In today's #vatnik soup I'll be introducing a comedian-turned-propagandist and conspiracy theorist, Jimmy Dore. He's the host of The Jimmy Dore Show, a comedic talk show but without any comedy.
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Between 2009 and 2019 Dore was affiliated with the Young Turks and appeared on their show Aggressive Progressives. Later Ana Kasparian accused Dore of sexual harassment, alleging that Jimmy had made several sexually inappropriate comments about her
looks.
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In Jul, 2020, Dore accused Biden of hosting a "black black face affair with a bunch of rich white people". Biden of course didn't have anything to do with the video, but this didn't stop Dore from sharing it along with the story. The video has been since removed by YouTube.
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His Twitter mostly consist of COVID-19 conspiracy theories, bashing of Biden, "debunking" of "Russiagate" and of course bullshit from the Grayzone bloggers, whom he's had as guests at his show several times.
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Dore pushed the conspiracy theories on the murder of Seth Rich, and insisted that there's "probably something more to this story" even after the source of this theory was debunked. Actually, he STILL thinks that he cracked the case.
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In 2017, Jimmy has also argued that the chemical weapons attack in Khan Sheikhun was a false flag operation orchestrated by the opposition of al-Assad. He's also denied al-Assad's regime's involvement in the Douma chemical weapons attacks.
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Bellingcat later confirmed that Dore had received 2500 USD from a pro-Assad lobby group. He also featured an "independent journalist" Eva Bartlett in a segment about Syria.
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In a good vatnik fashion, Jimmy also takes things out of context: in 2018, he quoted Jim Mattis out of context as saying that he didn't have evidence of sarin use in Syria. Mattis also said that the al-Assad regiment had been caught using sarin several times during the ...
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... Obama administration and the one after. Dore has denied the influence of Russia's interference during the 2016 US elections, and he was a staunch critic of the Special Counsel investigation on the matter.
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He's also called Bucha massacre (this one he called "false flag bullshit") and Mariupol hospital bombing as false flag operations against Russia. As is tradition, he has not made any judgements on Russia's atrocities in Ukraine.
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Jimmy will be attending the vatnik gathering also known as "Rage Against the War Machine", where Russia apologists will condemn the West's and NATO's support for Ukraine. During the event, Russia and the genocide its committing in Ukraine won't be condemned in any way.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we introduce Hasan Piker, a Turkish-American streamer and millionaire. He’s best known for his champagne socialism, rabid criticism of the US and Israel, support for the Soviet Union and for Chinese and Russian invasions, and for mistreating his dog.
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Born in 1991, Piker grew up in a privileged and well-connected environment. His father held senior roles at big corporations and his uncle, Cenk Uygur, is the founder of The Young Turks media network. He graduated cum laude from Rutgers, a top-tier university in New Jersey.
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His main activity and primary source of income consists of hours-long livestreams on Twitch where he comments on news and yells at videos. He also keeps his dog in place the whole time with a shock collar.
What you see happening here is coordinated strategic communication by the Trump cult. Elon’s baby mama and former MAGA influencer Ashley St. Clair explained this ecosystem in a long video. They have built platforms where people can find narratives to spread and get paid for doing so.
Even though the system technically breaks the platform's ToS, this is perfectly fine for @nikitabier and the rest of the X crew, because Elon pays their salaries and this is part of his election interference machinery.
If you wanna know how the system works, read this:
Here’s Ashley’s video, where she explains how the system works. She was immediately attacked by various MAGA actors, which suggests that what she said hit a nerve.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we introduce Yanis Varoufakis, a Greek economist and politician. He’s best known for rising to power at the height of the Greek debt crisis, not solving anything but endearing himself to the left, and using his fame to promote Russian imperialism.
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Born in 1961 in Athens, Varoufakis studied economics in the UK and built an academic career in Australia, the US, and Europe. His early work focused on game theory, political economy, and critiques of capitalism.
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Presenting himself as the fearless, unorthodox economist willing to confront the EU’s “neoliberal” elites, he rose to prominence during Greece’s debt crisis. At its height in 2015, he was appointed finance minister under the left-wing Syriza government of Alexis Tsipras.
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.
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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
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.
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:
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.
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:
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.