Stop Cancelling Russia
Another Interlude in the Left's Suicide Mission to Unravel Basic Freedoms and Norms in the Name of Defending "Our Democracy"
This morning I read Paul De Quenoy’s article, “Anna Netrebko, Sues the Met” in City Journal. It told the story of another unfortunate situation whereby cultural establishments sanctimoniously cancel and publicly humiliate Russian emigres, to signal solidarity with Ukraine.
Caitlin Ochs New York Times (Anna Netrebko)
The last time I remember reading about one of these debacles was when I read in the New York Times that Masha Gessen resigned her vice presidency from PEN Faulkner, over the awards’ decision to cancel exiled former Russian soldiers because their presence at an event discomfited Ukrainian guests. In that same Times story, I also read about a petition that mediocre writers like Joyce Carol Oates had submitted to PEN once, protesting the award given to an artist at Charlie Hebdo, the French publication memorably attacked by ISIS militants, because the magazine’s cartoon had depicted the prophet, Muhammad. Joyce Carol Oates protested that to award the cartoonist while valorizing free speech, offended Muslim minorities. Because the cartoon was offensive, that made it wrong to award, as if some of the greatest art that was ever written or painted wasn’t offensive— Picasso, Rimbaud, Baudelaire. Some of my favorite novels widely recognized as classics now, such as Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte and Justine by Marquis De Sade were considered highly offensive in their time, and to this day they’re considered subversive, and they’re taught with a grain of salt. There was even a moron in college, a male feminist or something, who told me he considered Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights an example of “toxic masculinity.”
Jens Schluter Getty Images (Masha Gessen)
Artists like Joyce Carol Oates and any cultural establishment that will cancel Tchaikovsky performances (which Cathy Young wrote about in The Bulwark who first apprised me of Western Russia-cancellation)—PEN Faulkner, or the Metropolitan Opera House—fundamentally misunderstand the value of art, the political merit of which consists in upholding the irreducible freedom of the individual against tyranny. That is what art is. Art is literally an assertive revolt, prosecuted by the defiant individual, seeking redemption, against tyranny. So it is a gross distortion of the purpose and meaning of art as well as a profanation of Western liberal values, when cultural establishments declare, for whatever reason, this art or this artist we shall not condone. We must deplatform.
It is especially alarming when Russians are being suppressed by our institutions merely for their association with Russia, not because they sympathize with Putin’s regime. Anna Netrebko, the opera singer, is with justification, suing the Met for discriminating against her nationality under New York antidiscrimination law. Paul De Quenoy writes,
I am opposed to this war,” said the superstar Russian soprano Anna Netrebko on February 26, 2022, just two days after Russian forces invaded Ukraine. She repeated that sentiment many times in the weeks and months that followed, but that wasn’t good enough for New York’s Metropolitan Opera, where she had performed in starring roles to near-unanimous acclaim since 2002. Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, demanded that Netrebko go a step further and denounce Russian president Vladimir Putin, variously claiming that she had been his “close personal ally,” a “huge Putin supporter,” “inextricably associated with Putin,” and “in lockstep politically and ideologically with Putin.” Gelb vowed that the Met would not employ artists who failed to denounce Putin (though it appears he has only selectively applied this rule). “We can no longer engage with artists or institutions that support Putin or are supported by him,” Gelb announced, “not until the invasion and killing has been stopped, order has been restored and restitutions have been made.” Gelb later extended these conditions: “until the war is won by Ukraine.”
And it’s ironic when this collective effort to signal solidarity with Ukraine shows such cruel disrespect to one’s status as a persecuted minority burdened with Russian citizenship.
Netrebko has consistently claimed that she has met Putin on only a handful of official occasions, that she is not a political person, and that she does not believe her employment should depend on denouncing her country of birth and its leader. In any case, criticizing the Russian government, its president, and the war in Ukraine—indeed, even calling it a “war”—is a criminal offense in Russia, punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Unofficial reprisals have also been made against political critics and their families in Russia, allegedly including murder. Russian government officials have already denounced Netrebko as a “traitor,” and her scheduled performances in Russia have been canceled.
Did it occur to the Met that perhaps Netrebko is unwilling to renounce her national identity as the Met demands, only because she’s afraid Putin might poison her, imprison, kill or terrorize her friends and kin?
I say… It was not only right to award the Charlie Hebdo artist, irrespective of what Muslims the cartoon may have offended, but because the cartoon was offensive to religious minorities! That Charlie Hebdo took the risk to caricature Muhammad and provoke retaliation from jihadists— that is the courage our artistic establishments in the West should be awarding if we should award any artist. And shame on Joyce Carol Oates for having such bad taste to cast doubt on PEN Faulkner’s awards selection process when Charlie Hebdo’s courage resulted directly in murder at the hands of a ruthless terror group. I would add, it’s Salman Rushdi’s willingness to offend and risk provoking radical Islamists that certifies him as a heroic defender of Western civilization. The uncompromisingly independent Salman Rushdie—a man of great integrity—is what the West is all about, ideally.
So we should not cancel Russian artists, because we support Ukraine. It contradicts the whole reason we support Ukraine in the first place, because Ukraine is fighting for freedom. However, I can understand if Ukraine wants to cancel Russia. That Ukraine has banished the Russian orthodox church, or that they tore down statues of Pushkin is understandable. It’s war-time in Ukraine. Every country does this sort of thing in times of war. It’s excusable, not morally correct or liberal, but still excusable.
But what Ukraine does in a state of national emergency with their kids getting kidnapped and deported to Russia, and their daughters getting raped: does not make it the obligation of the rest of us in Western Europe and America to cancel Russian art and culture, performers, speakers, any of it. And the Met’s grandstanding here, approaching bigotry, is a prime example of how leftwing elites’ fanatical progressive ideology exceeds their commitment to traditional classical liberal, liberal values. In addition it has been mortifying to me how certain historians like Timothy Snyder have sought to essentialize Russia, stamping it an inherently imperial civilization, arguing that all across Russian culture it bears the imprint of Putin’s Christian fascism. That is not a fair, and indeed it is an impudent, statement!
For the record, Leo Tolstoy was a diehard pacifist and a recluse whose greatest novel War and Peace was all about how Russia’s defeat of Napoleon, contrary to popular opinion, owes nothing to the superiority of the Russian empire. Fyodor Dostoevsky was so radically opposed to the Tsars that he was captured for plotting to overthrow the Russian regime, spent years as a political prisoner and was nearly executed for his dissent. Dostoevsky is one of my favorite writers by the way, and I can’t find a trace of Kremlin propaganda in my recollection of Notes From Underground or The Brother’s Karamazov or Crime and Punishment, of the novels I’ve read (I’m planning on The Idiot or Demons next). To be sure, Dostoevsky didn’t conceal his contempt for democratic capitalism, especially in Notes From Underground. But he was no fascist. That’s absurd. Crime and Punishment is about a guy who thought he could be Napoleon, who came to realize how foolish and horrible such adolescent conceits were. Crime and Punishment is a masterwork of anti-imperialism. Anton Chekhov was also an apolitical recluse. Certainly there are traces of mysticism and fatalism in some of these Russian artists, but that does not make them fascists! No less than it makes Beethoven or even Richard Wagner a Nazi.
There are, pardon the left-speak but it’s appropriate here, problematic aspects to all peoples. There is a streak of potentially illiberal fatalism, inwardness and grandiosity in the Russian people. There is an overweening tendency among Germans for order and discipline that, in theory, you can blame two atrocious world wars for. There is radical self-denial in Japan, from the Samurais disemboweling themselves for bringing disgrace on their families to the Kamikaze fighting tactics of the pacific theater. In America we have a paranoid and antintellectual streak. We love freedom, and we’re in love with ourselves. We live in perpetual fear of someone telling us lies and then confiscating our property, myself included. In Britain there is an obsession with class and social prestige. In France there is all this vulgar revolutionary extravagance, making people prey to absurd collectivist delusions. Every nation has its own problematic tendencies. That doesn’t make a people essentially this or that. Moreover it will surprise you the individuals who defy the worst instincts common to their own tribe. Take Thomas Mann who was a raging nationalist during World War I who emigrated to the United States by World War II, having become an uncompromising and very vocal critic of the Nazis. Or Albert Camus, who despite being a Frenchman who emerged as perhaps the most consequential philosopher of the twentieth century for the sake of individual freedom. You can’t boil a people down to their national background, stereotyping them. And you shouldn’t especially because that’s what the far right does. It is of the essence of nationalism to reduce the essential worth of the individual person to their heritage. Therefore it’s only natural that for cultural establishments to cancel Russians, they inevitably play into Tucker Carlson’s postmodern narrative that liberalism is a self-undermining ideology corrupting Christian civilization, which Vladimir Putin he perversely argues, defends.
So PEN Faulkner and the Met by silencing Russian artists and speakers do a disservice to the very cause they purport so zealously to champion. Well it’s all of a piece with the woke left’s nefarious efforts to advance their own narrow partisan interest in the name of defending “our democracy.”
I say the following as someone who is so pro-Ukraine that I think Biden, rather than fearing escalation, should rapidly deliberately seek to escalate the conflict, because he has every right and it is in everyone’s strategic interest, when the real escalator, Putin, bombs schools and hospitals, and blows up dams, and God knows what’s next, and I think Ukraine should be helped as much as possible to reclaim all their territory since before 2014, back to their 1991 borders…
Don’t cancel Russia.
Don’t cancel Russia, because in the free world, no one cancels anybody.
— Jay