In today's #vatniksoup, I'll be introducing an Australian "citizen journalist", astrologer and conspiracy theorist, Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz).

She's best-known for promoting outlandish conspiracy theories, and for blaming the US and the West for absolutely everything.

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First, let's take a closer look where Caitlin is coming from - between 2009 and 2011, she was mostly tweeting about spiritual teachers and gurus like Eckhart Tolle and Osho. In 2008 she published a book on astrology.

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Her first somewhat political tweets were about Bernie Sanders, whom she called "impressive" in the debates. After Hillary won the nomination, Caitlin started promoting all kinds of weird conspiracy theories, including the one where Sanders' family was held as a hostage and..
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..he had to endorse Clinton to "to get him and his family out alive". From there on she claimed that the whole thing was staged, that Hillary and Donald Trump are actually friends, and that the whole presidential race is just a ruse to stop the leftists' rise to power.

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Soon after she started promoting the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, which suggested that high-ranking Democrats were involved in a human trafficking and child sex ring. Pizzagate is generally considered to be predecessor of the QAnon cult.

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A lot of the conspiracy theories Johnstone promoted during these times came from right-wing outlets like InfoWars and Project Veritas, and in Jul 2017, she published a blog post titled "Lefties Need To Stop Being Shy About Working With The Anti-Establishment Right".

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And once again, the horseshoe theory becomes reality.

In addition to Pizzagate, she's promoted various other conspiracy theories, including "9/11 was a false flag", the murder of Seth Rich and the DNC leaks, "there is no Uyghur genocide", and that the chemical attacks...

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...conducted by the al-Assad regime in Syria were a false flag attack. She also strongly feels that Russia didn't interfere with the 2016 US presidential election.

Her current political stance seems to be somewhere between "you can't trust any mainstream media" and...

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"the US empire is the root of all evil around the world". This rabid anti-US stance is the basis of all her writings & not-so-surprisingly her anti-imperialistic stance does not include Russia or China: in a Star Wars-y way there is only one evil empire, and that is the US.

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In her bio, she says that she's "geared toward awakening human consciousness" and that she writes about "the end of illusions". She claims that on the collective level we are "driven by propaganda", and on individual level by our ego. I mean, the whole thing reads like it..
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...was written by a high-schooler who just took their first class of Philosophy and smoked some weed.

The interesting thing here is that while she was mostly tweeting about miracles, leftist politics and astrology, nobody gave a shit. Zero likes, zero retweets.

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It's only after she ventured deep into the fringes of "far-left" (with a twist of new age-y "poking holes in the matrix" BS) her rather-large audience came to her, and it grew even further after she took a clear pro-Russian stance on the war in Ukraine.

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When it comes to the war in Ukraine, Johnstone has clearly picked her side. She's questioned the Bucha massacre, suggested that the 2014 Revolution of Dignity was a US-planned coup, stated that Zelenskyy is a puppet installed by the US government, ...

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...and of course touted about "Ukrainian neo-Nazis". She stated that Russia wasn't planning on invading Ukraine, but soon after they attacked, she stated that "Kyiv cannot stop Russia", and that Ukraine should just accept Russia's ridiculous demands.

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She naturally became a peace advocate on the exact same day when Putin announced the annexation of four Ukrainian Oblasts. Her argument for the peace is that "avoiding nuclear war is the single most important thing in the world". By that she means that Ukraine should...

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...just give up the annexed areas, stop fighting and negotiate for peace. But what Caitlin is actually doing, is justifying the use of nuclear threat as a way to invade other countries. In this scenario, if Russia doesn't get what it wants, meaning the four Ukrainian...

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...Oblasts, they will just nuke the planet. Now, if they are given what they want, why wouldn't they use the same strategy with Moldova? And the Baltics? And Georgia? And for the heck of it, Finland? As scary as the idea of turning the whole planet into glass sounds, it...

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...shouldn't be considered a viable negotiation strategy or leverage.

Still in Aug 2018, Johnstone stated that she's "an indie writer and I don't write for any outlet". Apparently something changed her mind a few years later, as she has now published articles for RT and...
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...for Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeyev's think tank, Katehon. It is unclear if she was paid for this work.

Like her fellow "journalists", including Jackson "Z" Hinkle, Jimmy Dore, Eva Bartlett and the Grayzone bloggers, Johnstone has been awarded with the...

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"Serena Shim Award". According to research by @bellingcat, the association behind the award supports the Syrian totalitarian leader, Bashar al-Assad.

These days Johnstone's rhetoric is mostly driven by arrogance and her enormous ego.

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For example, when she's asked about her "love for China", she simply states that "I'm here to do serious analysis of the world's biggest problems" and that "If you have some desperate, aching need to hear one more white westerner tell you CHINA BAD, go switch on the ...

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... nearest television." Therefore, any further conversation is pointless because she's opened her third eye and you haven't.

To fight the evil US empire, she's also written plenty of poetry, that again reeks of high-school and low-grade weed.

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Johnstone's extreme and controversial views also provide her with a decent income - as of today, she earns around 6500 USD per month coming from a total of 1087 patrons.

You can also buy the paperback version of her astrology book on Amazon for just 14.99 USD.

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So, if you're a struggling spiritual healer/astrologer, maybe try spreading conspiracy theories and appeasing totalitarian regimes instead?

It seems that there's good money in grifting, or "hacking capitalism" as they call it these days.

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Is there anyone who ISN'T blocked by @caitoz?