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 #vatniksoup, I'll talk about TikTok (@tiktok_us), why some of the US legislators want to ban it, what are the app's connections to the Chinese Communist Party, and how the app has changed the social media landscape, especially among young people.
1/23
Tiktok's potential reach and potential political impact is actually huge, which is why US politicians are currently having such a heated debate over it right now. First of all, TikTok has over 1 billion monthly active users & it's been downloaded more than 4.1 billion times.
2/23
The app tends to appeal to younger users - 41% of the app's users are aged between 16 and 24. By Jul 2023, TikTok had become the primary news source for British teens and in Finland, around half of 13-18 year-olds get their news from TikTok.
In today's #vatniksoup, I'll talk about the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) and how pro-Kremlin propagandists, oligarchs and lawyers are using its "persecution" as a tool to reduce support for Ukraine and its government.
1/20
In Oct 2023, @tuckercarlson published an episode on Joe Biden "backing the Ukrainian government as it throws priests in jail," in which he interviewed Bob Amsterdam, a lawyer representing the UOC-MP. He was hired by a Russian oligarch, Vadym Novynskyi, for the job.
2/20
The case is related to so called Draft Law 8371, a bill that would give Ukrainian authorities power to investigate the connection of religious groups in Ukraine to the Russian Federation and to ban those that have leadership under the control of the Kremlin.
In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce an Irish social media personality and propagandist, Chay Bowes (@BowesChay). He's best-known for his collaboration with a Russian SVR operative @Dpol_un, and for spreading pro-Kremlin propaganda while working as a correspondent for RT.
1/20
For years, Bowes was looking for his place in this world, trying his wings as a gunshop owner and health insurance middle manager. At some point, he did some online studies so that he can put up "MA in strategic studies" in his bio to gain some credibility.
2/20
For some years, Chay has claimed to be an "investigative journalist". In 2021, Chay, businessman Paddy Cosgrave and few others launched an Irish political news website called The Ditch. It was funded by Cosgrave, and Chay was one of the three main shareholders.
In today's #vatniksoup, I'll talk about hybrid operations in the context of information operations. Hybrid operations are a blend of political warfare and influencing methods like employing troll/bot farms, and spreading fake news, propaganda and disinformation.
1/21
In this thread, I will demonstrate four case studies on how Russian operatives conduct hybrid operations on three different continents. All of them have distinct characteristics, but rely on the same mechanisms, like using social media to spread the message.
2/21
Hybrid operations often combine real-world, and orchestrated and pre-planned scenarios with online activities. Sometimes Russia shills attempt to mobilize people for real-life events like protests by inflating these events on social media and fake news sites.
In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce a Belgian political activist, Luc Michel (@LucMichelPCN). He's best-known for his extreme far-right views, supporting and promoting Russia-orchestrated fake elections, and organizing a vast African fake news network, Russosphère.
1/18
In his early years, Michel became part of Front de la Jeunesse, a far-right militia. In 1980, members of the organization killed a French-Algerian man in Brussels. In 1981, they burned down a publishing house for a magazine who exposed the organization's internal structures.
2/18
During the 80s Michel become an assistant of Jean Thiriart, a Belgian far-right political theorist and former Waffen SS member. Thiriart and Michel moved later towards National Bolshevism, and they also collaborated with Russian fascist Alexander Dugin.
In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce an Australian hacker, publisher and activist, Julian Assange. He's best-known as the founder of WikiLeaks, leaking hacked and stolen data, cooperating with the Russian intelligence, and for being under criminal investigation in the US.
1/22
Julian's activism probably comes from his father, John Shipton, an "anti-war activist" who's helped Julian with launching WikiLeaks and the WikiLeaks Party. He also arranged a trip to Syria to meet with Bashar al-Assad and even planned to open an office for the party there.
2/22
In recent years, Shipton has been seen regularly at Australian "Z-rallies" in support of the Kremlin's war on Ukraine. Incidentally, Shipton got interested in Julian after he became famous in Australia - before that, he was almost completely absent from Julian's life.