In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce an American pro-Russian propagandist, Wyatt Reed (@wyattreed13). He's best-known for his work for Sputnik, and for parroting the classic Kremlin narratives such as "Ukrainian Nazis", "genocide in Donbas" & the "corrupted Kiev regime".
1/19
Like with so many Kremlin propagandists, Wyatt's motivation stems from his deep hatred for American imperialism, and as is tradition, Reed's praised "public intellectuals" like Noam Chomsky and John Pilger.
2/19
Reed was also an author at the fake news blog, @TheGrayzoneNews, where he co-authored articles with Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton on Bolivia's political crisis in 2019. He hasn't published anything there after 2020, perhaps due to his contract with Sputnik.
3/19
Wyatt has called himself an "impartial analyst", but naturally he's nothing but a paid mouthpiece for the Kremlin. He's worked for the Russian-state controlled Sputnik for several years.
4/19
Reed's heavily involved in the circle jerk of pro-Kremlin propagandists who for some reason call themselves journalists. He's been interviewed by Katie Halper & Aaron Maté (@UsefulIdiotpod), Gonzalo Lira (@GonzaloLira1968), Liubov Sivaya (@liusivaya), ...
5/19
Tara "Joe Biden raped me" Reade (@ReadeAlexandra), Lee Camp from RT (@LeeCamp), and of course by our own favorite "poor woman from Lugansk", Donbass Devushka.
6/19
Wyatt's propagand relies heavily on the "genocide in Donbas" narrative. He's often reported from Donetsk, claiming that the "Ukrainian Nazis" are bombing civilian targets. Apparently for Wyatt the definition of a Nazi is "anyone who supports Ukraine".
7/19
Between Mar and Apr 2022, Reed was constantly tweeting about Mariupol. He tweeted about the "Azov base" with "copious quantities of nazi paraphernalia", like the hat with the coat Nazi Germany Coat and Arms and SS Totenkopf logo that the Russians planted there.
8/19
He's also shared several propaganda videos of crisis actors blaming the Azov for using them as human shields & forcing them to stay in the city.For some weird reason he did not tweet about the Mariupol theater or the maternity hospital bombings conducted by Russia.
9/19
After Bucha, Reed attempted to muddy the waters with Ukrainian war crimes. He also referred to the event as "so-called Bucha massacre", and stating how the Western media is silent on the "clearing operation", referring to the eradication of Russian forces in the area.
10/19
He was an "international observer" at the sham referendum in Sep 2022 in Sevastopol, Ukraine. "Everything I've seen so far has been very transparent, very open," he commented to TASS when asked about the situation at the polling station.
11/19
In Oct 2022, Wyatt was all about that cold, gasless, European winter. He stated that "It's gonna be a long winter", and fantasized about Europeans huddling over a burning barrel and slowly roasting a rat carcass.
12/19
In the end of Feb 2023, Reed was tweeting how "50,000 Germans came out [...] to call for peace and demand their government "stop the escalation of arms deliveries" to Ukraine". He just forgot to mention that these events were also orchestrated by the Kremlin.
13/19
In his promo video for an "antiwar gathering", Reed accuses Ukraine of Russia's strategy of "double-tapping" (i.e. bombing twice) civilian targets.
In the same video he claimed that the whole war is waged because US needs to launder money to the "elite".
14/19
Wyatt also likes to spice things up with historical revisionism. His claims that it was the Soviets who stopped the Nazis incidentally forgets to mention the military aid and involvement of the US, and the breakthroughs made from UK intel.
15/19
He also forgot to mention that it was actually the Poles, Belorussians and the Ukrainians who lost the largest percentage of population.
16/19
Wyatt is just another "independent journalist" who hails from the "far-left" - he parrots all the Kremlin-supported talking points, and in interviews and podcasts he speaks about his brief visit in Ukraine.
17/19
Now that Russia is doing nothing but losing, he's making subpar propaganda on pretty much anything, including a "sexualized image of the Hindu goddess Kali".
18/19
Oh, and as is tradition: Wyatt claims that the Uyghur genocide is "totally made up" and "CIA propaganda".
All these "journalists" are just predictable carbon copies of each other, toeing the line of totalitarian regimes around the world.
In this first (and maybe last?) Basiji Soup, we’ll look at… the Islamic Republic of Iran, its disinformation operations, its hypocrisy, how it sells its atrocities as virtue and its repression as morality, how it serves the Kremlin, and the current protests against it.
1/20
Basijis are members of the most fanatical part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). In a broader sense: Iranian regime loyalists & propagandists. They may be fewer than vatniks or wumaos, but the goal is the same: destabilize the West to protect a brutal regime.
2/20
The regime oppressing Iran is a “theocratic” authoritarian state around a “Supreme Leader” hiding behind religion to justify its crimes: censorship, repression, executions, torture and terror — similar to Russia and its “holy war” against Ukraine.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we introduce our first Czech vatnik, Tomio Okamura. He’s best known for building a political career on xenophobia while being of mixed origins himself, and for pushing Kremlin narratives in Czechia, a country otherwise very supportive of Ukraine.
1/19
Okamura was born in Tokyo in 1972 to a Japanese-Korean father and Czech mother. He spent part of his childhood in Japan, and part in a Czechoslovak foster home where he was heavily bullied. His mixed origins made it difficult for him to fit in either country.
2/19
Nonetheless, after working odd jobs in Japan, Tomio returned to Czechia and became a successful entrepreneur in Japanese tourism. He then rose in politics: Senator in 2012, MP in 2013, he founded two parties: Dawn of Direct Democracy and SPD (Freedom and Direct Democracy).
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we’ll introduce an American billionaire, real estate developer, and wannabe diplomat, Steve Witkoff. He’s best known for trying to sell Ukraine to Putin and for helping Trump sell this treason and encouragement of genocidal war as “peace”.
1/20
Steve studied law and political science at Hofstra University in New York. After law school, he worked as a real estate attorney, which led him into property acquisitions and development. He first met Trump in the 1980s when Trump was a client of his real estate law firm.
2/20
In 1997, Witkoff founded the Witkoff Group, a New York–based real estate development and investment firm. The firm has owned and developed dozens of properties in New York and other major US cities, making Witkoff quite wealthy, with some interesting business connections.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, our first on a non-human vatnik, we’ll talk about… Grok @grok. It’s best known for turning into Mecha-Hitler and Mecha-Putler and for defending its vatnik master, Elon Musk, at all costs, up to being willing to sacrifice the rest of mankind for him.
1/24
Let’s start with an introduction into how Large Language Models (LLMs) work, and the new “arguing with your toaster” phenomenon. LLMs like Grok are Artificial Intelligence (AI) but not the way we had imagined — a new form of intelligence that would somehow think like us.
2/24
Instead, LLMs are basically “guessing engines” and search engines trained on a massive dataset to give you the output you expect: they are imitating intelligence rather than being an actual intelligence. They’re chatbots generating responses pretending to be a helpful AI.
Robert Amsterdam is also a registered (and well-paid!) agent of Maduro’s Venezuela, the socialist regime and ally of Russia which Tucker Carlson has recently defended for some reason, shocking many of his right-wing supporters.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we’ll explain the context of the upcoming Budapest Blunder, and how it follows the infamous Alaska Fiasco from two months ago and Trump’s absurd delaying of serious aid to Ukraine and effective sanctions on Russia for the past nine months.
1/20
Two months ago, Trump embarrassed the United States by rolling out the red carpet for war criminal dictator Putin and overall acting like a pathetic servant eager to meet his master. Of course, the Alaska Fiasco didn’t bring peace any closer.
Worse, the main outcome of the humiliation was to delay serious sanctions, which the US Congress, in rare bipartisan unity against Russia, was on the verge of passing. Two weeks by two weeks, Trump Always Chickens Out, postponing any real pressure on Putin for 9 months now.