In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce an American social media personality, Dominick "Dom Lucre" McGee (@dom_lucre). He's best-known for lying about absolutely everything, and for spreading QAnon-related conspiracy theories and disinformation on the Russo-Ukrainian War.
1/21
Based on Dom Lucre, Dom Lucre is a massively popular Renaissance Man, who's dabbled successfully in military, hip hop, financial advising, philanthropy, politics and of course "breaking narratives". Hell, he even wrote an (everybody)Wiki about himself!
2/21
In many ways, Dominick is the George Santos for the black community, as almost everything about his past has been either exaggerated or completely made-up. A Twitter user @CoffinItUp (they're great, follow them and check their substack!) has made a lot of research on Dom,..
3/21
...and I'll be referencing to his investigative work quite often. First of all, Dom claims to have graduated from college in 2017 from Penn State, but they couldn't verify any diplomas or degrees. Dom then back-pedaled and said he's missing his "internship".
4/21
He's actually been enrolled to Penn State since 2017, but hasn't graduated after 6½ years. They even kicked him out once. Dom's also claimed to have obtained a certificate from Wharton University,but there's absolutely no proof of any of this:
Mr McGee has also his own business, Credit Cadabra. The site's been referred to as the "Most Searched and Serviced Financial Advising Company", which doesn't really mean anything at all. Anyway, it appears that he wrote a bunch of 5-star reviews by himself.
6/21
McGee also joined the army in 2013. He had a 4-year contract, but was allegedly generally discharged. Dom's version is that he left in order to care for his half-brother. As usual, his story is full of holes and you can read more about it here:
As is tradition with pathological liars like Santos and McGee, the lies hardly stop there. Dom's also lied about owning a 150 000 USD watch (it's a cheap copy), buying a house at the age of 22 (he was/is renting it), and having a net worth of 1,2 million USD.
8/21
Dominick has built his brand around being a black conservative who supports Donald Trump. He was also involved in the "Stop the Steal" movement, and even orchestrated his own FB group around the event called "Win the Win".
9/21
Most of his followers on social media came from running the group, which was also filled with QAnon references like "the storm will come." The group was also used by far-right militias for recruiting members.
10/21
Dom has launched an NGO called The Citizen's Crusade, although there is no information of this organization outside of Dom's interviews, so it's probably just another made-up project of his.
11/21
Dom Lucre has over half a million followers on Twitter, and his "exposures" have relatively high engagement. These posts include ridiculous claims like saying that Tom Hanks is a pedophile and it was actually Trump that got Epstein locked up.
12/21
He's also promoted the Pizza Gate conspiracy theory, which claims that high-profile Hollywood stars and politicians are involved in a child sex trafficking ring. As an "evidence", he posted a segment from Ben Swann's "Reality Check" TV show from Fox. Swann has promoted...
13/21
...every conspiracy theory out there, and has made almost 7 million USD by the Russian government for his propaganda work for the South America, Indian and Chinese markets.
14/21
As most grifters often focus on what's trending, Dom has also written about Ukraine. In one of his hot takes, he stated that Putin is "fighting the deep state in Ukraine," and that QAnon is somehow connected to human trafficking in Ukraine.
15/21
He also shared a slideshow that was supposed to be proof that Ukraine is infested with Nazis - too bad most of the images were from Russia.
Mistreatment of children in Ukraine is probably a remnant from the Soviet times, read more here:
He's pushed the bioweapons lab conspiracy theory and also tried to connect Joe Biden's son, Hunter, into the production of "pandemic diseases that could be used as a bioweapons."
17/21
In addition, Dom's tweeted about the "genocide in Donbas". On 14 Jul 2023, one of Prigozhin's "trolls" revealed the "Donbas genocide" victims were actually paid actors. He also forgot to mention that a lot of the civilians died in Donbas came from the down shooting of MH17.
18/21
In Dom's view, the 2014 Revolution of Dignity was a CIA-orchestrated coup. His source for this is a far-left fake news blog, MROnline. He's also suggested that Zelensky is a war criminal and that the US provoked the war with Russia.
You know, all the classics.
19/21
Dom is definitely trying to make his way into conservative politics, and in the current state of "post-truth politics" he could actually make it.
That's probably why he's a "black conservative" supporting Trump, as the truth is absolutely irrelevant within the MAGA gang.
20/21
To conclude: Dominick McGee is an opportunist, attention-seeking grifter who's trying to make money by spreading disinformation and conspiracy theories. He follows every "current thing" in order to garner to his "fans", while trying to make a quick buck.
21/21
Sources:
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Past soups:
https://t.co/pZfBD2NvH4
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.
1/7
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.
In this second (and possibly last) Basiji Soup, we’ll explore how the Islamic Republic of Iran has prepared for a conflict with the US and Israel. We won’t cover the military aspects, but another kind of war — information warfare.
1/20
In the 1st Basiji Soup, we souped the Islamic Republic, its disinformation operations, its hypocrisy, its support of terrorism including Russia’s, its (one-sided?) relationship with Putin, and the mass protests against it that started two months ago:
The Internet blackout has been crucial in allowing the regime to cover up its massacre of the protesters and especially the scope of it, making it difficult to assess the number of victims. They went to great lengths to jam Starlink, after having made its use illegal.
In this 7th Debunk of the Day, we’ll expose the “Chickenhawk” fallacy. The chickenhawk accusation or the “go to the front!” imperative is a dishonest attempt to silence anyone supporting Ukraine by pushing them to go fight. A barely hidden death wish, as it’s always uttered… 1/5
…with zero regard for who you are or what your personal circumstances might be — you could already be there, on your way there, a veteran, or unable to fight. More broadly, not everyone can or should be a soldier, just as not everyone can or should be a policeman or a nurse. 2/5
Yet a society still needs those things to be done, and the fact that not everyone can go to medical school or fight crime does not mean that we have to surrender to invaders and criminals, nor that we cannot all have an opinion on healthcare. 3/5
In this 6th Debunk of the Day, we’ll talk about a complex and controversial topic: conscription. It is used by vatniks to attack Ukraine for drafting men to fight, while conveniently ignoring the alternative, including the horrors of conscription into the Russian army. 1/8
Military obligations are a reality in many countries, from the most peaceful democracies to the most tyrannical dictatorships — unless you have “bone spurs”. Some argue it is a necessity for defense against invading armies, especially for small countries. 2/8
Others point out that it goes against individual rights or that a professional army is better. And Zelenskyy might agree: he did in fact end conscription. But then a full-scale invasion happened: exactly why many nations, including the US, still keep some form of draft. 3/8
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.
1/15
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.
2/15
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.