Ex-Trump official called for purging Jews from media using pseudonym: report
By: Matthew Chapman (Raw Story - Celebrating Years of Independent Journalism)
Michael Benz, a former Trump State Department official who has emerged as a right-wing crusader against "censorship" online and was promoted by tech billionaire Elon Musk, has been posting anti-Semitic and other alt-right content under a pseudonym, reported NBC News on Friday.
"The pseudonym, Frame Game, posted videos and participated in podcasts and livestreams during the rise of the alt-right following Donald Trump's election," reported Brandy Zadrozny. "Frame Game avoided showing his face in his videos or appearances, during which he pushed a variety of far-right narratives including the 'Great Replacement Theory' that posits the white race is being eradicated in America for politics and profits. In others, Frame Game said he was a white identitarian, railed against the idea of diversity and made montages urging white viewers to unite under the banner of race."
"If you were to remove the Jewish influence on the West," said Frame Game in one of his videos according to NBC, "white people would not face the threat of white genocide that they currently do." Benz, ironically, is himself Jewish.
According to the report, Benz took some steps after 2018 to try to bury that Frame Game was his alter ego, but he is identifiable by his voice, and by the fact that some of his videos show that he has the username "Mike" on his computer. He also provided some life details, like graduating magna cum laude from an Ivy League school, that match Benz's professional details.
That same year, in 2018, Trump administration speechwriter Darren Beattie was fired after it emerged that he had attended a conference of the white nationalist H.L. Mencken Club, where he spoke on a panel with Peter Brimelow, the founder of the white supremacist, anti-immigrant VDare.com.
Benz has been quoted as an expert in articles on disinformation, pushed Elon Musk's "Twitter Files" disclosures purporting to show bias at the social network, and has even been cited as a witness by House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan's subcommittee on government "weaponization." He has refused to answer questions about Frame Game.
Why do such stories keep turning up about MAGA figures?
Birds of a feather?