The US and its CIA-controlled “soft power” arm utilized the encrypted social media app Telegram to foment riots and protest movements against foreign governments it deems undesirable, former Trump administration official and free speech activist Mike Benz has said.
These statements were made during an interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson on his show Wednesday. Benz, a State Department official under the Trump administration, now runs the free speech watchdog Foundation for Freedom Online.
The US has championed free speech globally for decades, “in large part” because it allows the country to build resistance and political or paramilitary movements “in countries where the US State Department seeks political control,” the former official said. Durov’s end-to-end encrypted social media app Telegram has been instrumental in this effort, Benz claimed.
The reason “26 US-government-funded NGOs” condemned Russia for attempting to ban Telegram in 2018 was that “the US State Department was using Telegram,” utilizing its encryption and local popularity “to foment protests and riots within Russia – just as they did in Belarus, Iran, Hong Kong, and attempted to do in China,” the former State Department official stated. The app’s encryption is a powerful means of evading state control over media and allowing “US-funded political groups or dissidents to garner tens of thousands of supporters with relative impunity,” he added.