War has many unintended consequences. One of them is the situation involving British expats stranded in Dubai, and in particular the realisation of quite how vacuous and venal some, specifically those who style themselves ‘influencers’, truly can be.
It takes a certain kind of narcissist to be a full-time influencer, so I suppose one shouldn’t really be all that surprised. But something about Luisa Zissman’s latest online bulletin to her 712,000 Instagram followers encapsulated the utter vacuousness of her tribe – and had me tearing out what little remaining hair I have.
In case you don’t know, Zissman is a former Apprentice contestant (runner-up in 2013) who moved to Dubai last year with two of her three children and her Irish millionaire husband Andrew Collins.
Her content mainly consists of pictures of her wearing a bikini, riding horses (sometimes both at the same time), luxuriating in swimming pools and shopping for shoes (she has an entire wall of them) and handbags.
Like many of her influencer colleagues, she was caught mid-selfie when the missiles struck – not that it seems to have dimmed her enthusiasm for Dubai. Along with others of her ilk, she has been gushing in her praise of the UAE’s handling of the crisis.
Anyway, she’s back in the UK this week (to the delight, no doubt, of her adoring fans). Walking through central London, she declared that she was ‘in my refugee era, displaced from my home’, adding that she was anxious about crime rates in the capital. ‘I’m really paranoid someone is going to steal my phone,’ she whined, looking around anxiously.
Seriously? In her refugee era? Could this woman be any crasser?
Firstly, if she’s worried about her phone being stolen, why doesn’t she pop it in her pocket or keep it in her bag instead of waving it around in the street filming herself? Not every spit and toss has to be recorded for posterity, you know.
Luisa Zissman, runner-up in the ninth season of The Apprentice in 2013, moved to Dubai last year. Having returned to London, she claims she is entering her ‘refugee era’
A still from Luisa Zissman’s Instagram while she was still in Dubai, captioned ‘constantly checking the skies’ with a playful emoji
And second, has she any idea how spectacularly offensive and idiotic she sounds, comparing the minor interruption to her life of untrammelled luxury and tax-free status to the plight of women who are real refugees, fleeing genuine hardship and war and, in some cases, worse?
Women, for example, such as the Iranian ladies’ football team, branded ‘wartime traitors’ by the regime in Tehran for remaining silent during the Iranian national anthem at the start of their game against South Korea at the AFC Asian Cup tournament in Brisbane.
They subsequently caved in, and both saluted and sang during the anthem in their two follow-up games, no doubt because they had been strong-armed by their minders. But the regime doesn’t forgive, and there are now grave fears about what might happen to them when they fly home.
As of yesterday, five had been granted humanitarian visas after claiming asylum in Australian, throwing off their hijabs in a gesture of defiance to the regime and its apologists, who love to tell us Iranian women wear the veil of ‘their own choosing’. Perhaps some do, but not these brave lionesses.
Even so, they are far from safe from the tentacles of Tehran. If reports of ‘sleeper cells’ being activated are true, they will be looking over their shoulders for the rest of their lives. As for their families back in Iran, knowing as we do the level of brutality inflicted on dissenters, they must be absolutely petrified, expecting the knock on the door from the feared Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps at any moment.
What a stark choice: return and face torture, rape and death, the preferred punishment of the twisted ideologues clinging on to power in Iran; or seize their chance for freedom in the knowledge that their loved ones will almost certainly pay the price for their actions.
That is why several of them have opted to go home, which is an even more agonising choice. I dread to think of the horrors that await them, of the powerlessness they must feel knowing they have no other option but to submit to their oppressors. And for what? Daring to defy an evil that knows no bounds.
So spare us the theatrics, Ms Zissman. Don’t cast yourself a refugee when the biggest fear in your life is potentially having to hand some of your not-so-hard-earned wad to His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. Don’t pretend you’re scared when you’re in one of the safest cities in the world. And above all, please stop using this conflict and the genuine suffering of the Iranian people to generate ‘content’.
This is real life, not Hermes handbags.
