Pekka Kallioniemi Profile picture
Jun 5, 2023 23 tweets 14 min read Read on X
In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce a US& German political cultists, Lyndon LaRouche and Helga Zepp-LaRouche. They're best-known for running the far-right, cult-like LaRouche movement, and for promoting conspiracy theories as well as pro-Kremlin and pro-CCP narratives.

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Most of the ideas of Helga come from her late husband, Lyndon LaRouche. Initially, LaRouche movement was inspired by Trotskyist/Marxist ideas, opposing private ownership and such, but in the late 1970s these ideas were abandoned. As often happens with radical, cult-like...

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...movements, Lyndon started promoting the Leninist idea of the intellectuals (including himself, of course) being the "vanguard" that helps the working class to develop their consciousness as their leading role in the society.

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LaRouche movement claims that the world has been under the rule of British Empire for the last 600 years, and this epoch is now ending and we are moving towards a "multipolar world".

At some point during the 70s the movement started flirting with the far-right, and the...

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...long-time critics Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons wrote that the "LaRouchites combined populist antielitism with attacks on leftists, environmentalists, feminists, gay men and lesbians, and organized labor. They advocated a dictatorship in which a 'humanist' elite...

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...would rule on behalf of industrial capitalists." They've also been described as staunch anti-Semites.

Lyndon ran for US president in every presidential election between 1976-2004. From 1989 until 1994, Lyndon spent behind bars for tax and mail fraud, and he ran one of..
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...his presidential campaign from prison. So basically, the LaRouche cult is a horseshoe-shaped amalgamate of the far-left and far-right, combined with futurism like the high-speed maglev train that'll "re-invigorate industry and commerce", fusion power and the...

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..."Verdi tuning", in which A=432 Hz, as opposed to the common practice today of tuning to A=440 Hz in classical music. According to Lyndon, this had a direct relation to the structure of the universe. I know, it's weird cultist stuff.

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Lyndon's wife, Helga, established the Schiller Institute in 1984. The organization fights against "international financial institutions and other supranational bodies (without naming any)" and against their "tyranny".

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The main idea behind the institute is to "unite left and right" to "fight a common enemy", and this rhetoric has been copied by other pro-Kremlin propaganda outlets, too. In 2003, Schiller came under scrutiny after one of their "students" died in a freak accident.

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After Russia launched its full-scale invasion in Ukraine, Schiller Institute argued that the sanctions against Russia should be relieved, and that all other countries should stop their support for Ukraine. They also stated that Ukraine should accede to all Russian demands.

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Few days after Russia's attack,she appeared on Chinese CGTN,where he touted that Russia is simply reacting to endless provocations by NATO & the West.She's also given interviews to TASS,in which she praises the "Global South" for their efforts to end the "US/UK imperialism".12/22 ImageImageImageImage
Schillerites are very active bunch, and they hold regular conferences around the world. They've hosted many prominent speakers, including Jeremy Corbyn in 2015. Trump's former campaign adviser Roger Stone has also been cooperating with the institute.

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The group has other front organizations too, which are used to spread its core message. These include Executive Intelligence Review (EIR), LaRouchePAC, ICLC, LaRouche Youth Movement, and Fusion Energy Foundation.

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After the war started, Zepp-LaRouche was interviewed by Mira Terada from the Prigozhin-ran sham organization called Foundation to Battle Injustice (FBI!). In this extremely biased propaganda show they discussed the "end of the Anglo-American hegemony", spread conspiracy...

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..theories and lies, and of course defame Ukraine and praise Russia. Terada, whose real name is Oksana Vovk, was sentenced to 30 months in prison in 2020 for money laundering in the US, and was later transformed into a propaganda weapon by Yevgeni Prigozhin.

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In 2015, Zepp-LaRouhe wrote an article which described climate change as a "satanic swindle" attempting to establish "a global eco-dictatorship whose results, and whose declared intention is to eliminate six billion human beings."

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She claimed that there's a plan to create "a fascist world government which would exceed Hitler’s most audacious dreams". Lyndon LaRouche has also claimed that the 9/11 was orchestrated by Queen Elizabeth II together with the Saudis.

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In 2018, the LaRouche posse have advocated a theory that it was actually the UK that interfered with 2016 US election, not Russia. They also have good relations with many prominent Russian politicians, including Sergey Glazyev, who was funding the pro-Russia...

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...movement in Ukraine since 2014, and some of its former members including William Engdahl, have migrated to Duginist circles. In Feb 2023, she was one of the unannounced speakers at the "antiwar" event Rage Against the War Machine. Schiller Institute was also sponsoring..
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...the event, like it did with the UK event No2Nato. Especially the former event was the embodiment of the horseshoe theory, with people attending from the far corners of the left and right, including Jimmy Dore, Jackson "Z" Hinkle, The Oathkeepers and Caleb Maupin.

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To conclude, LaRouche is a cult-like organization that tries to promote pro-Kremlin and pro-CCP worldviews around the world. A large part of the "multipolar world" narrative comes from this lot, and especially Helga has been staunch supporter of Russia.

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Thank you's: @MattPPea @Vorkoz

Support my work: buymeacoffee.com/PKallioniemi
Subscribe for my upcoming YouTube channel: youtube.com/@TheSoupCentral
Past soups: vatniksoup.com

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More from @P_Kallioniemi

Jun 8
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll talk about Finland and how pro-Kremlin propagandists have become more active in the Finnish political space since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. For the first time since 2022, they’ve gained some political power in Finland.

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Russia’s political strategy in countries with Russian-speaking minorities (such as Finland and the Baltics) is typically quite similar: it seeks to rally these minorities around issues like language and minority rights, and then frames the situation as oppression.

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At the same time, Russian speakers are extremely wary and skeptical of local media, and instead tend to follow Russian domestic outlets like Russia-1 and NTV, thereby reinforcing an almost impenetrable information bubble.

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Read 17 tweets
Jun 2
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll discuss the Ukrainian SBU’s “Spiderweb” operation and the main disinformation narrative vatniks have been spreading during the afterfall. While domestic Russian media stays silent, the vatniks and Russian milbloggers have been extremely loud.

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This operation was probably the most impactful strike since the drowning of the Moskva, massively reducing Russia’s capability to bomb Ukrainian cities (or anyone else’s). It involved smuggling 117 FPV drones hidden in trucks into Russia. Once near airbases,…

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…the roofs opened remotely, launching drones in synchronized waves to strike targets up to 4,000 km away. The mission took 18 months to plan. The unsuspecting Russian truck drivers who transported them had no idea they were delivering weapons deep behind their own lines.

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Read 21 tweets
May 28
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce a Russian movie director, propagandist, and former priest: Ivan Okhlobystin. He’s best known for his strong support for the war on Ukraine and for his radical views, which are often used as a testbed for the domestic Russian audience.

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Ivan was born in 1966 from a short-lived marriage between a 62-year-old chief physician and a 19-year-old engineering student. She later remarried, and the family moved from Kaluga province to Moscow. Ivan kept the surname Okhlobystin from his biological father.

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After moving to Moscow, Ivan began studying at VGIK film school. He soon became a playwright for theatre productions and also wrote for Stolitsa magazine, which he later left because, as he put it, “it had become a brothel.”

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Read 21 tweets
May 22
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce a Ukrainian-born former State Duma deputy, Vladimir Medinsky. He is best known as one of the ideologues of the “Russkiy Mir”, for his close ties to Vladimir Putin, and for leading the “peace talks” in Turkey in 2022 and 2025.

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During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Medinsky interned as a correspondent on the international desk of the TASS news agency, learning the ways of propaganda at an early age. Some time later, he earned two PhDs – one in political science and the other in history.

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As is tradition in Russia, Medinsky’s academic work was largely pseudo-scientific and plagiarized. Dissernet found that 87 of 120 pages in his dissertation were copied from his supervisor’s thesis. His second dissertation was also heavily plagiarized.

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Read 21 tweets
May 15
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce an American social media influencer, Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson). He’s best known for his plagiarism while working as a clickbait “journalist”, and for being paid by the Kremlin to spread anti-Ukraine and anti-Democratic narratives.

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Benny graduated from the University of Iowa in 2009 with a degree in developmental psychology. His former high school buddy described him as the “smartest, most articulate kid in school,” and was disappointed to see him turn into a “cheating, low standard hack.”

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After graduating, Benny dived directly into the world of outrage media. Benny’s first job was writing op-eds for far-right website Breitbart, from where he moved on to TheBlaze, a conservative media owned by Glenn Beck, and a spring board for many conservative influencers.

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Read 24 tweets
May 13
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce a Cypriot politician and social media personality, Fidias Panayiotou (@Fidias0). He’s best known for his clickbait YouTube stunts and for voting against aid to Ukraine and the return of abducted Ukrainian children from Russia.

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Fidias hails from Meniko, Cyprus. In 2019, he began posting videos on YouTube. After a slow start, he found his niche with clickbaity, MrBeast-style content featuring silly stunts, catchy titles and scripted dialogue. Today, Fidias has 2,7 million subscribers on YouTube.

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Fidias’s channel started with trend-riding, but he found his niche in traveling without money — aka freeloading. In one video, he fare-dodged on the Bengaluru Metro. The train authority responded by saying they would file a criminal case against him.

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Read 22 tweets

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