VLADIMIR Putin has sparked incredulity with a rant about the “cancellation” of JK Rowling over trans rights – likening it to Russia’s contribution in the Second World War being underplayed.
In an official address, broadcast on Sky News, the Russian President said Russia was being “cancelled” and compared the country’s situation to that of the Harry Potter author.
"It's impossible to imagine such a thing in our country"
— Sky News (@SkyNews) March 25, 2022
President Vladimir Putin uses J K Rowling as an example of Western cynicism and "cancel culture", which he says is currently being aimed at Russia.
Latest on Ukraine: https://t.co/XTFXr6HmAe
📺 Sky 501 and YouTube pic.twitter.com/TyH9lddC5k
He said Rowling – who has been accused of transphobia for her social media posts – had failed to “satisfy the demands of gender rights”.
READ MORE: JK Rowling will not join Harry Potter cast after trans rights row
He said Russian culture in the West was facing “progressive discrimination” and said Russian books had been “cancelled”.
Most recently, Russia banned the sale of a book called Apocalypse Culture by Adam Parfrey in 2006 for allegedly promoting drug use and all existing copies of the book were destroyed.
Soviet censors also banned a number of books by Russian and Western writers including the works of internal critic Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Boris Pasternak, Friedrich Nietzsche and George Orwell.
The Cardiff Philharmonic Orchestra cancelled a performance of the Russian composer Tchaikovsky because of the conflict in Ukraine earlier this month. The orchestra said Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture was militaristic in nature and was deemed inappropriate because of the violence in Ukraine.
Russian censors also expurgated reference to homosexuality in Tchaikovsky’s letters after his death because the Soviet state wished to portray him as straight.
Putin said that the Red Army’s crucial role in defeating Nazism had been erased from history in the US – where he said the American Army was portrayed as being the main reason for the fall of the Third Reich.
READ MORE: Claim Putin would welcome Scottish independence referendum 'smacks of desperation'
“They are now trying to cancel our country,” he said.
“I’m talking about the progressive discrimination of everything to do with Russia, this trend that’s unfolding in a number of western states.
“They’re now engaging in the cancel culture, even removing Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich and Rachmaninov from posters, Russian writer and books are now cancelled.
“The latest programme to cancel world literature was conducted by the Nazis in Germany 90 years ago.”
One Twitter user said: “Vladimir Putin referencing JK Rowling in a speech about cancel culture is so batshit that even if it happened in a dream I would be like 'wtf that can’t be real' and yet it is our reality.”
Another said: “In Russia, you don't get cancelled because the state jumps straight to disappearing you, or you mysteriously fall from a third-story window.”
A Russian journalist who recently protested live on television against Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was fine the equivalent of $270.
More than 4,300 were arrested at anti-war protests in Russia earlier this month, according to the independent monitoring group OVD-Info.
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