In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce an American investor and social media commentator, Malachy J. (@The_Real_Fly). He's best-known for his extensive history as an investor blogger, for his extreme xenophobia and for spreading pro-Kremlin narratives on social media.
1/18
Mal has been involved in the investment world for a long time & for example @TheStalwart published a story on Business Insider about his massive losses in the market already back in 2014. In the article, he was described as "a well-liked member of the community for years".
2/18
His blog, "Trading with the Fly", has been active since 2007, and since then he's posted around 4 blog posts a day, and he's even published two books, "Journey into Fear: when the dot com bubble burst" and "In a Car Made of Dynamite, Racing Towards the Sun".
3/18
Mal has gone the distance trying to erase the traces of his real identity online, using a fake name in the blogosphere ("George Hamilton"), that was even picked up by @rcarrick for The Globe and Mail article published in 2008.
4/18
His blog, iBankCoin, was very popular among investors back in 2008, and it was even voted as the most popular investing blog back in the day. Malachy aka The Fly was described as a "source of reliably rude but smart investing commentary and musings".
5/18
Malachy's worldview seems to be coming almost completely from various pro-Kremlin narratives & conspiracy theories. He's not the most influential account on X,but he's a perfect example on how tendency to believe in conspiracy theories leads to believing in the Kremlin's BS.
6/18
Already back in 2016, he was promoting Pizzagate, a conspiracy theory suggesting that a pizzeria in DC was a meeting place for Satanic ritual abuse. Incidentally, the theory involved Hillary Clinton & spread online like wildfire just days before the US presidential election.
7/18
He also seems to believe in The Great Reset and The Great Replacement conspiracy theories. The latter is very popular among the far-right and is of course supported by X's owner, @elonmusk. Malachy also thinks that the moon landing was a hoax.
8/18
As is tradition, Malachy's also keen on conspiracy theories related to COVID-19 vaccines. He also promotes the idea that "Liberal Jews" are pushing "anti white [sic] agenda", and that George Soros is some kind of mastermind trying to ruin America.
9/18
He's also extremely hostile towards any sort of "wokeness" in the US, suggesting that the US military is weak and the Western societies are collapsing because of it. Malachy's own son appears to be some sort of "pro Halo gamer", so I don't know if that's somehow better.
10/18
Next, let's look at some of Fly's posts related to the Russo-Ukrainian War: he's claimed that Navalny was "100% a CIA asset", that Ukrainian drones have dropped chemical weapons on a Russian soldier, that Ukraine is "full of Nazis" & that Zelenskyy is a drug addict.
11/18
But that's not all! There's of course the classics like "Finland joining NATO is escalation", "secret US-funded biolabs in Ukraine", "2014 Revolution of Dignity was a coup", and that the war in Ukraine is actually a civil war.
12/18
Apparently he considers Putin to be some kind of crusader that's fighting against the "decadent West" & that all the beforementioned phenomena are the consequences of this "decadence". Mal may know something about the market, but it seems that he has no clue about Russia.
13/18
In addition to being pro-Kremlin, Malachy is also extremely xenophobic, especially towards the African-Americans and Mexicans. Which is weird, considering that his wife and her mother are allegedly Latinas and that they mostly speak to each other in Spanish.
14/18
Malachy belongs to the pro-Kremlin, conspiratorial, disinformation-ridden circle-jerk that includes accounts like @geromanAT, @endwokeness, @dom_lucre and @CensoredMen. He personally appealed to Elon after the Serbian-Austrian communist Roman G aka @geromanAT was suspended.
15/18
Based on his online activity, Mal is chronically online. On average, he tweets 37 posts daily, and still has time to write for his investing blog on an almost daily basis. That's quite a lot of Internet time for an almost 50-year-old family man.
16/18
And since he's American, there needs to be some kind of grift or business involved in all this craziness. Malachy is aggressively promoting Stocklabs, some sort of investment platform that has "AI Based [sic] Market Timing Algorithms" and other completely made up shit.
17/18
Because who wouldn't want to take financial advice from someone who believes that the moon landing was a hoax, that the "Satanic elites" are having sexual rituals in a pizza place, and who thinks that Putin will save the West from its "decadence"?
18/18
This investigation was done in collaboration with @UnintelAgency.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce a Russian politician and First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Administration of Russia, Sergey Kiriyenko. He’s best known for running both domestic and foreign disinformation and propaganda operations for the Kremlin.
1/20
On paper, and in photos, Kiriyenko is just as boring as most of the Kremlin’s “political technologists”: between 2005-2016 he headed the Rosatom nuclear energy company, but later played a leading role in the governance of Russia-occupied territories in Ukraine.
2/20
What is a political technologist? In Russia, they’re spin doctors & propaganda architects who shape opinion, control narratives, and manage elections — often by faking opposition, staging events, and spreading disinfo to maintain Putin’s power and the illusion of democracy.
Let me show you how a Pakistani (or Indian, they're usually the same) AI slop farm/scam operates. The account @designbonsay is a prime example: a relatively attractive, AI-generated profile picture and a ChatGPT-style profile description are the first red flags.
1/5
The profile's posts are just generic engagement farming, usually using AI-generated photos of celebrities or relatively attractive women.
These posts are often emotionally loaded and ask the user to interact with them ("like and share if you agree!").
2/5
Then there's the monetization part. This particular account sells "pencil art", which again are just AI-generated slop.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce an American lawyer and politician, Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee). He’s best-known for opposing the aid to Ukraine, undermining NATO by calling the US to withdraw from the alliance, and for fighting with a bunch of braindead dogs online.
1/21
Like many of the most vile vatniks out there, “Based Mike” is a lawyer by profession. He hails from the holy land of Mormons, Utah, where he faces little political competition, allowing him to make the most outrageous claims online without risking his Senate seat.
2/21
Before becoming a senator, Mike fought to let a nuclear waste company dump Italian radioactive waste in Utah, arguing it was fine if they just diluted it. The state said no, the public revolted, and the courts told poor Mikey to sit down.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce an American national security policy professional and the current under secretary of defense for policy, Elbridge Colby (@ElbridgeColby). He’s best-known for fighting with cartoon dogs online and for halting military aid to Ukraine.
1/21
Elbridge "Cheese" Colby earned his bachelor’s degree from Yale and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School. Before entering government, he worked at top think tanks and in the intelligence community, focusing on nuclear policy and strategic planning.
2/21
Cheese quickly became a key voice for a “China First” strategy, arguing the US must prioritize military buildup in Asia over commitments in Europe or the Middle East. He sees (or saw, rather) Taiwan as the core test of US credibility.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’m going to talk about… Vatnik Soup! As some of you know, we also have a website where you can find every soup ever published. The site also has other useful resources, making it the most comprehensive resource on Russian disinformation & vatniks.
1/15
Unfortunately, Elon has flagged the website as malware, as he might not be very happy about the soups I wrote about him - so far, they have garnered over 60 million views on X/Twitter.
The “freedom of speech” spokesperson doesn’t seem too keen on free speech, after all.
2/15
The heart & soul of the website is of course the soups page. There you can find all 360+ soups, which can be sorted chronologically, by popularity, etc. You can also search for soups by title or even in the soup text: