Why Putin name-checked J.K. Rowling
The gay panic playbook It would be easy to start this newsletter by commenting on how odd it was that Putin took time out of a televised address, in the midst of a war, to complain that the West was being too mean to J.K.
Rowling. During a speech on Friday, he claimed that Western elites had “canceled” the Harry Potter author because she “did not please fans of so-called gender freedoms.” (In fact, though Rowling’s views have led many to accuse her of transphobia, her career is just fine.) But the truth is that I don’t think it was odd at all.
Putin’s claim was just the latest minor addition to a yearslong pattern of scaremongering politics. For the past decade, as he has carried out an authoritarian crackdown on Russians’ political rights and freedoms and concentrated power in his own hands, he has also repeatedly claimed that shadowy Western elites are trying to destroy traditional Russian family values, impose gay ideology on unsuspecting Russian children, or even subject children to sexual abuse.
Taken together, Putin’s message has been clear: Without him, Russia’s traditional values would be erased, and Russian children would be in danger.
