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...
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...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...
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...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...
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...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..
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... 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".
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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".
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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.
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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..
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...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".
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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 today’s Vatnik Soup, we’ll introduce the International Olympic Committee (IOC) @Olympics . It’s mostly known for organizing sporting events, and for being supposed to foster the Olympic ideal while actually submitting to dictators.
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The International Olympic Committee (IOC) was founded in 1894 in Paris by Pierre de Coubertin with a noble goal: promote peace through sports. Politics out, sportsmanship in: sounds great in theory.
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But in practice, the IOC has a long history of accommodating authoritarian regimes, always in the name of “neutrality,” “dialogue,” and “keeping sports separate from politics”, usually not in a particularly consistent or moral way.
In today’s Wumao Soup, we’ll tell you 15 things about the People’s Republic of China that you didn’t learn from TikTok, Douyin or DeepSeek.
1/20
This is our 2nd Wumao Soup. In the 1st one, we introduced how the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) online propaganda works. Now we’ll cover some of the big topics they hide or lie about. Think of it as an antidote soup to their propaganda.
1 - Tiananmen Square massacre
Yes, it happened. Yes, it was a massacre. Vatniks, wumaos, and tankies in the West deny it, while China censors the slightest mention of it, even the date it happened.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, made together with chef invité @Martinlaineolen, we discuss the extensive links between pedophile sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and Russian officials and intelligence operatives, and how Western politicians reinforced these links.
1/23
While MAGA influencers remain silent on Epstein, pro-Kremlin propagandists and bot farms have expectedly launched an anti-Ukraine online operation, spreading fake narratives that connect Ukraine, its politicians, and the late sex trafficker.
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But the emails paint a very different picture: in reality, Epstein had very close connections with Russian officials and intelligence operatives, and even built bridges and arranged meetings between MAGA figures and the Kremlin.
In this 5th Debunk of the Day, we’ll discuss something that sounds great in theory, but was completely turned upside-down by the tankie kind of vatnik: anti-imperialism. More consistent anti-imperialists call this the “anti-imperialism of idiots”. 1/5
“Anti-imperialism” was popularized by Lenin, who saw imperialism as the ultimate stage of capitalism. Ironically, the largest empire is now… Putin’s Russia, proud heir to both Lenin’s Soviet Union and to the Tsarist Empire. 2/5
Indeed, Russia is an empire that is still ruled by a de facto all-powerful Tsar, that still proudly flies its imperial flag, that still dreams of expanding its already huge territory through brutal conquest and colonization. 3/5
In this 4th Debunk of the Day, we’ll refute an absolute classic of vatnik BS, the crown jewel of peak dishonesty: whataboutism.
Now, not everything that looks like whataboutism is wrong. Seeking consistency or comparing actions or responses is normal. 1/5
But when someone pulls some completely unrelated event, that happened to completely different people, a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, you know what you’re dealing with: a crass denial of the problem at hand, a bad-faith attempt to derail the topic. 2/5
Logic or chronology plays no role here, nor your opinion on these other topics. You could be the staunchest critic or supporter of these other actions thrown into the discussion, it doesn’t matter. It is irrelevant whether these other things are true or not, or bad or not. 3/5
In this 3rd Debunk of the Day, we’ll talk about… “ending” the war by surrendering or ceding territory.
Nearing four years of the 2-day “special military operation”, Russia is desperate to obtain through other means what they failed to conquer on the battlefield. 1/5
An endless army of vatniks therefore tries to demoralize both Ukrainians and supporters.
They sound noble: “anti-war” or concerned about the fate of Ukraine’s civilians, soldiers and cities. They claim that if we just stop fighting or helping, this horror would magically end. 2/5
What they never mention is… WHO started the war, WHO murders Ukrainians, WHO destroys Ukrainian cities: the same monsters they suggest Ukrainians be at the mercy of. Surrendering wouldn’t end the atrocities of the occupation, it would enable them. Surrendering wouldn’t even…3/5