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 discuss the Wagner Group, its founders Yevgeny Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin, and the mutiny they started on 23 Jun 2023. The event marked the climax of the Wagner Group–Russian MoD conflict, and finally led to the deaths of Prigozhin and Utkin.
1/22
Wagner has been used in many conflicts around the world, but they came to global prominence during the war in Donbas in 2014-2015. Wagnerites helped the Donbas separatists fight against the Ukrainians during the conflict, which helped Putin to “outsource” the insurrection.
2/22
The group doesn’t have any central ideology, but many of its members and leaders have ties to various neo—Nazi movements in Russia. For example, Wagner leader Dmitry Utkin had several Nazi symbols tattooed on his body. Neo—nazi group Rusich has also fights as part of Wagner.
3/22
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce an Amsterdam-based propaganda channel, Bonanza Media (@bonanzamedia2). It’s best-known for producing & spreading online pro-Kremlin propaganda videos while closely coordinating & collaborating with the Russian intelligence agency GRU.
1/19
Russian intelligence has been extremely active in the Netherlands for a long time. For example in 2018, four GRU agents were caught while trying to hack into OPCW,an organization that monitors the use of chemical weapons. In addition, the International Criminal Court (ICC)…
2/19
…and the MH17 investigation have become targets for the Russian intelligence and propaganda operations. These operations are often complemented with “investigative journalism” media outlets, that often echo the Kremlin’s propaganda and disinformation.
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll talk about the recent EU elections and what are their implications for both the Kremlin and Ukraine. Right-wing political parties, some pro-Kremlin, won a lot of seats around Europe, and this result can also change the EU’s stance on Ukraine.
1/19
But before we start, I want to promote a truck fundraiser I'm doing together with the fantastic @ArturRehi and @69thSB.
Our goal is 20 000 USD, and you can contribute to this important fundraiser here:
EU’s support of Ukraine is essential for their survival against genocidal Russia. So far,this support has been delayed mostly by Orban’s Hungary (& to some degree, Fico’s Slovakia). Now, this support will probably be challenged by many new members of the European Parliament.
3/19
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll discuss a specific propaganda/disinformation that the Kremlin likes to use – antisemitism. I also talk about how the Russian society itself has become riddled with antisemitism & how this has led to a decrease in Jewish population in the country.
1/19
Russian antisemitism works on many levels, and their narratives vary depending whether they’re targeting a local audience or people in Europe and the US. For example for the latter, Russia attempts to create a false narrative of Ukraine being an antisemitic “Nazi state”.
2/19
But before diving deeper, let’s look at a survey data of Russians in 2023: Nearly 30 million Russians harbour antisemitic attitudes, and 15% of those surveyed believed that “Jews were responsible for most of the world’s wars.” 38% think that the Jews have...
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce a Ukrainian media personality and propagandist, Diana Panchenko (@Panchenko_X). She’s best-known for betraying her own country by peddling anti-Zelenskyy and anti-Ukraine propaganda and disinformation for the Kremlin.
1/22
Panchenko was born in 1988 in the Mykolaev Oblast in Ukrainian SSR in 1988. She studied publishing and editing at the Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute and later graduated from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv with a degree in law.
2/22
After graduating, Diana worked briefly for the news site . Between 2010 and 2015, Panchenko was a presenter for KyivTV, but she found her true calling as a pro-Kremlin propagandist after she was hired by a national “news channel” called NewsOne.