In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce a British politician and TV presenter, Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage ). He's best-known for his prominent role in the Brexit campaign, and for his bootlicking of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.
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Farage joined the Conservative party at the age of 14. From early on, euroscepticism was at the core of his politics and he voted for the Green Party in 1989 due to their "sensible" policies towards the EU. He left the Conservative party in 1992 in protest to the signing...
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...of the Treaty on European Union, which forms the basis of the EU law. In 1993, Farage was a founding member of the Eurosceptic, right-wing populist UK Independence Party (UKIP). He was elected as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) in 1999, and was re-elected in...
3/24
...2004, 2009, 2014. While in the EP, he exposed various political figures for their shady deals, including Jacques Barrot and the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso. He also attacked Belgian politician Herman Van Rompuy, declaring that...
4/24
...he had the "charisma of a damp rag" and that he looked like "a low grade bank clerk".
In 2009, Farage boasted about using over 2 million £ of taxpayer money in staff, travel, and other expenses. In 2014 he declared 205 603 £ over ten years in gifts.
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A senior member, Kevin Ellul Bonici, of Nigel's parliamentary EU group was known for making trips to the Russian embassy in Belgium and for organizing smear campaigns against Kremlin critics. One former staffer stated that Ellul Bonici returned from each of these...
6/24
...trips with "a bootload of propaganda". Ellul Bonici was also responsible for uploading Farage clips on "many fringe sites".
Since the beginning of his political career, Farage's politics has been all about one thing and one thing only: UK leaving the EU.
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He was one of the main drivers of the Brexit campaign, and was involved in both the Vote Leave and Leave.EU movements. Farage's main financial backer over the years has been businessman Arron Banks.
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When Obama flew to London to "convince" Brits to stay in the EU,Farage called it a "monstrous interference".Ironically,a month later,Farage himself said in an interview with Robert Peston that if"he were an eligible US voter he would vote for Trump in the 2016 presidential..
9/24
... election". Few months later he visited the Republican convention with his aide, George Cotrell, and engaged in discussions with Trump's people. Before they could leave the US, Cotrell was arrested on 21 federal counts, including fraud, money laundering and extortion.
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In Aug 2016, Farage, his funder Arron Banks, and Andy Wigmore met with Trump at a fundraiser in Mississippi. Later they attended Trump's campaign rally, where he asked Farage to give a speech and introduced him as "Mr. Brexit".
11/24
After Trump won the presidency, Farage stated that he "couldn't be happier".
In the same interview he described Obama as a "loathsome individual" and as "that Obama creature".
12/24
Nigel was listed by the FBI as a person of interest in their investigation on the Russian interference in the 2016 US election due to his connections to Trump, WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. One source claimed that "he's right in the middle of these relationships.
13/24
He turns up over and over again. There's a lot of attention being paid to him." Farage had met with Assange and his lawyers, and Assange and his lawyer were even given an opportunity to contribute to the speeches given by the UKIP. In return, UKIP organized people...
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...for a pro-Assange demonstration in London. Documentarian Daniel DiMauro said that Farage had a dinner with Roger Stone and Alex Jones. In Oct 2017, Farage was attending a discussion on LBC radio station where one of the callers suggested that the pro-Israeli lobby in..
15/24
...the US was equally dangerous to the Russian interference in the US politics. Farage called it a "reasonable point", and stated that "there are about 6 million Jewish people living in America, so as a percentage it's quite small, but in terms of influence it's quite big".
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Farage has also appeared alongside conspiracy theorists from LaRouche movement and InfoWars, and shared content from Pizzagate promoter and serial liar Jack Posobiec. He has also described George Soros as "the biggest danger to the entire western world".
17/24
After his Brexit Party didn't gain any seats in the 2019 UK general election, Nigel traveled yet again overseas to work as a warm-up speaker for Trump in his 2020 campaign. In 2021 he did a six-week tour in the US, where he addressed Republican audiences across the country. 18/24
Farage has also suggested that the UK should work more closely with Putin, and that "on this bigger overall battle we need to start recognizing we’re on the same side". If the "same side" he's referring to means that we have to conduct chemical attacks on children and...
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In this 9th Debunk of the Day, we’ll discuss “legitimate military targets”. Russia illegally invaded Ukraine, with no declaration of war, hiding behind a “special military operation”. Yet vatniks & useful idiots pretend Russia has any legitimate or lawful targets in Ukraine.
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Russia started the war in 2014 by seizing Crimea with unmarked soldiers, “little green men”. Russians have been waging an undeclared, illegal war with endless war crimes ever since, whether it’s kidnapping of Ukrainian children with genocidal intent…
… the concentration camps for Ukrainians under occupation, conscripting Ukrainians from occupied territories, or the terrorist, deliberate bombing of civilians, including their infamous “double tap” strikes.
So no, Russia does not have any “legitimate targets” in Ukraine.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we introduce Hasan Piker, a Turkish-American streamer and millionaire. He’s best known for his champagne socialism, rabid criticism of the US and Israel, support for the Soviet Union and for Chinese and Russian invasions, and for mistreating his dog.
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Born in 1991, Piker grew up in a privileged and well-connected environment. His father held senior roles at big corporations and his uncle, Cenk Uygur, is the founder of The Young Turks media network. He graduated cum laude from Rutgers, a top-tier university in New Jersey.
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His main activity and primary source of income consists of hours-long livestreams on Twitch where he comments on news and yells at videos. He also keeps his dog in place the whole time with a shock collar.
What you see happening here is coordinated strategic communication by the Trump cult. Elon’s baby mama and former MAGA influencer Ashley St. Clair explained this ecosystem in a long video. They have built platforms where people can find narratives to spread and get paid for doing so.
Even though the system technically breaks the platform's ToS, this is perfectly fine for @nikitabier and the rest of the X crew, because Elon pays their salaries and this is part of his election interference machinery.
If you wanna know how the system works, read this:
Here’s Ashley’s video, where she explains how the system works. She was immediately attacked by various MAGA actors, which suggests that what she said hit a nerve.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we introduce Yanis Varoufakis, a Greek economist and politician. He’s best known for rising to power at the height of the Greek debt crisis, not solving anything but endearing himself to the left, and using his fame to promote Russian imperialism.
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Born in 1961 in Athens, Varoufakis studied economics in the UK and built an academic career in Australia, the US, and Europe. His early work focused on game theory, political economy, and critiques of capitalism.
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Presenting himself as the fearless, unorthodox economist willing to confront the EU’s “neoliberal” elites, he rose to prominence during Greece’s debt crisis. At its height in 2015, he was appointed finance minister under the left-wing Syriza government of Alexis Tsipras.
In this 8th Debunk of the Day, we’ll discuss complaints about US financing of NATO, in particular how the US allegedly pays for European defense, leading to calls for a US withdrawal from the Alliance — which would only make it easier for Putin to invade more countries.
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NATO by itself costs peanuts. In fact, the core of NATO is a principle, an agreement, that ideally costs nothing. The main cost is defense spending, which the US is eagerly doing anyway: Trump has just announced a 50% increase in military spending for his “Department of War”. 2/7
To sow division and thereby weaken the Alliance, vatniks deliberately mix up different figures, such as contributions to the NATO common budget, with defense spending. And US military spending has been huge by the sheer fact that the US is the world’s largest economy.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we’ll talk about why we’re doing this: why we think Ukraine is so important and why we believe that souping vatniks and debunking their propaganda narratives is so crucial to counter Russia’s & their allies’ wars of aggression and achieve real peace.
1/20
War is expensive, and Russia is not a rich country that could afford this: Hospitals? Roads? Plumbing? No: everything into terror and destruction.
But not only that. There is a 2nd item in the Russian state budget that remains strong no matter what:
Manufacturing support for that terror and destruction. Propaganda. Vatniks. “Innocent” travel bloggers. “Independent” journalists. “Patriotic” politicians. Russia spends hundreds of billions of rubles a year ($5 billion) on this, and that kind of money buys you A LOT of BS.