In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce an American politician and gun rights activist, Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert). She's best-known for her support of the QAnon conspiracy theory, for her support of Donald Trump, and for her pro-Russian voting patterns and hot takes.
1/15
Boebert comes from a modest background, and her family was allegedly living on welfare when she was growing up. After high school, she worked at McDonalds and as a pipeliner. In 2013, Lauren and her husband opened Shooters Grill, a gun-themed restaurant where carrying...
2/15
...guns openly was encouraged. In 2004 her then-boyfriend Jayson was arrested for exposing his penis to two young women at a bowling alley. In 2020, she protested the COVID-19 mandates by opening the restaurant despite of restrictions.
3/15
She was then served with a cease and desist order, with which she refused to comply. Eventually, their food license was suspended. The restaurant was a highly unprofitable business endeavor, and it was closed in 2022.
4/15
Around 2019, she started challenging various Democrat politicians on their gun rights stance and occasionally hanging out in demonstrations with far-right militias and organizations such as Three Percenters and The Proud Boys.
5/15
She also gained a lot of traction with her support of the QAnon movement. In May 2020, when she was interviewed by QAnon conspiracy theorist Ann Vandersteel, she stated that:...
6/15
..."Everything I've heard of Q, I hope that this is real because it only means America is getting stronger and better". She was also following several QAnon-related YouTube channels, but deleted her account after someone pointed this out.
7/15
Like her fellow QAnon associate Marjorie Taylor Greene, Boebert denied any connection with either The Proud Boys or with QAnon after she was elected as a representative.
8/15
Lauren is part of the so-called MAGA Republicans group and a HUGE Trump fan. She's been a large proponent of the "Stop the Steal" movement, stating that there was widespread voter fraud in Arizona. She was also criticized for her Twitter coverage of the Jan 6th insurrection.
9/15
As a representative,Boebert has introduced a few dozen bills and resolutions,out of which only two have passed committee (the 1st step in making proposed legislation into a law).Some notable examples include a resolution seeking to enlist antifa as domestic terrorist group.
10/15
She's stated that her top legislative priority is the elimination of critical race theory from US schools, even though the theory is not even taught in schools.
11/15
In Jan 2023, she opposed additional military aid to Ukraine, saying that the US has "already sent too much help" and continuing that "we don’t know where that money is going". For some reason, Boebert also opposed Violence Against Women Act.
12/15
She claimed that the money to Ukraine would be better spent on protecting the south border and fighting the fentanyl crisis.
In Feb 2023, Boebert and three other representatives sponsored a bill to name the AR-15 rifle the US "national gun".
13/15
On 8 Apr 2023, @AnonOpsUnited tweeted that they have damning e-mails of Boebert's. As of today, it is still unclear if these hacks/leaks are genuine or not. If genuine, Mrs. Boebert apparently had Googled about the size of duck's penis.
14/15
The amount of military and humanitarian aid from the US to Ukraine is substantial, and halting it would have devastating effects on Ukraine. This is why the Kremlin will keep on promoting the Trumpists like Boebert, Gaetz, Santos and Taylor Greene to undermine these efforts.15/15
Support my work:
Past soups: https://t.co/9k5rQx4cgb
Related soups:
MTG: https://t.co/5931MM4YG0
Matt Gaetz: https://t.co/XNUZDsBpax
George Santos: https://t.co/uvEC4BS9IR
QAnon: https://t.co/pV4Txmgjp0buymeacoffee.com/PKallioniemi vatniksoup.com
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll discuss the Ukrainian SBU’s “Spiderweb” operation and the main disinformation narrative vatniks have been spreading during the afterfall. While domestic Russian media stays silent, the vatniks and Russian milbloggers have been extremely loud.
1/20
This operation was probably the most impactful strike since the drowning of the Moskva, massively reducing Russia’s capability to bomb Ukrainian cities (or anyone else’s). It involved smuggling 117 FPV drones hidden in trucks into Russia. Once near airbases,…
2/20
…the roofs opened remotely, launching drones in synchronized waves to strike targets up to 4,000 km away. The mission took 18 months to plan. The unsuspecting Russian truck drivers who transported them had no idea they were delivering weapons deep behind their own lines.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce a Russian movie director, propagandist, and former priest: Ivan Okhlobystin. He’s best known for his strong support for the war on Ukraine and for his radical views, which are often used as a testbed for the domestic Russian audience.
1/20
Ivan was born in 1966 from a short-lived marriage between a 62-year-old chief physician and a 19-year-old engineering student. She later remarried, and the family moved from Kaluga province to Moscow. Ivan kept the surname Okhlobystin from his biological father.
2/20
After moving to Moscow, Ivan began studying at VGIK film school. He soon became a playwright for theatre productions and also wrote for Stolitsa magazine, which he later left because, as he put it, “it had become a brothel.”
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce a Ukrainian-born former State Duma deputy, Vladimir Medinsky. He is best known as one of the ideologues of the “Russkiy Mir”, for his close ties to Vladimir Putin, and for leading the “peace talks” in Turkey in 2022 and 2025.
1/20
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Medinsky interned as a correspondent on the international desk of the TASS news agency, learning the ways of propaganda at an early age. Some time later, he earned two PhDs – one in political science and the other in history.
2/20
As is tradition in Russia, Medinsky’s academic work was largely pseudo-scientific and plagiarized. Dissernet found that 87 of 120 pages in his dissertation were copied from his supervisor’s thesis. His second dissertation was also heavily plagiarized.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce an American social media influencer, Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson). He’s best known for his plagiarism while working as a clickbait “journalist”, and for being paid by the Kremlin to spread anti-Ukraine and anti-Democratic narratives.
1/23
Benny graduated from the University of Iowa in 2009 with a degree in developmental psychology. His former high school buddy described him as the “smartest, most articulate kid in school,” and was disappointed to see him turn into a “cheating, low standard hack.”
2/23
After graduating, Benny dived directly into the world of outrage media. Benny’s first job was writing op-eds for far-right website Breitbart, from where he moved on to TheBlaze, a conservative media owned by Glenn Beck, and a spring board for many conservative influencers.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce a Cypriot politician and social media personality, Fidias Panayiotou (@Fidias0). He’s best known for his clickbait YouTube stunts and for voting against aid to Ukraine and the return of abducted Ukrainian children from Russia.
1/20
Fidias hails from Meniko, Cyprus. In 2019, he began posting videos on YouTube. After a slow start, he found his niche with clickbaity, MrBeast-style content featuring silly stunts, catchy titles and scripted dialogue. Today, Fidias has 2,7 million subscribers on YouTube.
2/20
Fidias’s channel started with trend-riding, but he found his niche in traveling without money — aka freeloading. In one video, he fare-dodged on the Bengaluru Metro. The train authority responded by saying they would file a criminal case against him.
In today’s May 9th Vatnik Soup, we discuss the ambiguous relationship of the Kremlin with Nazism and explain why so many vatniks can be outright Nazis, and promote or excuse them while at the same time being so hysterical about alleged “Nazis in Ukraine”.
1/23
Of course, Kremlin propaganda employs the Firehose of Falsehood and often lacks any consistent ideology other than spreading chaos and seeking power, so such contradictions can be commonplace. However in this case there is a certain cynical consistency there.
2/23
To understand modern Russia, we need to go back a hundred years to the beginnings of Soviet Russia/Soviet Union — a genocidal terror regime under dictators Lenin and Stalin, whose totalitarian and imperialist legacy Putin’s Russia fully embraces.