The Murdoch Media Empire Venerates a Dead Misogynist Russian Propagandist Scumbag

Gonzalo Lira gets a hero's adoration that he does not deserve

If you’re relatively new to the issues related to Kremlin propaganda and how it’s affecting other countries (including the United States), I recommend reading some background posts I wrote that explains things in more detail along with links to other sites where you can read more to educate yourself.

In a previous post I thought I said everything that needed to be said about Gonzalo Lira, the Chilean American pro-Russian propagandist who died in Ukrainian custody this past weekend at the age of 55. Yes there are plenty of Russian sympathizers on Twitter/X who are still posting about Lira's passing but that is more indicative of the nature of how much of a shitstorm Twitter/X has become since Elon Musk purchased the site in late 2022. Other social media sites have far less Lira-related posts so Lira simply isn't an interesting subject matter that is frequently discussed.

But then the News Corp, which is owned by the Murdoch family, decided to spread the word about Lira's death outside of social media while bloviating about how dare Ukraine allowed a US citizen to die and how dare US officials not doing anything to free Lira from a Ukrainian prison. Both Fox News and The New York Post covered that story like it is this major scandal, especially given the amount of military aid that the US has provided to Ukraine over the past couple of years.

Having various News Corp media outlets blow a story into something that's way more outrageous and shocking than it really is in real life is nothing new. As the newspaper in Murdoch's native Australia, The Sydney Morning Herald, puts it:

All media outlets have their unique political outlook, but News Corp stands apart for its willingness to simply make stuff up.

In a way it's not shocking that the News Corp is trying to make a posthumous hero out of a pro-Russian propagandist. Rupert Murdoch has long had ties to the Kremlin, beginning with acquiring a billboard company called News Outdoors Russia in 2000. He later sold that company but the close ties remain between Murdoch and Russia.

Last year the 92-year-old Rupert Murdoch was romantically linked with a Russian woman named Elena Zhukova, whose daughter was once married to Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich. If all that weren’t enough, Zhukova's daughter, Dasha Zhukova, is friends with Murdoch's third ex-wife, Wendi Deng.

As to whether the News Corp will succeed in elevating Gonzalo Lira to the kind of glory that eluded Lira in life remains to be seen as of this writing. So far it looks like most of the online chatter regarding Lira is on Twitter/X. I haven't heard any real life conversations about Lira in public places.

I called Lira a garbage human in my last post about him and I still stand by that statement. Lira was a failed novelist, failed filmmaker, and failed economics expert. The closest he came to fame was when he started his Coach Red Pill YouTube channel, which he gave relationship advice to impressionable young men on the importance of getting a woman who is young (the younger the better) and submissive. He strongly advised against dating a woman in her thirties. He advocated keeping women in line by beating them, if necessary. This guy was definitely a very toxic misogynist.

And his toxic misogyny started young. As a student at Dartmouth he wrote this 1995 essay for the student newspaper giving full detail about the fallout he experienced from his fellow students after a female student accused him of sexual assault and harassment, which resulted in his being suspended from the school for three semesters. (He claimed to be an innocent victim of a false accusation but his accuser never provided any public rebuttal to that essay so you're only getting one side of the story.)

He even resorted to scamming his followers of his Coach Red Pill channel. His former friend and business partner made this 47-minute video where he detailed how Lira used Indigogo to get his fans to financially help him with self-publishing his latest novel only to take the money and run without ever producing any book.

Gonzalo Lira spent the last few years of his life making one bad decision after another, starting with his belief that COVID-19 was a hoax that was created to install totalitarian governments in many Western nations and he advocated against getting vaccinated. He also made this video on his Coach Red Pill channel urging his unvaccinated followers to leave their Western countries as soon as possible to avoid being stuck in a new totalitarian system and move to a poorer country because these countries lack the resources to implement totalitarian regimes.

So he took his own bad advice and moved to Ukraine, where he settled in Kharkiv and made some more bad decisions. He was a chain smoker and he eagerly took advantage of Ukraine's lower standard of living to buy economy sized cigarette packs.

When the US State Department urged American citizens to leave Ukraine as soon as possible because of the Russian troops situated on Ukraine's borders, he made the bad decision to stay.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, he decided to remain in Kharkiv while openly supporting Russia. He declared himself as a “journalist” although his work looked more like propaganda than anything that resembled actual factual reporting. (Some online posts and videos I read/saw indicated that Lira spent most of his time in his Kharkiv apartment.) He posted most of his pro-Russia propaganda on his Telegram channel, his Twitter/X account, and his three YouTube channels: Gonzalo Lira, The Roundtable - Gonzalo Lira, and Gonzalo Lira - Again. Here's a sample of his propaganda that he posted on Twitter/X.

He made his pro-Russian propaganda while continuing to live in Ukraine. That's right, he was living in one country that was experiencing being invaded and he was making propaganda that glorified the country that was responsible for the invasion. The fact that Ukraine had instituted martial law due to the invasion wasn't enough to deter Lira from making his pro-Russian propaganda.

Despite all that, he got away with making his Russian propaganda in Ukraine for awhile until he was finally arrested. I had read initial posts that claimed that he was arrested for providing secrets of the Ukrainian military to Russia but I saw a more plausible explanation for his arrest. He was charged with violating Article 436-2 of Ukraine's Criminal Code, which was instituted under martial law. That article prohibited anyone from justifying Russian aggression against Ukraine. Lira made pro-Russian propaganda, which violated that law. This article has more details about Lira's arrest and his awful past before he moved to Ukraine.

Before you free speech absolutists start screaming about Ukraine not allowing freedom of speech, I want to say that it's not unusual for a country at war to suspend some freedoms during wartime. My country, the United States, did something similar during World War II. Don't believe me? Check out what the US government did to far-right Roman Catholic priest and pro-Nazi radio commentator Father Charles Coughlin after the US entered World War II.

So Lira made the bad decision to make Russian propaganda in Ukraine and was arrested in Ukraine for it. He got out on bail but he decided to flee to Hungary. While he was fleeing, he made the bad decision to make videos about his flight and post them on YouTube. (You can still view his multipart video series on YouTube: part 1, part 2, and part 3.) He was captured before he made it into Hungary and was sent back to prison.

He caught double pneumonia in both lungs while in prison and he died. There are charges of criminal neglect on the part of prison officials not getting him the treatment he needed. To be fair, much of Ukraine's health care system has been decimated due to frequent Russian bombing of such civilian targets as hospitals and health care centers. Many of the doctors and nurses are overextended caring for the war wounded. If this had happened during peacetime, you could say that he died unnecessarily from medical neglect. But it's hard to judge a health care system that's under wartime.

I don't know what caused his double pneumonia but if it had been caused by COVID-19, then it was his fault for not getting vaccinated. If it was caused by smoking cigarettes, it was also his fault because he didn't do anything to quit his chain smoking habit.

I've seen posts blaming the US and Chilean governments for not doing anything to get Lira released. (Gonzalo Lira held dual US/Chilean citizenship.) We don't know what either government did or didn't do to get Lira released. It is so incredibly stupid to hurl such accusations without knowing all of the facts. We don't know what the Ukrainian position was on releasing Lira to either Chile or the US nor do we know what Lira wanted for himself. We probably won't get a full explanation until after the war ends.

This video does an excellent job at explaining the predicament that Lira was in and how most of it was due to his own actions. It explains why Lira could not be called a “journalist.” This video also includes excerpts from his Coach Red Pill YouTube channel, which contains dating advice that is so toxic and misogynist that young women should steer clear of any man who openly admits that he's a fan of that channel.

All I'm saying is that everyone needs to ignore the News Corp's attempt at turning Gonzalo Lira into a hero because he does not deserve it. He was a reprehensible person who is definitely no hero.

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