Organic uprisings or engineered ones? Paid protests and political warfare

The Short Version

Not every crowd in the street is what it looks like. In three conversations on The Joe Rogan Experience, guests describe how protests and even revolutions can be funded, organized and steered: Dave Smith points to Ukraine's 2014 Maidan uprising, which he says the United States kept alive with about $100 million, and to a "protest machine" that can be switched on and off at home [1]; Mike Benz traces a formal doctrine of "organized political warfare" back to 1948 and walks through USAID and military documents he says describe stoking unrest abroad [3]; and Rogan, Francis Foster and Konstantin Kisin describe paid rally crowds, cash offers to protest Tesla with "rules of engagement" for violence, and non-students at campus protests [2]. None of them say the people involved are fake; Smith stresses there were real people in the streets [1], and Rogan asks for compassion for young people swept up in movements [2]. The point is that money, organizers and messaging can turn real grievances into a tool, and knowing the signs helps you judge events without being played.

Table of contents

What They Said

Dave Smith: the protest machine and the Maidan

Smith starts from the scene in early 2025 of activists setting Teslas on fire [1]. He finds it surreal that the left was attacking the most successful electric car company, supposedly the thing that would save the planet, because Elon Musk had pointed out corruption in federal spending [1]. What made it make sense to him was a piece of mainstream journalism: a Time magazine article from after the 2020 election, titled The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election, which he says openly described coordination around social media censorship and the protest movements [1]. He is struck by how easily that "protest machine" can be turned on and off [1].

Rogan's explanation is simpler: it's money [1]. He jokes that at 21 he would happily have held a sign at a rally for $400 [1].

Smith connects this to how he believes intelligence agencies work: always moving things at the margins [1]. His main example is Ukraine. When he calls the 2014 Maidan revolution a US-backed coup against a democratically elected president, critics accuse him of denying Ukrainians' agency [1]. His answer is careful: there were real people in the streets, but the United States poured about $100 million into keeping the protests going through a Ukrainian winter, with heat lamps, celebrities and concerts, until the president had to flee [1]. He recommends Scott Horton's book Provoked as the best history of the build-up to the war, and praises Rogan's interviews with Mike Benz about USAID, which Benz describes as doing work too dirty for the CIA [1].

His point about scale explains why this works abroad: the US government spends six to seven trillion dollars a year, so a few billion dollars that seems small in Washington can move mountains in a small country [1].

Smith also describes the second half of the cycle: what unrest does for those in power. Rogan argues civil unrest is useful to the powerful because frightened people accept new measures that erode their liberties [1]. Smith quotes the libertarian Harry Browne, who used to say "the government breaks your leg and then offers you a crutch," and then convinces you to be grateful for it [1]. His example is 2020: when the George Floyd video first appeared, even his Fox-watching father-in-law wanted the officers charged with murder, but after a summer of riots, many of the same people wanted the military sent in [1].

On campus protests over Gaza, Rogan notes that some look funded rather than organic, while Smith offers a more measured data point: a Jewish Columbia grad student who found the protests annoying but not threatening [1].

Rogan, Foster and Kisin: paid crowds and manufactured passion

The conversation with Triggernometry hosts Francis Foster and Konstantin Kisin goes furthest into the mechanics of domestic paid protest [2].

Paid crowds. Rogan cites claims, noting he read them on X, that some Bernie Sanders and AOC rally crowds were padded with repeat attendees [2]. He describes the appeal of a staged event: "they're coming out to see you Because you're giving them money in free food," with water bottles handed out and "everybody gets a sign," so "everybody seems like they're kind of a part of a team" [2]. He is candid that the offer would have worked on his younger self: if someone had paid him "100 bucks to attend a Kamala Harris rally, I'm 100% go [2]. He argued that during the campaign they filled these arenas with people that were paid," calling it "manufacturing this passion, manufacturing this movement" [2].

Money with "rules of engagement." The most troubling detail concerns the Tesla protests. Rogan says protesters were reportedly offered money along with "rules of engagement" for violence [2]. As he described it, "They were giving out a thousand bucks For people to protest," with instructions like "If someone comes after you Hit them in the body Don't pick up an object Unless they pick up an object first" [2]. His reaction: "Like why is that even on the table I thought you guys were peacefully protesting" [2]. Who, he asked, was going to fight them? "How many pro Tesla Fucking Hooligans are out there" [2]. By writing violence into the plan while paying people, he argued, organizers were at least putting it "on the table" [2].

Why violence starts to seem logical. Kisin supplies the psychological mechanism. Once language is destroyed and opponents are called Nazis, violence starts to seem logical to some: as the exchange put it, "If you actually thought Nazis had taken over your country You'd pick up a gun" [2]. Rogan describes how a narrative gets seeded: tell people "this guy is a Nazi. Go out there and say it and prompt it," and "all of a sudden, you've got, looks like ground swell of support," and then "a bunch of people hop onto that and they think it's organic" [2]. His reading of the Tesla attacks is that "they're being paid and they're trying to crash the stock of Tesla," to put pressure on Elon to drop doge [2]. "It's puppet show. You're watching a puppet show," he said [2].

Campus protests and outsiders. Rogan's fear is "that a lot of these things are paid for and organized, including a lot of these protests at universities," and that organizers are "trying to build up a lot of passion in these people for being disruptive" and "then they weaponize it" [2]. Francis recalls a UCLA student who told him many protesters weren't even students [2]; the student pointed at one and said, "that guy's about 42. I know he doesn't go to my college. Why is he here protesting? He's being paid" [2]. The exchange added that "there are a lot of foreign governments that want this shit to be going on" and "a lot of bots online," concluding: "These are not organic" [2].

Compassion and a warning. Rogan does not treat the participants as villains. "We need to have a lot of compassion For young people to get caught up in these movements," he said, comparing it to how "people get caught up in being in cults" [2]. Many are young, newly out of their parents' house and "experiencing freedom" for the first time [2]. But he is firm: "No violent acts Or ever justified" [2]. Violence also backfires strategically: reasonable people are "not going to light starbucks on fire Because black lives matter," and those who do are "just serving them," because "they will develop better and stronger ways to crack down on protest now," and everyone who wanted to protest peacefully gets hurt [2]. He compares arsonists on the left to a hypothetical white nationalist burning churches in the name of the right: both poison their own side [2].

Power, data and pretexts. The broader theme of this episode is wariness of handing power to any government [2]. Rogan cites the Gulf of Tonkin and Operation Northwoods alongside post-9/11 security measures and the NDAA's indefinite detention provisions [2]. His lesson: You have to be very, very, very careful when you give power to people in order to keep you safe [2]. He also condemns Canada freezing the bank accounts of people who donated to the trucker convoy [2], a case where the state punished a grassroots protest rather than engineering one. Francis's rule for spotting power: the moment you can't criticize someone, like, that's your master [2].

Honest uncertainty. The episode ends this thread with an admission worth keeping: "I don't know what's real and what's not," one speaker said, and Rogan replied that he doesn't either and wishes he did, "Because people think I do" [2].

Mike Benz: organized political warfare as doctrine

Benz, a former State Department official who runs the Foundation for Freedom Online, provides the history and the paperwork [3]. The summary of his episode stresses that these are his own readings of the documents, and that on darker topics he says he is raising questions rather than making firm claims [3].

1948: the birth of the doctrine. Benz roots the story in 1947 and 1948, when the National Security Act created the CIA and National Security Council and international law began banning territorial conquest [3]. Instead of occupying countries, he says, the United States shifted to winning elections and shaping laws abroad [3]. The template was the 1948 Italian election, which he says the US tipped through propaganda, churches and charities used as fronts, Hollywood films and even Mafia-linked unions [3]. "We worked with the mafia and we worked with the mafia connected unions," he said, relationships the War Department had built against Mussolini and "kept those relationships in order to run this pro democracy regime change thing" [3]. George Kennan, he says, "called it the inauguration of organized political warfare," arguing "we need to create a covert apparatus to hide what we do" [3]. That is, in Benz's words, "the secrecy doctrine that we now live under and all these NGOs work under this cover" [3]. He also describes Frank Wisner's boast that the CIA could play the world's media like an organ [3].

The covert purpose. Benz argues the CIA is "our organ for organized political warfare," and that Kennan and later officials saw its "express purpose" as "to carry out the subversive side of the political struggle" [3]. USAID, he says, became the central warehouse for this work because, unlike the CIA, it needs no presidential finding and can call it discrete democracy promotion [3]. His signature line is that when something is too dirty for the CIA, it goes to USAID [3].

Engineered unrest on paper. Benz's most direct example of manufacturing a movement is a 2021 US military planning document describing a hypothetical West African scenario in which special forces inflame labor and racial tensions to stall a foreign-backed port, with USAID setting up job fairs for striking workers [3]. Another is ZunZuneo, the Obama-era "Cuban Twitter," which he says was built by a USAID contractor with disguised funds, front companies and Cayman Islands accounts, attracted about 60,000 users with sports, music and hurricane updates, and was meant to pivot to political messaging and "smart mobs" [3]. He says Senate staff were told they could not be briefed because lives were at stake [3].

Culture as a weapon. Benz argues that anything can be an instrument of statecraft, including music [3]. He recounts State Department jazz diplomacy to counter Soviet arguments about American racism in newly independent African countries, protest rock behind the Iron Curtain and US support for Pussy Riot [3]. He cites a Grayzone report on USAID-funded protest rap in Cuba targeting Afro-Cuban youth, NED-linked rap in Bangladesh, and a State Department program that brought 22 hip-hop artists to the United States for training in youth engagement [3]. On claims that the government promoted gangster rap, he says the topic is highly controversial and he does not have a solid record on it [3].

The vocabulary of influence. Benz says one phrase unlocks the grant documents: "capacity building." "Whenever you see the word capacity or capacity building it means this thing is useful to us the more money we give it the more powerful they are to protect our influence" [3]. In State Department usage, he says, "independent media" means independent of rival governments, not of the United States [3].

The Truman Show. Benz uses the film to describe what ordinary people discover: they thought "these were authentic conversations you're having with the cashier and it turns out" they are "part of this," a sponsored network of the State Department, the Pentagon or intelligence agencies, "because this is fundamentally covert action that's being done" [3].

After the uprising: courts. Benz argues the influence doesn't stop when a government falls. He explains "transitional justice" as the doctrine of prosecuting the leaders of a government after it is replaced, which makes foreign influence cheaper by ensuring a defeated rival cannot return [3]. He shows a Journal of Democracy article urging Poland's new government to prosecute the previous ruling party and to stabilize the political system by "stamping out populism" [3]. A search for USAID and "judicial reform," he says, shows programs in about 100 countries working on legal systems "in order to rig the scales of justice in favor of the foreign policy establishments interest" [3]. In Brazil, he says Internews ran trainings on flagging pro-Bolsonaro disinformation [3].

When it came home. Benz notes that in the 1960s and 70s, the CIA's domestic activities against the anti-Vietnam War movement led to the Church and Pike committee reforms [3]. The safeguard against turning foreign propaganda on Americans was the Smith-Mundt Act, which he says lasted about 70 years until its effective repeal a decade ago [3]. He wants a hard "domestic firewall" with criminal penalties for agencies and civil liability so individuals could sue agencies and the NGOs they fund if foreign-facing operations are turned against Americans [3].

Where They Agree, and Where They Don't

They agree that money can sustain or simulate a movement. Smith's Maidan heat lamps and concerts [1], Rogan's paid crowds and $1,000 Tesla offers [2], and Benz's grant pages [3] all describe money keeping protest alive beyond what it would otherwise sustain.

They agree the grievances can be real. Smith insists there were real people in the Maidan [1]; Rogan asks for compassion for young people with real frustrations [2]; Benz's West African scenario describes inflaming tensions that already exist, not inventing them [3]. The engineering is usually amplification, not creation.

They agree secrecy is the tell. Kennan's call for a covert apparatus [3], Senate staff denied a briefing on ZunZuneo [3], and Smith's Time article describing a "shadow campaign" [1] all point to the same feature: engineered movements hide their sponsors.

They differ on scope. Benz focuses on institutional, state-run programs abroad, with methods he says crept home [3]. Smith spans both foreign coups and domestic protest machines [1]. The Triggernometry conversation is mostly about domestic, partisan paid protest, often from reports its speakers admit they read on X [2].

They differ on evidence. Benz grounds his case in public grant pages and documents, while flagging where he speculates [3]. Rogan's claims about paid Tesla protesters and padded rallies rest on online reports [2]. Smith's $100 million figure and the Time article are specific, checkable claims [1]. Smith's Columbia anecdote [1] is a reminder that not every campus protest fits the paid-agitator frame Rogan fears [2].

They share a concern about what unrest produces. Smith and Rogan both argue unrest invites crackdowns and more state power [1][2]; Benz argues that after regime change, courts can be used to make sure the old side never returns [3].

Why It Works

Scale asymmetry. A sum that is trivial to Washington can dominate a small country's politics [1]. $100 million kept Kyiv's protests warm through a winter [1]; $20 million funded an investigative reporting program across Europe and Eurasia [3].

Logistics beat ideology. Heat lamps, concerts, celebrities [1], free food, water bottles and signs [2] turn a crowd into a sustained event. People who might not show up for an idea will show up for a team, as Rogan puts it, especially young people with little going on [2].

Borrowed legitimacy. Engineered campaigns use real grievances, real people and trusted fronts: churches, charities, unions and films in 1948 Italy [3], protest musicians [3], investigative journalists [3]. Benz's Truman Show image captures the result: people think the conversation is authentic [3].

Language that licenses violence. Once opponents are labeled Nazis, Kisin notes, violence starts to look logical [2]. Seeding a label and prompting people to repeat it creates the appearance of a groundswell that others then join, believing it organic [2].

Plausible deniability. Working through NGOs and contractors lets agencies avoid the rules that bind covert action [3]. Benz's point about USAID needing no presidential finding explains why the work flows there [3].

The crackdown dividend. Violence produces fear, and fear produces demand for control, as in Harry Browne's broken-leg line [1] and Smith's account of how public opinion shifted after the 2020 riots [1]. Rogan adds that violent protest leads authorities to "develop better and stronger ways to crack down on protest," hurting peaceful protesters most [2].

Locking in the result. Transitional justice, as Benz describes it, prevents a displaced government from returning, making the whole operation cheaper [3].

Where It Applies, and Where It Doesn't

The pattern applies most clearly where there are documents: the 1948 Italian election, ZunZuneo, the West African planning scenario and grant pages Benz shows on screen [3]. It also applies where the money is large and the country is small, as Smith argues about Ukraine [1].

It applies less cleanly at home, and the sources admit uncertainty there. Rogan's claims about padded rallies and paid Tesla protesters come from reports he read online [2], and the Triggernometry conversation ends with the admission that no one there is sure what is real [2]. Benz is explicit that some threads, like the Panama Papers and gangster rap, are questions, not findings [3].

The frame can also be misused. Calling every protest "paid is a convenient way to dismiss real anger, and Smith's critics raise exactly this when they accuse him of denying Ukrainians' agency [1]; his reply is that both can be true [1]. The same episode that worries about paid campus protests also worries about a Turkish PhD student at Tufts arrested with officials citing support for Hamas without giving evidence, which Kisin says seems extreme" for writing an article [2]. Labeling protesters as foreign-backed can itself become a pretext for the kind of power grab Rogan warns about [2], as Canada's freezing of convoy donors' accounts shows [2].

Finally, not every campus protest fits the pattern: Smith's Columbia grad student found them annoying, not threatening [1]. The signs of engineering are signals to investigate, not proof.

What To Do With It

1. Follow the logistics. Ask who is paying for the heat lamps, stages, food, signs and buses. Smith's Maidan account [1] and Rogan's description of free food and handed-out signs [2] show that sustained crowds need sustained money.

2. Look for outsiders. Notice when protesters don't match the stated group, like the 42-year-old at a student protest Francis's UCLA contact described [2].

3. Be wary of prepared violence. An organizer who hands out "rules of engagement" for fights at a supposedly peaceful protest, as Rogan describes, is planning for conflict [2].

4. Watch the labels. When a new label, such as calling someone a Nazi, appears suddenly and everywhere, ask who seeded it and whether the groundswell is real [2].

5. Read the grant language. In funding documents, "capacity building" and "independent media" may mean assets useful to the funder, as Benz explains [3]. Search the funder's own pages, as he does [3].

6. Ask who benefits from the aftermath. Consider which new powers, crackdowns or prosecutions follow the unrest, per Harry Browne's broken-leg line [1] and Benz's transitional justice [3].

7. Hold both truths. A movement can have real participants and real grievances and still be funded and steered, as Smith argues about the Maidan [1]. Don't dismiss the people; examine the sponsors.

8. Refuse violence, whatever the cause. Rogan's warning is that violence serves the people who want a crackdown and hurts peaceful protesters most [2].

9. Resist blanket dismissal. Before calling a protest fake, check the evidence, as Benz does with documents and caveats [3], and remember cases where authorities used "foreign support" claims against individuals without evidence [2].

10. Support clear legal limits. Benz's proposed domestic firewall, with penalties for turning foreign-facing operations on Americans, is one concrete reform [3]; Rogan's rule of being very careful about power granted to keep you safe is the principle behind it [2].

Sources

1. 2299 - Dave Smith · The Joe Rogan Experience
2. 2297 - Francis Foster & Konstantin Kisin · The Joe Rogan Experience
3. 2272 – Mike Benz · The Joe Rogan Experience