.
\n \u201cI can tell you literally everything,\u201d Benz told Taibbi, promising him that he would have \u201csuperpowers\u201d at the end of the conversation. In a rambling monologue, Benz breathlessly recounted the alternate history he\u2019d so painstakingly crafted. He fixated on me: I was the puppet master of this vast cabal, with \u201cspecial privileged access\u201d to \u201cDHS\u2019 24\/7 cyber mission control\u201d and \u201cDHS FBI powers.\u201d My supposed powers came with a secret deputization authorizing me to censor \u201c22 million tweets,\u201d he burbled, dropping the twisted statistic he\u2019d harped on for months on his blog. Then he ran through the laundry list of conspiracy theories he\u2019d been feeding right – wing media. Basking in the audience attention, he enthusiastically upped the number of posts we\u2019d somehow censored to hundreds of millions. \u201cWow,\u201d Taibbi solemnly replied, as if he were Bob Woodward speaking to Deep Throat in an underground DC parking lot.
\n \u201cThis is a scale of censorship the world has never experienced before!\u201d Benz exclaimed.
\n A few days later, on March 9, 2023, Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger testified in a public hearing before Jim Jordan and his Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. Under oath, and in chaotic written testimony, the two witnesses regurgitated Benz\u2019s claims \u2014 the nonsense about \u201cmillions of tweets\u201d and targeting of conservatives, my supposed \u201cundisclosed CIA ties,\u201d and all the rest of the bullshit, now entered into the congressional record as if they\u2019d uncovered it while sleuthing through Twitter\u2019s files.
\n The appearance made Benz\u2019s dream of congressional hearings before a committee with subpoena power \u2014 the stated goal in his first blog post \u2014 come true.<\/p>\n

* Four months after that panel in England, Benz was the subject of a damning expos\u00e9 by NBC News. He had, as I mentioned earlier, erased nearly all of his social media profiles before starting his \u201cfoundation\u201d \u2014 a move that suggested he perhaps had something to hide. Indeed, an October 2023 news story revealed that Benz had \u201ca secret history as an alt – right persona\u201d known as \u201cFrame Game.\u201d 92 Frame Game had run an anonymous YouTube channel called \u201cFrame Game Radio\u201d where he ranted about \u201cwhite genocide\u201d in the United States, a purported Jewish cabal, his desire to set up a \u201cWhite Mother Fertility Fund,\u201d and the IQs of racial minorities. He posted similar content to Twitter and Gab. When caught by NBC, he declared that his secret past persona had been an effort to deradicalize anti – Semites (an excuse that his past social media contacts, including prominent neo – Nazi Richard Spencer, publicly mocked). 93 However, Frame Game\/Mike Benz\u2019s past posts still lingered in some corners of the web, where his own words spoke for him: \u201cIf I, a Jew, a member of the Tribe, Hebrew Schooled, can read Mein Kampf & think \u2018holy shit, Hitler actually had some decent points.\u2019 Then NO ONE is safe from hating you once they find out who is behind the White genocide happening all over the world.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Renee DiResta writes in her new book: * when attorney – turned – speechwriter Michael Benz set his sights on convincing American conservatives that a vast collusion operation had deprived Donald Trump of his rightful victory in 2020… Despite his … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29674,79,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-156636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-censorship","category-internet","category-journalism"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t