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 #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce a Georgian politician &oligarch, Bidzina Ivanishvili. He’s best-known launching the pro-Kremlin Georgian Dream party, and for running the government from behind the scenes, slowly shifting Georgia’s course from the West back to Russia.
1/25
Ivanishvili was born and raised in a small village in Georgia. Their family was poor but he showed a business mindset from a young age. In 1988, he moved to Moscow and began his first business, importing and selling computers with Vitaly Malkin, a Russian-Israeli oligarch.
2/25
The rapid growth of Ivanishvili’s businesses can be attributed to his close ties with government officials. In 1996, he joined Seven Bankers (семибанкирщина), a group of influential Russian bankers who supported Boris Yeltsin’s re-election.
In today´s #vatniksoup REBREW, I´ll introduce a Hungarian lawyer and politician, Viktor Orbán (@PM_ViktorOrban). He´s best-known for turning Hungary into an authoritarian state, and for cooperating with other authoritarian regimes like the Kremlin, the CCP and Iran.
1/24
Orbán has been Hungary´s Prime Minister since 2010, and under his leadership the country has basically become the first nondemocracy in the EU. Orbán himself has described Hungary as an "illiberal state", and he´s used the Kremlin playbook to create it.
2/24
He created a nationwide right-wing media network and interfering with independent media has plummeted Hungary´s Press Freedom Index into 67th place, one of the worst in the EU. The state has also spied on Hungarian journalists by using the infamous Pegasus spyware.
In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce a Russian social media personality and vatnik archetype, Mr. G (@Wagnersfamily). He's best-known for sharing the most outrageous Kremlin lies, albeit previously being extremely anti-Putin and Kremlin, even coining the term "vatnik".
1/19
It's worth noting, that G is an extremely irrelevant account and person, but his almost comical descent from an anti-Putin, fully fledged Russian Liberal, to full blown vatnik, who doesn't hesitate to lie and naturally lives outside of Russia, is worth demonstrating.
2/19
In his liberal days G was dedicated to popularizing the vatnik meme. He ran the site together with his friend, and also the @trueVATNIK Twitter account, which went inactive in 2015, but was popular in circles opposed to Putin's imperialist ambitions.
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll intoduce an Italian propagandist, Vittorio Nicola Rangeloni. He’s best-known for producing pro-Kremlin propaganda from Donbas for the Italian-speaking audience, and for breaking the Geneve conventions by interviewing prisoners of war.
1/19
Rango grew up in Lecco, Italy. His mother was Russian, and because of this young Vittorio was told about the virtues and wonders of Russkiy Mir and the superiority of the communist system.
2/19
In his early 20s, Rango was yet to discover his role in this world. He enjoyed traveling, and decided to take his humble savings of 3000 EUR to relocate to his dream destination in the newly formed and completely made-up Donetsk People’s Republic.
I've actually noticed this trend on TikTok with our videos - they do relatively well on YouTube, Instagram and X, but fail miserably on CCP's spying app. In the second photo you can see views for our videos, on other platforms these ranged from 500 to 120 000.
"TikTok is more focused on entertainment, dance videos and such" - Well, not really. According to a study, account registered as a 13 year old was quickly served with conflict-related content, and the account quickly delved deep into the conflict rabbit hole.
I decided to do a little non-scientific test: I created an account, used VPN to relocate myself to the US, and just watched what the TikTok algorithm offered me. I didn't like or comment any videos and finished every video that was shown. My age was set to 18.
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At first, the algorithm seemed to show me some of the most popular videos on the platform, mostly consisting of cute animals, comedy and babies.
Then, after 30 or so videos, I was shown this video demonstrating the "superiority" of Chinese kindergartens.
2/4
Then, a few more cute animals and a relatively attractive girl dancing. Then, again video about Chinese kindergartens. This time I wanted to see what happens if I interact with the post, and I liked the video.
In today´s #vatniksoup REBREW, I´ll introduce a Canadian propagandist & social media personality, Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate). He´s best-known for whitewashing al-Assad´s & Russia's war crimes in Syria & for denying Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential elections.
1/24
Maté´s biography reads an awful lot like his collaborator @MaxBlumenthal´s. Another failson of a well-to-do and famous father, in this case, of bestselling Canadian pop psychologist Gabor Maté, Aaron similarly fought a losing struggle to make a career in liberal journalism.
2/24
Maté´s personal life is also a bit weird. Records show he was married to a former NPR reporter named @StarleeKine, yet neither he nor Kine have ever publicly acknowledged their marriage on social media,even at the time it took place. Perhaps this is because it also...