Tweet

How to get URL link on Twitter App

On the Twitter thread, click on or icon on the bottom
Click again on or Share Via icon
Click on Copy Link to Tweet
Paste it above and click "Unroll Thread"!
More info at Twitter Help

Pekka Kallioniemi

@P_Kallioniemi

Apr 11 • 19 tweets • 8 min read Twitter logo

Read on Twitter

Scrolly

In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce a German lawyer(!), politician and MEP, Maximillian Krah (@KrahMax). He's best-known for his far-right politics, for his pro-Russian voting patterns, and for his denial of war crimes and human rights violations around the world.

1/18

First of all, how do you recognize a douche bag? They put the title "Dr." before their name.

Dr. Maximillian Krah got into youth politics when he was 14, when he joined a CDU's youth organization, Junge Union. He left the party in 2016 and joined AfD, a German political...
2/18

...party that contains a strong pro-Russia movement. AfD is deeply connected to the Kremlin, and for example the party's MP, Markus Frohnmeier, called for Russian funding for his election campaign. But that's another soup for later, let's focus on Dr. Max for now.

3/18

A year after Dr. Max joined the AfD, it made a change in its policies, and the party's new leadership agreed that Germany should "close its borders to asylum applicants, end sanctions on Russia and to leave the EU".

Dr. Max's own rhetoric relies heavily on ...

4/18

...George Soros-based conspiracy theories, "anti-wokeism", anti-Americanism, xenophobia and pro-Russian and pro-China politics.

5/18

For example, in 2017 he tweeted that "the threat of terrorism in the world does not come from supporters of Assad or Putin, nor from 'right-wing populists'". Ironically, in the recent years, it has come mostly from all of those three sources.

6/18

Like the Irish MEPs Clare Daly and Mick Wallace, Dr. Max has been appearing routinely at the CCP-controlled propaganda mill Global Times (GT), where he usually focuses on the criticizing the US foreign policy.

7/18

In 2019, after the US had published their "Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2019", Dr. Max gave a statement to the CCP-controlled People's Daily magazine that "Xinjiang-related issues are no doubt China’s internal affairs, and the U.S. has no right to weigh in".

8/18

In 2019, Putin's favorite Ukrainian oligarch, Viktor Medvedchuk, met with Maximilian Krah and other AfD members to promote his "peace agreement in Eastern Ukraine".

9/18

Medvedchuk allegedly tried to gain more power in Ukraine and in the eyes of Putin with this joke of a peace agreement, which was just a copy of the earlier Minsk agreement, that wasn't withheld by any party involved.

10/18

In Sep 2020, after Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a nerve agent by FSB agents, Dr. Max defended the Kremlin narrative that it is unclear whether he was poisoned with Novichok and whether the Kremlin had anything to do with the case.

11/18

In an interview published by GT in Oct 2021, Dr. Max suggested that "the US is using human rights as a political tool," continuing that the "interpretation of what human rights are" are done by left-liberal NGO's funded by George Soros.

12/18

Based on Dr. Max, these NGO's promote issues like gay marriage, abortion and "foreign-sponsored NGO's". He then stated that these NGO's produce fake news with political agenda, and that they are part of the "deep state".

13/18

In another interview published in Nov 2022, Dr. Max predicted the energy crisis that never came, and went as far as saying that "we will have a complete deindustrialization crisis following". Then he continues: ...

14/18

..."Russia is our most reliable and cost-efficient supplier of oil and gas. It would be foolish to plan otherwise." Naturally, he also blames NATO expansion for the war in Ukraine, also suggesting that this war has put "Europeans at the mercy of the US".

15/18

In Aug 2022, he tweeted that "China exports goods, not ideology" and "neither does Russia". That's pretty rich coming from a guy who gives interviews to both People's Daily and Global Times magazines. The second statement is also ironic considering how eagerly our ...

16/18

...dear Doctor spreads the "anti-woke" message and sucks up to Putin and his cronies.

Krah has also been a fervent opponent of Zelenskyy. He's blamed the Ukrainian President of corruption, for supporting gay rights and for calling for nuclear war.

17/18

In the European Parliament, Dr. Max has naturally been voting exactly like Putin wants him to: like all MEPs from the AfD, he's voted against the resolution of declaring Russia a state "sponsor of terrorism".

18/18

https://twitter.com/P_Kallioniemi/status/1613077071172980737

Support my work:

Past soups: https://t.co/9k5rQx4cgb
Related soups:
Mick Wallace: https://t.co/9WJhOgXbGM
Clare Daly: https://t.co/pwTZJ5w5T0buymeacoffee.com/PKallioniemi
vatniksoup.com

https://twitter.com/P_Kallioniemi/status/1613077071172980737

https://twitter.com/P_Kallioniemi/status/1618985882350141440

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

More from @P_Kallioniemi

Pekka Kallioniemi

@P_Kallioniemi

Apr 13

In today's #vatniksoup, I'll talk about post-truth politics and how they have changed our society - in my opinion - for worse. This analysis relies heavily on the work done by academic John Hartley, and by journalist Adam Curtis.

1/22

Post-truth politics refers to a political culture where the distinction between what's true and what's false has become almost irrelevant. This has created a political culture where instead of stating facts, the debaters appeal to the audience's emotions.

2/22

Of course, there was nothing new in politicians lying to people (that's just called "politics"), but at some point the people stopped caring about the factuality of these claims, and focused more on how it made them FEEL.

3/22

Read 23 tweets

Pekka Kallioniemi

@P_Kallioniemi

Apr 12

In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce an American politician, conspiracy theorist and businessman, Donald Trump Jr. He's best-known for his dealings with the Russians, and for his work for The Trump Organization and for his father.

1/20

Trump Jr's early life was a wild ride - his parents divorced when he was 12 due to his dad's affair which estranged Don Jr. from his father for a year. After getting his BS, he lived in a truck and worked as a bartender until he returned to work for the Trump Organization.

2/20

It seems that the organization was closely tied to Russian money as early as 2008, when Don Jr. stated that "In terms of high-end product influx into the US, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets," ...

3/20

Read 21 tweets

Pekka Kallioniemi

@P_Kallioniemi

Apr 11

.@JenniferCandoli is a good example of how troll farms grow accounts around various controversial topics: an attractive person as a profile picture, begs for likes and retweets while offering a "followback". Once the account has enough followers, it starts unfollowing ...

1/4

... every account slowly to get a nice follower-following ratio that'll increase the account's engagement and visibility.

After the account has a large enough audience, it starts promoting and spreading content around a specific topic.

2/4

For example, @JenniferCandoli account could be targeting the 2024 US presidential election, and it seems to be well on the way of promoting Trump and the MAGA gang. Sometimes these accounts can in hibernate for years, until they are activated for some specific purpose.

3/4

Read 5 tweets

Pekka Kallioniemi

@P_Kallioniemi

Apr 10

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

Read 16 tweets

Pekka Kallioniemi

@P_Kallioniemi

Apr 9

In today's #vatniksoup, I'll be introducing a bank well-known in both Austria and Russia: Raiffeisen Bank International and its Russian subsidiary, AO Raiffeisen. It is one of the few foreign banks that still continues business-as-usual in Russia.

1/12

The Russian branch of Raiffeisen was founded in 1996 and was expanded massively after the takeover of Russia's Impexbank in 2006. A year later they had become the largest bank that deals with foreign capital (seventh largest overall) in Russia.

2/12

During the early 2000's Raiffeisen was opening new branches around Russia, including St. Petersburg, Samara, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk and Krasnodar. After 2018 they focused on digital expansion, and in 2021 they had digital presence in over 300 cities.

3/12

Read 12 tweets

Pekka Kallioniemi

@P_Kallioniemi

Apr 8

In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce a Russian politician and economist, Sergey Glazyev. He's best-known for his long career in Russian politics, and for his leaked phone calls in regard to Russian meddling in Ukraine before, during and after the Revolution of Dignity.

1/24

Sergey was born in Zaporizhzhia, in the Ukrainian SSR. His father was Russian & mother Ukrainian. After getting his doctorate from the Moscow State University,he entered government service becoming the First Deputy Minister of External Economic Relations under Yegor Gaidar.

2/24

Gaidar was best-known for his economic reform known as "shock therapy" - with the help of US economists, Gaidar and his posse tried to transform the Soviet system into free market capitalism overnight. It was a disaster for everyone except the oligarchs and organized crime.

3/24