In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce a Danish medical doctor and conspiracy theorist, Anastasia Maria Loupis (@DrLoupis). She's best-known for spreading disinformation and conspiracy theories regarding COVID-19, Russo-Ukrainian War, or basically any other trending topic.
1/19
Let's start with what is probably the wildest thing about this whole soup - Nastya is an actual trained medical doctor & she works at a emergency response in Denmark.
Allegedly her views and comments have been challenged in two...
2/19
...Medical Boards - The Medical Board for Patient Safety and the Medical Board for Medical Ethics. In Apr 2022, Danish tabloid newspaper called BT published an article discussing her social media presence. Many of her colleagues had complained about her conspiratorial...
3/19
..hot takes, but the clickbait-y article mostly focused on Nastya's Instagram "sexy" photos where she poses in skimpy underwear.
Now,take the crazies conspiracy theorist you know & then try to imagine an extra layer of craziness on top of that, and you'll have Dr. Loupis.
4/19
She is the ultimate contrarian, who thinks that everything happening is actually organized by the "deep state". All of her views are based on this premise.
The root of all this is what she calls "anti-Zionism," and its fueled by an age old trope originating from Russia.
5/19
In 1902, a fabricated text called "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" was published. The book described a "Jewish conspiracy against the world," and it's basically the basis of all "globalist Jewish elite taking over the world" tropes originate from.
6/19
In addition, Loupy now separates the Jewish people, who "don't need a state to survive" from the evil "Zionists" who are planning to take over the world with deadly vaccines, stealing all your possessions and by censoring brave people like her.
7/19
There is nothing unusual about this, as the deep state/World Economic Forum/Jewish elite ruling over the world is one of the most popular "super conspiracy theory" that is used as a basis for all other theories. For example, Nastya has grouped COVID-19, climate change,...
8/19
...the US elections, the "woke culture" and the Russo-Ukrainian War under this umbrella. To put it in simple terms: she will be a contrarian to any new trendy thing that makes the news and somehow connects it to the "deep state".
9/19
Nastya has made some peculiar statements over the war in Ukraine. According to her, Putin is a "hero" whose fight against the "The New World" is something we all should support. Since Feb 2022, she's been strongly defending Putin and his brutal and genocidal war in Ukraine.
10/19
She's also claimed that the US and Zelenskyy have "recruited ISIS terrorists to fight in Ukraine", that one of Ukraine's former Ministers bought a villa in Cannes with US & EU tax payers money, and that Ukraine is a "money laundering operation".
11/19
Incidentally, the first time Nastya tweeted about Ukraine, Putin, Russia or Zelensky was in Feb 2022. The first time she tweeted about geopolitics over Israel, Palestine or Hamas was in Oct 2023.
Before this, she simply didn't care as these topics weren't popular enough.
12/19
Many of her tweets refer to one of the most notorious fake news blogs in the world, The People's Voice. The site was formerly known as NewsPunch, and in 2017 BuzzFeed identified NewsPunch as being the second-largest source of popular fake stories spread on FB.
13/19
Nastya is also extremely transphobic, and often posts images of trans people while making fun of them. According to her, the "Trans Agenda" is again a scheme by the "deep state" to, among other things, depopulate the planet and to feed the "Big Pharma".
14/19
I usually refrain from judging people by their looks, but with Nastya I'll make an exception: if you look like you could be one of the Bogdanoff brothers, I wouldn't criticize absolutely anyone for how they look.
And Loupy: you CAN get help for Body Dysmorphic Disorder.
15/19
Now I wouldn't recommend it, but if you watch Loupy's interview with @PeterSweden7, another X/Twitter grifter, you'll see how these people believe every conspiracy theory out there, including the "Great Reset" & that labmeat is produced from "cancer cells". It's all there.
16/19
Loupis has enormous following on X/Twitter: as of today, she has almost 800 000 followers. You can even subscribe to even more crazier content through her X subscription service, that costs a measly 5,70 EUR per month. Nastya herself is of course subscribed to the...
17/19
...most rabid conspiracy theorists on X, including @ShaykhSulaiman, @dom_lucre, and @jacksonhinklle.
They might have actually organized a little club to see who can gather the most community notes, and all of these accounts are heavily monetizing disinformation on X.
18/19
To conclude: Nastya is a conspiracy theorist and disinformation superspreader who monetizes outrage.
I'll close this soup by showing you how Nastya wins an arms wrestling match in 2020, hope you enjoy!
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.
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.