In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce an American-born Russian mixed martial artist turned politician and propagandist, Jeff Monson (@JeffMonson). He’s best-known for his career as a MMA fighter, and for his propaganda work for the Russian Federation.

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Monson calls himself an anarcho-communist, and he’s described himself as “someone who would like to do away with all class hierarchy in society and the institutions that promote this inequality”. His worldview leans strongly towards radical left.

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Monson’s career in mixed martial arts was relatively successful - he’s considered to be one of the world’s top submission grapplers, and he has even fought in UFC and PRIDE. He also worked as a mental health professional as well as a child and family counselor.

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In 2011, Jeff got to fight the Russian MMA legend, Fedor Emilianenko in Moscow, Russia. Jeff lost the match, after which Putin surprisingly decided to come up to the stage for a speech, but got unexpectedly boo’d by the crowd. The Kremlin later claimed the crowd boo’d Monson.
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After the fight, Jeff met Vladimir, who at this point was desperate at finding celebrities who could promote the Russian cause. Putin later called Monson and told him that he’d be “always welcome” in Russia, after calling Jeff a “real man”.

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This must’ve been a turning point in Jeff’s life - in 2015, he stated that he had a “Russian soul” and that he felt solidarity with the Russian people, after which he applied for a Russian citizenship. Finally in 2018, Putin granted Monson a Russian passport.

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Interestingly, the made-up republics of Abkhazia and Luhansk granted Jeff citizenships already in 2016 and in 2017, so by 2018 he had accumulated a total of four passports. In May 2023, Monson officially renounced his American citizenship.

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Monson initially sided with Gennady Zyuganov’s CCCP in 2016. Soon disappointment set in over the lack of ideology “There are no communists in the communist party in Russia”. He later ran as an independent representative and was elected to the city duma of Krasnogorsk.

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Monson has strongly supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine since 2014, and he’s made many propaganda trips to Eastern Ukraine since then. He supports the Kremlin false narrative Ukraine being run by “fascists”.

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The Kremlin saw a valuable asset in Monson, and he was even given his own TV show on RT. Additionally he was handed the means to make a documentary “8 years before” to spread the false narrative that Ukraine and The West were responsible for the Donbas war since 2014.

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He would later become the face of several charities connected with the new regions, like opening “fighting schools” in Donbas and handing out medicines to soldiers in Luhansk. These “humanitarian missions” done by Westerners are a staple of Kremlin propaganda.

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Monson’s reasoning for the war follows closely the Kremlin’s - according to him, Russia didn’t want to kill their “Ukrainian brothers and sisters” and “Russia had no desire to conquer the whole of Ukraine but was fighting Ukrainian Nazis in Donbas”.

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In 2023, Monson made yet another political turn by joining Putin’s United Russia, a party on the opposite spectrum of his communist beliefs. He solidified his support for Putin and the war by taking a big Z tattoo and stating Russia has more democracy than the US.

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While being a clear advocate of the war in Ukraine, the idea of being sent to the front scares Jeff: “I hope I don’t get drafted.” He probably knows how well the Russian soldiers are treated and would rather stay in Russia as a propagandist.

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To conclude, Jeff Monson represents the far-left “tankie” group of Kremlin apologists whose view on Russia is not based on any reality. His “strongman” ego helped him gain attention of Putin’s, and he’s been heavily utilized as an anti-Western propagandist in Russia.

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This soup was done in collaboration with NAFO activist SLAVAUA2022.

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