Cancelled

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Perhaps the time has come for Vladimir Putin to go on Joe Rogan’s
podcast, because Russia has been canceled.

Following the invasion of Ukraine, governments and companies around the
world have distanced themselves from Russia and its citizens. “The West
is not just trying to surround Russia with a new Iron Curtain,” its
director of the Foreign Intelligence Service, Sergey Naryshkin, said
last week. “We are talking about attempts to destroy our state—its
‘cancellation,’ as it is now customary to say in a ‘tolerant’
liberal-fascist environment.” The theme was echoed in the United States.

“Russia is now being canceled,” the former Trump official Monica Crowley
said on Fox News. “The West is trying to deplatform and debank Russia,”
far-right Arizona State Senator Wendy Rogers declared on Twitter. “This
is just as wrong as invading Ukraine.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/03/russia-ukraine-war-cancel-putin-culture-war/626978/

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The idea of the decadent, snowflake, cancel-culture-obsessed
West—contrasted with the traditional values of Mother Russia and its
strongman leader—has become a staple of Kremlin propaganda. Putin has
warned about “infertile and genderless” Europe, a continent whose
tolerance of same-sex couples and men wearing mascara is presented as
evidence of terminal decline. The theme has been picked up by the
American right, with the former Trump adviser Steve Bannon praising
Putin as “anti-woke” mere hours before the invasion of Ukraine. This
idea that wokeness equals weakness is wishful thinking. In a real war,
your views on pronoun usage matter far less than whether you can
maintain your supply lines or achieve air superiority.

хахахаха

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But the idea of Putin’s “cancellation” shouldn’t be consigned to the
slop bucket of public discourse, along with the other arguments caused
by bored, anxious onlookers milling about online. After all, the reason
I have voiced concerns over hair-trigger shamings and sackings is
precisely because those actions are so powerful. Cancellation works.
Cancellation hurts. And therefore, cancellation should be saved for the
very worst among us—those who commit violent crimes, incite others to
violence, or build careers on preaching hatred against minority groups.
The atrocities of which Putin’s troops are accused in Ukraine exceed
that threshold. There is a difference, it turns out, between the
hyperbolic invocation of “violence” on Twitter and literal violence
itself.[]

The ancient Greeks understood the power of creating outcasts. Athenians
had a range of punishments available to them that would make even a
southern Republican governor queasy, including death by exposure or
being thrown into a chasm. But ostracism, or 10 years of exile, was
considered so serious that it required a public vote, in which
offenders’ names were written on ostraka—shards of leftover pottery. The
toll of banishment is evident to modern researchers too.

A 2003 study found that the effects of being ostracized even show up on
MRIs. “Being the target of ostracism activates brain regions associated
with pain, threatens fundamental needs, worsens mood and causes behavior
changes,” note the authors of one psychology textbook. Ostracism is a
feeling from which no amount of money or privilege can insulate you.[]

When a Russian spymaster complains about his country’s cancellation, our
response should not be to laugh at an idiot confusing a culture war and
a real one. Instead, we should recognize that economic and social
isolation is a powerful weapon, and resolve to use it with the same
restraint as any other weapon.