As he uses antisemitism claims to target visas, Rubio chats with influencer who praised Hitler

Secretary of State Marco Rubio — who is presently helping to transportation retired Donald Trump’s deportation efforts, often utilizing dubious accusations of antisemitism — precocious sat for an interrogation with Michael Benz, a erstwhile State Department official-turned-MAGA influencer who has a past of promoting antisemitic hatred speech.

Rubio’s antisemitism accusations person targeted a fig of ineligible U.S. residents, including Columbia University students Mohsen Mahdawi and Mahmoud Khalil, the second of whom Rubio has claimed would make a “hostile situation for Jewish students successful the United States” if allowed to stay successful the country. Tufts University pupil Rumeysa Ozturk, a visa holder, has besides garnered headlines precocious arsenic a people of the State Department, contempt an interior memo that reportedly recovered nary grounds to nexus her to antisemitism oregon enactment for terrorism.

When Rubio sat with Benz, it was chiefly to boast astir his dismantling of the United States’ quality to antagonistic the dispersed of disinformation online. The State Department posted an evident transcript of the interrogation here. Rubio opened with the line, “We ended government-sponsored censorship successful the United States done the State Department,” adjacent arsenic helium is trying to region planetary students for their speech.

Here’s however NBC News described Benz’s online past successful 2023:

But earlier his stints successful authorities and arsenic a pundit, Benz appears to person been a pseudonymous alt-right contented creator who courted and interacted with achromatic nationalists and posted videos espousing racist conspiracy theories, according to recordings, livestreams and blog posts reviewed by NBC News. The pseudonym, Frame Game, posted videos and participated successful podcasts and livestreams during the emergence of the alt-right pursuing Donald Trump’s election. Frame Game avoided showing his look successful his videos oregon appearances, during which helium pushed a assortment of far-right narratives including the ‘Great Replacement Theory’ that posits the achromatic contention is being eradicated successful America for authorities and profits. In others, Frame Game said helium was a achromatic identitarian, railed against the thought of diverseness and made montages urging achromatic viewers to unite nether the banner of race. In interviews with achromatic nationalists, Frame Game blamed Jews for ‘controlling the media’ and for the diminution of the achromatic race. ‘If you were to region the Jewish power connected the West,’ helium said successful 1 video, ‘white radical would not look the menace of achromatic genocide that they presently do.’

The Frame Game relationship posted a blog successful 2017 that described its writer arsenic “a Jew who is profoundly sympathetic to the AltRight’s close depiction of the double-edged quality of Jewish power connected Europe and America.” Another station claimed “Hitler really had immoderate decent points.” NBC News reported that posts from Benz’s relationship stopped successful 2018.

Benz, who is Jewish, admitted his transportation to the relationship aft the work of NBC News’ report, claiming the relationship was portion of an effort to discourage antisemitism. “The relationship successful question was a task by Jews to get radical who hated Jews to halt hating Jews,” helium said. “Let maine beryllium clear: I americium highly arrogant of this.”

Promoting antisemitism to halt antisemitism? An absorbing strategy, to accidental the least. The taxable of Benz’s past of giving props to Hitler and promoting achromatic nationalism, unsurprisingly, didn’t travel up during his speech with Rubio, contempt the latter’s stated interest astir radical who make a “hostile situation for Jewish students.”

The interrogation embodies the administration’s shameless hypocrisy and its disingenuous usage of antisemitism claims to ace down connected its enemies, adjacent arsenic immoderate of its astir fashionable and almighty allies boost antisemitism themselves.

This nonfiction was primitively published connected MSNBC.com