In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce a Swiss/French writer, Alain Bonnet, aka Alain Soral. He’s best known for his rabid antisemitism and for his pathetic support for all the worst authoritarian regimes from Russia to North Korea.

Alain’s childhood was problematic, as his father has been characterized as a “narcissistic pervert” who beat his children and did jail time for fraud. Alain himself has said he was “programmed to be a monster.” Born Alain Bonnet, he took the stage name of his sister,…

… actress Agnès Soral. She wasn’t too happy about this, commenting “How would you like to be called Agnès Hitler?”. Like many grifters, he became a pick-up/seduction artist writer, à la late Gonzalo Lira, writing books and even making a B-movie, “Confessions d’un dragueur”.

Soral is the embodiment of the horseshoe theory. During the 1990s, he was a far-left Marxist, but he eventually drifted towards the far-right, joining Le Pen’s National Front and becoming one of France’s worst antisemites — but without ever renouncing his dear “Uncle Jo”.

Yes, that’s Stalin, the genocidal dictator who did the Holodomor.

In 2007, Soral founded his own organization, “Égalité & Réconciliation” (É&R). With over 3 million visits per month, it’s the biggest French source of antisemitic, pro-Kremlin, conspiracy theory bullshit.

Alain also has his own publishing company, Kontre Kulture. The “high-brow literature” you can buy there is exactly what you’d expect from a far-right provocateur, such as Hitler’s Mein Kampf or the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a Russian fake imagining a Jewish plot for world domination.

In 2009, Soral’s É&R teamed up with the Russian embassy in Paris to organize a “welcoming committee” for Putin. They claimed to “counter Atlanticist propaganda,” while also hoping to gain visibility for Soral in Russia and who knows maybe even get a few rubles out of it.

Yes, their first “independent” action was submitting to Russia. Soral is closely tied to the transnational network of vatniks from Dugin in Moscow to Holocaust deniers in France, a “Russosphere” of red-fascist agitators who infiltrate Kremlin imperialist narratives into…

…European nationalism. Alain is a friend of Aleksandr Dugin, Putin’s favorite “Eurasianist” ideologue. He even wrote a foreword for his book in French — but of course, there is no room for a sovereign France in Dugin’s “Vladivostok to Lisbon” vision.

Aleksandr Dugin

As a useful idiot, however, Soral is regularly invited to Russia. He was an observer during the 2012 Russian election, gave interviews to RT, and appeared on Russian TV spreading conspiracy theories. In 2016, Soral was again in Moscow, calling for a “counter-empire” to …

… challenge the West, echoing Kremlin imperialism. And again this year to discuss “sovereignty”. Speaking of which, Soral has violated Ukrainian law by illegally entering the country from Russia.

He also works closely with Xavier Moreau, a French vatnik based in Moscow.

Moreau channels Russian disinformation into France while Soral amplifies it through his YouTube rants and É&R website. When it comes to pro-Kremlin narratives, expect the usual troll farm material: like all vatniks, Alain has a hard time coming up with anything original.

Soral has been sentenced 22 times in France, mostly for antisemitic hate speech. He fled to Switzerland, avoiding jail, only to be sentenced there once already, with a second Swiss trial ongoing, as well as further accusations in France. Of course, this hasn’t stopped “Russia the denazifier” from welcoming Soral with open arms. As we know, Russia loves nazis as long as they support Putin.

May 9

And of course the Stalin fanboy loves Putin, who’s done more than anyone to rehabilitate the dictator who starved Ukrainians. But Horseshoe Soral also admires Putin as a “great symbol of aryan virility”. After all, it’s all about worshipping dictators, not their policies.

And to make sense of the absurd “denazifying” of Ukraine by Wagner and Rusich nazis, while a self-described national-socialist himself, Soral blabbers about “Jewish Nazis”. Soral has been sentenced for violent speech such as “Hitler should have finished the job” and…

… “between Jews and the rest of mankind, the fight can only be total and genocidal”. Some of those comments were on Russian social network VK. Of course he claims he is being silenced by “the system” and uses this to bolster his image as a martyr of free speech, a tactic…

… heavily used by vatniks and MAGA Republicans. Even Elon, the patron saint of free speech, has defended Soral’s hateful rants. But neither of them are true free speech advocates: Musk censors Twitter in Turkey and other countries, whereas Soral assaulted Daniel Conversano …

… on live TV over his speech. And despite his 20+ sentences in two countries, Alain hasn’t spent a day in jail. Meanwhile, under the regimes he promotes, real journalists get murdered on Putin’s birthday, imprisoned for years in harsh conditions, or tortured to death.

As a big fan of totalitarian states and dictators, Alain’s praise is not limited to Putin: Assad, of course, but also North Korea, calling Kim’s regime “a total success of socialism and even national-socialism.” Yeah, only the worst tankies like Galloway venture that far.

In 2009 Soral organized an “anti-Zionist”, anti-NATO voting list with Dieudonné (also sentenced for antisemitism in both France and Switzerland) for which he admitted receving funding from Iran. He even hosted their ambassador, portraying the Russian ally as a misunderstood victim of Western propaganda.

And as is tradition, the promotion of “traditional values” is just a façade for vatniks like Alain. For example, he’s defended the pedophile Gabriel Matzneff, who’s abused 8-year-old boys. He has also, according to his own words, tried gay sex and enjoyed zoophilia.

To conclude: Alain Soral is yet another vatnik mess of hypocrisy and contradictions, whose sole consistency lies in serving authoritarian regimes.

The French version of this soup will be published soon, make sure to follow @vatniksoup_fr.

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