The Russia Today (RT) television channel and the Sputnik news agency are now banned in Europe. Yes, it is censorship. But wartime censorship is “moral” – and necessary – censorship. Allowing Russian propaganda to express itself, which forbids the word “war”, which rewrites history while developing a stubborn conspiracy, reducing Ukraine to a community of neo-Nazis, is not compatible with the reality of aggression and of the Russian invasion.
On the other hand, the “bochisation” [de “boche”, terme péjoratif désignant autrefois les soldats allemands, NDLR] of the Russians that we are witnessing is proof that the cancel culture and wokism have permanently impregnated our minds. “La Poutine” – a dish consisting of cheddar fries covered in a brown sauce – is a Quebec institution. But since the Russian invasion in Ukraine, restaurants that serve Poutine have received death threats and insults – in France as in Canada. That ignorance has become the most shared characteristic is one thing, but that a disturbing number of people do not know that “poutine” is a slang word meaning “mess” or “bazaar”, revives my concern. That a Quebec restaurant wanted to “suspend” the name “Poutin” during the conflict makes matters worse.
From now on, before the text explanation, we go directly to the censorship box. Thus, the world feline federation has chosen to ban cats of Russian origin from competitions while the Philharmonie de Strasbourg – which refuses to use the words “Russian” or “Moscow” – will continue to play Stravinsky , Rachmaninoff or Prokofiev, but keeping their names silent! Meanwhile, in Milan, a lecture on Dostoyevsky by writer Paolo Nori has been cancelled. When Nori was moved by it, he heard himself answer that it was necessary “to balance the conference with Ukrainian writers”. Young Russian pianists are also excluded from Western competitions.
Russia is reduced to Vladimir Putin
Creating taboo seems to have become a global sport. In less than seventy-two hours, Russia, past and present, literary as well as artistic, scientific and political, is reduced to Vladimir Putin. It’s not even stupidity anymore, it’s perverse childishness and an admission of failure, proof that we have collectively abandoned the idea of subtlety, otherness and moderation. Essentialization has spread, reducing every human being to the haphazard assembly of their genes; every Russian is a potential Putin, every free will is erased before the overpowering of the origin of birth.
Another continent, another example of this aberrant drift. Mid-February, the New York Timeswhich since the Trump presidency has become the Pravda Progressives launched an ad campaign featuring a profile of an ecstatic woman with the caption, “Lianna is imagining Harry Potter without her creator.” the New York Times thus validates the killing of JK Rowling, victim for months of threats, on the pretext that she dared to emit a truth as true as the earth is round: biology determines sex. The “bochisation” of the Russians is part of the same delirious movement which no longer supports reality or paradox, which fantasizes about a world where the Other no longer exists except as an enemy, where strict resemblance is the norm and where science itself is sacrificed on the altar of fascistic inclusion. The irony is not to be outdone: while we hysterically glorify the geographical, ethnic and religious prison of birth, preparing the ground for irrational hatreds, we refuse with the same obtuse force, the sex of birth, which would only be an assignment (by whom? by what? how?).
That a Valery Gergiev, conductor as brilliant as he is unsympathetic, close to Putin, is singled out for his nauseating political opinions is one thing; except that banning him from all stages, when he doesn’t hold a political meeting but conducts orchestras that don’t play Putin’s military march leaves me perplexed. That Elena Kovalskaya, director of the Moscow cultural center, resigns because she refuses to receive a salary from the “assassin” Putin, or that Laurent Hilaire, director of the academic theater leaves his functions, are individual decisions guided by just principles . But that the world is no longer capable of commitments other than to throw in the trash, to look away outraged, to create a comfortable hell where nothing exists that can generate roughness, is an intellectually collapsed world.