J.K. Rowling Hits Back At Putin After He Cited Her to Claim Russia is Being ‘Canceled’

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J.K. Rowling has responded to Russian leader Vladimir Putin after he cited her in a speech condemning the West for “canceling” Russia.

“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,” Rowling wrote in a Friday tweet, adding the hashtag “IStandWithUkraine.”

Rowling also linked to a BBC article on Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most prominent Putin critic, who survived a poisoning in 2020 and is currently behind bars for “fraud and contempt of court.”

The Harry Potter author shared the tweet after Putin compared the West’s reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to the backlash Rowling faced because of her controversial views on gender identity.

“They canceled Joanne Rowling recently, the children’s author. Her books are published all over the world,” Putin said. “Just because she didn’t satisfy the demands of gender rights. Then they’re trying to cancel our country.”

“I’m talking about the progressive discrimination of everything to do with Russia,” he continued. “This trend that’s unfolding in a number of Western states with the full neglect and sometimes encouragement of Western cultures that they’re now engaging in cancel culture.”

Putin’s speech comes a month after Russia invaded Ukraine, and after Russian Foreign Intelligence Director Sergei Naryshkin had already deemed the country a victim of cancel culture. 

“The masks are off. The West isn’t simply trying to close off Russia behind a new iron curtain,” Naryshkin said, according to Washington Post reporter Paul Sonne. “This is about an attempt to ruin our government — to ‘cancel’ it, as they now say in ‘tolerant’ liberal-fascist circles.”

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