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.
1/11
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.
2/11
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.
3/11
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.
4/11
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.
5/11
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.
6/11
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 ...
8/11
... 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.
9/11
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.
10/11
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’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.
1/20
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.
1/20
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.
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… 1/5
…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. 2/5
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
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. 1/8
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. 2/8
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. 3/8
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.