Summary:
Just days after Russia's most prominent opposition figure, Alexei Navalny, was jailed for nine years at the conclusion of a "sham trial," Putin lashed out at at the West's "cancel culture"
First the Russian regime poisoned Alexei Navalny in 2020, after he urged Russians to rid themselves of Vladimir Putin and his corrupt cronies.
In this video he branded his country “an insatiable toad”. After he survived the assassination attempt, he was jailed earlier this week on what his many supporters say were trumped up charges of of fraud and contempt of court.
Then yesterday (Friday) Putin had the gall to condemn “cancel culture”, alleging that countries and companies who have imposed sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine were trying to “cancel Russia.”
“Today, they are trying to cancel a thousand-year-old country. I am talking about the progressive discrimination against everything connected with Russia, about this trend that is unfolding in a number of Western states, with the full connivance and sometimes with the encouragement of Western elites.”
VLADIMIR PUTIN
“The proverbial ‘cancel culture’ has become a cancellation of culture,” Putin said, adding that works by Russian composers were being excluded from concerts and books by Russian authors were being “banned”.
The last time such a mass campaign to destroy unwanted literature was carried out was by the Nazis in Germany almost 90 years ago … books were burned right on the squares.
Since Putin sent Russian troops into Ukraine on February 24, the West has piled sanctions on Moscow that have seen Russia increasingly isolated, politically and financially, and extending to spheres such as sports and culture.
Putin singled out British author J.K. Rowling, above, who had been criticized following controversial tweets about transgender people.
Said Putin:
Not so long ago children’s author J.K. Rowling was cancelled because she, a writer of books that have sold millions of copies around the world, didn’t please fans of so-called ‘gender freedoms’.
Fun fact: In 2003, Russians got the idea that one of Rowling’s characters, Dobby, the house elf, bore a resemblance to Putin, and they were furious.
Rowling was less than pleased by Putin’s remarks, according to this Fox News report. She got wind of the remark and took to Twitter stating:
Critiques of Western cancel culture are possibly not best made by those currently slaughtering civilians for the crime of resistance, or who jail and poison their critics.
She added the hashtag #IStandWithUkraine. She also shared an article about the jailing of Alexei Navalny.
In a follow-up tweet, Rowling reminded her social media followers of the work her children’s charity, Lumos, has been doing in Ukraine.
Children trapped in orphanages and other institutions are exceptionally vulnerable right now. Thank you so, so much to everyone who has already donated to Lumos’s Ukraine appeal.
A reminder: I will personally match all donations to our emergency appeal, up to £1million ($1.3 million). If you’re able to, you can donate here. Again, thank you so very much to all who’ve already donated.
This piece would run to thousands of words if I were to list the names of dead opponents who were “cancelled” by successive Russian regimes: Instead I will direct you two Wiki pieces: “List of journalists killed in Russia” and “List of organisations banned in Russia“, and a report in the Los Angeles Times entitled “Will Russia bring its war on LGBTQ people to Ukraine?“
In a video interview in 2014, evangelist Franklin Graham praised Putin for “protecting his country’s children from LGBT “recruitment.”
Four days before Russia invaded Ukraine, Graham tweeted, “Pray for President (Vladimir) Putin today. This may sound like a strange request, but we need to pray that God would work in his heart so that war could be avoided at all cost.”
God’s hearing aid must have been on the fritz when Graham issued his call for prayer, because… well we know what happened next.