In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce a social media personality and TV presenter, Raisa Blommestijn (@rblommestijn). She’s best-known for her far-right rhetorics, spreading conspiracy theories, and spreading anti-Ukraine and pro-Kremlin narratives on Dutch television.

Raisa studied philosophy of law at Leiden University. The faculty is best-known for one of its professors, Paul Cliteur. He’s a member of the pro-Kremlin party Forum voor Democratie (FvD), where he is one of the leading figures.Cliteur is also known for supervising the FvD…

…founder Thierry Baudet’s doctoral thesis, and can be considered a central figure in this Dutch “anti-establishment” movement. While studying at Leiden, Raise also met her best friend forever, Eva Vlaardingerbroek:

Eva Vlaardingerbroek

Blommestijn obtained her PhD on “The Decline of the Weimar Republic”. In her work, she described “the downfall of democracy and its decay towards totalitarianism,” so you’d imagine she would be strongly against the totalitarian regimes like the ones in Russia.

But Raisa actually loves these kleptocracies, and she’s only outspoken against the Western “global elites”. For example, in 2023 she attended a “Science Summit — Uncensored” where she spoke about the conspiracy theory around the UN’s “Agenda 2030” project…

…focusing on sustainable development. Blommestijn has been steadily building her presence on other platforms that clearly steer towards conspiracy theories, such as Cafe Weltschmerz. On X, Raisa promotes herself as an opponent of “wokeness”, climate concerns…

…and COVID-19 mandates and vaccinations. This anti-establishment stance has made her a relatively popular voice opposing mainstream media, the government and the EU. While going through her tweets, it becomes evident that she blames EVERYTHING on the EU or the immigrants.

In late 2021, Raisa and Eva started working with Maes Law, bringing in legal cases connected to COVID-19. But Bart Maes, one of the partners, soon broke off their cooperation due to lack of results and massive backlash from both the pro-vaccine and anti-vaccine people.

And it was clear that Raisa had chosen her side, when she wrote on X that ‘The people with a Ukrainian flag in the bio, who boycott Russian products and send money to Ukraine. Virtuous people who do their “duty”. What an emptiness.’

On the conspiracy channel BlckBx, Blommestijn discussed the Russian invasion of Ukraine on its 4th day, sharing typical Kremlin viewpoints. While there, she falsely claimed that “a large part of the population is Russian and wants to belong to Russia.”

According to her, due to the “Western interference” in the elections, Russia had a good reason to invade. To my knowledge, Raisa hasn’t discussed Russia’s meddling and funding of politicians and separatist movements in Ukraine, but maybe I haven’t looked close enough.

As is tradition, Ms. Blommestijn argues for “de-escalation” & naturally blames the West for warmongering. She seems to ignore the fact that at no point the Kremlin has been interested in actual peace negotiations and that Russia has a tendency to break any truce they make.

If there’s one person who’s been constantly wrong about the war in Ukraine, that’s Douglas Macgregor. As it happens, Macgregor is also extremely biased against Ukraine, which is probably why Raisa loves sharing Dougie’s analysis so much.

Douglas Macgregor

Following propagandist Tucker Carlson’s interview with Putin, Blommestijn praised the Russian dictator on her show: “He has a clear picture of history and self-identity, unlike our leaders.” This same rhetoric was parroted by her BFF, Mrs. Vlaardingerbroek.

Blommestijn is one of those Western pro-Kremlin propagandists who has been able to break into the mainstream — she works as a presenter for Ongehoord Nederland,a Dutch show that claims to give a voice to those “who do not feel represented in the current politics and media.”

Ongehoord (meaning “unheard”) was launched (among others) by Arnold Karskens and Joost Niemoller, and it started broadcasting just a few days before Russia launched their barbaric full-scale invasion against Ukraine. Raisa ended up fighting with Mr. Karskens…

…over her online behavior, and was told to leave X but refused. Raisa then had to leave Ongehoord in early 2024. Six months later, a new tribal battle ensued. Karskens lost this one, and Raisa returned to the screen.

Recently, Raisa was struck with a lawsuit for using the terms ‘toddler f*cker’ (defamation) and ‘n*groid primates’ (group defamation).

What a beautiful human being!

According to court journalist @chrisklomp, the case will be heard on 21 November 2024.

Despite Ongehoord paying Raisa an annual salary of 93,000 EUR, she has solicited personal donations from her supporters several times. She raised money for herself after being kicked out of Ongehoord and after she was being struck with a lawsuit.

Besties Raisa and Eva share a very similar far-right worldview. They see the Dutch right-centrist VVD party as the far-left. Both also rub shoulders with the right wing of the US Republicans, as well as parties like the Flemish Vlaams Belang & Órban’s Fidesz.

Both of them also fall into the category of “relatively attractive young women simping for Putin”, of which I have spoken about in previous soups. Raisa is sort of a “dollar store” version of Eva and has failed to garner as much international fame as her best friend.

Blommestijn uses the standard rhetoric of alarmism about the Russian war in Ukraine. Everyone is getting poorer because of it, nuclear escalation is imminent, and we have nothing to do with Ukraine anyway. Those who stand up for Ukrainian freedom are framed as “warmongers”.

Under the facade of defending freedom of speech and a fight against curbing freedoms, Blommestijn regularly promotes the ideas of authoritarian leaders. Pretty rich coming from someone who wrote her thesis on the “erosion of democracy” and “rise of totalitarianism”.

Raisa is a useful pawn for the Kremlin because she amplifies and legitimises ideas from the far-right, which are then seasoned with crazy conspiracy theories and populism. This is nothing new, but Raisa has managed to bring this type of BS to Dutch national television.

The 2nd edition of Vatnik Soup — The Ultimate Guide to Russian Disinformation is officially out!

You can order your copy here:

The Book | Vatnik Soup