In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce an American far-right conspiracy theorist and social media personality, Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer). She's best-known for her unethical activism and "journalism", and for promoting the most outrageous conspiracy theories.
1/16
Laura graduated in 2015 with bachelor's degree in broadcast journalism, but apparently she skipped the course on journalistic ethics altogether, as she immediately started doing highly controversial and biased reporting, including interviews while wearing concealed camera.
2/16
In 2015, she used a hidden camera to record her discussions with university officials about start a club called "Sympathetic Students in Support of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria". The school then asked the name to be changed to "Students in Support of the Middle East".
3/16
With clever editing by a far-right grifter James O'Keefe, the tape was then made to look like the university official was not bothered by a university organization that was supporting the Islamic State. Loomer was then suspended for violating the student code of conduct.
4/16
Soon after this, Loomer and two other women attempted to entrap Hillary Clinton's campaign workers into accepting illegal cash donations. At this time, he was allegedly already working for O'Keefe and his far-right activist group Project Veritas.
5/16
In 2016 during the US presidential election, Laura went to the polling station dressed in a burqa and asked for a ballot under the name of Huma Abedin. In Jun 2017, she gave a speech "anti-sharia" protest in NYCand condemned "liberals who aligned themselves with sharia law."
6/16
In 2017, Loomer disrupted a Shakespeare in the Park presentation of Julius Caesar in NYC, calling for an end on "political violence against the right". She then went on to collect over 13 000 USD from donations to help her "legal defense".
Is that @jackPosobiec filming?
7/16
In addition to to working for Project Veritas, Loomer has also collaborated and worked with the Geller Report, The Rebel Media and InfoWars. All of these are known for publishing fake news and disinformation.
8/16
As you can guess from some of the examples above, Loomer's pet peeve is Islam. She's declared to be a "proud Islamophobe" and have even tried to popularize a hashtag with the same message. She's also probably the first person to be banned from both Uber and Lyft.
9/16
She's also promoted a bunch of conspiracy theorist, mostly related to mass shootings. She's claimed that school shootings in Florida and Texas in 2018 were staged, and that the 2017 Vegas shooter was affiliated with ISIS.
10/16
In 2020, Laura won the Republican primary, after which Trump expressed his support for her by tweeting "Great going Laura. You have a great chance against a Pelosi puppet!" She was also congratulated by @RepMattGaetz, who's best-known for hanging out with 17-year old girls.
11/16
In 2021, Loomer tried to unseat Republican Rep. Daniel Webster in the primary election, but lost. She refused to concede, though, and blamed unspecified voter fraud and "big-tech election interference" for her loss. Loomer's X/Twitter account was reinstated in Dec 2022.
12/16
Laura has been banned from numerous social media sites, payment processors, and other platforms for, among other things, violating policies on hate speech and spreading disinformation. Her meltdown over this made even Alex Jones uncomfortable.
13/16
When it comes to the war in Ukraine, Laura's cheering for the Kremlin. She's called Zelenskyy to "stop antagonizing Russia", that "much of the conflict and chaos in the world always traces back to Ukraine", & that "Ukraine’s biggest supporters are Nazis & Nazi sympathizers".14/16
Recently, Loomer accused a US citizen and serial liar Kent Boneface McLellan of fighting with the Azov Brigade in Ukraine, and even blamed "Ukrainian spy operatives" for "penetrating the Capitol" during Jan 6th United States Capitol attack.
15/16
Of course Loomer is no longer talking about any of this, as there are more trendy topics around. Currently she's attacking Hamas/Palestine supporters and fellow "citizen journalists" like @ShaykhSulaiman who disagree with her.
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.
In today’s Wumao Soup, we’ll tell you 15 things about the People’s Republic of China that you didn’t learn from TikTok, Douyin or DeepSeek.
1/20
This is our 2nd Wumao Soup. In the 1st one, we introduced how the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) online propaganda works. Now we’ll cover some of the big topics they hide or lie about. Think of it as an antidote soup to their propaganda.
1 - Tiananmen Square massacre
Yes, it happened. Yes, it was a massacre. Vatniks, wumaos, and tankies in the West deny it, while China censors the slightest mention of it, even the date it happened.