I'll start with a story from my school days, which was in the early 1980s. I can't speak for all the schools in our city and country at the time. But in our high school, we had to take turns publishing a handwritten satirical newspaper called Koluchka. The content consisted of caricatures illustrating school troubles and short captions under them. They explained who was depicted and why the offender was being lampooned. Once, the hero of a cartoon was a sixth-grader known for foul language. He swore out loud during recess and in class, not only with students, but also with teachers. This had an unexpected effect on the brutal sixth-grader. He brought his parents to the school to brag: "Look, I've been featured in the newspaper.” His behavior did not change after he was officially recognized as a bully.
Now, a few more politicized examples, also from that era. In the mid-1970s, the Central African Republic was ruled by Jean-Bédel Bokassa, first as a self-proclaimed president, then as a self-proclaimed emperor. For his fake coronation, he wore shoes later listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the most expensive. With his equally legendary ostrich leather shoes, Viktor Yanukovych competed with him in garishness at a meeting in PACE. After Bokassa's accession, he no longer hid the fact that his regime was dictatorial. Rumors about his personal involvement in torture went beyond the CAR. There was also talk of the emperor practicing cannibalism.
At the time, the French government openly supported Bokassa. The reason was the favorable conditions that the cannibalistic dictator provided for the development of uranium, which France needed to create nuclear weapons. In addition, the dictator corrupted the head of the French government, Valérie Giscard d'Estaing. The French press wrote about this openly, which led to his defeat in the elections. But other leaders of the democratic world of that time also had business relations with dictator Bokassa.
Another leap in time. Europe's Last Dictator is the title of a documentary made in 2003 by Belarusian director Yury Kalina. It was about the results of the then nine years of Alexander Lukashenko's unchallenged presidency in Belarus. Nine years later, in 2012, a film with the same title was released by British journalists. Security forces violently disrupt the screening in Minsk. But four more years passed, and in 2016, the director Glenn Ellis used the same phrases to describe Lukashenko in his film. You won't believe it: in 2010, even the Russian media called Lukashenko the last dictator of Europe! He didn't mind too much; he was even proud of it: “look, see what I am like.” The dictatorial status did not prevent Western leaders from taking advantage of the dictator's invitations and choosing Minsk as a platform for negotiations on the Russian-Ukrainian war from the fall of 2014 onward. However, Lukashenko suddenly demanded an apology this summer and declared he was not the last dictator.
Путін підкуповує сильних світу цього реальними нафтодоларами