In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce a Dutch right-wing activist, conspiracy theorist & social media personality, Eva Vlaardingerbroek (@evavlaar). She's best-known for her promotion of the "decline of the Decadent West" trope, and for promotion of pro-Kremlin narratives.
1/19
Eva's main audience is conservative traditionalists, and basically everything she does revolves around this theme. She also promotes various conspiracy theories about the "global elites", COVID-19 and vaccines, World Economic Forum and digitalisation of society.
2/19
She's also a raging populist, and is not afraid to take current events and rally around them to get more attention to her conspiratorial ramblings. Recently, she's been involved with the protests by European farmers against increasing costs and tiny margins.
3/19
In 2016, she joined the far-right political party, Forum voor Democratie (FvD). Some years later she became an intern at the FvD faction in the European Parliament, and soon left her position at the university in order to fully focus on her political career with the FvD.
4/19
FvD leader Thierry Baudet soon announced that Eva would fill the 5th spot on FvD's candidate list for the House of Representatives.Few months later FvD faced a huge crisis when its youth wing had made some extreme remarks, including praise of Anders Breivik & Brenton Tarrant.5/19
Soon after this, many members resigned from the party. Eva was one of them - she joined a morning talk show in which she announced that she had chosen sides against the FvP leader and her former boyfriend (or "fling", as Eva called it), Thierry Baudet.
6/19
For the time being, she left politics and focused more on political commentary and promoting herself on podcasts, talk shows and right-wing political events. She promotes various conspiracy theories, and often talks about the "The Great Reset" and its dangers.
7/19
In 2021, she appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight, stating that Europe is becoming "a tyrannical regime, of mass surveillance and control". In the same year, she also worked as presenter of her own YouTube talk show "Let's Talk About It".
8/19
The show was part of Swedish media outlet Riks, which is affiliated with the far-right party Sverigedemokraterna. It seems that the show ran for only 10 episodes. She was also working as a legal advisor at a law firm, but her employment was terminated just after 4 months.
9/19
Eva then continued her career as a political commentator and speaker, calling for people to "reject Globalism and embrace God" at events like the Brussels National Conservatism Conference. She also became a regular commentator on European matters at Carlson's show on Fox.
10/19
She's also appeared as a regular commentator on Mark Steyn's YouTube show, on which she's commented - among other things - about how "young girls are being sacrificed on the altar of mass migration," and how the governments are trying to control us with digital currencies.
11/19
Like most conspiracy theorists, Eva often creates doomsday scenarios around topics she has no clue about, like for example cybersecurity and the threat of "cyber pandemics", which according to her would lead to martial law and the adoption of Europe-wide mass surveillance.
12/19
Eva doesn't speak a lot about Ukraine, but when she does, she condemns it as a pointless money sink. She's also claimed that the whole thing is just another scheme to make weapon manufacturers and companies like BlackRock even wealthier.
13/19
After the Carlson interview with Putin, she praised the dictator's 30 minute revisionist history rant, stating that it has "current political relevance", and that no other leader could give such a detailed (biased and made-up) "historical account" as Putin did.
14/19
She also commented on the Tucker video about the "low prices" in Russian supermarkets, stating that the Western standard of living is low "by design" and that it was "made by people who hate us." Almost half of Russians state that their salary doesn't cover basic spending.
15/19
It doesn't take a genius to see the conclusion here - Putin as a traditionalist is in the right by "defending Russia" and the "decadent West" in the wrong by giving up all power to "global elites" and by sending military and monetary aid to Ukraine. The whole narrative...
16/19
... is based on a silly conspiracy theory there is some kind of clandestine power that is trying to enslave the whole of humanity through degradation of "conservative values", lockdowns, vaccines, mass surveillance, and depopulation.
As is tradition.
17/19
As a traditionalist, Eva's been desperately looking for that far-right love of her life - between 2012 and 2014 she dated far-right fascist Julien Rochedy, after which she had a "fling" with Baudet. In 2022 she got engaged with Will Witt, but I don't think that worked out.
18/19
Oh, and Eva: if you're reading this, here are some of the lies Putin told to Carlson:
And below is Tucker making excuses why he didn't ask Putin any tough questions and basically calling him a killer.
In this 5th Debunk of the Day, we’ll discuss something that sounds great in theory, but was completely turned upside-down by the tankie kind of vatnik: anti-imperialism. More consistent anti-imperialists call this the “anti-imperialism of idiots”. 1/5
“Anti-imperialism” was popularized by Lenin, who saw imperialism as the ultimate stage of capitalism. Ironically, the largest empire is now… Putin’s Russia, proud heir to both Lenin’s Soviet Union and to the Tsarist Empire. 2/5
Indeed, Russia is an empire that is still ruled by a de facto all-powerful Tsar, that still proudly flies its imperial flag, that still dreams of expanding its already huge territory through brutal conquest and colonization. 3/5
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