In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce a Finnish economist, conspiracy theorist and doomsayer, Tuomas Malinen (@mtmalinen). He's best-known for promoting market crash every two months, for his alleged support for the WEF conspiracy theory, and for his pro-Russian hot takes.
1/23
Malinen has a PhD in Economics from University of Helsinki, where he studied, among other things, economic crises. Currently he's working for GNS Economics (actually Kasvu ja Suhdanne Oy), a company with revenue of 100 000 EUR and operating loss of 10 000 EUR.
2/23
Based on Malinen, there are five partners on board with him on GNS.
For many years now, Tuomas has been forecasting the economic end times that never came. He's often suggested people to "withdraw cash and keep it" because the collapse can happen on "any day now".
3/23
Malinen was also at least on some level involved in the most pro-Russian party in Finland, Valta Kuuluu Kansalle (VKK; "Power to the People"). At the end of 2021, he published a video where he claimed that the top leadership of the police and of the Army don't think the...
4/23
...best for the Finns anymore. In the same video he promoted antivax- and WEF conspiracy theories, suggesting that "we are at the point where we need to start building a parallel society".
5/23
Few days after Russia started its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Tuomas commented that "VKK unfortunately didn't turn out to be what I hoped for", at the same time suggesting that he had previously collaborated with them.
6/23
Malinen has been appearing every now and then on pro-Russian and conspiratorial podcast called LEVELI. Both hosts of the podcast are members of the VKK party, and they're known for promoting conspiracy theories and for smearing Finnish politicians and journalists.
7/23
In Dec 2022, Malinen was caught up in a drama when she was blamed for "manipulation" by one of LEVELI's former podcasters, Nea Lundström-Finnilä.
8/23
She suggested that Tuomas had manipulated her by offering her a "position as his successor" by becoming her mentor, and for this she had to "give up everything". LEVELI later gave him the platform to explain the situation.
9/23
In Oct 2022, Malinen claimed that the Russian bombing of civilian targets seemed "too focused to act as a mere terror campaign" (which it was and is). He also stated that the Russian re-grouping could predict a "massive winter offensive in many fronts possibly to ...
10/23
...crush Ukrainian army altogether". "Russia would probably be able to unleash a war-machine not seen in Europe for a very long time," he continued.
Malinen has also theorized that the war could result in - surprise, surprise - market crash in Europe, and this might've...
11/23
...been Putin's strategy all along.
In Dec 2022, Malinen tweeted that he'd received "worrying information", pointing to the possibility that it was actually Ukraine that initiated the war against Russia.
12/23
Malinen attempts to create this illusion of being a neutral analyst, often using phrases like "I am hoping that the information and the speculation are wrong", but then continuing with something like "Something just doesn’t add up".
13/23
He often presents Putin as a "master strategist" and the West as the inferior party. When reporting about various incidents from the battlefield, he refers to pro-Russian propagandists such as Douglas Macgregor.
14/23
Tuomas also claims that he's receiving "extraordinary intel" from various sources on the field which is a great way to shift the responsibility to others when he's eventually wrong again. This fantastic information usually comes from people like Ritter and Macgregor.
15/23
Here's a textbook example from one of his blog posts: "Again, I hope that I am wrong and Ukraine wins the war and reclaims her territories. That, unfortunately, currently looks rather unlikely."
16/23
This "muddying the waters" approach offers a nice backdoor when Russia eventually loses the war - Tuomas can simply state that he was always rooting for the good guys.
17/23
In Jan 2023, Malinen tweeted that "there would have been a simple solution to #UkraineRussiaWar️" - by addressing the concerns of Russia and by accepting territorial losses (probably referring to Crimea) "as a result of failed foreign policies of the US and the EU".
18/23
In Mar 2023 he also blamed the Biden administration for the destruction of Nord Stream pipelines, parroting the narrative by Sy Hersh. At the same time he highlighted the "inhumane losses of the Ukrainian army", perhaps again referring to Macgregor's shitty analysis.
19/23
On 3 Mar 2023,he claimed that Finland's NATO membership makes Finland the second front-line against Russia, and will most like bring war. He also possibly thinks that "Finns are, generally, the most stupid, gullible and malevolent people" and that we have "lost our purpose".20/23
Tuomas also has a tendency to cry out election fraud in any election held in Finland - the last time he cried wolf was on 5 Apr 2023, after the Finnish Parliamentary election, when he stated the possibility of a "massive elecotral fraud".
21/23
Apparently Mr Malinen considers himself as a real threat to the "deep state", as he has tweeted that "they" are eventually coming after him with false accusations of tax fraud, sexual assault or robbery/battery.
22/23
In the grand scheme of things, he's nobody, but I wanted to demonstrate the doomsayer, "I fully support Ukraine, BUT..." type that we so commonly see these days, especially among scholars and academics.
A little dessert for today's #vatniksoup: Greg Gaylor (@SMUMustangAlum) and his company helped Malinen to obtain a visa to the U.S.
They planned of having him serve as an economist for their M&A group, but they couldn’t get him "out of the clouds" and "down to Earth".
Greg said that "he was virtually bankrupt" and had no money or prospects, but is now doing well. "I think he’s in the pay of the Kremlin," he continued.
Greg also stated that "his economic analysis is very good" but he doesn't know how to translate this into advice for clients.
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In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce an American far-right social media personality, Nicholas J. Fuentes (@NickJFuentes). He’s best-known for his white supremacist, misogynistic and antisemitic rhetoric, and for being the poster boy for the so-called incel movement.
1/17
Like so many from the white supremacist movement, Fuentes dropped out of university after his freshman year. He studied introductory international relations, which apparently made him a geopolitics expert. Nick was introduced to the white supremacist movement at an…
2/17
..early age - he took part in the infamous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville,Virginia. In 2017, Fuentes launched his political talk show “America First”. Initially the show was aired on Trump-aligned Right Side Broadcasting Network, but it was dropped after the rally.
3/17
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll discuss foreign malign influence operations during the 2024 US elections. As in 2016 and 2020, these recent elections were also a target of massive disinformation and hacking campaigns originating mostly from Russia and Iran.
1/17
First of all, my opinion is that these influence operations alone didn’t affect the elections so much, that they actually made a difference.
Unlike in 2016, Trump’s win over Harris was clear and these short-term campaigns didn’t really change that much this time.
2/17
Yet, many of these online campaigns attacked both Harris and Walz on various social media platforms. Especially Walz became a big target after his nomination, and many Russian efforts attempted to defame him.
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce a social media personality and TV presenter, Raisa Blommestijn (@rblommestijn). She’s best-known for her far-right rhetorics, spreading conspiracy theories, and spreading anti-Ukraine and pro-Kremlin narratives on Dutch television.
1/24
Raisa studied philosophy of law at Leiden University. The faculty is best-known for one of its professors, Paul Cliteur. He’s a member of the pro-Kremlin party Forum voor Democratie (FvD), where he is one of the leading figures.Cliteur is also known for supervising the FvD…
2/24
…founder Thierry Baudet’s doctoral thesis, and can be considered a central figure in this Dutch “anti-establishment” movement. While studying at Leiden, Raise also met her best friend forever, Eva Vlaardingerbroek:
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce an American podcaster, Darryl Cooper (@martyrmade). He’s best-known for “Martyr Made”, a history podcast that provides a strongly revisionist and biased analysis on historical events such as the Revolution of Dignity and World War II.
1/22
Darryl became known to big audiences in 2021, when he published a Twitter thread in which he basically described a massive conspiracy against Trump during both 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. The culprits were predictable: the corporate press, intelligence agencies…
2/22
…and of course the evil Democrats. To Darryl, Russia was not working together with the Trump campaign, even though there’s clear evidence that many of his officials - including Carter Page, Rex Tillerson, Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort - interacted intimately with…
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’m going to outline the current situation in the West’s information war against Russia & its allies. Currently,the West’s counter-disinformation measures are severely underfunded,making it difficult to combat Russian influence operations effectively.
1/17
Europe today is repeating the same mistake in information warfare that it made in conventional warfare: we are not dedicating enough resources to counter it. Just as Europe was unprepared to fully support Ukraine and prepare for kinetic warfare against Russia,...
2/17
...we have been neglecting information warfare. Next year, Russia is reportedly set to spend around 3 billion USD on its information operations domestically and abroad, with allies like the CCP, Iran, and North Korea likely following suit.
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce an American conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation (@Heritage). Heritage is best-known for opposing military aid to Ukraine and for their political initiative called Project 2025, a potential blueprint for a Trump presidency.
1/23
Before we begin, I want to justify this soup that focuses heavily on US domestic politics. As a strong supporter of Ukraine, I see Donald Trump as a threat to Ukraine’s existence, and the reasoning for that can be found in this previous soup:
Heritage was founded in 1973, but it took a leading role in conservative politics during the Reagan presidency, whose policies were mostly taken from the foundation’s book series called Mandate for Leadership. Project 2025 is the ninth iteration of this series.