In today's #vatniksoup REBREW, I'll introduce an American propagandist and social media personality, Max Blumenthal (@maxblumenthal). He's best-known for his great admiration towards authoritarian regimes, and for launching the fake news blog @TheGrayZoneNews.
1/24
Max started his career as a fairly mainstream left-wing journalist, publishing in the New York Times and elsewhere. His father Sydney is a former journalist and distinguished adviser to former US President Bill Clinton. He's an intimate associate to both Bill and Hillary.
2/24
Blumenthal Senior stood a good chance of entering the White House again in 2017, had the presidential election in November 2016 gone a different way. As we know, Russia intervened in that election in every way possible to help Donald Trump win:
Being a longtime anti-Israel activist, in 2015 Max was writing for a Hezbollah-aligned website called Al Akhbar. He was then opposed to the genocide perpetrated against Syrians by dictator al-Assad and even resigned publicly in protest of the outlet’s pro-Damascus bias.
4/24
Things did not go well for Max from there, as he was out of a job and out of money. Couch surfing at friends' houses - mainly those still sympathetic to his pro-Palestinian activism. But then a curious thing happened. He was invited to Moscow to speak at...
5/24
... RT's 10 year anniversary gala – the same event that Donald Trump's disgraced national security adviser Michael Flynn attended, as did pro-Kremlin Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein. Here they are sitting at Putin's table.
6/24
While there, Max participated in a panel with Charles Bausman, an American blogger and founder of Russian Insider, a notoriously anti-Semitic and pro-Kremlin website. Bausman would eventually participate in the Jan 6 insurrection in DC, after which he defected to Moscow.
7/24
Naturally the Kremlin paid for all travel expenses and accommodation, and the Russian special services evidently had more ambitious plans for Max on that RT panel.
Finally Max had found someone who'd be ready to pay for his shit propaganda, what a lucky day!
8/24
Upon returning to the US Blumenthal founded the Grayzone Project. It was initially attached to a far-left news outlet called AlterNet, although staffers there say they didn't fund the Grayzone Project, and that "Max brought his own money". I wonder where it came from...
9/24
The website, founded in 2015, has become one of the largest spreaders of disinformation and conspiracy theories on the Internet, always eager to defend whatever authoritarian regime opposed to the United States and its allies. Among other things, it has laundered...
10/24
...FSB-hacked emails of British journalists, and two of its editors are regularly hosted at the UN by a Russian spy, @Dpol_un. Grayzone has for years refused to disclose its donors, while of course insisting that any entity it dislikes which receives funding from, say,...
11/24
...George Soros' Open Society or the Congressionally-funded National Endowment for Democracy, is a CIA front. Actually, one of the only confirmed donors to Grayzone is another notorious anti-Semite and Putin apologist, ex-Pink Floyd musician Roger Waters.
12/24
Soon after launching the Grayzone, Blumenthal also made a full 180 on his stance on Syria, transforming himself from an outspoken anti-Assad journalist into a pro-Assad stooge who pushed fake news to exonerate the regime for its most well-documented atrocities.
13/24
He's also a big fan of Hamas, a terrorist group he portrays as a heroic resistance movement, even though it massacred 1200 people on Oct 7 – including women and children. For Max, anyone who fights the Assad regime, Russia, Iran or Hezbollah is definitely a terrorist.
14/24
Like most pro-Kremlin puppets, Blumenthal has spent a great deal of energy labeling embattled civil society & medical aid groups in Syria as jihadist fronts aligned with al Qaeda or ISIS. Grayzone was at the forefront of vilifying the White Helmets,a rescue organization...
15/24
...nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and a major target of the Kremlin’s information warfare since Russia came to save Assad's regime in 2015. White Helmet volunteers have saved women & children out from under the rubble of buildings destroyed by Russian bombs in Syria.
16/24
As is tradition for the Kremlin propagandist, Max likes to blame EVERYTHING on the CIA. His modus operandi is INSINUATING that something happened due to deep state or "neocon warmonger" meddling. Some examples include the Euromaidan, the death of Wagner leader...
17/24
...Yevgeny Prigozhin, and "flooding" countries with weapons. In Max's world, Ukraine is fully controlled by foreign agents, but the Russia-controlled Crimea is the bastion of free elections, telling us that we should just trust any information coming out from that region.
18/24
Of course he's attacked Zelenskyy, too, suggesting he's a drug addict because he wiped his nose in Kherson. Apparently the Ukrainian president is also ruled by some "global predator class". Max has also spread the fake story that Zelenskyy's wife went on a "shopping spree".
19/24
In addition, Max has suggested that the Mariupol theater airstrike that killed women and children was a "false flag attack" by Ukrainian AZOV batallion to trigger NATO intervention.
Max has also tried his wings as a stand-up comedian. Watching him make jokes is absolutely excruciating, as he's even less funny than his good friend @jimmy_dore. I could only watch the first half, but I assume that the rest wasn't any funnier.
21/24
But how do we know Max is working for the Kremlin? The Grayzone boys have been a transparent go-to for one Dmitry Polanskiy. Technically working as Russia's deputy permanent representative to the UN, Polyanskiy is in fact an SVR officer working under diplomatic cover,...
22/24
...according to three different Western intelligence services. Prior posting of his was in Warsaw, Poland, where Polish counterintelligence tracked his movements:
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll cover the agenda-setting and flood of disinformation that spread on X and other platforms right after Charlie Kirk’s assassination. It’s far from the first or last time a tragedy has been weaponized for political purposes.
1/18
Every major political event, especially those involving violence, attracts massive attention. In the immediate aftermath, reliable information is scarce, making it highly vulnerable to both coordinated and improvised disinformation campaigns.
2/18
As I’ve mentioned in my previous soups and lectures, in disinformation campaigns, being first with a narrative is crucial, as people often remember the first version best — psychology studies show it sets the mental schema, and later updates rarely overwrite it.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce American social media personality David Freeman, AKA Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman). He’s best known for spreading political disinformation on X and shamelessly sucking up to Trump, Putin, and other authoritarian leaders.
1/22
David is a textbook example of someone profiting from MAGA grievance politics. He uses extreme, provocative language to farm engagement on X and never hesitates to flatter anyone who might give him more exposure — or money.
2/22
But David wasn’t always like this. At some point, in his mid-40s, he even tried a real job: he trained to become a cop. He spent three years with the Metro Transit PD, but after that he either got fired or quit, and never looked back.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce a Russian-Estonian businessman, Oleg Ossinovski. He is best-known for his deep ties to Russian rail and energy networks, shady cross-border dealings, and for channeling his wealth into Estonian politics.
1/14
Oleg made his fortune via Spacecom Trans & Skinest Rail, both deeply tied to Russia’s rail system. Most of this is through Globaltrans Investments PLC, a Cyprus-based firm with 62% held via Spacecom and tens of millions in yearly profits.
2/14
Ossinovski’s Russian-linked ventures made him Estonia’s richest man in 2014, with an estimated fortune of ~€300M. His business empire stretched across railways, oil via Alexela shares, and Russian bitumen imports from Help-Oil, a supplier to the Defense Ministry.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce a Swiss/French writer, Alain Bonnet, aka Alain Soral (@officielsoral). He’s best known for his rabid antisemitism and for his pathetic support for all the worst authoritarian regimes from Russia to North Korea.
1/22
Alain’s childhood was problematic, as his father has been characterized as a “narcissistic pervert” who beat his children and did jail time for fraud. Alain himself has said he was “programmed to be a monster.” Born Alain Bonnet, he took the stage name of his sister,…
2/22
… actress Agnès Soral. She wasn’t too happy about this, commenting “How would you like to be called Agnès Hitler?”. Like many grifters, he became a pick-up/seduction artist writer, à la late Gonzalo Lira, writing books and even making a B-movie, “Confessions d’un dragueur”.
3/22
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll explain the Alaska Fiasco and how it marks the peak of Trump’s two-year betrayal of Ukraine. What was sold as “peace talks” turned into a spectacle of weakness, humiliation, empty promises, and photo-ops that handed Putin exactly what he wanted.
1/24
Let’s start with the obvious: Trump desperately wants the gold medal of the Nobel Peace Prize, mainly because Obama got one. That’s why he’s now LARPing as a “peace maker” in every conflict: Israel-Gaza, Azerbaijan-Armenia, India-Pakistan, and of course Ukraine-Russia.
2/24
Another theory is that Putin holds kompromat — compromising material such as videos or documents — that would put Trump in an extremely bad light. Some have suggested it could be tied to the Epstein files or Russia’s interference in the 2016 US presidential election.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll talk about engagement farming: a cynical social media tactic to rack up likes, shares, and comments. From rage farming to AI-powered outrage factories, engagement farming is reshaping online discourse and turning division into profit.
1/23
Engagement farming is a social media tactic aimed at getting maximum likes, shares, and comments, with truth being optional. It thrives on provocative texts, images, or videos designed to spark strong reactions, boost reach, and turn online outrage into clicks and cash.
2/23
One subset of engagement farming is rage farming: a tactic built to provoke strong negative emotions through outrageous or inflammatory claims. By triggering anger or moral outrage, these posts often generate 100s or even 1,000s of heated comments, amplifying their reach.