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 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).
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we’ll introduce an American billionaire, real estate developer, and wannabe diplomat, Steve Witkoff. He’s best known for trying to sell Ukraine to Putin and for helping Trump sell this treason and encouragement of genocidal war as “peace”.
1/20
Steve studied law and political science at Hofstra University in New York. After law school, he worked as a real estate attorney, which led him into property acquisitions and development. He first met Trump in the 1980s when Trump was a client of his real estate law firm.
2/20
In 1997, Witkoff founded the Witkoff Group, a New York–based real estate development and investment firm. The firm has owned and developed dozens of properties in New York and other major US cities, making Witkoff quite wealthy, with some interesting business connections.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, our first on a non-human vatnik, we’ll talk about… Grok @grok. It’s best known for turning into Mecha-Hitler and Mecha-Putler and for defending its vatnik master, Elon Musk, at all costs, up to being willing to sacrifice the rest of mankind for him.
1/24
Let’s start with an introduction into how Large Language Models (LLMs) work, and the new “arguing with your toaster” phenomenon. LLMs like Grok are Artificial Intelligence (AI) but not the way we had imagined — a new form of intelligence that would somehow think like us.
2/24
Instead, LLMs are basically “guessing engines” and search engines trained on a massive dataset to give you the output you expect: they are imitating intelligence rather than being an actual intelligence. They’re chatbots generating responses pretending to be a helpful AI.
Robert Amsterdam is also a registered (and well-paid!) agent of Maduro’s Venezuela, the socialist regime and ally of Russia which Tucker Carlson has recently defended for some reason, shocking many of his right-wing supporters.