Cancel culture: Vladimir Putin compares Russia to JK Rowling, who answers him

Ie parallel is surprising. Friday, March 25, Vladimir Putin spoke of the cancel culture of which Russia would be a victim. Present at a cultural event, the strongman of the Kremlin denounced the boycott suffered by Russian artists, daring a comparison with JK Rowling, the creator of Harry Potter, who fell out of favor after his remarks deemed transphobic. The West would have “cancelled” the British author “because she did not meet the requirements of the rights around the genre”. “They are trying to cancel the country, I mean the progressive discrimination of everything related to Russia,” Vladimir Putin added during a speech broadcast on television and echoed by HuffPost.

Acclaimed for the bespectacled wizard saga, JK Rowling has been widely criticized in recent years for her controversial outspokenness about transgender people. In response to Vladimir Putin’s remarks, the novelist replied on Twitter, recalling her support for Ukraine, a country against which Vladimir Putin launched a military offensive on February 24. According to her, criticism of Western cancel culture would be unwelcome from those who “massacre civilians for the crime of resistance, or who imprison and poison their critics”.

Russian works withdrawn

In reaction to the war in Ukraine, Western countries imposed economic sanctions against Moscow. In his speech, Vladimir Putin specifically castigated the removal of works by Russian artists, authors and composers by Western institutions, comparing this to what happened during World War II. “The last program to cancel world literature was carried out 90 years ago by the Nazis, we remember these images when they burned books,” he said, assuring that in Russia ” there is no room for intolerance”.