Speaking at the annual meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Russian President Vladimir Putin passionately expressed his discontentment with ‘wokeness,’ Western PC culture, and advances in gay and transgender rights.
During his speech, Putin stressed that his country should adhere to its own “spiritual values and historical traditions,” while steering clear of “sociocultural disturbances” in the West.
Putin’s Problem With The West
In his Thursday remarks, Putin addressed a plethora of his qualms with Western ideologies:
- Cancel culture results in reverse discrimination against the majority in the interests of a minority. “Opposing racism is a necessary and noble thing, but the new ‘culture of abolition’ turns into ‘reverse discrimination’…Here in Russia, the absolute majority of our citizens don’t care what color a person’s skin is.”
- The notion that children are “taught that a boy can become a girl and vice versa” is monstrous and “on the verge of a crime against humanity.”
- “The obsessive emphasis on race is further dividing people when the real fighters for civil rights dreamed precisely about erasing differences and refusing to divide people by skin colour.”
Putin Has A Dream
Credit: bswise/Flickr
One of ‘the real fighters for civil rights’ Putin refers to is Martin Luther King Jr. Putin even repeated a version of King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, weaponizing it against progressive views on race, twisting King’s radical views on the evils of society into a point of view that sees any emphasis on race as dividing people.
“I asked my colleagues to find this quote from Martin Luther King, and he said, ‘I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.’ That is a true value.”
Final Thoughts
I could say that Putin’s statements are quite tone-deaf, or I could say that he doesn’t have the slightest clue on “wokeness” in the Western world. I could say a lot of things.
However, Putin, who has been accused of jailing and killing political opponents and journalists, will nonetheless continue to portray himself as a symbol of virile masculinity to Russia and the rest of the world.
