In today's #vatnik soup I'll introduce a politician who loves EU money but also 🇷🇺 energy.His name
is Viktor Orbán and he's been 🇭🇺's PM since 2010.Orbán is the ultimate opportunist,begging for gas from Russia & at the same time hoarding all the money he can get from the EU. 1/11
Because of his limitations on press freedom, judicial system, and multiparty democracy, and attacks against immigrants and marginal groups, Hungary's democracy has been described as being in deep decline. 2/11
Due to this 🇭🇺dropped 11 places in the EIU's Democracy Index and Freedom House downgraded their rating from "Free" to "Partly free". The Economist went as far as calling Orbán's Hungary an "authoritarian kleptocracy". 3/11
Orbán has been in the politics for a long time,and he's been part of his current party, Fidesz, since 1993.His authoritarian position was cemented in 2010, when Fidesz won 53% of the popular vote and gained 2/3 majority of seats, allowing Orbán to make constitutional changes.4/11
And of course Viktor seized this opportunity: In 2011, he added support for traditional values and nationalism to the constitution, and also made it easier for him and Fidesz to stay on the throne by reducing total parliamentary seats by 187. 5/11
In 2020, at the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Hungarian parliament passed legislation that allows them to create states of emergency without time limits, postpone by-elections, and provide the PM the ability to rule by decree. 6/11
They also introduced prison sentences for spreading of fake news (we all know who decides what is fake and what's not). By doing all this, they are following the authoritarian 101 rulebook. 7/11
Orbán has also seized control of several universities & funneled money into their favorite university, Mathias Corvinus Collegium, that'll raise more "future conservative intellectuals". A total of 1% of Hungary's GDP was spent on this little brainwashing program. 8/11
Orbán's policies are anti-immigration, anti-Islam, anti-LGBT, Euroskepticist and conservatist. Political Capital Institute's director, Péter Krekó has stated that many of Orbáns views were inspired by Putin. 9/11
Orbán's policies are anti-immigration, anti-Islam, anti-LGBT, Euroskepticist and conservatist. Political Capital Institute's director, Péter Krekó has stated that many of Orbán's views were inspired by Putin. 🇭🇺threatened to veto the EU's 6th sanction package on Russia...10/11
...just to have KGB agent Patriarch Kirill removed from the sanction list:
In addition to Turkey's Erdoğan, Orbán has been stalling Finland's and Sweden's NATO membership - these two are the last countries that haven't ratified the contract.
11/11
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we’ll introduce the International Olympic Committee (IOC) @Olympics . It’s mostly known for organizing sporting events, and for being supposed to foster the Olympic ideal while actually submitting to dictators.
1/15
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) was founded in 1894 in Paris by Pierre de Coubertin with a noble goal: promote peace through sports. Politics out, sportsmanship in: sounds great in theory.
2/15
But in practice, the IOC has a long history of accommodating authoritarian regimes, always in the name of “neutrality,” “dialogue,” and “keeping sports separate from politics”, usually not in a particularly consistent or moral way.
In today’s Wumao Soup, we’ll tell you 15 things about the People’s Republic of China that you didn’t learn from TikTok, Douyin or DeepSeek.
1/20
This is our 2nd Wumao Soup. In the 1st one, we introduced how the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) online propaganda works. Now we’ll cover some of the big topics they hide or lie about. Think of it as an antidote soup to their propaganda.
1 - Tiananmen Square massacre
Yes, it happened. Yes, it was a massacre. Vatniks, wumaos, and tankies in the West deny it, while China censors the slightest mention of it, even the date it happened.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, made together with chef invité @Martinlaineolen, we discuss the extensive links between pedophile sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and Russian officials and intelligence operatives, and how Western politicians reinforced these links.
1/23
While MAGA influencers remain silent on Epstein, pro-Kremlin propagandists and bot farms have expectedly launched an anti-Ukraine online operation, spreading fake narratives that connect Ukraine, its politicians, and the late sex trafficker.
2/23
But the emails paint a very different picture: in reality, Epstein had very close connections with Russian officials and intelligence operatives, and even built bridges and arranged meetings between MAGA figures and the Kremlin.
In this 5th Debunk of the Day, we’ll discuss something that sounds great in theory, but was completely turned upside-down by the tankie kind of vatnik: anti-imperialism. More consistent anti-imperialists call this the “anti-imperialism of idiots”. 1/5
“Anti-imperialism” was popularized by Lenin, who saw imperialism as the ultimate stage of capitalism. Ironically, the largest empire is now… Putin’s Russia, proud heir to both Lenin’s Soviet Union and to the Tsarist Empire. 2/5
Indeed, Russia is an empire that is still ruled by a de facto all-powerful Tsar, that still proudly flies its imperial flag, that still dreams of expanding its already huge territory through brutal conquest and colonization. 3/5
In this 4th Debunk of the Day, we’ll refute an absolute classic of vatnik BS, the crown jewel of peak dishonesty: whataboutism.
Now, not everything that looks like whataboutism is wrong. Seeking consistency or comparing actions or responses is normal. 1/5
But when someone pulls some completely unrelated event, that happened to completely different people, a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, you know what you’re dealing with: a crass denial of the problem at hand, a bad-faith attempt to derail the topic. 2/5
Logic or chronology plays no role here, nor your opinion on these other topics. You could be the staunchest critic or supporter of these other actions thrown into the discussion, it doesn’t matter. It is irrelevant whether these other things are true or not, or bad or not. 3/5
In this 3rd Debunk of the Day, we’ll talk about… “ending” the war by surrendering or ceding territory.
Nearing four years of the 2-day “special military operation”, Russia is desperate to obtain through other means what they failed to conquer on the battlefield. 1/5
An endless army of vatniks therefore tries to demoralize both Ukrainians and supporters.
They sound noble: “anti-war” or concerned about the fate of Ukraine’s civilians, soldiers and cities. They claim that if we just stop fighting or helping, this horror would magically end. 2/5
What they never mention is… WHO started the war, WHO murders Ukrainians, WHO destroys Ukrainian cities: the same monsters they suggest Ukrainians be at the mercy of. Surrendering wouldn’t end the atrocities of the occupation, it would enable them. Surrendering wouldn’t even…3/5