In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce an American social media personality, conspiracy theorist and neo-Nazi, Angelo John Gage AKA Lucas Gage (@Lucas_Gage_). He's best-known for his rabid antisemitism, support for white nationalism, and his anti-Ukrainian statements on X.
1/16
In 2015, Gage was chairman of the National Youth Front (NYF), a far-right organization that's goal, according to Gage was "declaring our freedom from this oppressive, anti-white, globalist government that has been slowly subverting our country since the 1960's."
2/16
In 2016, Angelo started creating racist videos on YouTube, discussing topics such as "anti-racist is a code word for anti-white", "diversity is white genocide" and making videos with titles like "Make Whites Great Again".
3/16
As a clout chaser & opportunist,he soon realized that white supremacy is a losing strategy & after Trump's victory moved on to "ethno-nationalism" and populism. Ironically, he then stated that he's going to "get away from this internet bull****" and get into local politics.
4/16
He admired Trump's way to "attract broad support from Americans through a simple, hard-hitting and emotionally appealing style," and tried to distance himself from racist and antisemitic views as he realized that it would prevent him from getting political power.
5/16
In 2020, he published a blog post titled "My Journey In and Out of the Rabbit Hole of Racism," still being a rabid racist but now calling it "trait realism," while defending eugenics, antisemitism and opposing non-white immigration.
6/16
Basically, every narrative Gage spreads is revolving around Jews. He claims that the fabricated Russian text "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" is real. His X/Twitter feed mostly consists of anti-Semitic content and his criticism of Zionism.
7/16
In Feb 2023, Angelo tweeted that Russians had "intercepted a submarine in the Black Sea carrying a HUGE shipment of cocaine," then claiming that Zelenskyy reroutes military aid to Mexico in exchange to cocaine, and that Zelenskyy himself uses the dope.
8/16
According to him, "Jewish Supremacist are the MAIN DRIVER behind the Ukraine/Russia war." He's also spread the lie that the casualties are 7:1 in favor to Russia and that the US has "jihadist assets pulled from Syria" to assist Ukrainians with their defense.
9/16
He's also attacked the "Kyiv regime" and called for Ukraine to "kick out Zelensky and all the parasites" and stated that "I want Russia to feel secure at its borders." Angelo's also falsely stated that Zelenskyy refuses to have peace negotiations:
Naturally, he's called Zelenskyy Israeli asset, suggesting that he'll eventually flee to Israel after "Ukraine falls". He claims that Zelenskyy and his leadership takes orders from US/NATO and that he doesn't "give a shit about Ukraine."
In Jul 2023, he was a guest on RT.
11/16
Angelo is also trying to connect the situation in the Middle East to the war in Ukraine, by sharing a conspiracy theory called The Heavenly Jerusalem Project. It's a fake narrative over the plan to reduce the native Ukrainian population and replace it with Jewish settlers.
12/16
Angelo has legally changed his name to Lucas Gage and is now using this name on X/Twitter and YouTube. He's probably trying to wipe his past as a raging neo-Nazi and participating in far-right organizations in the past.
13/16
Before 7 Oct 2023, Gage's account went mostly unnoticed. After Hamas' terrorist attack against Israeli civilians, Angelo started promoting posts around the #GazaGenocide hashtag, gaining over 100 000 followers in one month. He's posted about the "evil Zionists" and a...
14/16
...summary of the fake scripture The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and quotes from Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. In one of his more popular posts, he claimed that we should "STOP BEING SOFT ON JEWS!" and "that God is telling us to go HARD on them; they deserve it."
15/16
Angelo most probably does all this for attention and money. His book, "Thoughts and Reflections on Life", looks like 1 dollar store version of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. As is tradition, his angry and racist tirades have also been monetized by Elon's X.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll discuss the Ukrainian SBU’s “Spiderweb” operation and the main disinformation narrative vatniks have been spreading during the afterfall. While domestic Russian media stays silent, the vatniks and Russian milbloggers have been extremely loud.
1/20
This operation was probably the most impactful strike since the drowning of the Moskva, massively reducing Russia’s capability to bomb Ukrainian cities (or anyone else’s). It involved smuggling 117 FPV drones hidden in trucks into Russia. Once near airbases,…
2/20
…the roofs opened remotely, launching drones in synchronized waves to strike targets up to 4,000 km away. The mission took 18 months to plan. The unsuspecting Russian truck drivers who transported them had no idea they were delivering weapons deep behind their own lines.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce a Russian movie director, propagandist, and former priest: Ivan Okhlobystin. He’s best known for his strong support for the war on Ukraine and for his radical views, which are often used as a testbed for the domestic Russian audience.
1/20
Ivan was born in 1966 from a short-lived marriage between a 62-year-old chief physician and a 19-year-old engineering student. She later remarried, and the family moved from Kaluga province to Moscow. Ivan kept the surname Okhlobystin from his biological father.
2/20
After moving to Moscow, Ivan began studying at VGIK film school. He soon became a playwright for theatre productions and also wrote for Stolitsa magazine, which he later left because, as he put it, “it had become a brothel.”
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce a Ukrainian-born former State Duma deputy, Vladimir Medinsky. He is best known as one of the ideologues of the “Russkiy Mir”, for his close ties to Vladimir Putin, and for leading the “peace talks” in Turkey in 2022 and 2025.
1/20
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Medinsky interned as a correspondent on the international desk of the TASS news agency, learning the ways of propaganda at an early age. Some time later, he earned two PhDs – one in political science and the other in history.
2/20
As is tradition in Russia, Medinsky’s academic work was largely pseudo-scientific and plagiarized. Dissernet found that 87 of 120 pages in his dissertation were copied from his supervisor’s thesis. His second dissertation was also heavily plagiarized.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce an American social media influencer, Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson). He’s best known for his plagiarism while working as a clickbait “journalist”, and for being paid by the Kremlin to spread anti-Ukraine and anti-Democratic narratives.
1/23
Benny graduated from the University of Iowa in 2009 with a degree in developmental psychology. His former high school buddy described him as the “smartest, most articulate kid in school,” and was disappointed to see him turn into a “cheating, low standard hack.”
2/23
After graduating, Benny dived directly into the world of outrage media. Benny’s first job was writing op-eds for far-right website Breitbart, from where he moved on to TheBlaze, a conservative media owned by Glenn Beck, and a spring board for many conservative influencers.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce a Cypriot politician and social media personality, Fidias Panayiotou (@Fidias0). He’s best known for his clickbait YouTube stunts and for voting against aid to Ukraine and the return of abducted Ukrainian children from Russia.
1/20
Fidias hails from Meniko, Cyprus. In 2019, he began posting videos on YouTube. After a slow start, he found his niche with clickbaity, MrBeast-style content featuring silly stunts, catchy titles and scripted dialogue. Today, Fidias has 2,7 million subscribers on YouTube.
2/20
Fidias’s channel started with trend-riding, but he found his niche in traveling without money — aka freeloading. In one video, he fare-dodged on the Bengaluru Metro. The train authority responded by saying they would file a criminal case against him.
In today’s May 9th Vatnik Soup, we discuss the ambiguous relationship of the Kremlin with Nazism and explain why so many vatniks can be outright Nazis, and promote or excuse them while at the same time being so hysterical about alleged “Nazis in Ukraine”.
1/23
Of course, Kremlin propaganda employs the Firehose of Falsehood and often lacks any consistent ideology other than spreading chaos and seeking power, so such contradictions can be commonplace. However in this case there is a certain cynical consistency there.
2/23
To understand modern Russia, we need to go back a hundred years to the beginnings of Soviet Russia/Soviet Union — a genocidal terror regime under dictators Lenin and Stalin, whose totalitarian and imperialist legacy Putin’s Russia fully embraces.