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 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.
1/20
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.
2/20
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.
In today’s (first) Debunk of the Day, we’ll talk about… “realistic expectations”.
Russia has the GDP of Italy. NATO — which Russia claims to be fighting — has 20 times their GDP, and a much stronger and more modern military. 1/5
Russia’s full scale invasion was supposed to take 2 days, but we’re nearing 4 years. They’ve lost a million men. Their economy is in shambles.
And yet we're letting them set their red lines instead of massive sanctions, strong support for Ukraine, and an immediate sky shield. 2/5
Russia thought their war was “realistic” because we’d let them get away with it. It wouldn’t be “realistic” to invade a European nation and redraw borders by force if the West had a strong and united response.
What’s “realistic” is what public opinion tolerates and accepts. 3/5
In this first (and maybe last?) Basiji Soup, we’ll look at… the Islamic Republic of Iran, its disinformation operations, its hypocrisy, how it sells its atrocities as virtue and its repression as morality, how it serves the Kremlin, and the current protests against it.
1/20
Basijis are members of the most fanatical part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). In a broader sense: Iranian regime loyalists & propagandists. They may be fewer than vatniks or wumaos, but the goal is the same: destabilize the West to protect a brutal regime.
2/20
The regime oppressing Iran is a “theocratic” authoritarian state around a “Supreme Leader” hiding behind religion to justify its crimes: censorship, repression, executions, torture and terror — similar to Russia and its “holy war” against Ukraine.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we introduce our first Czech vatnik, Tomio Okamura. He’s best known for building a political career on xenophobia while being of mixed origins himself, and for pushing Kremlin narratives in Czechia, a country otherwise very supportive of Ukraine.
1/19
Okamura was born in Tokyo in 1972 to a Japanese-Korean father and Czech mother. He spent part of his childhood in Japan, and part in a Czechoslovak foster home where he was heavily bullied. His mixed origins made it difficult for him to fit in either country.
2/19
Nonetheless, after working odd jobs in Japan, Tomio returned to Czechia and became a successful entrepreneur in Japanese tourism. He then rose in politics: Senator in 2012, MP in 2013, he founded two parties: Dawn of Direct Democracy and SPD (Freedom and Direct Democracy).