Cancel Culture Comes For Putin

Let’s face it — we all secretly love cancel culture

Photo by Val Do on Unsplash

Russian President Vladimir Putin is the latest victim of cancel culture. I do hope poor Vlad’s feelings aren’t too hurt.

Putin joins a long list of people who have been very, very unfairly treated just because they’re shitty and/or evil. As soon as the Russian invasion into Ukraine began, the U.S. imposed the stiffest economic sanctions the world has ever known. Plus, many private companies are voluntarily exceeding the legal requirements. (You can read more about these sanctions here, here, here and here … plus everywhere else, honestly.)

Sanctions, cancel culture, boycotts* and shunning are all closely related. All of them seek to influence an entity’s behavior without taking direct violent action. The aim is to either shame someone into better behavior, to discourage others from committing the same offense or to make it impossible for the person/company/country to function by cutting off their resources. Usually, the action is taken because the targeted entity is too powerful to be taken down forcefully, or because we want to avoid force for some reason.

The Amish are pacifists, so if an Amish person steps out of line, their leaders’ method of dealing with it never involves violence. Instead, the offending person is simply shunned. Nobody will speak to or interact in any way with the officially shunned person, ever. Not even their family members will interact with them, unless they wish to be shunned as well.

Kind of like right now, right? Putin’s only international friends are, I think, Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson. Everyone else in the world has taken extreme steps to avoid allying themselves with Putin and Russia. We don’t know exactly what’s going on between Russia and China, but it looks a little bit like China is not quite ready to take a side. (It’s like when someone you thought you were friends with suddenly starts side-stepping your invitations. China is essentially sending Russia texts that say things like, “Sorry. Work has just been so crazy lately!” 

Everyone else has been really clear about considering Putin a pariah. Partly this is because attacking your peaceful neighbor goes against nearly every company’s branding. But that’s not the only problem; plenty of other countries attack and kill people. This time is different, though, for a very simple reason. Putin is killing people in our own club.

It’s considered bad taste to mistreat downtrodden minorities struggling to make a life in the developing world, but nothing worth kicking your friend out of the club for. Wealthy westerners read a headline about the treatment of the Uighers by the Chinese and briefly put down their coffee. They think, “Oh, dear, that’s really too bad,” and then they go back to scrolling through Amazon for more cheap Chinese tchotchkes.

But Putin attacked people who live just like us: People in Ukraine were living a western lifestyle very much like that of most Americans. Their houses and cars and fashions and lifestyles look an awful lot like those of us in the U.S. or Britain or Germany or any other western country. And that has all of us in the western world asking one very scary question:

“Wait. You mean that can happen to people like us?”

Less than two weeks ago, your average Ukrainians were still doing things like getting coffee with friends, shopping for new jeans, going out to eat with their families … you know, living pretty much exactly like Americans live. Most of them dismissed the ridiculous and unthinkable idea that Putin was actually going to attack them. 

Maybe you saw this video of a Russian tank rolling through a village in Ukraine and were struck, as I was, just how much that little yellow frame house looks like one you or someone you know used to live in. Think of the little bungalow your grandma lived in. Now imagine a tank advancing down Grandma’s street, and all her neighbors running out to try to get it to stop. 

While you’re at it, imagine you hear a siren and have only moments to get yourself, your children and your pets to safety — assuming you have a safe place near you. Do you have bottled water, bedding, non-perishable food and sanitary facilities in your basement? Neither did a lot of Ukrainians. You probably read stories of people who were killed when they left a shelter to try to bring back food and water. 

I thought at first that sanctions were unlikely to do much, and maybe they won’t, but almost anything we can do to prevent World War III from spreading is worth trying. I’m heartened by developments so far … except that Putin is still, as I write this, not giving an inch.

Still, it appears Putin is surprised the world has gone against him. Up to now, the man has done whatever he wanted, and nobody has offered much pushback. You can see how he might have gotten the idea we’d continue to do nothing forever.

He simply miscalculated the dangers of attacking people in our club. He doesn’t consider any human life sacred, and when he observed how Americans have been treating Central and South American refugees and plenty of other oppressed people, he naturally thought we were of one mind with him on this. He didn’t understand that while a lot of people in this world don’t consider every life sacred, they do care about the people who look like (most of) them.

For a while, Putin was befriended by the cool kids — we even let him into the G8 until he annexed Crimea. He met the Queen of England and the Pope. It seemed like he might want to be one of us. How will he feel now, cut out of polite society forever? Does he even care, as long as everyone regards Russia as an empire to be reckoned with again?

Let’s face it, everybody secretly loves cancel culture. Liberals refuse to eat certain chicken sandwiches, rest their heads on a particular kind of shitty pillow or buy craft supplies from a place that rhymes with Sobby Jobby. Conservatives are deeply butthurt about a type of heavy-duty work pants, the Christmas designs on paper coffee cups and anybody who suggests schools teach children anything about our racist history. Not one of these campaigns has done anything but provide either anger or satisfaction to people.

So to recap: 

Canceling things we don’t like: Good, but ineffective. 

Canceling things we do like: Bad, but ineffective. 

Canceling Putin: Good, but probably ineffective, because all Putin cares about is trying to Make Russia Great Again.

Since the alternative is risking a nuclear war, let’s hope it works better than I think it will.

*Shunning and canceling culture can go too far: You may have heard of calls for Smirnoff vodka to be boycotted, but it’s not a Russian brand at all. (It’s British, and is manufactured in several countries, including the United States. Not Russia.)