Harry Potter’s author J.K. Rowling criticized Vladimir Putin after a television address during which the president of Russia said his nation is being cancelled by the West, linking it to how J.K. Rowling has faced the wrath of cancel culture due to her views and opinions on transgender community. Rowling responded to Putin’s name-drop by posting an article on Twitter which mentioned Russia’s opposition leader Alexei Navalny being incarcerated.
Rowling tweeted, “Critiques of Western cancel culture are possibly not best made by those currently slaughtering civilians for the crime of resistance, or who jail and poison their critics.” She also posted a hashtag which read, “I Stand With Ukraine”. Putin stated that Western countries love to cancel things, telling, “They canceled Rowling recently, the children’s author. Her books are published all over the world, but they canceled her just because she didn’t satisfy the demands of gender rights.”
Putin also linked cancel culture to the Nazis destroying books during the 1930s, “I’m talking about the progressive discrimination of everything to do with Russia.”
J.K. Rowling has been a controversial figure in the past few years because of her beliefs, views on transgenders and many tweets. Rowling believes changing one’s gender identity contradicts the existence of biological sex and she also denounced a bill in Scotland which would legalize and make it easier to change one’s gender. Most notably, she called out a policy in Scotland, according to which if a male prisoner identifies as a woman, then he can be placed in a women’s jail complex even if he has been convicted of crimes against women.