In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce an American far-right social media personality, Stewart Peters (@realstewpeters). He's best-known for his (short) rap career, and for promoting conspiracy theories related to COVID-19, "global elites" and the Russo-Ukrainian War.
1/21
Peters falls in the category of "far-right conspiracy theorists monetizing outrage & lies" with a white trash twist. As is the case with all of this type of accounts (for example @mattwallace888 & @bennyjohnson), Stewie has no interest in correcting any fake info he shares.
2/21
It is important to note, that this type of people have no interest in the truth. These people also almost always lack any set of moral values, and are willing to share any trendy topic to get engagement for their content and buyers for their snake oil products.
3/21
As a young boy, Stewie really wanted to become a police officer. He wanted it so much, that he even took classes towards a law enforcement degree, but eventually was either too slow or too conspiratorial to make it. At the ripe age of 32 and after the failure to become...
4/21
...a police officer - Peters decided to try his second career option as a rapper named Fokiss.
His song titled "I Never Made It" tells how well his career as an artist went. This might be the saddest thing I've seen this year, and I've seen a lot of war footage.
5/21
He has always wanted to become someone famous & without any talent his only chance for stardom was to lie. In 2000 he was kicked out of a movie production after he lied about his brother being a famous sitcom actor during the 90s.
6/21
After failing to become a police officer, radio DJ, rapper, and a film star, Stewart started his own bounty hunting company. While working, he dressed up as a cop and his police-like uniform even resulted in a change of Minnesota laws, restricting how similar bounty...
7/21
...hunter's uniforms can resemble the police's. One County Sheriff complained that the attention-seeking Stewie desperately wanted to become like the celebrity bail bondsman Dog the Bounty Hunter.
This guy wanted to be a cop so much, that he even LARPed as one.
8/21
He eventually had to close down his bounty hunting business in 2021 after he was found guilty of disorderly conduct. One night in Feb 2021, Stewie's wife called the police, claiming he was in drunken rage and was throwing household items at her.
9/21
When asked whether she was scared of Stewie attacking her, she nodded and responded "That’s the reason that I had to call you guys." Stewie's wife said he "regularly became belligerently drunk," and that this type of incidents were "happening too frequently."
10/21
Incidentally, Peters has publicly promoted "family values" (without the Mrs...),while at the same time blaming the "woke culture" for ruining them.
Peters launched his podcast, The Stew Peters Show, in 2021. The show mostly featured conspiracy theories and hosted various..
11/21
...American far-right figures like L. Lin Wood and Paul Gosar. Gosar is a strong opponent of any aid to Ukraine and says "Russia is not our enemy".
In 2022, he launched his own media company called the Stew Peters Network.
12/21
The network features shows from fellow conspiracy theorists like QAnon follower DeAnna Lorraine and anti-semites Lauren Witzke and Edward Szall. Stewie's own shows average between 40 000-70 000 views on Rumble - a relatively high number on the platform.
13/21
So what disinformation and conspiracy theories Stewie spreads? Absolutely ANYTHING that creates controversy and engagement. His pet peeve is COVID-19 vaccinations, and in 2022 he published a documentary called "Died Suddenly", that "exposed" how global elites were...
14/21
... involved in the vaccine production and how they're used to "depopulate the planet."
His first COVID-19 documentary, "Watch the Water", claimed that the virus is actually derived from snake venom and it contains the "Satan's DNA".
15/21
In 2023, he claimed that the wildfires in Canada and in Hawaii were caused by "orbital energy weapon platforms" - a narrative stolen from Marjorie Taylor Greene when she talked about "Jewish space lasers" starting fires in California.
16/21
As most contrarian conspiracy theorists, Peters has often tweeted & spoken about the war in Ukraine. According to him,the whole war is completely fabricated,the Ukrainians have a black market for organ trading & Zelenskyy is a drug addict and a thief.
So,nothing new there.
17/21
He's claimed that Mexican cartels bought the weapons that were sent to Ukraine,the bioweapons program in Ukraine was started by Obama & Putin is the "one man standing between what’s left of a 'free' world, and a totalitarian, tyrannical,murderous one-world government body."
18/21
Naturally, all this is then complemented with various money-making schemes. From his website, one can buy Stewie-merch like T-shirts and hats, buy premium access to most ridiculous conspiracy theories that ever existed, and even buy "wealth protection", whatever that is.
19/21
To conclude, Stew Peters is relatively popular conspiracy theorist who monetizes rage and disinformation. We can safely assume, that he'll ditch all narratives related to Ukraine as soon as there's a new fad, but at the moment he's sharing vast amounts of fake...
20/21
...information to hundreds of thousands of uninformed people. At the same time, he's fighting against the "woke culture" and promoting Christianity while getting drunk at a bowling alley and assaulting his (ex-?)wife after.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce a former Ukrainian politician and president, Viktor Yanukovych. He’s best known for selling his country to Russia, trying to turn it into an authoritarian state, and eventually fleeing to Moscow once his plan failed.
1/22
Now that Russia and the US are planning to replace president Zelenskyy with someone who’s more willing to sell the country to them (most probably Viktor Medvedchuk or one of his cronies), it’s a good time to remind people how Yanukovych and Putin almost took over Ukraine.
2/22
Yanukovych’s first attempt at power came in 2004, when he “won” the Ukrainian presidential election through massive fraud. The rigged vote sparked the Orange Revolution, a wave of protests that forced the election to be re-run. His opponent, pro-Western candidate…
Russia uses Tucker Carlson as a vessel for its propaganda. Many of the most popular narratives originate from his misinformation-filled show, which is funded by Elon. Some of these lies include:
- Bioweapons labs
- Gonzalo Lira being a "journalist"
-Zelenskyy being a dictator
- The banning of the Russian Orthodox Church
- The banning of Viktor Medvedchuk's pro-Kremlin propaganda network
- Putin's interview and revisionism
- That ridiculous St. Petersburg propaganda piece
Bob Amsterdam, who Tucker has interviewed a few times is paid by a Russian oligarch, Vadym Novynskyi.
We now know from the Tenet Media case that Russian state media wants to spread Tucker's verbal diarrhea everywhere. These fake stories have finally made their way to Trump.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll take out my crystal ball and predict what the alliance between the US and Russia could mean for Ukraine, Europe and geopolitics in general. These recent changes could be a real risk for the whole of Europe, and need to be addressed quickly.
1/23
Some of us have been reporting on Trump’s pro-Kremlin tendencies for years now. His Moscow connections go back all the way to the late 80s, and the 2016 US presidential elections raised a lot of red flags about the close connections of his associates to Russian operatives.
2/23
The recent Rubio-Lavrov meeting in Saudi Arabia was an eye-opening event for many who were still optimistic about Trump and Ukraine – the outcome was that Putin got absolutely everything he’s ever wanted from the war, and at the same time it seems that the US got nothing.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce how the Elon’s Election Interference Machine™ (EIM) works. Since Musk & his broligarch allies won the presidency for Trump, they’ve now harnessed the machine to interfere in European elections, including the ones in Germany & Romania.
1/23
At this point it is clear why Elon bought Twitter – his grand plan was to promote “free speech absolutism” (which, of course, doesn’t even exist on the platform) and tweak the algorithms so that they allow him to promote political parties that align with his worldview.
2/23
First, let’s talk about “freedom of speech” that the Trump administration, especially Musk and VP Vance constantly rant about. Incidentally, they only blame the EU for “limiting free speech”, and there’s a good reason for this: they are driving for political change.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce the Russian disinformation network “Doppelgänger”. Doppelgänger is an influence and hybrid operation spreading Kremlin propaganda via AI-generated fake news websites and social media sites, especially X.
1/20
Doppelgänger is a massive influence operation that was initially exposed back in 2022. Their modus operandi is to create near-identical copies of large, legitimate Western news outlets to spread anti-Ukraine, anti-Western and anti-NATO narratives.
2/20
The operation, overseen by Putin’s top aide Sergei Kiriyenko (who’s reportedly communicated with Elon), uses Russian firms like Social Design Agency (SDA) to create fake news sites that mimick legitimate media like The Washington Post, The Guardian, Bild and Fox News.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’m going to talk about Europe’s information defense against foreign influence operations & disinformation.
The EU can’t rely anymore on America’s help in geopolitical struggles, and it’s time we created a united front against information threats.
1/24
Recent news coming from the US should be the final wake-up call for European decision-makers. Recently, Trump’s rhetoric has been openly pro-Kremlin and both anti-Ukraine & anti-EU, and at the same time the US is dismantling all institutions fighting against disinformation.
2/24
So far, the Trump administration has put staffers working on disinformation as well as a team of election security advisers at the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on administrative leave.