Don’t Punish All Russians for Putin’s Actions — Punish the Ones Who Support Him
I have no problem with shunning anyone — Russian or otherwise —- who supports Putin after he invaded a peaceful sovereign nation and committed war crimes. But what is the point of this?
A young Russian pianist who was set to perform with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra this week has been struck from the schedule after protest.
However, the orchestra maintained its praise for 20-year-old Alexander Malofeev, who has been outspoken against the invasion of Ukraine, where he said he has some family members.
. . . .
In two Facebook posts, Malofeev has decried the war, first writing on March 2 that “the truth is that every Russian will feel guilty for decades because of the terrible and bloody decision that none of us could influence and predict.”
On Monday, however, he added that he’s upset by the “hatred going in all directions, in Russia and around the world,” and that he “still believe[s] Russian culture and music specifically should not be tarnished by the ongoing tragedy, though it is impossible to stay aside now.”
This is part of a sadly predictable wave of anti-Russian sentiment across the world, and a lot of ordinary people of Russian descent, many of whom hate Putin, are paying the price. It has to stop. It’s bigotry of the most blatant type.
I would contrast this decision with the decision in New York to replace a conductor who openly supports Putin:
Carnegie Hall and the Vienna Philharmonic announced on Thursday that the Russian conductor Valery Gergiev, a friend and prominent supporter of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, would no longer lead a series of concerts there this week amid growing international condemnation of Mr. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Mr. Gergiev, who had been slated to conduct the Philharmonic in three high-profile appearances at the hall beginning Friday evening, has come under growing scrutiny because of his support for Mr. Putin, whom he has known for three decades and has repeatedly defended.
No reason was cited for his removal from the programs. But the extraordinary last-minute decision to replace a star maestro apparently over his ties to Mr. Putin — just days after the Philharmonic’s chairman insisted that Gergiev would be appearing as an artist, not a politician — reflected the rapidly intensifying global uproar over the invasion.
While Mr. Gergiev has not spoken publicly about the unfolding attack, he has supported Mr. Putin’s past moves against Ukraine, and his appearance at Carnegie was expected to draw vocal protests. He was the target of similar demonstrations during previous appearances in New York amid criticism of Mr. Putin’s law banning “propaganda on nontraditional sexual relationships,” which was seen as an effort to suppress Russia’s gay rights movement, and his annexation of Crimea.
Yascha Mounk pronounced himself disgusted with the latter decision:
How is canceling the performance of a Russian conductor—however stupid his opinions on Putin might be—going to help the brave Ukrainians fighting for freedom?
These kinds of performative cancelations disgust me, even when I deeply disagree with the opinions of those they target. https://t.co/smFrCr0WaE
— Yascha Mounk (@Yascha_Mounk) February 25, 2022
I understand his point. After all, as David French said last night, in tweets that I intend to write more about and agree with entirely:
Private actors have the right to shame, exclude, boycott, etc., but that's a right that should be exercised sparingly, in extreme circumstances. Our default posture should be one of openness, tolerance, and curiosity. Students shouldn't fear engaging in good faith debate.
— David French (@DavidAFrench) March 8, 2022
But Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is one of the “extreme circumstances,” as is the genocide of the Uighurs in China. I don’t want to pay one red cent to support anyone who agrees with any of that. And that’s my right of association.
I see some people saying it’s all a slippery slope, and if they cancel you for supporting Putin then the next thing you know they are freezing your bank accounts for funding people blocking roads in Canada. Well, I don’t like people blocking roads and I also don’t like war crimes — but I can tell the difference between the two. So don’t tell me I can’t raise my voice in protest if someone supports a war criminal.
But don’t boycott or beat or harass people for being Russian. Instead, humiliate them for supporting Putin.
Here is the video of the public humiliation of Salvini in Poland. The same should happen with the other right-wing populists who made public declarations of support for Putin. pic.twitter.com/2Pl7Qwnibc
— Paolo Gerbaudo (@paologerbaudo) March 8, 2022
In a world where one can be banned for saying that biological gender is a thing, it’s really hard to draw any bright line.
Kevin M (38e250) — 3/9/2022 @ 9:01 amHa, ha, ha! She probably does not know anyone who voted for Richard Nixon, either.
Thankfully, most people do not belong to either the elites who want to listen to fiddles while Putin burns Chernobyl or to the lowlifes who punch elderly Asians because of the “China flu”.
But the fact remains that for 30 years we sold ourselves the delusion that Russia is another Canada and that delusion is now biting Ukraine in the ass and ours should not feel all that safe either. So to paraphrase Sam Spade, I don’t mind a reasonable amount of bigotry.
nk (1d9030) — 3/9/2022 @ 9:27 amThe anit-Free Speech Cancel Culture is alive and well here in America – especially on our college campuses – which were/are supposed to be the marketplace of ideas. See this article and watch the VIDEO.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/03/nineteen-uc-hastings-law-faculty-object-to-university-statement-in-support-of-free-speech-after-ilya-shapiro-shoutdown/
Liberty & Truth require constant vigilance. GLZ.
Gary L. Zerman (a1521c) — 3/9/2022 @ 9:57 am“But the fact remains that for 30 years we sold ourselves the delusion that Russia is another Canada”
You are way off. The Canadian government has been working hard to emulate Russia.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 3/9/2022 @ 10:19 amOf course, the sanctions do punish all Russians, not just those that support Putin. But it’s worth it. The US has always tried to avoid “punishing the people” of whatever country we want to sanction, and have finally realized that for sanctions to really punish the elites of the target country we need to include their citizens.
Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 3/9/2022 @ 10:28 amTchaikovsky has become the new Wagner.
Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 3/9/2022 @ 11:16 amLOL. Hard to get the thread-winner in the first post.
Hoi Polloi (093fb9) — 3/9/2022 @ 11:50 amGoogle deletes Oliver Stone’s [7/18/17] documentary UKRAINE ON FIRE – Western governments and NATO afraid of truth?
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/03/09/google-deletes-oliver-stone-documentary-ukraine-on-fire-western-government-and-nato-afraid-of-truth/
Where do you go today to get the truth?
Liberty & Truth require constant vigilance. GLZ.
Gary L. Zerman (a1521c) — 3/9/2022 @ 12:12 pmHow about those supporting putin at c-pac. Children’s hospital and maternity ward just bombed by tucker carlson’s friends in russia. Pictures are horrific.
asset (551324) — 3/9/2022 @ 12:24 pmNYT reporters mathew rosenberg admits he lied when he wrote their were no government undercover agent provocateurs in jan.6 crowd that stormed the capital. (project veritas) Fbi agent provocateur fired the first shot at kent state making the guard think they were being fired on. The Church Commsion reported that nixon thought a demonstration against the war in san francisco was to peaceful and had his people go into the crowd to throw rocks at the police. History is full of government agent provocateurs inciting violence.
asset (551324) — 3/9/2022 @ 12:44 pmWhat Alexander Malofeev said on Facebook is enough. Anything more is cancel culture, and that’s not god.
The New York Times also had a story:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/05/arts/music/russian-artists-putin.html
In there, Evgeny Kissin, a pianist who was born in Moscow and is now based in Prague, seems to be saying only supporters of the war should be ostracized.
Those who previously had a record of supporting Putin should be asked to speak out against the war, while those who had not been particularly political (it might have been hard for them earlier not to support Putin to some degree, especially since they or their organizations got funding) should merely be required NOT to support the war.
Sammy Finkelman (46ec7d) — 3/9/2022 @ 12:55 pm3. The anit-Free Speech Cancel Culture is alive and well here in America – especially on our college campuses
There was a New York Times Op-ed piece about that today! (that didn’t use that word but said people were afraid to speak their minds)
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/07/opinion/campus-speech-cancel-culture.html
It ran apparently, a day later than its URL would imply.
She even came under attack in a class discussion for having the temerity to criticize a cultural institution in India that’s not even practiced any longer:
Sammy Finkelman (46ec7d) — 3/9/2022 @ 1:04 pmI eriously doubt that there would be any substantial truth in anything by Oliver Stone.
In this case Oliver Stone was apparently saying o 2017 that there’s too much Nazi influence in Ukraine or that it’s run by Nazis.
Sammy Finkelman (46ec7d) — 3/9/2022 @ 1:08 pm@2. But the fact remains that for 30 years we sold ourselves the delusion that Russia is another Canada and that delusion is now biting Ukraine in the ass and ours should not feel all that safe either.
It’s a ‘delusion’ -albeit well intentioned, post Soviet times- that isn’t limited to that venue:
‘In 1996, economist Thomas Friedman came up with what is known as the Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention, the notion that no two countries with McDonald’s franchises have ever gone to war with each other. People in McDonald’s countries, he said, “don’t like to fight wars. They like to wait in line for burgers,” and “countries with middle classes large enough to sustain a McDonald’s have reached a level of prosperity and global integration that makes warmongering risky and unpalatable to its people.” Although Friedman’s idea was somewhat tongue-in-cheek and not necessarily meant to be taken literally and absolutely, it does not seem to have held true in all cases.’ – source, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mcdonalds-countries-war/
Then there’s Hong Kong…
“Well, that’s the end of this suit.” – Rock Ridge townsman [Donald Chaffin] ‘Blazing Saddles’ 1974
DCSCA (f4c5e5) — 3/9/2022 @ 1:48 pmBut don’t boycott or beat or harass people for being Russian.
Absolutely right. One on one at street level they’re a proud people w/an inferiority complex and denied access to many basic truths of the world for generations. When in the Soviet Union, our official state guide would proudly show and explain their triumphs as we visited various sites in Moscow and, always, always beginning or ending w/t phrase- “after the revolution of 1917.” There was no official history before it. After a few days of enduring this line we circled the 30-something lady and confronted her w/truths from outside– she’d blinked politely- then nervously- and went right back to the standard state line. It’s a hard cultural and generational nut to crack. The best hope is with the young.
DCSCA (f4c5e5) — 3/9/2022 @ 2:01 pmPutin’s daughter+ Luiza Krivonogikh, also known as Luiza Rozova, now 18, whose mother is Svetlana Krivonogikh, 46, Putin’s mistress in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
whose identity was revealed in 2019, was on Instagram (she stopped posting about five months ago when the Panama Papers were published, and more recently deleted her entire Instagram account. She was more recently active on Clubhouse.
https://nypost.com/2021/02/17/vladimir-putins-secret-daughter-says-shes-enjoying-the-limelight
https://nypost.com/2022/03/07/putins-alleged-love-child-deletes-instagram-after-verbal-abuse-over-ukraine/
Putin also has two adult daughters, Maria, 36, and Katerina, 35, from his decades-long marriage to former flight attendant Lyudmila Shkrebneva,. They got divorced in 2013-4 after years of separation and Lyudmila Aleksandrovna Shkrebneva married somebody else in 2015. All this was donw without publicity so in 2017 it was still thought she was married to Vladimir Putin..
I think Vladimir Putin once took care of her after an accident in the 1990s
https://www.thedailybeast.com/vladimir-putins-wife-lyudmila-has-all-but-vanished-and-russians-dont-seem-to-care
Sammy Finkelman (02a146) — 3/9/2022 @ 2:27 pmIn a world where one can be banned for saying that biological gender is a thing, it’s really hard to draw any bright line.
Got a post coming up shortly that you’re going to like (and by that I mean it’s going to aggravate you).
JVW (ee64e4) — 3/9/2022 @ 2:30 pmBut don’t boycott or beat or harass people for being Russian.
If you can believe the media these days (and, of course, you cannot), there are nimrods out there who are dumping their Stolichnaya and Smirnoff vodka down the drain, despite the fact that Stoli is owned by a Russian who allegedly fled for Luxembourg once Putin came into power and Smirnoff is distilled in Illinois. Stolichnaya, it has been reported, plans to officially change their name to Stoli, to de-Russify it a bit and to formally adopt what has become its colloquial sobriquet.
JVW (ee64e4) — 3/9/2022 @ 2:41 pm#13 – you wrote:
I [s]eriously doubt that there would be any substantial truth in anything by Oliver Stone.
In this case Oliver Stone was apparently saying o 2017 that there’s too much Nazi influence in Ukraine or that it’s run by Nazis.
Sammy Finkelman (46ec7d) — 3/9/2022 @ 1:08 pm
_____________________
Granted, some of his work I would take issue with (particularly JFK [1991]), however, I found SNOWDEN (2016) to be quite good. Did you see SNOWDEN? If so, your take?
Liberty & Truth require constant vigilance. GLZ.
Gary L. Zerman (a1521c) — 3/9/2022 @ 3:20 pmI didn’t see Snowden. What was Oliver Stone’s take?
Sammy Finkelman (46ec7d) — 3/9/2022 @ 5:06 pmAnd I would like to think that there is such a thing as a national conscience. That America would not grow soldiers who strategically bomb hospitals and systematically rape women or would follow leaders who order them to do such things, for example. I think that every Russian is Putin’s keeper.
nk (1d9030) — 3/9/2022 @ 5:23 pmCouldn’t agree more with this post.
lurker (59504c) — 3/9/2022 @ 5:35 pmI wonder what Snowden thinks of his benefactor now. Oh, nothing:
Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 3/9/2022 @ 5:39 pm“Children buried under rubble” as Russian airstrike hits maternity hospital – BBC News (video)
nk (1d9030) — 3/9/2022 @ 5:46 pmAnyone who is interested in the truth about Edward Snowden should read Edward Jay Epstein’s How America Lost Its Secrets.
For instance, how did Snowden get an into secret work, originally? His parents were divorced, and his maternal grandfather who was high up in the Cost Guard had connections with intelligence agencies.
(Oh, and over the years, I have found that I can explain 95 percent of what Glenn Greenwald does by assuming he is working for Putin. Which is not necessarily the person I would got to were I a truth seeker.)
Jim Miller (406a93) — 3/9/2022 @ 5:59 pmIf only we’d have had a Nazi sniffing tool like the SPLC database to plug into the bombs dropped on Dresden. We’d have only killed the Nazi’s
steveg (e81d76) — 3/9/2022 @ 6:10 pmNice to see the Chinesers and the Russians get their propaganda synched with their QAnon bots to pre-emptively blame the US for biological weapons.
steveg (e81d76) — 3/9/2022 @ 6:13 pmTakes some nuts for the Wuhan clan to do it, but by god they don’t disappoint
Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 3/9/2022 @ 5:39 pm
I think that refers to things that happened after he was trapped there. Obama indicated he didn’t need him back.
Sammy Finkelman (46ec7d) — 3/10/2022 @ 3:49 am27. The Biden Administration is now all worried (possibly they also have additional information) that this means that Russia is contemplating a biological attack, (maybe with anthrax?) or a chemical weapons attack.
As happened, after all, in Syria, a few times.
This would probably be against particularly obdurate targets, They can only use them a limited number of times, particularly since they are going to want to characterize it as an accidental releease, They’ve left themselves some leeway for multiple attacks, because the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesma Zhao Lijian said during a press conference in Beijing that the United States has 26 bio-labs and other related facilities in Ukraine over which the Pentagon has complete control in which all research activities are led by the U.S. side, attributing this information ro what Russia found,
Sammy Finkelman (46ec7d) — 3/11/2022 @ 10:02 amThere were also attacks against hospitals in Syria. There was a count of 14 hospitals attacked in Ukraine sometime before the last one. But they say only 3 people killed, so maybe it was not functioning much and/or they were mostly in a makeshift shelter or it wasn’t a bunker busting bomb.
Sammy Finkelman (46ec7d) — 3/11/2022 @ 10:05 am