In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce an American politician and political commentator, Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiGabbard). She's best-known for blaming absolutely everything on the US Democrats and NATO, and for being a fan of totalitarian regimes like Russia and Syria.
1/19
Tulsi was raised up in accordance with the teachings of the Science of Identity Foundation (SIF), a religious group described as secretive and abusive cult. Former member has described SIF as "virulently homophobic, often anti-Islamic and misogynist" where its founder,...
2/19
Chris Butler, is "considered to be akin to a God". Gabbard became politically active at a relatively young age, and she was elected to the Hawaii House of Representatives when she was 21. She was in a field medical unit and was deployed to Iraq between 2004 and 2005 and...
3/19
...was stationed in Kuwait between 2008 and 2009 as a platoon leader. While in Congress, she was a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) between 2013 and 2016. She later resigned to endorse Bernie Sanders' campaign for the 2016 US presidential election.
4/19
While in Congress, she was a staunch critic of Barack Obama for refusing to admit that the real enemy of the US is actually radical Islam and Islamic extremism, often appearing on Fox News to comment on the issue. Since she started criticizing Obama and picking fights...
5/19
...inside the Democratic Party, she's been praised more by the people like Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson than the Democrats. Gabbard ran for US presidency in the 2020 election. Hillary Clinton described Tulsi as "the favorite of the Russians," and that she was being...
6/19
..."groomed" by the Republicans for the candidacy. Gabbard filed a defamation lawsuit against Clinton, but dropped it five months later. Interestingly, Tulsi used the same law firm that represented Rudy Giuliani and George Papadopoulos during the investigation into the...
7/19
...Russian interference in the 2016 US election. Gabbard was also endorsed by former KKK boss David Duke, and neo-Nazi and conspiracy theorist Richard B. Spencer. After dropping out of the race, she endorsed Joe Biden.
8/19
Gabbard has criticized the "neoliberal/neoconservative war machine", stating that the money the US uses for wars should be used for other stuff, like war against (Islamic) terrorism. Some (well, me) have speculated that this harsh stance against Islam might stem from her...
9/19
...upbringing in a anti-Islamic cult.
Tulsi visited Syria in 2017 in a "fact-finding mission". She had two "unplanned" meetings with Syrian totalitarian leader Bashar al-Assad. Later she expressed skepticism about the Khan Shaykhun chemical attacks, and voted against...
10/19
...condemning the Syrian government for "war crimes and crimes against humanity". OPCW-led investigation later attributed the Khan Shaykhun attack to al-Assad's forces. She also refused to say who paid for her trip to Syria. Gabbard's trip to have a chat with al-Assad...
11/19
..was later praised by our favorite weapons inspector/chatroom-enjoyer, Scott Ritter.
When it comes to Ukraine, Gabbard parrots the same Kremlin narrative: the US and NATO provoked Putin to attack Ukraine, peace negotiations are needed (after Putin got what he wanted, ...
12/19
...as is tradition) to prevent nuclear war, it's a "proxy war" between US and Russia, and sanctions are hurting the West and not Russia. She also blames the "elite cabal of warmongers" for the war. She's said that the war could've been prevented by declaring that Ukraine...
13/19
...can't join NATO, but as those who have read Putin's 2022 essay, "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians", it was never about NATO but Putin's obsession over Ukraine being part of Russia. In a recent keynote speech, she also praised the Durham report, ....
14/19
stating that the Russian collusion in the 2016 election was a "manufactured hoax".
She was also one of the speakers at the "antiwar" event Rage Against the War Machine in Feb 2023.
15/19
Tulsi has been careful about commenting on the atrocities and the ongoing genocide, and I couldn't find any mention of Bucha, Izium, Kherson, Donbas, Crimea,etc. I guess she wants to be careful and just defame Biden & the Democrats and disregard the complexity of war crimes.16/19
Gabbard left the Democratic Party in Oct 2022, blaming its leadership for "cowardly wokeness, anti-white racism, (being) hostile to people of faith and spirituality, and dragging us closer to nuclear war". After this, she signed a deal with Fox News and started working...
17/19
...as a paid contributor for the network. She also endorsed several Republican candidates for Senate, including J.D. Vance who has said that he doesn't "care what happens to Ukraine".
18/19
Some have speculated that she'd be a running mate for Donald Trump in the 2024 US presidential election. This would make sense, since these days Gabbard is speaking like any MAGA member would, condemning the "woke mind virus", and outright refusing to condemn Russia's war.
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.
2/23
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
In today’s Debunk of the Day (2), we’ll look at… nuclear blackmail. Vatniks love using Russia’s nuclear threats as a reason for surrendering or for not lifting a finger to help Ukraine: “see, they have nukes, we have to give them whatever they want”.
The argument is absurd: 1/5
Nuclear deterrence has been a reality for decades. Both the US and Russia have lost wars without resorting to nukes. We are not submitting to the whims of Pakistan or North Korea either. For vatniks, it’s just an insidious way of siding with Putin. 2/5
We can’t just give in to the Kremlin’s nuclear blackmail, to the threats their officials and propagandists make five times a day to scare us into letting them have something they know perfectly well is not theirs, with no limit to their appetite. 3/5 vatniksoup.com/en/nuclear-thr…