In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce an American political activist, attention-seeker and TV presenter, Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec). He's best-known for his tendency to lie and spread conspiracy theories, and for his pro-Kremlin views on the Russo-Ukrainian War.
1/24
Posobiec rose to popularity during the 2016 US presidential election, while working for Roger Stone's organization Citizens for Trump. Jack's style of promoting lies and making up stuff resembles Stone's "admit nothing, deny everything, and launch a counterattack"...
2/24
...style of propaganda, in which there isn't any kind of commitment to the truth. Jack has also described himself as "Roger Stone's man". He worked in the United States Navy Reserve from 2010 until 2018. A former active duty naval intelligence officer stated that Jack...
3/24
...was "unlikely in the extreme to have ever done any intelligence gathering of any national level importance". Later his security clearance was suspended without any disclosed reason. Some have speculated that this could be due to his involvement in politics, other that...
4/24
...it had something to do with his wife, a Belorussian MyPillow advocate, Tanya Gorbach.
At some point Jack's Twitter bio described him as being "fmr CBS News". CBS News has told that Posobiec never worked for them. During this time in 2016, he also live-streamed the...
5/24
...infamous "Pizzagate" video where he visited a pizzeria called Comet Ping Pong, and looked for signs of child-sex ring ran by Hillary Clinton. He was asked to leave the place after he tried to broadcast a child's birthday party to his live viewers.
6/24
A few weeks after this, a man walked into the restaurant, opening fire with a semi-automatic rifle. Posobiec later said that he was actually "debunking" the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, declaring it "stupid".
7/24
In Nov 2016, Jack snuck into a anti-Trump protests, planting a sign saying "Rape Melania". He denied his involvement to BuzzFeed News who reported on the issue even after BuzzFeed published the text messages with Jack allegedly planning these theatrics.
8/24
Jack's also closely connected to various far-right and neo-Nazi actors, including Richard Spencer, the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. He has also attended a march organized by far-right, fascist political movement called Obóz Narodowo-Radykalny.
9/24
In 2017, Posobiec hired the Clark brothers to help create a documentary about the murder of Seth Rich for Rebel News, an outlet he was working for. They're well-known neo-Nazis, and Jeffrey Clark was arrested by the FBI on gun charges after he declared that Jewish victims..
10/24
... of the October 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting "deserved exactly what happened to them and so much worse". He naturally denied any connection to them, even though HuffPost published photos of all three working together.
11/24
In Oct 2019, after Alexander Vindman testified in Congress - he stated that Trump withheld military aid to Ukraine and asked Zelensky to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden - Posobiec tweeted, citing NYT, that Vindman had been advising the Ukrainian government on how...
12/24
...to counter Trump's foreign policy goals. The whole news was of course all made up. His crusade against Vindman has been going on ever since.
In the wake of George Floyd's murder in Jun 2020, Jack falsely claimed about pipe bombs planted at a veteran memorial in DC.
13/24
Throughout his career as a... whatever he is, Jack's lied so much that the Philadelphia magazine called him the "King of Fake News". SPLC reported that Posobiec had tweeted almost thirty articles from SouthFront, a Russian fake news blog connected to Russian intelligence...
14/24
services, and that SouthFront had promoted Posobiec as well. The US State Department has described SouthFront as part of Russia's "disinformation and propaganda ecosystem".
A 2017 investigation by HuffPost revealed that Internet Research Agency-controlled Twitter account, @TEN_GOP, retweeted Jack's content more than any other account. The account focused on disinformation and racist content, so his tweets were a perfect fit for the account.
16/24
Posobiec was one of the most prominent spreaders of the #MacronLeaks, a hack-and-leak operation which leaked 20 000 e-mails related to Macron's 2017 campaign:
. He's also promoted Alexander Dugin's 1997 book Foundations of Geopolitics.
17/24
He also crowdfunded a comic called "Agent Poso". In this extremely sad project a character named Jack Posobiec was depicted as the leader of the TASK FORCE AEGIS. The comic was described as "a series about young conservatives that could be enjoyed from anyone from 2 to 92".
18/24
One of Posobiec's favorite narratives has been the bioweapons labs in Ukraine. This conspiracy theory originated from QAnon supporter Jacob Creech, and quickly became one of the biggest disinformation topics related to the Russo-Ukrainian War.
19/24
Naturally he's also promoted various other conspiracy theories,including The Great Reset & "white genocide". Lately he's put a lot of focus on defaming @MalcolmNance,a veteran who's actually gone to Ukraine to do shit (instead of just talking shit on social media like Jack).20/24
Jack and his pals seem to think that the West is somehow "forcing" various countries to join their defense and economic alliances, thus removing any kind of sovereignty or free will from these actors. Another popular claim is that these sovereign countries were somehow...
21/24
... "assimilated" by the "deep state" and intel organizations like the CIA or NGO's like NED. The focus is clear: criticize NATO and the Western leadership, question the aid to Ukraine and this way help Russia to achieve its goals.
22/24
Posobiec is a wannabe-Roger Stone who promotes post-truth conservative politics through lies & provocation. He doesn't care about the truth and is willing to spread any extreme views or conspiracy theories, so that he can stay relevant and make some money at the same time.
23/24
This tactic will be utilized as long as it has no consequences. These days you can say pretty much anything on social media without any real flashback. The flow of information and viral content is so fast, that all false claims are forgotten almost immediately.
I guess it's also worth mentioning that Jack clearly puts pedophiles in two distinct categories based on their political leaning: the good pedos, and the bad pedos.
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.