Okay, this is gonna sound like a round of Mad Libs gone horribly wrong, but bear with me: in a bizarre TV address, Vladimir Putin — that would be the Russian leader currently invading the sovereign nation of Ukraine in an act of all-out war — claimed that the West was trying to “cancel” his country. Per Deadline, he mentioned a campaign against Russian composers. Then there are all those economic sanctions nations have imposed on Russia in the hopes that it will, y’know, stop invading Ukraine; the war has already claimed thousands of lives and displaced millions of people from their homes.
Comparing that backlash to being “cancelled” is pretty odd, since these days that word is usually reserved for celebrities who get blasted on Twitter for doing something stupid. One of the highest-profile cancellations in recent memory was of Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, who was harshly criticized after she wrote at great length about her transphobic beliefs: to summarize, she misgendered trans people, implied that they’re dangerous or confused, and generally peddled in fear-mongering stereotypes disproven with a glance at the research or just by talking to trans people about their experiences.
And indeed, Putin — this is the leader of a country waging brutal war against a neighbor, I remind you — brought up Rowling in his address, saying that she, like Russia, was unfairly cancelled, in her case “just because she didn’t satisfy the demands of gender rights.”
What’s the game plan here, Vlad? I guess he thinks that people who support Rowling will also support him if he compares himself to her? Maybe he’s aiming to win the transphobe vote?
“J.K. Rowling rejects Vladimir’s Putin’s endorsement,” is a sentence I never thought I would write
Rowling, for her part, quickly distanced herself from Putin’s comments, because what is she gonna do, thank him for the show of support? “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 quipped on Twitter.
Still, I wonder if it was sobering for Rowling to realize that a murderous dictator feels a sense of solidarity with her. Maybe time to give that full-throated-endorsement-of-transphobia thing a once-over?
I also wonder how else the culture wars might clash with…actual wars. Maybe Kim Jong-un will say we need to get critical race theory out of our preschools? Mad Libs from hell, it’s fun.
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