World
Stephen Karganovic
September 26, 2023
© Photo: SCF

A counterfeit President, counterfeit political activist, and counterfeit “performance artist” … a handsome gallery do they make.

❗️Join us on Telegram Twitter , and VK .

Sane and decent people everywhere reacted with indignation to the stupid and offensive video of the scowl-faced Ukrainian Armed Forces spokesperson haranguing publicly for the “hunting down” of journalists who question the righteousness of the Neo-Nazi regime in Kiev. The individual in question went on to threaten other forms of harsh and lethal reprisal against anybody who dared withhold support for the Kiev regime’s disastrous war and the auto-genocide resulting from the application of its catastrophic military and political “strategies.”

Be it noted that in light of the “Myrotvorets” [Peacemaker] international kill list officially operated by the Ukrainian authorities, to which almost weekly new names of targeted victims are being added, the apprehension generated by this ghastly video was by no means unreasonable, and bespeaks prudence rather than cowardice. Seymour Hersh and Tucker Carlson should probably watch their step and avoid dark alleys.

No one in the Western media, even of the alternative variety, has mustered the courage to point out that, fake bust notwithstanding, the individual in question, Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, is actually a counterfeit on more than one count. The deeply troubled hermaphrodite perpetrator of these demented YouTube statements, which quickly went viral on the internet, is in fact a tragic figure who personifies much that is egregiously wrong with the sick and dying culture which spawned him/her.

Moved by wrath, my initial thought was to write a hit piece to denounce the uncivilised behaviour that the ugly video and its maker exemplify. However, as I delved deeper into the life story of that pathetic creature, my anger turned gradually into compassion. Not of course compassion for the Kiev regime, which employed and exploited Cirillo as a poster image precisely because of this unfortunate individual’s freakish background. On life support and totally dependent, the regime will do anything, however abhorrent that may be to the people of Ukraine, to ingratiate itself with its woke collective West sponsors and paymasters. My compassion (and let’s just settle for the neuter pronoun) is for the pitiful transgender creature itself, the eager YouTube victimiser who after being victimised on its home turf by deliberately induced gender confusion cluelessly drifted into the bedlam that is Ukraine, to be manipulated into even more mischief. But now not just to the grave detriment of self but also, as the video rant demonstrates, potentially of others as well.

Lest I be chastised for excessive pain of heart for the undeserving, in my defence I commend to the readers’ perusal the Wikipedia biography of Sarah Ashton-Cirillo. I do not credit every assertion published on Wikipedia as holy writ, but in the instant case most of the general details expounded there seem reasonably trustworthy. Immersed in the woke political ideology, the author of the Wikipedia piece (whoever he may be) appears genuinely unaware that the ostensibly laudatory picture of Cirillo he evidently tries to paint, of a rebel overcoming societal obstacles, for normal people is actually the diagnostic sheet of a profoundly disturbed and incoherent personality, deserving of pity but certainly not admiration. That is why I regard the Wikipedia article as an inadvertently credible source of general information, for profiling purposes at least. It is precisely that cognitive dissonance between the subject-sympathetic author and the natural adverse reaction of the sober and critical reader that makes it credible.

The picture that emerges of the subject Ashton-Cirillo is either flattering or problematic, depending entirely on the values standpoint of the viewer. The same set of biographical data that from the woke perspective suggest an admirable quest for self-realisation, when interpreted from the vantage point of traditional normalcy depict Ashton-Cirillo as a schizoid personality, an unstable misfit, and a compulsive rebel frantically searching for some elusive cause.

And stumble upon a counterfeit romantic cause Ashton-Cirillo certainly did, swallowing it hook, line, and sinker. It was in the form of the superficial propaganda narrative about neo-Nazi Ukraine as the exemplification of redemptive virtue in a fallen world. This is not very different, to be honest, from the gullibility displayed by the majority of the brain-washed inhabitants of the collective West in its terminally decadent phase. It springs from the climate of degeneracy and, specifically with regard to the fiction of Ukraine’s noble and victorious struggle, of magical realism. That is what shaped Ashton-Cirillo into the unfortunate, simultaneously repulsive and oddly pitiful creature ranting in the viral video.

Here we should pause for some historical perspective. As a would-be advocate for an adopted nation, Ukrainians in this particular case (of course, the matter is much more complex, but a simple-minded missionary of virtue from Nevada cannot be expected to have a clue about it) Ashton-Cirillo is not unique. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries distinguished Western writers made a name for themselves by championing the causes of the various subjugated peoples in the Balkans who groaned under the Ottoman yoke. Greeks, Bulgarians, Albanians, Serbs – each of those oppressed ethnicities had its own admiring and articulate advocate in the literary circles of the West. From the intensely romanticist poetry of Lord Byron idealising Greeks to the sober, academic prose of Dame Rebecca West written on behalf of the Serbs, and with everything in between, a serious genre came into being, fusing morally and emotionally engaged advocacy for pet nations with extremely serious and informed reflection.

But what have we got today? One hundred years later, from the commanding intellectual heights of a Rebecca West we have crashed to where we are required to endure the diatribes of a tragically lost soul, Sarah Ashton-Cirillo.

Contrary to Zelensky’s disingenuous claim, after the compromising video hit the fan, that he had no knowledge of who Cirillo even was, a spokesperson was selected deliberately for the Ukrainian Armed Forces with precisely such attributes, if not by Zelensky personally then certainly by his staff. It was done as a clever ingratiating strategy to win the favour of their foreign masters. The same was manifestly the case with the seeming climate change non sequitur in Zelensky’s UN address. Climate would normally be the least of the concerns of a collapsing government, except that every hegemonic puppet on the planet knows that they must toe and be publicly seen toeing their masters’ ideological line, not selectively but to the minutest particular.

The tragicomical Ashton-Cirillo should therefore be viewed in a wider context, not as a solitary, and least of all inadvertent symbol of the normalisation of freakishness in a broken world. Zelensky’s announced intention to appoint Marina Abramović, the demonic witch posing as a performance artist, to serve as Ukraine’s ambassador-at-large is perfectly in line with the promotion of freakishness, of which Ashton-Cirillo is a representative illustration. Abramović, be it remembered, garnered additional notoriety some years ago after Wikileaks disclosed her email to Hilary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta’s brother Tony inviting the siblings to a “spirit cooking dinner.” The invitation was to an occult ceremony associated with the practices of Aleister Crowley.

So that is the person enlisted by the President of Ukraine to help out with the reconstruction of his ravaged land, and as the London Telegraph blandly put it to “lend her voice to help rebuild schools in the country.”

Lucky children. A counterfeit President, counterfeit political activist, and counterfeit “performance artist” … a handsome gallery do they make.

O tempora! O mores!

The Tragic Lostness of Sarah Ashton-Cirillo and the Broken Culture That Made Her

A counterfeit President, counterfeit political activist, and counterfeit “performance artist” … a handsome gallery do they make.

❗️Join us on Telegram Twitter , and VK .

Sane and decent people everywhere reacted with indignation to the stupid and offensive video of the scowl-faced Ukrainian Armed Forces spokesperson haranguing publicly for the “hunting down” of journalists who question the righteousness of the Neo-Nazi regime in Kiev. The individual in question went on to threaten other forms of harsh and lethal reprisal against anybody who dared withhold support for the Kiev regime’s disastrous war and the auto-genocide resulting from the application of its catastrophic military and political “strategies.”

Be it noted that in light of the “Myrotvorets” [Peacemaker] international kill list officially operated by the Ukrainian authorities, to which almost weekly new names of targeted victims are being added, the apprehension generated by this ghastly video was by no means unreasonable, and bespeaks prudence rather than cowardice. Seymour Hersh and Tucker Carlson should probably watch their step and avoid dark alleys.

No one in the Western media, even of the alternative variety, has mustered the courage to point out that, fake bust notwithstanding, the individual in question, Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, is actually a counterfeit on more than one count. The deeply troubled hermaphrodite perpetrator of these demented YouTube statements, which quickly went viral on the internet, is in fact a tragic figure who personifies much that is egregiously wrong with the sick and dying culture which spawned him/her.

Moved by wrath, my initial thought was to write a hit piece to denounce the uncivilised behaviour that the ugly video and its maker exemplify. However, as I delved deeper into the life story of that pathetic creature, my anger turned gradually into compassion. Not of course compassion for the Kiev regime, which employed and exploited Cirillo as a poster image precisely because of this unfortunate individual’s freakish background. On life support and totally dependent, the regime will do anything, however abhorrent that may be to the people of Ukraine, to ingratiate itself with its woke collective West sponsors and paymasters. My compassion (and let’s just settle for the neuter pronoun) is for the pitiful transgender creature itself, the eager YouTube victimiser who after being victimised on its home turf by deliberately induced gender confusion cluelessly drifted into the bedlam that is Ukraine, to be manipulated into even more mischief. But now not just to the grave detriment of self but also, as the video rant demonstrates, potentially of others as well.

Lest I be chastised for excessive pain of heart for the undeserving, in my defence I commend to the readers’ perusal the Wikipedia biography of Sarah Ashton-Cirillo. I do not credit every assertion published on Wikipedia as holy writ, but in the instant case most of the general details expounded there seem reasonably trustworthy. Immersed in the woke political ideology, the author of the Wikipedia piece (whoever he may be) appears genuinely unaware that the ostensibly laudatory picture of Cirillo he evidently tries to paint, of a rebel overcoming societal obstacles, for normal people is actually the diagnostic sheet of a profoundly disturbed and incoherent personality, deserving of pity but certainly not admiration. That is why I regard the Wikipedia article as an inadvertently credible source of general information, for profiling purposes at least. It is precisely that cognitive dissonance between the subject-sympathetic author and the natural adverse reaction of the sober and critical reader that makes it credible.

The picture that emerges of the subject Ashton-Cirillo is either flattering or problematic, depending entirely on the values standpoint of the viewer. The same set of biographical data that from the woke perspective suggest an admirable quest for self-realisation, when interpreted from the vantage point of traditional normalcy depict Ashton-Cirillo as a schizoid personality, an unstable misfit, and a compulsive rebel frantically searching for some elusive cause.

And stumble upon a counterfeit romantic cause Ashton-Cirillo certainly did, swallowing it hook, line, and sinker. It was in the form of the superficial propaganda narrative about neo-Nazi Ukraine as the exemplification of redemptive virtue in a fallen world. This is not very different, to be honest, from the gullibility displayed by the majority of the brain-washed inhabitants of the collective West in its terminally decadent phase. It springs from the climate of degeneracy and, specifically with regard to the fiction of Ukraine’s noble and victorious struggle, of magical realism. That is what shaped Ashton-Cirillo into the unfortunate, simultaneously repulsive and oddly pitiful creature ranting in the viral video.

Here we should pause for some historical perspective. As a would-be advocate for an adopted nation, Ukrainians in this particular case (of course, the matter is much more complex, but a simple-minded missionary of virtue from Nevada cannot be expected to have a clue about it) Ashton-Cirillo is not unique. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries distinguished Western writers made a name for themselves by championing the causes of the various subjugated peoples in the Balkans who groaned under the Ottoman yoke. Greeks, Bulgarians, Albanians, Serbs – each of those oppressed ethnicities had its own admiring and articulate advocate in the literary circles of the West. From the intensely romanticist poetry of Lord Byron idealising Greeks to the sober, academic prose of Dame Rebecca West written on behalf of the Serbs, and with everything in between, a serious genre came into being, fusing morally and emotionally engaged advocacy for pet nations with extremely serious and informed reflection.

But what have we got today? One hundred years later, from the commanding intellectual heights of a Rebecca West we have crashed to where we are required to endure the diatribes of a tragically lost soul, Sarah Ashton-Cirillo.

Contrary to Zelensky’s disingenuous claim, after the compromising video hit the fan, that he had no knowledge of who Cirillo even was, a spokesperson was selected deliberately for the Ukrainian Armed Forces with precisely such attributes, if not by Zelensky personally then certainly by his staff. It was done as a clever ingratiating strategy to win the favour of their foreign masters. The same was manifestly the case with the seeming climate change non sequitur in Zelensky’s UN address. Climate would normally be the least of the concerns of a collapsing government, except that every hegemonic puppet on the planet knows that they must toe and be publicly seen toeing their masters’ ideological line, not selectively but to the minutest particular.

The tragicomical Ashton-Cirillo should therefore be viewed in a wider context, not as a solitary, and least of all inadvertent symbol of the normalisation of freakishness in a broken world. Zelensky’s announced intention to appoint Marina Abramović, the demonic witch posing as a performance artist, to serve as Ukraine’s ambassador-at-large is perfectly in line with the promotion of freakishness, of which Ashton-Cirillo is a representative illustration. Abramović, be it remembered, garnered additional notoriety some years ago after Wikileaks disclosed her email to Hilary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta’s brother Tony inviting the siblings to a “spirit cooking dinner.” The invitation was to an occult ceremony associated with the practices of Aleister Crowley.

So that is the person enlisted by the President of Ukraine to help out with the reconstruction of his ravaged land, and as the London Telegraph blandly put it to “lend her voice to help rebuild schools in the country.”

Lucky children. A counterfeit President, counterfeit political activist, and counterfeit “performance artist” … a handsome gallery do they make.

O tempora! O mores!

A counterfeit President, counterfeit political activist, and counterfeit “performance artist” … a handsome gallery do they make.

❗️Join us on Telegram Twitter , and VK .

Sane and decent people everywhere reacted with indignation to the stupid and offensive video of the scowl-faced Ukrainian Armed Forces spokesperson haranguing publicly for the “hunting down” of journalists who question the righteousness of the Neo-Nazi regime in Kiev. The individual in question went on to threaten other forms of harsh and lethal reprisal against anybody who dared withhold support for the Kiev regime’s disastrous war and the auto-genocide resulting from the application of its catastrophic military and political “strategies.”

Be it noted that in light of the “Myrotvorets” [Peacemaker] international kill list officially operated by the Ukrainian authorities, to which almost weekly new names of targeted victims are being added, the apprehension generated by this ghastly video was by no means unreasonable, and bespeaks prudence rather than cowardice. Seymour Hersh and Tucker Carlson should probably watch their step and avoid dark alleys.

No one in the Western media, even of the alternative variety, has mustered the courage to point out that, fake bust notwithstanding, the individual in question, Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, is actually a counterfeit on more than one count. The deeply troubled hermaphrodite perpetrator of these demented YouTube statements, which quickly went viral on the internet, is in fact a tragic figure who personifies much that is egregiously wrong with the sick and dying culture which spawned him/her.

Moved by wrath, my initial thought was to write a hit piece to denounce the uncivilised behaviour that the ugly video and its maker exemplify. However, as I delved deeper into the life story of that pathetic creature, my anger turned gradually into compassion. Not of course compassion for the Kiev regime, which employed and exploited Cirillo as a poster image precisely because of this unfortunate individual’s freakish background. On life support and totally dependent, the regime will do anything, however abhorrent that may be to the people of Ukraine, to ingratiate itself with its woke collective West sponsors and paymasters. My compassion (and let’s just settle for the neuter pronoun) is for the pitiful transgender creature itself, the eager YouTube victimiser who after being victimised on its home turf by deliberately induced gender confusion cluelessly drifted into the bedlam that is Ukraine, to be manipulated into even more mischief. But now not just to the grave detriment of self but also, as the video rant demonstrates, potentially of others as well.

Lest I be chastised for excessive pain of heart for the undeserving, in my defence I commend to the readers’ perusal the Wikipedia biography of Sarah Ashton-Cirillo. I do not credit every assertion published on Wikipedia as holy writ, but in the instant case most of the general details expounded there seem reasonably trustworthy. Immersed in the woke political ideology, the author of the Wikipedia piece (whoever he may be) appears genuinely unaware that the ostensibly laudatory picture of Cirillo he evidently tries to paint, of a rebel overcoming societal obstacles, for normal people is actually the diagnostic sheet of a profoundly disturbed and incoherent personality, deserving of pity but certainly not admiration. That is why I regard the Wikipedia article as an inadvertently credible source of general information, for profiling purposes at least. It is precisely that cognitive dissonance between the subject-sympathetic author and the natural adverse reaction of the sober and critical reader that makes it credible.

The picture that emerges of the subject Ashton-Cirillo is either flattering or problematic, depending entirely on the values standpoint of the viewer. The same set of biographical data that from the woke perspective suggest an admirable quest for self-realisation, when interpreted from the vantage point of traditional normalcy depict Ashton-Cirillo as a schizoid personality, an unstable misfit, and a compulsive rebel frantically searching for some elusive cause.

And stumble upon a counterfeit romantic cause Ashton-Cirillo certainly did, swallowing it hook, line, and sinker. It was in the form of the superficial propaganda narrative about neo-Nazi Ukraine as the exemplification of redemptive virtue in a fallen world. This is not very different, to be honest, from the gullibility displayed by the majority of the brain-washed inhabitants of the collective West in its terminally decadent phase. It springs from the climate of degeneracy and, specifically with regard to the fiction of Ukraine’s noble and victorious struggle, of magical realism. That is what shaped Ashton-Cirillo into the unfortunate, simultaneously repulsive and oddly pitiful creature ranting in the viral video.

Here we should pause for some historical perspective. As a would-be advocate for an adopted nation, Ukrainians in this particular case (of course, the matter is much more complex, but a simple-minded missionary of virtue from Nevada cannot be expected to have a clue about it) Ashton-Cirillo is not unique. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries distinguished Western writers made a name for themselves by championing the causes of the various subjugated peoples in the Balkans who groaned under the Ottoman yoke. Greeks, Bulgarians, Albanians, Serbs – each of those oppressed ethnicities had its own admiring and articulate advocate in the literary circles of the West. From the intensely romanticist poetry of Lord Byron idealising Greeks to the sober, academic prose of Dame Rebecca West written on behalf of the Serbs, and with everything in between, a serious genre came into being, fusing morally and emotionally engaged advocacy for pet nations with extremely serious and informed reflection.

But what have we got today? One hundred years later, from the commanding intellectual heights of a Rebecca West we have crashed to where we are required to endure the diatribes of a tragically lost soul, Sarah Ashton-Cirillo.

Contrary to Zelensky’s disingenuous claim, after the compromising video hit the fan, that he had no knowledge of who Cirillo even was, a spokesperson was selected deliberately for the Ukrainian Armed Forces with precisely such attributes, if not by Zelensky personally then certainly by his staff. It was done as a clever ingratiating strategy to win the favour of their foreign masters. The same was manifestly the case with the seeming climate change non sequitur in Zelensky’s UN address. Climate would normally be the least of the concerns of a collapsing government, except that every hegemonic puppet on the planet knows that they must toe and be publicly seen toeing their masters’ ideological line, not selectively but to the minutest particular.

The tragicomical Ashton-Cirillo should therefore be viewed in a wider context, not as a solitary, and least of all inadvertent symbol of the normalisation of freakishness in a broken world. Zelensky’s announced intention to appoint Marina Abramović, the demonic witch posing as a performance artist, to serve as Ukraine’s ambassador-at-large is perfectly in line with the promotion of freakishness, of which Ashton-Cirillo is a representative illustration. Abramović, be it remembered, garnered additional notoriety some years ago after Wikileaks disclosed her email to Hilary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta’s brother Tony inviting the siblings to a “spirit cooking dinner.” The invitation was to an occult ceremony associated with the practices of Aleister Crowley.

So that is the person enlisted by the President of Ukraine to help out with the reconstruction of his ravaged land, and as the London Telegraph blandly put it to “lend her voice to help rebuild schools in the country.”

Lucky children. A counterfeit President, counterfeit political activist, and counterfeit “performance artist” … a handsome gallery do they make.

O tempora! O mores!

The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture Foundation.

See also

The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture Foundation.