Excerpts: “The weaponization of grievance is the unified field theory behind the rise of nationalism and right-wing strong men” (p.9).

“Disinformation doesn’t create divisions; it amplifies them” (p.12).

“Terrorism works because human beings imagine possibilities instead of probabilities” (p.92).

“You need your own narrative and you need to stick to it. We can’t fight propaganda with propaganda because then we become what we are fighting. We value truth. That’s the difference” (p.127).

“If you engaged disinformationists–which is what they wanted–they won; if you did not engage them, they won. They tapped into prejudice and ignorance and grievance. They weren’t so much creating resentment as aggravating it. Yes, facts mattered, but since they did not really engage with the world of facts, it didn’t have much of an effect. At the end of the day, she said, they didn’t acknowledge that empirical facts even existed. Their goal was to persuade everyone else of that, too” (p.202).

“Anything that we do that optimizes transparency, accountability, and information literacy will diminish the power of disinformation. But it won’t eliminate it” (p.307).

“When I was in government, I felt my job was to help people here and around the world determine their own destiny. At the heart of that fight was the idea that people could use information–factual information–to decide what was best for them. That idea is still worth fighting for” (p.314).

Stengel, Richard (2019). Information Wars: How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press.