People tend to believe in the invisible matters, the things that are with supernatural powers, because there’s no way they can be determined or contested. Such is the case with predicting the future, a craft as old as humanity, which exploits the “fragility” of people to impose positive or negative expectations on life.
Everyone knows Baba Vangja, who has been subject of writings for years, for predicting a few key events in the world, mostly negative ones, and after her death a successor of hers has already emerged who also predicts “black times” for the world. Her name is Vera Lyon, of Kazakhstan descent who lives in Russia. She is also active on social networks, where she often publishes predictions of Putin that are extremely positive, and of all his “enemies” she predicts terrible times.
The fortuneteller Vera now is a source of conspiracy theories spreading across the Balkans. Relying on her predictions, texts that a major disaster is approaching that will cause humanity to suffer are constantly published, something that creates panic and insecurity among citizens.
The emergence of the coronavirus is an ideal moment for such a move of causing panic, or imposing the idea that millions or billions will die. Exactly in a situation when the world is struggling with the virus, a text is published in which the author once again lists the alleged predictions of the long time deceased old Baba Vangja that there will be a world war in 2020 and many people will die and Europe will have a significantly lower number of inhabitants.
In order to build up the conspiracy theory that something bad is awaiting Europe, another text was published in which the “the new Baba Vangja” goes on to predict that “the worst is yet to come”.
This woman’s predictions are that allegedly “The European Union will collapse and such sad fate also awaits America”. Not only in Russia, but other countries will refuse to use the US dollar as their currency”.
She goes on saying that “Americans will cause more bloody wars, but they will not affect Russia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine. These countries will stay out of war conflicts”.
The text concludes with a statement that “Russia will expand its territory in the coming years,” and that “China will lose its economic power.”
All of the above is a conspiracy theory that is conveyed and distorted in a way that will affect people among which fear and panic is spread about “the end of the world” or a supposed new order of the world’s power states. Stay calm, Vera Lyon is an ordinary mortal just like us all, and she cannot predict the future, be it good or bad.
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This project was funded in part through a U.S. Embassy grant. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed herein are those of the implementers/authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Government.
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