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And now some news from Ukraine: Gonzalo Lira is dead.
More details about his demise in Ukrainian prison.
You probably heard about him. Former pickup artist guru who turned into journalist/propagandist lambasting Ukraine and Zelensky - from Ukraine in war time. Whatever you think about him and his opinions, this tooks serious guts (and GL was well aware of the risks).
English Wikipedia finds him not enough notable and deleted him at 4th attempt, but, strangely enough, simple English Wikipedia keeps his article.
Now, he is notable enough to be noticed by Tucker Carlson and notable enough make it to Twitter worldwide trends (as for now), notable enough to be added as another reason for Red tribe to oppose supporting Ukraine.
Not smart move from Ukrainian government. You gained a little bit of sadistic revenge and even smaller bit of intimidation of people inside Ukraine (who already know well what will happen to them if they open their mouth too much). You lost rather bigger piece of credibility with people whose support you desperately need.
RIP Coach Red Pill. Whatever you were in your life, now you are symbol and martyr.
One thing that comes to mind is comparing this with the treatment of Miles Routledge by the Taliban.
Of course it's not apples to apples, but as far as "westernized sperg goes on stroll in country where real shit is going on" it's at least somewhat comparable.
I suspect that the main difference is Miles just plays the part of an idiot whiles CRP may legitimately have been one. But the difference between pneumonia gulags and forced movie marathons is a bit stark. Especially factoring in which country had a diplomatic mission from the UK/US.
The real lesson in all this is that you don't start telling people how to run their business when you're a guest, and that goes double when they're at war.
It's too late for him, but I hope Lira's family makes it okay out of this mess.
TBH, you're a nicer guy than I am because my knee jerk reaction was a Nelson Muntz-esque point and laugh.
Soljenitsyne has this passage in Gulag Archipelago that describes people that were fully propagandized supporters of the regime but still ended up in the system, and how they were convinced that they were the one mistake but that everyone else was deported for good reason.
As he describes them and how even more pathetic they are than your average political prisoner, you can't really summon any schadenfreude because no naive idiot deserves such a horrid fate, Marxist bandit or not.
CRP, in all his lolcow glory, is spiritually the same as those people in many ways.
Think about it though, will we really be laughing when Chris-chan finally kicks the bucket?
The difference is that some measure of sympathy for the most hardcore Stalinists who got Gulaged is ‘justified’ by the fact that they grew up in the system (even pre-1917 many were early members of Bolshevik groups and so on, had parents who were etc), were brainwashed by years or decades of propaganda, and had no frame of reference for the outside world. You can’t be too judgmental of the morality of a core Kim loyalist in the DPRK whose entire fifty-year lifespan has been dominated by an ideology that worships his lineage, at least without some hypocrisy in most cases.
Going to an extremely corrupt shithole country fighting an existential war as an enemy propagandist is just unbelievably stupid. Even in the most ‘civilized’ Western countries that aren’t directly at war with Russia Lira’s behavior wouldn’t be tolerated (see the treatment of Russia Today in recent years), and Ukraine isn’t in that group.
It would be stupid if GL thought it was safe, but he was well aware of the danger. You can call it foolish/self sacrificing deed if you wish, but not dumb.
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