Vladimir Putin has accused Western countries of “cancelling” Russian culture in a televised meeting with significant cultural figures.
Russian President Vladimir Putin says his people’s culture has been cancelled by the West since his invasion of Ukraine that began over a month ago.
“Today they are trying to cancel a whole thousand-year culture, our people,” Putin said. “I am talking about the gradual discrimination against everything linked to Russia … a tendency unfolding in a number of Western countries.”
During Putin’s address, he compared the West’s actions to that of Nazi Germany in the 1930s and likened his own country’s treatment to the cancellation of J.K. Rowling in response to accusations of transphobia.
“Not so long ago, they canceled a children’s writer, Joanne Rowling, because she, the author of books spread around the world, in hundreds of millions of copies, failed to please the supporters of the so called gender liberties,” Putin said.
It depends whether you interpret the West acting to diminish a threatening country’s economy as an attempt to ‘cancel’ Russian culture.
But at the same time, many people that live in western countries agreed that the Cardiff Philharmonic Orchestra’s Pyotr Tchaikovsky boycott was a step too far.
Cancelling a Tchaikovsky concert is so daft ordinary Russians will write it off as mad Vlad over-doing the propaganda.
— Geoff Norcott (@GeoffNorcott) March 9, 2022
Still, there is a vast difference between condemning Putin, and boycotting artists that have had no involvement in the Ukraine conflict.
Though we’re not sure if the Russian President’s comments will receive much sympathy since J.K. Rowling isn’t exactly the most popular celebrity at the moment.
