Thread by @P_Kallioniemi

In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce an opportunist, grifter and YouTuber Gonzalo Lira (@GonzaloLira1968). He's best-known for appearing as an expert and making money from controversial topics, such as the "Red Pill" movement, economics and of course the war in Ukraine.

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Gonzalo has tried all sorts of careers to make an easy buck. In the 90's, he wrote corny spy-action books with characters such as "Duncan Idaho, the Langley roadrunner who skirts the line between brilliantly daring and foolishly reckless" in his hardly-a-bestseller, Acrobat.
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He's also co-written,produced & directed a campy action film Secuestro in 2005.After his failure as both an author & as a filmmaker,Lira disappeared from the public sphere,only to re-appear in 2010 as an "economic expert", forecasting hyperinflation threatening the US dollar.3/21

His predictions were published on a prestigious "He Wall Street" website. He was also contributing to Business Insider, a website known for publishing fake news and for allowing the use of anonymous sources "at any time for any reason".

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He's also written articles for the far-right, libertarian blog ZeroHedge. Steve Keen, an Australian economist, described Gonzalo as an "over-promiser" and as an "under-deliverer". He also described him as a "sleaze" who refashions himself as an expert on any chosen topic.

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Then around 2017, during the peak of the so called "Red Pill Movement" on Reddit, Lira found a new opportunity in "guiding" young men in life and became known as the "CoachRedPill". At this point he was almost 50-year-old geezer spreading ideas such as "women over...

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...30 are ruined", "all women only truly desire money", and "the degenerate Western culture pushes them to chase only the hottest 15 % guys for meaningless sex".

At the same time he's selling digital seminars with topics ranging from dating to relationship advice.

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He was relatively popular in the "manosphere", and his Patreon still has almost 800 patrons, making him anything between 4000 and 8000 USD a month. His other Patreon makes him another 5500 USD a month.

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The idea of the "decadent West" of course comes from Russian-spread propaganda, and at some point had made its way into the Red Pill community. Due to its contrarian views, the "manosphere" was also great breeding ground for conspiratorial and pro-Russian sentiment.

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Lira was spreading COVID-19 conspiracy theories, while calling himself a "PureBlood" - someone who hasn't taken the COVID-19 jabs. He's also suggested that trying to start a family with anyone who's had the vaccine is pointless since they are already infertile.

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Around 2021 Reddit and other social media sites started censoring all "manosphere" related content, which naturally made Lira to move on to other things. He became a doomsayer, preaching about a "great war against China", telling people to move to "poor and ...

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... under-developed countries" since they "can't afford to impose any totalitarian policies". He'd allegedly been living in Kharkiv, Ukraine for some years before the war started. Lira's wife is allegedly Ukrainian/Russian.

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Around mid-February 2022, he was still confident that Russia wasn't going to invade Ukraine and that it's all just Western propaganda. He later insisted that he saw the invasion coming way before it happened.

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When the full-scale invasion in Feb 2022 started, Gonzalo immediately became a professional analyst on the matter. During the first days, he said that "the commentary and analysis I post is without picking sides," right after he'd picked the side of a genocidal maniac.

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On 27 Feb 2022, he published a video defending Russia's actions and plans for a regime change, and blaming the US for any destruction in Ukraine. His motivations for praising Russia are unknown, but it could be due to his need to feed his big ego and due to his need ...

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..to be in the spotlight. Since the full-scale invasion, he's basically just parroted the Russian propaganda on the war, for example saying that the Russians are "careful in not hitting civilian targets", "Zelenskyy is a cokehead" and that the Bucha massacre was actually...
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..conducted by the Ukrainian State Secret Service, SBU. He's also blamed Victoria Nuland for having "orchestrated the Euromaidan". Lira was eventually detained by the SBU after he was taking pictures around Kharkiv. He allegedly gave up five other pro-Russian collaborators..17/21

...in exchange for house arrest or deportation. He eventually chose deportation, was escorted to Poland,and allegedly moved to the Netherlands.There were also some rumors that he was decapitated by the SBU, which made his fellow propagandist, iEarlGrey, very upset.

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Gonzalo is also a big fan of the worst combat analyst, Douglas Macgregor, whose out-of-this-world predictions he shares on almost daily basis. He's also been interviewed by another pro-Kremlin propagandist, George Galloway.

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To conclude: Lira is a grifter and an opportunist who's always looking for a new ways to earn more money. He has an enormous and fragile ego, he's extremely thin-skinned and gets upset when his shitty takes on Ukraine (or on anything) are challenged.

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Like Jackson "Z" Hinkle, Lira's a "Merchant of Rage", making money from outrage and from contrarian views, which is why people should just ignore him.

Block, and move on.

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Support my work: buymeacoffee.com/PKallioniemi

Past soups: vatniksoup.com

Related soups:
George Galloway:

https://twitter.com/P_Kallioniemi/status/1615274756151853056

iEarlGrey:

https://twitter.com/P_Kallioniemi/status/1638473850781327363

Jackson Hinkle:

https://twitter.com/P_Kallioniemi/status/1630556786347458560