Pekka Kallioniemi Profile picture
Apr 16, 2024 25 tweets 15 min read Read on X
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.

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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.

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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:



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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.

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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...

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... 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.

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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.

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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!

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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...

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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...

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...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,...

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...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.

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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.

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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.

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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...

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...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.

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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...

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...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.

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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".
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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.

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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.

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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,...

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...according to three different Western intelligence services. Prior posting of his was in Warsaw, Poland, where Polish counterintelligence tracked his movements:



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One can only guess, but one motive for Max to simp for the Kremlin could be hatred towards his much more successful father.

After all, agents of Russian intelligence in the West are simply losers and rejects who detest their own society for not letting them succeed.

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In the next REBREW, we look at Max's short and stout friend Aaron Maté.

Find us also on other socials:

instagram.com/vatniksoup/
youtube.com/@TheSoupCentra…
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More from @P_Kallioniemi

May 2
In today’s 350th Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce an American comedian and podcaster, Dave Smith (@ComicDaveSmith). He’s best-known for his numerous appearances on the Joe Rogan Experience and for his unhinged takes on the Russo-Ukrainian War.

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Smith has a massive megaphone - he’s a good friend of Joe Rogan, and he’s appeared on Joe’s podcast a whopping 16 times. Naturally, he’s also visited Lex Fridman’s podcast and frequently appears on Fox News’ Kennedy and The Greg Gutfeld Show.

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Dave is part of the Kremlintarian section of the Libertarian Party called Mises Caucus. They took control of the party in May 2022, and with the help of their new leader, Angela McArdle, turned it into an extension of the MAGA Republicans:

3/22

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Read 24 tweets
Apr 29
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce a Russian journalist, Leonid Ragozin (@leonidragozin). He’s best-known for posing as a Russian dissident, while at the same time sneakily promoting the Kremlin’s narratives about the Russo-Ukrainian War.

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On paper, Leonid doesn’t look like your typical Kremlin apologist - he’s written and worked for prestigious Western outlets like the BBC, the Guardian, and he’s even written some Lonely Planet guides for the Baltic countries!

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But Ragozin’s public commentary often seems to walk a fine line: condemning the war while pushing narratives that shift blame, dilute responsibility, or quietly carry the same old imperial baggage Russia - or its opposition - has never truly forgotten.

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Read 21 tweets
Apr 28
In today’s Vatnik Soup REBREW, I’ll introduce a bank that is well-known in both Austria and Russia: Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) and its Russian subsidiary, AO Raiffeisen. It is one of the few foreign banks that still does business in Russia.

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Raiffeisen’s Russian branch was founded in 1996 and expanded dramatically after the acquisition of Russia’s Impexbank in 2006. A year later, it was the largest bank trading in foreign capital (seventh in size) in Russia.

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In the early 2000s, Raiffeisen opened new branches in Russia, including in Saint Petersburg, Samara, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk and Krasnodar. After 2018, it focused on digital expansion and by 2021 it had a digital presence in more than 300 cities.

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Read 22 tweets
Apr 24
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce an Estonian lawyer, social activist, politician, and useful idiot for the Kremlin, Varro Vooglaid (@varrovooglaid). He’s best-known for promoting pro-Kremlin viewpoints under the guise of “traditional family values.”

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Vooglaid has an academic background, which usually gives people plenty of credibility in the eyes of the Kremlin. Most of his academic career was spent at the University of Tartu, but he was also a researcher between 2007 and 2011 at the University of Helsinki.

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Varro is likely the most influential vatnik in Estonia. His academic credentials provide him credibility, while his religious image appeals to “traditionalists” - many of whom oddly admire Russia and its imperialistic nature.

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Read 21 tweets
Apr 4
In today’s Vatnik Soup REBREW, I’ll introduce a Russian ultra-nationalist propagandist and “philosopher”, Aleksandr Dugin. He’s best-known for his blueprint on Russia’s geopolitical strategy and for his genocidal rhetoric towards Ukrainians.

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In my first Dugin Soup, I covered the man’s 1997 book Foundations of Geopolitics — a manual for dismantling the West, breaking up NATO, and building a Russian-led empire. In it, he makes eerie “predictions” that seem to be playing out today.

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Dugin called for destabilizing the US by exacerbating internal divisions. Fast forward to today: culture wars, conspiracy theories, far-right lunatics, and social media algorithms doing half the work for him.

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Read 18 tweets
Apr 3
Tariffs memes are the hottest thing right now, so post your favorites👇🏻 Image
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Read 5 tweets

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