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...
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...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.
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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.
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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.
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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:...
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..."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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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".
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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.
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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
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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.