In today's #vatnik soup I'll be introducing a neo-nazi,conspiracy theorist & a troll, Andrew Anglin (@WorldWarWang). He's by no means a prominent figure of influence,but I wanted to introduce him as a cautionary tale of how people with fragile egos become brainwashed online.
1/9
It seems that throughout his life Andrew has been soul searching, but in all the wrong places. As a teenager, he was a declared atheist and a vegan, wearing clothes with "Fuck Racism" written on them. Even as a youngster, his friends described him as erratic and sadistic.
2/9
Ironically, he even flirted with homosexuality during his teenage years, something that he would strongly condemn later on, supporting the ISIS-style of throwing gays off buildings.
At some point he became interested in conspiracy theories, and became a fan of InfoWars ...
3/9
... and other fringe medias. Lizard people, chemtrails, fake moon landing, fetus-eating pedophiles and their blood rituals... he embraced them all. He also spent a lot of time on 4chan, and he's declared that "4chan was more influential on me than anything".
4/9
At some point he roamed around Southeast Asia for some years and stated that the only way for the humanity to survive was to return to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. He apparently wanted to marry two local Muslim women until "by the Grace of God", ...
5/9
... he found Hitler and neo-nazism. You can't make this shit up, unless you're Andrew Anglin.
In 2012 he launched a neo-nazi website, Total Fascism. It was a failure and he decided to switch to more provocative, short-form content with his new website, The Daily Stormer.
6/9
The website was quite popular, drawing in millions of readers. Anglin used his website to organize a brigade against Tanya Gersh, a Jewish real estate agent. In Jul, 2019, a judge issued a 14 million USD default judgement against Anglin.
7/9
These days Andrew is fighting against the American obesity epidemic, women's rights and NAFO. He's a stout supporter of Russia's genocide in Ukraine, and he's (ironically) spouting about Russia being "the last White Christian country".
8/9
Bankrupt, disenfranchised and alienated, Andrew resorts to only thing he can do: trolling. The best thing people can do is ignore him and move on.
He was banned from Twitter in 2013. but Musk reinstated his account in Dec, 2022.
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
In today’s Debunk of the Day (2), we’ll look at… nuclear blackmail. Vatniks love using Russia’s nuclear threats as a reason for surrendering or for not lifting a finger to help Ukraine: “see, they have nukes, we have to give them whatever they want”.
The argument is absurd: 1/5
Nuclear deterrence has been a reality for decades. Both the US and Russia have lost wars without resorting to nukes. We are not submitting to the whims of Pakistan or North Korea either. For vatniks, it’s just an insidious way of siding with Putin. 2/5
We can’t just give in to the Kremlin’s nuclear blackmail, to the threats their officials and propagandists make five times a day to scare us into letting them have something they know perfectly well is not theirs, with no limit to their appetite. 3/5 vatniksoup.com/en/nuclear-thr…
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we introduce a Ukrainian “scholar” and social media activist, Marta Havryshko (@HavryshkoMarta). She’s best known for spreading anti-Ukraine and pro-Kremlin narratives online, along with a habit of spotting neo-Nazis everywhere in Ukraine.
1/20
Marta hails from Ukraine, where she studied history at Ivan Franko National University of Lviv. She received her PhD in history in 2010. Her academic work focused on gender-based violence and wartime atrocities, including publications on sexual crimes in occupied Ukraine.
2/20
She is currently working as a visiting Assistant Professor at the Strassler Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies at Clark University in the US. According to the center’s website, Marta teaches courses on antisemitism, racism, and gender-based violence in armed conflicts.
In today’s (first) Debunk of the Day, we’ll talk about… “realistic expectations”.
Russia has the GDP of Italy. NATO — which Russia claims to be fighting — has 20 times their GDP, and a much stronger and more modern military. 1/5
Russia’s full scale invasion was supposed to take 2 days, but we’re nearing 4 years. They’ve lost a million men. Their economy is in shambles.
And yet we're letting them set their red lines instead of massive sanctions, strong support for Ukraine, and an immediate sky shield. 2/5
Russia thought their war was “realistic” because we’d let them get away with it. It wouldn’t be “realistic” to invade a European nation and redraw borders by force if the West had a strong and united response.
What’s “realistic” is what public opinion tolerates and accepts. 3/5
In this first (and maybe last?) Basiji Soup, we’ll look at… the Islamic Republic of Iran, its disinformation operations, its hypocrisy, how it sells its atrocities as virtue and its repression as morality, how it serves the Kremlin, and the current protests against it.
1/20
Basijis are members of the most fanatical part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). In a broader sense: Iranian regime loyalists & propagandists. They may be fewer than vatniks or wumaos, but the goal is the same: destabilize the West to protect a brutal regime.
2/20
The regime oppressing Iran is a “theocratic” authoritarian state around a “Supreme Leader” hiding behind religion to justify its crimes: censorship, repression, executions, torture and terror — similar to Russia and its “holy war” against Ukraine.