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.
3/24
After taking over the media, Orbán started working on the court system, firing anyone he saw as a threat. Later he reshaped the voting system to favor his party Fidesz, a process that´s often referred to as "gerrymandering", giving Fidesz supermajority in Parliament.
4/24
Some have suggested that Orbán´s closeness to Russia and Putin stems from his early days as a politician, when he allegedly received cash from Russian mafia boss Semyon Mogilevich. The incident was allegedly recorded and then passed over to Russian secret services.
5/24
Orban´s fans in the West see him as a Christian conservative who´s standing up to "woke" European bureaucrats. But when taking a closer look at his policies in the last 14 years, we quickly see that his government´s most consistent policy direction has been embracing China.
6/24
His (alleged) Christian conservatism has also made him a rock star of US conservative politics & he was recently interviewed by the infamous pro-Kremlin conspiracy theorist,@tuckercarlson. Orbán also hosts the annual Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) conference.
7/24
This year´s CPAC featured many prominent conservative speakers, including Orbán himself, Prime Minister of Georgia, PVV leader Geert Wilders, Jack "Agent Poso" Posobiec and Trump lackey @VivekGRamaswamy, who has incidentally named China as the biggest adversary of the US.
8/24
Usually, authoritarian states tend to become allies and do business together. Since 2009, Orbán has been very close with the Kremlin and Putin, but what people often forget is that he´s been doing close cooperation with the Chinese leadership at least since 2010.
9/24
Already back in 2011, Orbán was praising the CCP regime because it "was not dominated by that Western, liberal idea that fiddling with the books is the way to get the best economic indicators." After this, Chinese investments started pouring into Hungary.
10/24
By 2022, China had become the largest foreign investor in Hungary. For example, Huawei´s largest logistics center in Europe is located in Hungary, and China is financing the Hungary-Serbia railway, the Kaposvar solar power station, and the Debrecen battery factory.
11/24
Interestingly, the Trump administration banned Huawei & many of its subsidiaries from the US due to a trade war, espionage and other national security threats. Canadian authorities even arrested Huawei’s chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou at the request of the US in 2018.
12/24
While meeting Trump in the US in Mar 2024, Orbán also met with Heritage Foundation leadership and @VivekGRamaswamy. Ironically, Heritage (and Ramaswamy) calls Orbán´s closest ally, the CCP, "the most persistent and consequential threat facing the American people today".
13/24
For Hungary, the CCP is a great source of funding without any string, like advocating human rights, attached. But like with Russian energy imports, it also increases Hungary´s dependency on China. This cooperation and money flow can also create a "debt trap" for Hungary.
14/24
As they´ve done in many other countries, the CCP is also attempting to promote the Chinese culture within Hungary. Hungary hosts five CCP-funded language and cultural centers, known as "Confucius Institutes," and they´ve also attempted to build a...
15/24
..Shanghai Fudan University campus in Budapest. This sparked large protests, & the Budapest mayor even announced that the streets around the university would be renamed to commemorate human rights abuses by the CCP. The university was labeled as a "CCP influence operation."
16/24
Orbán has also invited the Chinese police to patrol in Hungary. Setting up Chinese police stations in the EU is of course alarming, not only because the CCP has a "well-documented history of harassing and intimidating overseas Chinese citizens and diaspora members".
17/24
And it appears that the CCP already has leverage on Hungary - In 2016, Hungary blocked an EU statement on China´s maritime claims in the South China Sea, and vetoed an EU statement condemning CCP´s security law in Hong Kong.
18/24
In Feb 2024, Hungary again blocked EU´s sanctions package against Russia. But according to diplomatic sources, the package wasn´t blocked because of Orbán´s friendship with Russia, but because the sanctions also targeted four Chinese companies.
19/24
For Orbán, all this seems to be a straightforward transaction: a source of money and influence as China’s leading partner in Europe. In the meantime, Chinese companies can build factories in the heart of Europe with little apparent oversight.
20/24
This deal has led to Hungary becoming the CCP’s most valuable ally in Europe, with economic ties evolving into common security interests. As Hungary is also a NATO member, this has raised concerns on issues such as intelligence sharing.
21/24
This is also the reason why the CCP leader Xi Jinping will be meeting Orbán during his Eurotrip. Due to dire economic conditions, Hungary is desperately seeking for a economic support, which the CCP can of course offer. Xi´s other official visits will be to France & Serbia.
22/24
To conclude, Orbán is a typical politician whose words & actions hardly meet. He´s good friends with the most anti-CCP organizations in the US,while at the same time he´s doing massive deals with China, making himself rich & his country more dependent on this foreign power.
23/24
This has led to a absurd situation, in which Orbán is considered a rock star in the US even though his political decisions and EU voting is undermining the American interests in the geopolitical arena.
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce a Belarusian politician and dictator, Alexander Lukashenko. He’s best-known for giving up his country to Russia, and for cracking up political opposition and dissidents in Belarus, ruling the country with an iron fist.
1/19
Alexander was born in the Byelorussian SSR, living an unhappy childhood with his mother, taunted by his schoolmates due to being fatherless. His father’s identity is not known, but there’s a rumour that his father was a Roma traveler passing through the region.
2/19
Lukashenko joined the Soviet Communist Party in 1979, and a few years later he became the deputy chairman of a collective farm. By 1990, he had risen to the rank of Deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the Byelorussian SSR. He claimed to be an opponent of corruption…
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll discuss social media superspreaders. Due to their effectiveness, superspreader accounts are often used to spread "low credibility" content, disinformation and propaganda, and today this is more often done by hostile state actors such as Russia.
1/14
DeVerna et al. (2024) described superspreaders as "users who consistently disseminate a disproportionately large amount of low-credibility content," also known as bullshit. It’s worth noting, that some of these people may actually believe the lies they spread.
2/14
The numbers behind these accounts are astonishing – a study by Grinberg et al. (2019) found out that 0,1% of Twitter accounts were responsible for sharing approximately 80% of the mis/disinformation related to the 2016 US presidential election.
In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce an American politician, Angela McArdle (@angela4LNCChair). She's best-known for turning the US Libertarian Party into a wing of MAGA Republicans, and for promoting pro-Kremlin narratives about the Russo-Ukrainian War.
1/20
McArdle received her Bachelor's from the evangelical Christian university Biola in 2009 and paralegal certificate through the UCLA extension progam in 2013. She's also trained as a craniosacral therapist through the Upledger Institute.
2/20
She started her political career as the Libertarian nominee in the 2017 California's 34th congressional district special election, finishing the primary with 0,8% of the total vote. A few years later, she had gained popularity within the Libertarian Party,...
In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce a Russian businessman and financier, Yury Kovalchuk. He’s best-known for being a close friend, confidant and "personal banker" of Putin's, and for strongly supporting the Kremlin's genocidal war against Ukraine.
1/21
Kovalchuk was born in 1951 in St. Petersburg. He started his career during the 80s at the Loffe Physico Technical Institute, eventually becoming the institute's first deputy director. But Yury aspired for more & the fall of the iron curtain gave room for his business plans.
2/21
Kovalchuk quickly learned that one didn't have to play fair to become rich in Russia during the 90s. He joined the board of directors of the Joint Ventures Committee, a government body involved with restructuring companies and finding (foreign) partners.
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, 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.