In today's #vatnik soup we'll travel back to Ireland, and get to a know an Irish politician and a MEP, Clare Daly. She strongly aligns herself with another Irish MEP, Mick Wallace. Like Wallace, Daly spends most of her energy appeasing Russia and China and criticizing the US.1/11
After several attempts, she was finally elected to Dáil Éireann in 2011 general election. In 2012, she was accused of misusing travel funds. In the same year, she refused to call for the resignation of her political ally, Mick Wallace.
2/11
Wallace's company forgot to pay 2,1 million EUR in VAT. After the incident, she resigned from the Socialist Party. After leaving, she requested a share of her old party's allowance so that she can fund her activities as an independent MP.
3/11
In Jun, 2013, after the G8 summit, she accused the Irish government of "prostituting" the country to US and Obama. She also called Obama a hypocrite and a war criminal for wanting to supply weapons for the Syrian rebels.
4/11
In 2019, Daly was elected as a MEP for the European Parliament. Soon after Daly was accused of nepotism for hiring her former husband as her assistant, forbidden by the rules of the European Parliament. He had previously also employed Mick Wallace's son.
5/11
In Sep, 2020, Daly's parliamentary assistant accused her of mistreatment and - ironically - having "no respect for workers' rights".
In Apr, 2021, Daly and Wallace visited the HQ of Iran-backed militia group Popular Mobilization Forces.
6/11
In Jun, 2021, Daly and Wallace travelled to work as unofficial election monitors in Venezuelan parliamentary election and Ecuadorian general election, without a mandate or permission from the EU.
7/11
When it comes to Russia, Daly's been busy. Daly and Wallace attempted to remove parts from the EP's report on MH17. She's attended protests supporting Algirdas Paleckis, a politician who was spying for Russia in Lithuania.
8/11
In Jan, 2022, Clare said that the Russian troops on the Ukrainian border were "clearly defensive". She also said that there is "no evidence that Russia has any desire to invade Ukraine".
9/11
She has voted against pretty much every pro-Ukraine vote in the European Parliament,including the declaration of Russia as a terrorist state. Her speeches are filled with whataboutism and accusations of "US imperalism". She's also spouted the regular "proxy war" accusations.10/11
Daly's also been featured a lot in Chinese state-sponsored TV, and she's been featured in more Chinese-language news articles than any other Irish person, with Mick Wallace coming in close second. In these interviews, she often praises China and Chinese politics.
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
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…