The Bulgarian mystic’s doomy predictions continue to grab headlines in Albania and elsewhere – even though many seem fabricated and sometimes appear to serve Russian geopolitical narratives.
It also spreads beyond the Balkans, but it does follow a political agenda.
@mapto@feddit.bg@balkanika “The legend of Vanga was created using the same formula, but it was promoted by the Bulgarian secret services. It was prestigious for the country to have a prophetess who attracted crowds of tourists and celebrities from all over the world. Including politicians. The secret services had their own interests here. In the town where visitors to Vanga stayed, information about future famous visitors was collected by hotel maids and taxi drivers.” 2/5
@mapto@feddit.bg@balkanika “Most importantly, the archives of the secret services themselves were used. This is where Vanga’s knowledge came from. For example, Todor Zhivkov was shocked when Vanga told him: your friends were killed 50 years ago. He thought that no one knew about this. Later, an acquaintance from the Bulgarian secret service told me that he had even seen a photograph of those killed in his archives…” 3/5
@mapto@feddit.bg@balkanika “I checked it out in the same way as I did with Uncle Vanya, only I couldn’t go myself, so I asked two journalists (they asked not to be named) to do it. One of them asked his acquaintances to introduce him to Vanga. A Bulgarian fellow journalist, clearly connected to the authorities, questioned his new friend and went with him to the bathhouse, then took him to Vanga. And she gave him the whole set of stories she had prepared.” 4/5
@mapto@feddit.bg@balkanika "The only thing she guessed correctly was that he had a scar on his scrotum. The journalist was stunned at first, but then he understood why his colleague had invited him to the bathhouse…
As for predictions, everyone remembers the ones that came true. But even more did not come true! For example, Vanga predicted to Alexander Bovin that the USSR would send troops to Chile. Obviously, the Bulgarian secret services made a mistake in their international forecasts…" 5/5
@mapto@feddit.bg @balkanika from NY Post and the Mirror to Hindustan Times. This Bulgarian propaganda
project mastered clickbait before clickbait even existed. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=baba%2BVanga&iar=news&t=fpas
@mapto@feddit.bg @balkanika “Vanga saw the past through the archives of the secret services”
https://www.skeptik.net/extras/gorny1.htm
The interviewee in this article was a member of the Commission on Pseudoscience at the Russian Academy of Sciences at its founding in 1998
1/5
@mapto@feddit.bg @balkanika “The legend of Vanga was created using the same formula, but it was promoted by the Bulgarian secret services. It was prestigious for the country to have a prophetess who attracted crowds of tourists and celebrities from all over the world. Including politicians. The secret services had their own interests here. In the town where visitors to Vanga stayed, information about future famous visitors was collected by hotel maids and taxi drivers.” 2/5
@mapto@feddit.bg @balkanika “Most importantly, the archives of the secret services themselves were used. This is where Vanga’s knowledge came from. For example, Todor Zhivkov was shocked when Vanga told him: your friends were killed 50 years ago. He thought that no one knew about this. Later, an acquaintance from the Bulgarian secret service told me that he had even seen a photograph of those killed in his archives…” 3/5
@mapto@feddit.bg @balkanika “I checked it out in the same way as I did with Uncle Vanya, only I couldn’t go myself, so I asked two journalists (they asked not to be named) to do it. One of them asked his acquaintances to introduce him to Vanga. A Bulgarian fellow journalist, clearly connected to the authorities, questioned his new friend and went with him to the bathhouse, then took him to Vanga. And she gave him the whole set of stories she had prepared.” 4/5
@mapto@feddit.bg @balkanika "The only thing she guessed correctly was that he had a scar on his scrotum. The journalist was stunned at first, but then he understood why his colleague had invited him to the bathhouse…
As for predictions, everyone remembers the ones that came true. But even more did not come true! For example, Vanga predicted to Alexander Bovin that the USSR would send troops to Chile. Obviously, the Bulgarian secret services made a mistake in their international forecasts…" 5/5