In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce a Canadian social media personality and QA tester, Patrick JM (@vonClownsewitz). He's best-known for spreading pro-Kremlin propaganda & for creating a fake persona as an academic expert on international relations and strategic studies.
1/19
This investigation was put together by The Unintelligence Agency.
Patrick is a self-proclaimed expert on international relations, regularly pissing on people who comment on geopolitical issues but who have no background on the topic.
2/19
According to the man himself, he's a "published strategic analyst" who does "defense research" and who is also "speaking at panels." He also claims to be one of his institutions Russia experts, which is of course yet another lie.
3/19
Let's start with the obvious: Paddy is not an expert on anything, and his credentials are completely made up. In reality, he double-majored in studio arts and on political science, probably having a Bachelor's level degree in both.
4/19
By the way, the picture in the first tweet is his campaign poster for running to become a student representative at his university. Including the Soviet flag and the cat ears in the photo was a brave move, but unfortunately he lost the election.
At the time, he was 35.
5/19
Paddy's name is mentioned in exactly one technical paper that's basically a pamphlet, but not as an author but as a contributor to the technical analysis.
In reality, Paddy works as a video game tester at a local company that pays him around 2CAD/hour over the minimum wage.
6/19
The online fake persona he created has landed him some spotlights as a geopolitical analyst. He's appeared on Sarah Bils' Donbass Devushka podcast before Bils' fake persona was exposed and the channel was re-branded as @DD_Geopolitics:
DDG also promoted Paddy's hilariously bad analysis on Prigozhin's mutiny in Jun 2023. He's also spread false narratives on Holodomor, a Soviet policy that resulted in millions of dead Ukrainians in 1932–33 due to starvation.
8/19
He participated as an expert in @MarioNawfal's Twitter Space about the Prigozhin mutiny. The other top analysts that were commenting on this dire situation were @KimDotcom and DDG activist @Kahlissee, who will be introduced properly on #vatniksoup at a later date.
9/19
According to @elonmusk, this particular Space was the "best coverage of the situation I've seen so far," so Paddy's contributions in the Space must've been pretty good.
10/19
In Jul 2023, Patrick was a guest Riverwest Radio/WXRW, a community radio that provides "an outlet for marginalized and alternative voices", in which he was described as an "IR academic" and "social media superstar".
11/19
Paddy seems to be a big fan of communism and the USSR, often posing with the hammer and sickle flag in the background. I mean, the man even bought a brand new flag for Russia's Victory Day in 2020.
12/19
He also has a tendency to laugh at people who have been tortured and beat up, like he did in the case @cossackgundi. Imagine being a dweeb and laughing at people who are ready to defend innocent people from genocidal maniacs and are then tortured for that.
13/19
When discussing Ukraine, Patrick's all about them Nazis. Below you can see the man himself wearing a Marilyn Manson shirt depicting the Nazi eagle. As you can see, he's also wearing a red fedora with some leopard stripes - pretty cool, eh?
14/19
In addition, we have the same old boring stuff: Bucha denial, promotion of Mariupol's Potemkin village (and even comparing it to Grozny!), downplaying Ukraine's attack in Kherson, and claims that the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia wasn't planned in 2014.
15/19
Paddy seems to dislike NAFO, probably because of its effectiveness. He often refers to them as "furries", probably while still wearing the cat ears you can see in the first tweet. Incidentally, he likes to call NAFO activists "incels".
Could he just be projecting?
16/19
Mr. Clown was one of the many people who sneered over Merdan E doxxing the wrong Pekka Kallioniemi, possibly putting the man in real danger. I just want to tell you Paddy,that I don't hold any grudge over this but I also disagree with you over what's doxxing and what's not.
17/19
Now here's some kitchen sink psychology: Paddy's someone who's attempting to connect with a particular part of his identity and family history, and doing it in the most cringe, 13-year-old edgelord way possible, despite having been in his 30s and now his 40s.
18/19
I would like to close this soup with the tweet below and beg to differ with Paddy here: I'd argue that even funnier than a racecar driver turning geopol expert is the game tester making barely minimum wage at 41, promoting himself as a geopolitical expert.
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.