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Vatnik Soup Profile picture
@P_Kallioniemi
Jan 12, 2023 • 12 tweets • 5 min read • Read on X
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In today's #vatnik soup we'll travel to the land of tulips & get to know a Dutch politician & a conspiracy theorist, Thierry Baudet (@thierrybaudet). He's the founder and leader of Forum for Democracy (FvD) party and also a member of the House of representatives since 2017.

1/12
Thierry belongs to the group of Eurosceptics, and advocates for both the Netherlands' exit from EU and the dissolution of the whole institution. He has strongly opposed the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement that promotes the economic collaboration between the two.

2/12
This agreement was made in 2017 & during the campaign, he spread a ton of fake news, including false reported of crimes by the Ukrainian military: nytimes.com/2017/02/16/wor…

Baudet was strongly against the EU sanctions on Russian individuals after the occupation of Crimea.

3/12
In Nov, 2016, Baudet co-signed an open letter requesting for a new investigation on MH17. The letter also requested Trump to do another investigation on the incident. In FvD's 2017 election program, they stated that relations should be normalized between the EU and Russia.

4/12
In 2020 Dutch TV program Zembla published Whatsapp group messages with interaction between Baudet and Russian Vladimir Kornilov. Based on NYT, Kornilov has ties to the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin, and in his messages Baudet described him as "a Russian who works for Putin."

5/12
FvD's then-treasurer Henk Otten said that he wanted to stop working as a commentator on the the TV network Powned, and suggested that "Maybe Kornilov wants to pay some extra".

After the messages were published, Thierry switched immediately to damage control mode...

6/12
...declaring that the conversations about Kornilov were a "running gag" and "playful exaggeration".The leaked messages also revealed that he wanted Netherlands to leave NATO,despite the party's election program declaring that Dutch collaboration with NATO should be increased.7/12
The messages also revealed a racist-y side of Thierry, and in one chat he said that white people had an average IQ of 110, while Hispanics averaged at 90 and African-Americans at 75. The party members also discussed if they'd mind if their sister "came home with a negro". 8/12
In Apr, 2020 Whatsapp messages from FvD's youth wing revealed a lot of anti-Semitic and homophobic rhetoric. The group's members also glorified mass murderers Anders Breivik and Brenton Tarrant.

Besides his love for classical music, Baudet also enjoys conspiracy theories:...9/12
... he has promoted the idea that the world is controlled by evil lizard people, called the EU being "a Cultural Marxist project, with the aim of destroying European Civilization", and suggested that COVID-19 was introduced by George Soros in order to "steal freedom".

10/12
In addition, he has parroted the age old claim that the 2022 war in Ukraine is the fault of the West, called Putin "the hero we need" and that he is the only one who can take on the elite (possibly referring to WEF conspiracy theory).

11/12
He has said that Putin must win the war in Ukraine and that "we must do everything we can to support him".

"Useful idiots":
Conspiracy theories:

12/12

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More from @P_Kallioniemi

Vatnik Soup Profile picture
Mar 29
In this 8th Debunk of the Day, we’ll discuss complaints about US financing of NATO, in particular how the US allegedly pays for European defense, leading to calls for a US withdrawal from the Alliance — which would only make it easier for Putin to invade more countries.

1/7 A flight of French and Polish Rafale and F-16 fighter jets above a NATO flag during the opening of the exhibition “Powerful because we are united”, dedicated to the 19th anniversary of Lithuania’s 2004 accession to NATO (OTD 22 years ago), in the bastion of the Vilnius defensive wall on March 29, 2023 (OTD 3 years ago) in Vilnius, Lithuania. (Photo by Oleg Nikishin/Getty Images)
NATO by itself costs peanuts. In fact, the core of NATO is a principle, an agreement, that ideally costs nothing. The main cost is defense spending, which the US is eagerly doing anyway: Trump has just announced a 50% increase in military spending for his “Department of War”.
2/7 Trump aides struggle with how to spend $500 billion more on military, Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2026/02/21/trump-hegseth-budget-military/
Trump calls for US military spending to rise more than 50% to $1.5tn https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy59kxl2xwzo
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To sow division and thereby weaken the Alliance, vatniks deliberately mix up different figures, such as contributions to the NATO common budget, with defense spending. And US military spending has been huge by the sheer fact that the US is the world’s largest economy.

3/7 Newsweek falsely claiming that the US pays 68% of NATO’s budget. The real number is 15%.

Elon Musk falsely claiming that the US pays for 2/3 of European defense. In another post he claimed it was 1/4. Both made-up numbers. https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1870903805845598428 https://x.com/i/birdwatch/t/1870903805845598428
NATO has annual budgets and programs worth around EUR 4.6 billion in 2025 (representing 0.3% of total Allied defence spending), and up to EUR 5.3 billion in 2026. The US share for 2026-2027 is 15% of that: 0.8 billion. Source: Funding NATO https://www.nato.int/en/what-we-do/introduction-to-nato/funding-nato
Read 7 tweets
Vatnik Soup Profile picture
Mar 9
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we’ll talk about why we’re doing this: why we think Ukraine is so important and why we believe that souping vatniks and debunking their propaganda narratives is so crucial to counter Russia’s & their allies’ wars of aggression and achieve real peace.

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War is expensive, and Russia is not a rich country that could afford this: Hospitals? Roads? Plumbing? No: everything into terror and destruction.

But not only that. There is a 2nd item in the Russian state budget that remains strong no matter what:

2/20
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Manufacturing support for that terror and destruction. Propaganda. Vatniks. “Innocent” travel bloggers. “Independent” journalists. “Patriotic” politicians. Russia spends hundreds of billions of rubles a year ($5 billion) on this, and that kind of money buys you A LOT of BS.

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Read 20 tweets
Vatnik Soup Profile picture
Mar 2
In this second (and possibly last) Basiji Soup, we’ll explore how the Islamic Republic of Iran has prepared for a conflict with the US and Israel. We won’t cover the military aspects, but another kind of war — information warfare.

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In the 1st Basiji Soup, we souped the Islamic Republic, its disinformation operations, its hypocrisy, its support of terrorism including Russia’s, its (one-sided?) relationship with Putin, and the mass protests against it that started two months ago:

2/20
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The Internet blackout has been crucial in allowing the regime to cover up its massacre of the protesters and especially the scope of it, making it difficult to assess the number of victims. They went to great lengths to jam Starlink, after having made its use illegal.

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Read 20 tweets
Vatnik Soup Profile picture
Feb 25
In this 7th Debunk of the Day, we’ll expose the “Chickenhawk” fallacy. The chickenhawk accusation or the “go to the front!” imperative is a dishonest attempt to silence anyone supporting Ukraine by pushing them to go fight. A barely hidden death wish, as it’s always uttered…
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…with zero regard for who you are or what your personal circumstances might be — you could already be there, on your way there, a veteran, or unable to fight. More broadly, not everyone can or should be a soldier, just as not everyone can or should be a policeman or a nurse.
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Yet a society still needs those things to be done, and the fact that not everyone can go to medical school or fight crime does not mean that we have to surrender to invaders and criminals, nor that we cannot all have an opinion on healthcare.
3/5
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Read 5 tweets
Vatnik Soup Profile picture
Feb 18
In this 6th Debunk of the Day, we’ll talk about a complex and controversial topic: conscription. It is used by vatniks to attack Ukraine for drafting men to fight, while conveniently ignoring the alternative, including the horrors of conscription into the Russian army.
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Military obligations are a reality in many countries, from the most peaceful democracies to the most tyrannical dictatorships — unless you have “bone spurs”. Some argue it is a necessity for defense against invading armies, especially for small countries.
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Others point out that it goes against individual rights or that a professional army is better. And Zelenskyy might agree: he did in fact end conscription. But then a full-scale invasion happened: exactly why many nations, including the US, still keep some form of draft.
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Read 8 tweets
Vatnik Soup Profile picture
Feb 13
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.

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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.

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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.

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Read 16 tweets

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