I’m pretty certain that none of the hand-wringing ‘don’t cancel Russian culture’ opinion writers are Slavic, having enjoyed Russian fraternal love up and close as Ukraine is enjoying again or Jewish, having had their relatives chased through the snow with dogs to quote Alfie Solomon.

I seriously doubt they have read any of the classics of Russian literature since their youth. Russian grand culture is extremely chauvinistic, nationalistic and there is absolutely no place in it for people with brown skin like Mr Kenan Malik.

This guy has read it.

Can newspapers stop printing this kind of shite?

We can revile Putin’s violence in Ukraine, but we’re not at war with Russian culture

Kenan Malik

Mr Malik’s trump card is this:

The following year, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, which had relocated to Bristol, opened its 1940 concert series with a performance in which the entire second half was given over to Wagner.

As a damned by geography Pole my statement is this was a fucking stupid arrogant example of how the West, the British especially, treated their war as a gentleman’s affair in a country far away, while the Germans were murdering Poles, especially Polish Jews and starting the Final Solution with ghetto, bullet and beating. Even until 1945 and the camps were found, the true horror of the German regime was not believed, despite frantic Polish and Jewish reports. The myth of the good German still exists in Western writing, especially being revived in recent years.

Oh btw, Tank Museum, you are seriously wrong.

The Tiger Tank. Built by slaves from concentration camps to wage genocide war in Europe. Especially to kill all the Jews and subjugate the Slavs.

Back to the subject at hand:

1. During genocide war, you do not celebrate the culture of the genocider. Maybe you examine if and how the culture forms the society committing the genocide.
2. Gilbert isn’t a Russian and her book isn’t Russian culture.
3. Gilbert can choose what the fuck she does with her book. You reverse cancelling her to pressure her to put out a book she doesn’t want to? Peer fucking pressure?

If even the British establishment in the midst of an existential war with Nazi Germany could see German music as more than simply “enemy” culture, but as part of a common civilisation, surely we should be able to do the same today?

The author has no knowledge of WW2 history or distorts it, the war very much wasn’t viewed as existential in 1940 Britain. Furthermore, this disingenuous writer quotes a book which makes it very much clear that Nazi favorite Wagner wasn’t being played later in the war. Only select composers were still being played. That’s called manipulation. Wagner wasn’t being played during the Blitz. Kyiv and Kharkiv are burning today.

And the fact that the BBC was shamefully playing Wagner while Warsaw burnt is an another example of British arrogance, repeated throughout the war and then in reconstruction when Good Germans with excellent English escaped the noose they deserved. The same as thieving murdering Russian oligarchs with excellent English lawyers will come out of this war with their stolen riches, and I assume Mr Malik will write something about rule of law and presumption of innocence.

The BBC may have been an instrument of Britain’s war effort but few of even the most patriotic Britons thought it immoral to play the works of the great German classical composers.

You know who has the right to decide when the genociders culture can be celebreated again? Not you Mr Malik.

The victim of genocide.

Like my grandfather.

Fluent German speaker.

Auschwitz 169601.

Mirosław Łebkowski.

Tannhauser 1974.

I doubt he figured he would a quarter of a century later do the translation for a Wagner masterpiece, while organising his first play as an author in Auschwitz. It wasn’t Wagner he and his friends were playing in their freezing diseased terrifying barracks.

So maybe let the Ukrainians decide what’s appropriate.

Not your column, Mr Malik.

Which has had one piece on Ukraine since 2022. Despite genocide war raging. Which you only used to point out European hypocrisy about treating Ukrainians differently to Syrians.

Now you’ve balanced out that piece masquerading as support for Ukraine, with a very enthusiastic manipulative misleading piece on Wagner during World War Two.

PS In other news on the Russian culture front:

She thought she was unshockable, then two castrated Ukrainian soldiers arrived