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
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.
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.
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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
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…
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we introduce a Ukrainian “scholar” and social media activist, Marta Havryshko (@HavryshkoMarta). She’s best known for spreading anti-Ukraine and pro-Kremlin narratives online, along with a habit of spotting neo-Nazis everywhere in Ukraine.
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Marta hails from Ukraine, where she studied history at Ivan Franko National University of Lviv. She received her PhD in history in 2010. Her academic work focused on gender-based violence and wartime atrocities, including publications on sexual crimes in occupied Ukraine.
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She is currently working as a visiting Assistant Professor at the Strassler Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies at Clark University in the US. According to the center’s website, Marta teaches courses on antisemitism, racism, and gender-based violence in armed conflicts.