An audio clipping of a Twitter space discussion recently went viral on social media in which a former officer of the United States cyber department revealed how America-funded organisations interfere in Indian elections. Mike Benz, Executive Director of Foundation For Freedom Online, a former US govt official, made these revelations in a Twitter space discussion hosted by a Twitter handle named Trash Discourse. Mike Benz explained how US States Department was funding various entities in Indian media to create a narrative against Narendra Modi during the 2019 general elections.
Benz was Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Communications and Information Technology in the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs under the US Department of State till January 2021, he specialised in international communications and information technology matters.
Mike Benz said at around 3 hours 15 minutes in the space, “When any proxy uses democracy in unified policy establishment, it is used for regime change. For a change in that country’s elected government, principally in order to control various political, media, social, and cultural levels to give more freedom to state departments and intelligence whose influence is limited by state action in that country. I thought of the India thing for a long time. Because I remember very vividly in 2019 when America also was holding conferences about what to do about India and the problem of internet and communications freedom in India because it was leading people to be Modi supporters and Modi was perceived as a populist sort of new non-aligned movement.”
He further said, “The role that India played on the side of the state Department in the national security state during portions of the current war. When you see this right now with the fact Modi is basically non-aligned in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. You have got declarations by the Indian finance minister who has talked about how they are going to continue to buy Russian oil and gas. There is the purchasing of arms and other equipment. India plays a very very important role with respect to America’s foreign policy because of China.”
Former state department employee explains how America has been using state funded organizations to interfere in a Indian elections. #AmericanHypocrisy
— malika (@malikakas) May 19, 2023
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Mike Benz added, “India loses very largely to Modi’s nationalist proclamations sometimes making it an unstable and adversarial piece on the state department chessboard. They want somebody there who is like a Trudeau who is like Angelina Berboc in Germany essentially. She controls the foreign ministry in Germany and she was the one who on day one after being put in her office did this. She is from the Green Party. They are using this pretext to shut down the north stream pipeline on regular grounds over basically climate-type pretext and not having the gas coming through there. She is the perfect photocopy replica of the picture-perfect state of the Western interest.”
Mike Benz also said, “I support Western interests but there are dirty tricks. And what they are doing with Modi is dirty tricks. We have lived through three years of high-intensity Russian gates over a hundred thousand dollars are paid for gas. And we have got probably thirty million dollars at least that have flowed from the state departments to do the same thing in India somewhat explicitly. Because this is all done through the global engagement standards and USAID and funding of different pop-ups censorship mercenary groups that we send over there under the guise of fact-checking, digital resilience groups, or media literacy groups. They are censorship mercenaries who put pressure on Indian civil society and communications platforms in order to stop the ability of Modi supporters from accessing other party mines.”
— malika (@malikakas) May 20, 2023
In the same space, US-based cyber criminologist Laura Love lauded Indians and especially Hindu nationalists active on the internet for early identifying that the pandemic was a part of Chinese weapons and propaganda. This Twitter space discussion was held on 3rd March 2023. The clipping of the space has now gone viral on social media. Mike Benz’s remarks exposed how the US state department was trying to destabilise India by affecting the 2019 general elections as it funded certain sections of media to run an anti-Modi narrative.
This is not the first time Mike Benz has talked about American organisations working against the Modi government. In an interview with the Sunday Guardian earlier this year, he had said that biased elements in the US foreign policy establishment waged a campaign against PM Narendra Modi and the BJP ahead of the 2019 general elections in India. He had said that these elements in the US administration, social media giants, think tanks and state department officials were working together to paint PM Modi’s electoral success as the result of a “misinformation campaign”.
He had explained that labelling something as ‘misinformation’ in a foreign country is a signal to the social media platforms to impose censorship. he had said- “Misinformation” is a censorship predicate. When the US foreign policy establishment says a foreign country has a “misinformation crisis,” that is a cue to US tech companies to work with entities like the State Department’s Global Engagement Center or cut-out think tanks like the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab or counter-misinformation USAID fundees to censor the “misinformation” in that foreign country.
Mike Benz had added that they censored chat apps like WhatsApp to limit the spread of Pro-Modi messages.
