Ben Nimmo

Ben Nimmo  (propagandist, deep state functionary)
Nationality	UK
Member of	Atlantic Council, DFR Lab, DisinfoPortal, EXPOSE Network, Graphika, Institute for Statecraft, Integrity Initiative/Cluster/UK/Inner Core
Victim of	permanent war mentality?
Interests	• “Russian Propaganda” • Fake news • dark web
"Nimmo is a former spokesperson for NATO, who has essentially dedicated his career to fear-mongering about Russia."  journalist  In office 2004 - 2011 Preceded by Scott Shane Succeeded by Gianni Riotta Including EU and NATO correspondent German Press Agency)  NATO press officer In office 2011 - 2014 In office 2015 - Present Employer Institute for Statecraft

Ben Nimmo is a UK deep state functionary. He was listed as a senior fellow of the Institute for Statecraft website on 25 November 2018, but his name was gone by 10 January 2019. His speciality was listed as "Information & Influence, Russia". Craig Murray termed him "witchfinder-general for Russian Bots".

A senior fellow at the NATO-aligned think-tank Atlantic Council, in February 2021, he started working for Facebook, "helping to lead global threat intelligence strategy against influence operations."

Career

A 2016 "impact assessment" leaked from the II revealed that Nimmo had made at least 2 complaints to Ofcom.

Craig Murray wrote on his blog some months before the Integrity Initiative Leak:

“Nimmo’s track record is simply appalling. In this report for the Atlantic Council website, he falsely identified British pensioner @Ian56789 as a “Russian troll farm”, which led to Ian being named as such by the British government, and to perhaps the most surreal Sky News interview of all time. Perhaps still more remarkably, Nimmo searches for use of the phrase “cui bono?” in reference to the Skripal and fake Douma chemical weapons attacks. Nimmo characterises use of the phrase cui bono as evidence of pro-Assad and pro-Kremlin bots and trolls – he really does. Most people would think to consider cui bono indicates a smattering more commonsense than Nimmo himself displays.”
Craig Murray (28 August 2018) 

The Grayzone reported in December 2019 that Nimmo and the DFRLab prompted Facebook and Twitter to delete hundreds of accounts.

As of 2019 was a "Senior Fellow for Information Defense, Digital Forensic Research Lab". He also has an author page at Disinfoportal.

Opinions

Introduced as a “defence analyst” in The Times, Nimmo stated that Sputnik News is “an instrument of Russian state power, not an independent journalism outlet.” A 2019 RT article commenting on the tendency of commercially-controlled media to cite Nimmo without declaring his allegiances "is journalistic malpractice".

On 2 December 2019, 'Philip Cross' cited "Ben Nimmo, of the social media analysis company Graphika" as a reliable source in the "Russian and Syrian disinformation campaign" subsection of the Wikipedia page posted following the death of James Le Mesurier.

COVID-19

Full article: COVID-19

Nimmo was cited by Deutsche Welle as a "British fake news expert, who regularly monitors the Russian media landscape". mentioned in connection with UK government launching a new initiative "to fight coronavirus misinformation". The unit “won’t provide heavy-handed rebuttals” but instead would analyse social media activity to work out how to promote narratives and reliable information, especially rebutting the allegation that coronavirus was originally a biological weapon. "The NHS has already partnered with Google, Twitter and Facebook to ensure that members of the public searching for news about the virus are given the option of finding accurate information on the NHS website."

Exposure

The Integrity Initiative Leak revealed Ben Nimmo as a UK deep state propagandist. Danielle Ryan wrote for RT that "Nimmo is a former spokesperson for NATO". He previously consulted for the covert Integrity Initiative propaganda farm, which was funded by the UK Foreign Office and dedicated to spawning conflict with Russia.

Nimmo admitted on Twitter to have worked for IfS in 2016.

Citation about "Russian disinformation"

After the first Integrity Initiative leak, RT asked "Why is paid Integrity Initiative hitman Ben Nimmo still used as "independent" expert by CCM?"

“Ben Nimmo works for the Atlantic Council, funded inter alia by NATO. He is also on a retainer of £2,500 per month from the Integrity Initiative, in addition to payments for individual pieces of work. For his attack on Scottish Nationalists Nimmo was therefore paid by the Atlantic Council (your taxes through NATO), by the Integrity Initiative (your taxes) and by the Herald (thankfully shortly going bankrupt)... Nimmo’s role as witchfinder-general for Russian Bots appears very remunerative. His August 2016 invoice to The Institute for Statecraft, apparently the 71st invoice he had issued to various neo-con bodies that year, was for £5,000.”
Craig Murray (22 December 2018) 

 

Related Quotation

Page	Quote	Author
Graphika	“Who funds net nanny Graphika? Their venture capital was raised privately, in two tranches of about three million dollars each, in 2014 and 2019. We do know who they work with. Their current “Innovation Officer” is Camille François, who once worked for Google’s analytics offshoot Jigsaw before quitting to run a secretive project for the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, alongside now Graphika CEO John Kelly (no relation to the Marine.) Their December 2018 reporting helped “prove” how the Russians used social media networks like Facebook and Twitter to influence the 2016 election. Graphika also has ties to the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Defense Department’s Minerva Initiative. If you pay to look at their stuff you realize they write like spooks, talk like spooks, and snitch out news sites like spooks. So you can decide if they’re involved in all this again because they are just good at proving Russian stuff or because they are tied to a corporate-quasi government structure alongside the intel community......What is missing from Graphika’s work is any evidence whatsoever of any actual influence on the only thing that matters: how people vote. Graphika offers nothing quantitative, claiming only that by using American freelancers PeaceData was part of the “fabric” of communities and this made them credible.”	Peter van Buren

 

Event Participated in

Event	Start	End	Location(s)	Description
Tackling Tools of Malign Influence	1 November 2018	2 November 2018	London Frontline Club	Integrity Initiative conference about "Russian Propaganda"

 

Related Document

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Novichok, Navalny, Nordstream, Nonsense	blog post	3 September 2020	Craig Murray	The US and Saudi Arabia have every reason to instigate a split between Germany and Russia at this time. Navalny is certainly a victim of international politics. That he is a victim of Putin I tend to doubt.

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