Cancelling Russian Culture the USA Way! By Chris Knight (Florida)
In times of war, this is what is done; the enemy becomes dehumanised and the Great Satan. Thus, as Putin has observed, even Russian high culture such as composers Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Sergei Rachmaninov are cancelled, in the same way he said it had cancelled “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling. Well, maybe even worse, as Rowling can still reply to her critics, while Russian culture is silenced, and the music no longer plays. How exactly this all helps the war effort is unclear, showing I think a high level of cultural paranoia.
https://www.amren.com/news/2022/03/putin-says-russian-culture-being-cancelled-like-j-k-rowling/
“President Vladimir Putin on Friday accused the West of trying to cancel Russia’s rich musical and literary culture, including composers Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Sergei Rachmaninov, in the same way he said it had cancelled “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling.
Speaking in a meeting with leading cultural figures broadcast on national television, Putin complained of the cancellation of a number of Russian cultural events in recent weeks and compared it to actions taken by Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
“Not so long ago, the children’s writer J.K. Rowling was also cancelled because she … did not please the fans of so-called gender freedoms,” Putin told the meeting, referring to controversy sparked by the “Harry Potter” author’s opinions on transgender issues.
“Today they are trying to cancel a whole thousand-year culture, our people,” he said.
Several events involving Russian cultural figures who have voiced support for the war have been cancelled, including some involving Valery Gergiev, general director of the St. Petersburg Mariinsky Theatre
Gergiev has been dismissed as chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic
Spain’s Teatro Real, one of Europe’s major opera houses, has cancelled performances later this year by Russia’s Bolshoi Ballet. {snip}
The Cardiff Philharmonic Orchestra dropped a concert of Tchaikovsky’s music from its programme, and media reports have said orchestras in Japan and Croatia took similar decisions.
“Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has said that Russia is a victim of “cancel culture” like Harry Potter author JK Rowling.
“They cancelled Joanne Rowling recently — the children’s author, her books are published all over the world — just because she didn’t satisfy the demands of ‘gender freedoms’,” Putin said on Friday, referencing the British writer’s ongoing clash with fellow leftists who regard her as “TERF” (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist) for insisting there are important differences between biological females and male-to-female transwomen.
The Russian leader insisted that the West was similarly “engaging in cancel culture” against Russia and Russian culture, referencing the cancellations of orchestral performances involving Russian composers and attempts to remove Russian writers and books from some academic courses in recent months, comparing this to the behaviour of the National Socialists in Germany around the time of the Second World War.
President Putin also struck what some right-leaning Westerners who have counted themselves among his admirers might see as an uncomfortably “woke” tone, claiming that Russia is “immune” to the book-burnings of National Socialist era Germany because it is a place “where there is no place for ethnic intolerance, where people of dozens of nationalities have been living, working, and raising their children side by side and where cultural diversity is the pride of society, the strength and advantage of our state.”
This characterisation of the “Russian homeland” is arguably very much at odds with the current censorship around the “special military operation” in Ukraine and is certainly at odds with the country’s history during the Soviet era, when censorship and the falsification of history were endemic.
While politics can make strange bedfellows, Rowling was quick to shut down President Putin for any imputation that they are engaged in a common struggle, highlighting his own “cancellation” of opposition figures in Russia.
“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 wrote on microblogging platform Twitter, adding that hashtag #IStandWithUkraine and a link to a BBC article on Alexei Navalny, who was Russia’s leading opposition politician prior to being banned from standing for election, poisoned with a nerve agent, and imprisoned.”
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