In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce an American propagandist, Florida Man and ex-cop, John "Badvolf" Mark Dougan (@RealBadVolf). He's best-known for his battle against the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, and for his propaganda work for the Kremlin.
1/21
Before he became a grifter for Moscow, Dougan worked as a cop. He actually wanted to be a super cop, and in his first job as a small town cop he wrote more traffic tickets than the 11 other officers combined.
2/21
But all this was too boring for an ex-marine wanting to get in on the real action, which is why he transferred Belle Glade, Florida, a hotspot of criminal activity and the HIV capital of the US of A.
3/21
But Dougan had anger management issues, and he constantly ran into trouble with his colleagues. In 2006, he pepper-sprayed an off-duty officer, costing the county a 275 000 US civil judgment. In 2009, while working at his new job, John was accused of sexual harassment by...
3/21
..a female officer. The accusations ranged from inappropriate comments of sexual nature to repeated unwanted touching. In 2013, the case was settled out of court.
At some point he also realized that his colleagues were brutal and ruthless (and they actually were) with...
4/21
...their police work, so he decided to publish dirt on them on FB. Years later in another job - again out of spite against his fellow officers - he launched several websites where he'd smear his old colleagues and where people could share dirt on local authorities.
5/21
One of them, PBSOtalk.com, became a popular forum for leaking damning information. But he also used his various websites to spread fake news and doctored documents. According to Dougan, "A fake-news site is nothing without real news", and he used this strategy...
6/21
..on his websites, mostly publishing factual news and the adding some BS in between - a tactic commonly used by fake news blogs such as Zero Hedge.
In 2015, Dougan lured a general contractor into sharing information against his enemies over recorded phone calls by faking..
7/21
..being a woman called Jessica. The problem was that he couldn't share these calls with anyone without breaking the law, which is why he created a fake Russian hacker persona, Badvolf. He then created a website where he published all the recordings under his new pseudonym.
8/21
After this Badvolf started publishing personal information on federal agents, prosecutors, cops and judges. He'd gathered and combined the information from open sources and databases. Eventually FBI confiscated his computer, after which Dougan fled to Toronto, from where...
9/21
..he flew to to Moscow, leaving behind an angry (now ex-)wife and two children.Few years prior,Dougan had started visiting Russia regularly & on one of the trips he met with Putin's confidant,Pavel Borodin.His collaboration with the Kremlin probably started around this time.10/21
The Kremlin has utilized Dougan's notoriety in the US in a very effective way. He's shown as an Edward Snowden-type of figure, who is persecuted by the FBI for his "whistleblowing activities". RT even made a documentary, "Breaking Bad Wolf", about Dougan.
It's shit.
11/21
John has been attempting to monetize his silly antics in various ways. In 2018, he published a book with the most ridiculous title which I just shorten to "Badvolf".
12/21
In the book he claimed, that it was actually him who received the "DC Leaks" from "whistleblower" Seth Rich, and put them up online. The leaks were actually an operation by Russian hacker group/GRU intel unit Fancy Bear.
13/21
In Mar 2022, after Russia invaded Ukraine, Dougan claimed that he'd go to Ukraine to "prove" the existence of bioweapons labs. The idea of these labs originated from a QAnon supporter, and was then picked up by trustworthy news sources such as RT, Sputnik,...
14/21
CCP-controlled Xinhua, and the Russian embassy in Sarajevo. And of course Tucker Carlson together with Glenn Greenwald.
In Jul 2022, Dougan interviewed a British-born prisoner of war, Aiden Aislin, a clear breach of the Geneve conventions.
15/21
In Mar 2023, Dougan, together with Mike "iEarlGrey" Jones, appeared on state-owned national TV channel, Zvezda, to talk about their humanitarian (read: propaganda) project in Donbas Oblast in Ukraine.
16/21
Twitter user @cossackgundi discovered, that John had also appeared in a propaganda video while wearing a mask. Cossack referred to it as a "pro-russian freakshow", and I agree with this statement:
Dougan has an active YouTube channel with around 50k subscribers. His videos propagate the Kremlin narratives and also usually blame the West for hypocrisy, war crimes, and probably Satan worshiping. He also visits other podcasts, probably just to earn a living.
18/21
My "Man in Moscow" had two comments about Badvolf: first, he said that "Everyone says Dougan can't go 5 minutes without bringing up his trips to donbas". His second comment was that "he'll say anything for a few rubles".
19/21
To conclude: Dougan is just one Kremlin mouthpiece & "RT correspondent" in the big swarm of paid shills. Most of these pathological liars are trapped by the propaganda factories like RT, since they're own channels have been demonetized and they can't get a job anywhere else.20/21
With charges of extortion and wiretapping hanging over his head, he probably won't ever be able to go back the US. Until then, he'll just have to publish videos on how great the supermarkets in Moscow are.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce an American radio host and propagandist, Scott Horton (@scotthortonshow). He’s best known for blaming Russia’s genocidal war against Ukraine on the US, and for publishing a 700-page book full of Kremlin propaganda.
1/23
Most of you probably remember Scotty from this recent episode of Piers Morgan Uncensored, in which he was schooled for his revisionist propaganda by Ukrainian volunteer and activist Anastasiya Paraskevova (@UkrainianAna).
2/23
Let’s start with the obvious - Scott Horton is a hardcore Kremlin apologist who sees nothing wrong with what Putin does, but strongly condemns anything that Ukrainians do to defend themselves. For Horton,the enemy is the US and all of its allies. The way this works is that…
3/23
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll discuss the sad (but funny) state of Finnish vatniks. After Russia launched their full-scale invasion against Ukraine, the Finnish pro-Kremlin/conspiracy theorist scene experienced a dramatic devaluation and hasn’t been able to bounce back since.
1/20
I often get asked about the current state of the Finnish vatnik club, and there’s usually not much to report.
It’s not because these people have stopped, but because today their work has only comedic value.
So here’s the latest:
2/20
Master vatnik and traitor Johan Bäckman has relocated to Russia, and he was recently given a Russian citizenship. It’s obvious that Johan was recruited by Russia’s intelligence agencies a long time ago. He’s still producing videos on YouTube on his…
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce a Romanian politician and conspiracy theorist, Călin Georgescu (@calin_georgescu). He’s best-known for his pro-Kremlin and conspiratorial views, running for president of Romania, and doing it by only campaigning on TikTok.
1/25
Georgescu has a doctorate in pedology (a branch of soil science), and held various positions in Romania’s environment ministry during the 90s.
Between 1999-2012, he was a representative for Romania on the national committee of the United Nations Environment Program.
2/25
He was proposed as Romania’s prime minister in 2011, 2012 and 2016 by Romanian far-right parties, but he rose to international infamy in 2024, when he ran for president of Romania independently and obtained the most votes (22,95%) out of all candidates in the first round.
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce a Canadian journalist and alleged Soviet/Russian spy, David Pugliese (@davidpugliese). He’s best-known for his articles about “Ukrainian Nazis”, and for allegedly being a spy for both the Soviet Union and later Russia.
1/21
Several months ago I was anonymously sent a pile of documents from the mid-80s originating from the KGB archives in Kyiv. These documents outlined a KGB recruitment into “Stuart”, or David Pugliese who “works in foreign mass media” and who is…
2/21
..“studied with the perspective of possible operative use”. Another document described “Stuart’s” contact “Ivan”, who allegedly became his handler.Some have speculated that “Ivan” is Fred Weir, a correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor.He’s lived in Moscow since 1986.
3/21
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.