Emacs. Everything.
+1 for the FOSS philosophy and why that's important when it comes to privacy (ie closed source crypto implementation back doors etc) + full system control, lack of spyware etc. KVM for the VM demo - keep it Linux, right? Introduce the concept of how almost everything in Linux is a file and can be read from / written to. This is important when understanding pipes. Show pipelines - logical && ie cat x | grep y | grep z. Logical || ie grep -E 'x|y|z' Useful commands like top and ps. Explain selinux and why it's a good idea.
gre implies you want to run dynamic routing over the tunnel but no routing is configured? If you don't need dynamic routing (why would you on a P2P tunnel?) but do want privacy then use IPsec or SSH instead?
Start with a pre-installed laptop for an easy life? https://itsfoss.com/get-linux-laptops/
Who needs science and objectivity when culture wars and dead cats are available to avoid facts? Ree Lowley knows.
Over 26 million people from ex Soviet states were killed in world war 2 fighting facism. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_the_Soviet_Union