In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce two American-British social media personalities, Andrew and Tristan Tate (@cobratate and @tatethetalisman). They're best-known for their social media grifts, allegations of human trafficking and rape, and anti-Ukrainian rhetoric.
1/18
Andrew used to be a professional kickboxer, and eventually became a four-time world champion. He became to wider public in 2016, when he appeared on Big Brother. He was removed from the show after six days due to an ongoing police investigation for rape.
2/18
Some years later, the brothers launched a group of websites selling training courses on making money and improving in "male-to-female interactions". They also started a webcam business, where up to 75 women were working for him. They admitted the business was a "total scam".
3/18
The brothers launched a website called Hustler's University, a paid platform with an affiliate marketing system, where members receive a commission if they recruit new people to the service. Andrew also encouraged people to spread the content far and wide on social media.
4/18
Their other websites like "The Real World" and "War Room" are also paid services with little meaningful substance. Leaked chat logs showed that the latter even ran a "PhD course" on how to emotionally manipulate women into performing on webcams.
5/18
Throughout the years, Tates have gathered a large, cult-like following and his social media campaigns have reached especially young men - 80% of British boys aged between 16 and 17 had seen Andrew's content, and 45% of British men aged 16–24 had a positive view of him.
6/18
Andrew and his brother have been connected to various far-right figures & conspiracy theorists, including British far-right activist @TRobinsonNewEra, PizzaGate promoter @JackPosobiec, and of course @RealAlexJones.
Andrew's been featured several times on InfoWars.
7/18
Out of the two, Tristan has been much more vocal about the War in Ukraine.
Some of their views most probably come from their late father, Emory, who already back in 2015 wrote that "Why is America silent when Kiev is slaughtering innocents?? Unreal".
8/18
Both Andrew and Tristan are strongly pushing for the "US/Western proxy war" narrative, and neither has never condemned Russia for their invasion of Ukraine. Tristan even claimed that "Western politicians are responsible for the slaughter of a generation of brave young men".
9/18
Tristan has claimed that "Porosenko [sic] overtook the country in a CIA led coup," and then started "murdering" the ethnic Russians. According to him, Putin tried to "mitigate this and the killing for 7+ years," eventually "stepping in" to save them. All this in one tweet.
10/18
He's also has called Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia "breakaway regions," then comparing the situation to China and Taiwan, completely misunderstanding how countries and borders in general work. According to him, Donbas "declared independence" from Ukraine.
11/18
Tristan has naively called to "stop the war," but neither of the brothers ever talks about why this is not possible: it's because Russia has decided to decimate Ukraine and at the same time kill hundreds of thousands of their own men.
12/18
According to Andrew, Putin "cured" COVID after he launched the full-scale invasion to Ukraine. He's also suggested that the war is some kind of money laundering scheme of the elites. And of course it's a proxy war and, according to Tristan, provoked by NATO expansions.
13/18
After Yevgeny Prigozhin and PMC Wagner launched their insurrection against the Kremlin, Tristan tweeted that he's "Praying for all the people of Russia". He's also called Zelenskyy a "criminal", and claimed that he was "spearheading" the humanitarian aid in Feb 2022.
14/18
As a matter of fact, Tristan delivered a bunch of coats and shoes (probably costing ~100 USD) to fleeing Ukrainian refugees, and filmed this for all to see. This way he can show his critics that "he actually cares." He doesn't, he did it for attention and to sell their BS.
15/18
In Dec 2022, Romanian police arrested both Tate brothers and two women. All four were suspected of human trafficking, forming an organized crime group and one of them was suspected of rape. Naturally, they've countered the accusations with their own.
16/18
Recently, various fellow conspiracy theorists like @drloupis have come to defend the Tates, claiming that they "won't be on the Epstein list," using the infamous "I may be an (alleged) sex trafficker and rapist, but at least I'm not a pedophile!" defense.
17/18
In Finland, however, the big brother Andrew is best-known for his tendency to "culturally appropriate" Finnish sauna by sitting on the kid's bench in the measly temperature of 50C, all this while wearing his swimming trunks. And this guy calls himself the "ultimate alpha".
18/18
I have paused personal donations for now, please support @U24_gov_ua by donating to the #HopakChallenge and sending me the receipt:
In this 9th Debunk of the Day, we’ll discuss “legitimate military targets”. Russia illegally invaded Ukraine, with no declaration of war, hiding behind a “special military operation”. Yet vatniks & useful idiots pretend Russia has any legitimate or lawful targets in Ukraine.
1/8
Russia started the war in 2014 by seizing Crimea with unmarked soldiers, “little green men”. Russians have been waging an undeclared, illegal war with endless war crimes ever since, whether it’s kidnapping of Ukrainian children with genocidal intent…
… the concentration camps for Ukrainians under occupation, conscripting Ukrainians from occupied territories, or the terrorist, deliberate bombing of civilians, including their infamous “double tap” strikes.
So no, Russia does not have any “legitimate targets” in Ukraine.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we introduce Hasan Piker, a Turkish-American streamer and millionaire. He’s best known for his champagne socialism, rabid criticism of the US and Israel, support for the Soviet Union and for Chinese and Russian invasions, and for mistreating his dog.
1/20
Born in 1991, Piker grew up in a privileged and well-connected environment. His father held senior roles at big corporations and his uncle, Cenk Uygur, is the founder of The Young Turks media network. He graduated cum laude from Rutgers, a top-tier university in New Jersey.
2/20
His main activity and primary source of income consists of hours-long livestreams on Twitch where he comments on news and yells at videos. He also keeps his dog in place the whole time with a shock collar.
What you see happening here is coordinated strategic communication by the Trump cult. Elon’s baby mama and former MAGA influencer Ashley St. Clair explained this ecosystem in a long video. They have built platforms where people can find narratives to spread and get paid for doing so.
Even though the system technically breaks the platform's ToS, this is perfectly fine for @nikitabier and the rest of the X crew, because Elon pays their salaries and this is part of his election interference machinery.
If you wanna know how the system works, read this:
Here’s Ashley’s video, where she explains how the system works. She was immediately attacked by various MAGA actors, which suggests that what she said hit a nerve.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we introduce Yanis Varoufakis, a Greek economist and politician. He’s best known for rising to power at the height of the Greek debt crisis, not solving anything but endearing himself to the left, and using his fame to promote Russian imperialism.
1/20
Born in 1961 in Athens, Varoufakis studied economics in the UK and built an academic career in Australia, the US, and Europe. His early work focused on game theory, political economy, and critiques of capitalism.
2/20
Presenting himself as the fearless, unorthodox economist willing to confront the EU’s “neoliberal” elites, he rose to prominence during Greece’s debt crisis. At its height in 2015, he was appointed finance minister under the left-wing Syriza government of Alexis Tsipras.
In this 8th Debunk of the Day, we’ll discuss complaints about US financing of NATO, in particular how the US allegedly pays for European defense, leading to calls for a US withdrawal from the Alliance — which would only make it easier for Putin to invade more countries.
1/7
NATO by itself costs peanuts. In fact, the core of NATO is a principle, an agreement, that ideally costs nothing. The main cost is defense spending, which the US is eagerly doing anyway: Trump has just announced a 50% increase in military spending for his “Department of War”. 2/7
To sow division and thereby weaken the Alliance, vatniks deliberately mix up different figures, such as contributions to the NATO common budget, with defense spending. And US military spending has been huge by the sheer fact that the US is the world’s largest economy.
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.