In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce an American politician, Angela McArdle (@angela4LNCChair). She's best-known for turning the US Libertarian Party into a wing of MAGA Republicans, and for promoting pro-Kremlin narratives about the Russo-Ukrainian War.
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McArdle received her Bachelor's from the evangelical Christian university Biola in 2009 and paralegal certificate through the UCLA extension progam in 2013. She's also trained as a craniosacral therapist through the Upledger Institute.
2/20
She started her political career as the Libertarian nominee in the 2017 California's 34th congressional district special election, finishing the primary with 0,8% of the total vote. A few years later, she had gained popularity within the Libertarian Party,...
3/20
... and was elected as the Chair of the LNC at the 2022 Libertarian National Convention in 2022. She was endorsed by the highly controversial Mises Caucus, a caucus (technically not even a caucus but a PAC) promoting what's called "paleolibertarianism".
4/20
Paleolibertarianism is a strategy that tries to unite libertarians with paleoconservatives. The latter group promotes ideas such as American nationalism, Christian ethics and traditional values, and it overlaps heavily with other right-wing populist movements.
5/20
As the Mises Caucus also won all the leadership positions in the LNC in 2022, they basically took over the whole Libertarian Party, creating an "anti-woke" and conspiratorial group that at this point is basically just an extension of the MAGA Republicans.
6/20
McArdle, together with Nick Brana, Chair of the People’s Party, organized an "antiwar event" called "Rage Against the War Machine" in Washington DC in Feb 2023. Speakers at the event came from the fringes of the conspiratorial extreme left and right of the horseshoe.
7/20
McArdle and other organizers also published a "list of demands", calling for an end of all aid to Ukraine, peace negotiations, disbanding of NATO, abolishment of CIA and "military-industrial deep state", and slashing of the Pentagon budget.
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Some of the speakers at the event include The Grayzone grifter Max Blumenthal, grifter Jackson Hinkle, and Moscow-exile Tara Reade. Convicted pedophile Scott Ritter and CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin were also supposed to speak at the event but cancelled due to protests.
9/20
There was actually so much pushback and criticism, that the Libertarian Party had to publish a statement, in which they asked the twice-convicted pedophile Scott Ritter to "stay home" due to his criminal past and Ritter declaring that "he's not anti-war".
10/20
The same gang tried to organize a similar event titled "Defeat the Deep State" in 2024, but at this point nobody gave a shit and the event was first postponed, and finally cancelled. The speaker lineup was extremely sad, and Angela herself was promoted as the key speaker.
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Angela also strongly promotes the "Great Reset" conspiracy theory, which claims that "global elites" are trying to enslave people by creating a "social credit system" à la the CCP. This theory is also closely related to the "conservative Russia" vs. "decadent West" trope.
12/20
She also writes op-eds for Newsweek. In Jun 2023,the paper published her opinion titled "No, Russia Is Not Committing Genocide in Ukraine". In it,she argued that we shouldn't blame Putin for genocide because the US has also killed civilians in countries like Iraq & Vietnam.
13/20
In her article, Angela also conveniently forgets to mention that the Kremlin has abducted hundreds of thousands of children to Russia, only to brainwash them into believers of their fascist regime. More on the topic here:
14/20
Remember when I said that the LP has basically become an extension of MAGA Republicans? In May 2024,it was announced that Donald Trump would headline their yearly convention. Apparently this was protested by some party members, which McArdle called "a small, noisy faction".
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And McArdle isn't hiding her admiration of Trump - she recently told podcaster Austin Petersen that "Donald Trump is a much better person and president than Joe Biden." McArdle later stated that she had extended an invitation to Joe Biden, RFK Jr. and rap artist Afroman.
16/20
The biggest draw of this bunch is of course Afroman, but another interesting addition is RFK Jr. - an antivaxx conspiracy theorist who's often spread pro-Kremlin narratives like the "genocide in Donbas" and "US-orchestrated coup" about Ukraine:
17/20
Under the guise of an "antiwar" stance, the hijacked Libertarian Party has been spreading extremely anti-Ukraine memes, even comparing Zelenskyy to Hitler. @LPNH even claimed that "Zelensky is a bigger threat to humanity than Putin is."
Dear God.
18/20
McArdle's and Mises Caucus' antics have scared away many party members and party donors and some old members have started a new party, Liberal Party USA. On her Substack,Angela has stated that once she reaches 2k/month support through crowdfunding,she'll chair LP full time.
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To conclude, Angela McArdle is a MAGA Republican masquerading as an "antiwar libertarian". Her views have nothing to do with traditional libertarianism, and @GrandTurion has even popularized a term for this type of actors - Kremlintarians:
20/20en.liberpedia.org/Kremlintariani…
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ADDENDUM:
More on the takeover in this thread:
And here:
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