The Plot to Destroy Democracy Quotes

“The false information must be logical, believable, and acceptable to gain the confidence of the target population of an adversary nation. Like all good lies, the material must be crafted to play to the biases and accepted norms of the target audience, even if the information is horrible or distasteful to others not of that tribe.”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West

“The Russian goal was to quickly harness the power of personal access that social media gives and craft metanarratives and distribute in such a way that the enemy population can be turned against their own government. Opinion polls, news coverage, and street talk can be shifted by changing the perception of the populace. Social media not only weaponizes opinion, it gives the attacker the ability to act as puppeteer for an entire foreign nation. Two Russian information warfare officers wrote a treatise describing the combat effects of weaponized news and social media: “The mass media today can stir up chaos and confusion in government and military management of any country and instill ideas of violence, treachery, and immorality, and demoralize the public. Put through this treatment, the armed forces personnel and public of any country will not be ready for active defense.”1 Additionally, the Russians make no distinction between using these activities in wartime and “peace.” The Russian Federation will deploy information warfare and propaganda persistently in a constant effort to keep adversaries off balance. When it comes to information warfare, such distinctions of peacetime and wartime fade away.”
― Malcolm W. Nance, The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West

“Alex Stamos, Chief Security Officer of Facebook, told Congress that the RF-IRA spent more than $100,000 on Facebook political ads between June 2015 and May 2017.5 This amounted to approximately 3,000 ads from 470 fake accounts and pages. A quarter of these ads were “geographically targeted” with an uptick in 2016 over 2015.6 Stamos stated that the “behavior displayed” was intended to “amplify divisive messages.” In addition to these numbers, Stamos said that accounts with “very weak signals of a connection” or “not associated with any known organized effort” amounted to $50,000 spent on approximately 2,200 ads, including ads purchased from US IP addresses.7”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West

“In the end, Putin won with the aid of Americans who had turned on their own values. The news media assisted greatly by elevating stolen innocuous emails from an insecure party server to a national crisis in which the victims were treated suspiciously. To Trump supporters it validated everything they ever suspected about Hillary Clinton—she hid emails, which meant she was a liar. No matter that Trump voters elected a man who openly embraced white supremacy, rejected diversity, abhorred global engagement, ignored his own corruption, and enlisted his own family and staff as royalty to be worshipped. Trump voters saw these traits as perks. They viewed nepotism, largess, and excess as virtues of a business and political shark. If he vocally stood against virtually all gains America had made in equality and global economic expansion since 1964 and it got him elected, then all the better that he hold those positions. By all means necessary was Trump’s apparent motto for the 2016 election. Russian intelligence lived by that motto too. The spies of the Red Square were shameless enough but the real scandal was that Team Trump saw nothing wrong with it. Trump voters had blindly elected him despite knowing that Russia had intervened in the electoral process. They cared not that Trump’s own surprising level of slavish devotion to Putin was suspicious. It. Did. Not. Matter. Trump had created a cult of personality in the white lower class so that they worshipped his every word and challenged the veracity of anything negative said against him. This worked out well for Putin. For the”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West

“Nance’s Law: Coincidence takes a lot of planning.”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West

“Prussian philosopher Alexandre von Humbolt. “The most dangerous worldview is the worldview of those who have not viewed the world.”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West

“America was getting older and the children of the greatest generation were drawing more conservative. The election of Barack Obama was an anathema to them. Russia under Putin would not preach the gospel of Marx. There would be no appeals to brotherhood and collectivism. The mission would be to tear a deflated white America away from the rest and assist them to become the dominant political force. Liberals would dismiss it as racist craziness.”
― Malcolm W. Nance, The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West

“Frustrated with accusations that InfoWars was a Russian hashtag generator, Alex Jones posted a photo of his Russian business visa and tweeted mockingly, “Looking forward to Putin giving me the new hashtags to use against Hillary and the dems…”34 Little did he know he was revealing something not far from the truth. Jones had been a highly reliable source of fake news for the Russian propaganda warfare structure and his conspiracy theories were hashtagged like crazy by the RF-IRA. His nutty commentary is widely admired by some of Russia’s leading politicians, and thanks to his own tweet he revealed he had been issued a long-term business visa to keep his special brand of conspiracy mongering alive.”
― Malcolm W. Nance, The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West

“most dangerous worldview is the worldview of those who have not viewed the world.”
― Malcolm W. Nance, The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West

“The hallmark of these European conservative demagogues was a single-issue hatred of Muslim immigrants, particularly since the Syrian and Libyan migration crises, which led millions of people to flee to Europe. Add to this the rise of ISIS in Syria that led Muslim nationals born in France, Belgium, and Germany to carry out terrorist attacks in their countries of birth.”
― Malcolm W. Nance, The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West

“Russia has always been a nation predisposed to believe almost anything, but under the Communist rule they were immersed in the policy of “Make a Big Lie, Call It the Truth” for three quarters of a century. Needless to say, it made them experts at detecting a lie but also of fabricating a bigger one.”
― Malcolm W. Nance, The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West

“the stakes of”
― Malcolm W. Nance, The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West

“As further information emerges from the Mueller investigation, the level of Trump’s complicity will determine if it was all coincidence or a plot to commit treason.”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West

“Milos Zeman is the President of the Czech Republic. He is pro-Russian, is friends with Marine Le Pen and Nigel Farage, endorsed Donald Trump for President, and has ties to Hungary’s Jobbik movement. Zeman has justified the civil war in Ukraine and has denied that Russia has a military presence there. He stated, “I take seriously the statement of foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, that there are no Russian troops [in Ukraine].” Zeman had been consistently verbal in his support for the lifting of Western sanctions on Russia and was against EU sanctions on Russia. He was re-elected President in January 2018 with 51.4% of the vote. He won the majority of the rural vote by exhorting a populist anti-immigrant slogan: “Stop Migrants and [opponent] Drahos. This is our land! Vote Zeman!” Zeman’s chief economic advisor is Martin Nejedlÿ, a former executive of the Russian oil company, Lukoil Aviation Czech. Lukoil was once the second largest oil company in Russia following Gazprom. Martin Nejedlÿ of Prague was also owner of Fincentrum, a financial advisory firm with “more than 2,500 financial advisors” on its website with offices in Prague and Bratislava. The firm has a history of alliances with the Kremlin. The Prime Minister of the Republic’s coalition government is 63-year-old Andrej Babiš. He is a media and agribusiness mogul and the second-richest man in the Czech Republic. ANO is the Action of Dissatisfied Citizens Party that was founded by Babiš that holds a center-right populist platform like many European and American conservative right-”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West

“In February 2018, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia filed an indictment in the United States versus the Internet Research Agency, Concorde Management and Consulting, LLC, and Concorde Catering. The indictment alleges that the internet research organization is a Russian organization engaged in operations to interfere with elections in political processes. According to the indictment, beginning in late 2013, the organization hired staff and planned to manipulate the US Presidential election by creating false personas of American citizens. They would set up social media websites, group Facebook pages, and Twitter feeds to attract US audiences. They name 13 Russians who are the key managers of the organization starting with Yevgeniy Prigozhin.”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West

“These advertisements, tweets, and Facebook posts were seen by as many as 150,000,000 Americans during the 2016 election. The Oxford Internet Institute studied the election and found that on Twitter and Facebook people shared almost as many fake news stories as they did real ones.8 By 2018, Twitter would be forced to notify 677,000 users that they were exposed to Russian propaganda during the campaign, but not what kind specifically.”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West

“Testifying before the House Intelligence Committee former Director of the CIA John Brennan spoke on the matter of how Russia handles its assets and agents: “They have been able to get people—including inside of CIA—to become treasonous, and frequently, individuals who go along that treasonous path do not even realize they’re along that path until it gets to be a bit too late…”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West

“The Republicans became more concerned with white grievance like their European brethren. And like their cousins overseas, the alt-right appeared to relish doing the work of the Kremlin in the same way that the European Nationalists were aligning themselves with the United Russia Party.”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West

“Led by Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, previous attempts by the British to join the European Community from 1957 to 19636 were rejected under pressure from French President Charles de Gaulle. De Gaulle considered the British too adversarial to the interests of the European Community to accept Britain being admitted.”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West

“Let them call you racist! Let them call you xenophobes! Wear it as a badge of honor.”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West

“Sometimes I am amazed how easy it is to play these games, if they did not have press freedom, we would have to invent it for them.”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West

“Give a man fake news, and he’ll fool you for a day. Teach a man to fake news, and he’ll lie to you for life.” —J.M. BERGER”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West

“Russians refer to United Russia as the Party of Power. Other nations refer to it as “the Party of Crooks and Thieves.” In exchange for financial support, Putin’s party controlled power by giving out contracts, bribes, and kickbacks. Across the country members of the party were routinely accused of corruption, drug trafficking, racketeering, vote-rigging, and murder. Yet, once in office they would not only escape prosecution, in some cases they were awarded medals for their service. Being a member was almost a get-out-of-jail-free card, unless you crossed the party itself.”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West

“The State Department’s website removed “spreading democracy” from its mission statement.”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West

“in the shadows of espionage “Coincidence takes a lot of planning.”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West

“hagiography”
― Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West