I’ve seen some utter crap behaviour in my time both in real life and online from people who have temporarily lost their bloody minds because they’ve got all heated up about something or they have picked one side in a controversy and defend it beyond reason. My experience of those who are temporarily insane in this way has been that some of them become disconnected from reality and too often end up saying and doing stuff that is ridiculously over the top. I’ve especially noted when I’ve seen people overreacting to either the stuff in their personal lives, online or in the wider world that it doesn’t always lead to the best outcomes. Let’s just say that the outcomes are often not pretty.
I really worry about the potential outcomes of the cultural aspects of the fall out from the Ukraine-Russia War. The amount of hatred that is being stoked up against anything that is Russian or is of Russian origin reminds me rather too sharply of the anti-German feeling that was a feature of Britain during World War One. Back then Britons of German descent who may well have been politically opposed to the policies of German Kaiser Wilhelm II were attacked by mobs and had their property destroyed or damaged because the press had promoted the image of anybody and anything German being a part of ‘The Beastly Hun’. Interestingly this violent and intolerant anti German attitude was said to be less prevalent during World War Two and that the Mass Observation social attitudes and views surveys taken in 1940 showed sympathy to a certain extent for the German people but not the German government.
When I see stories like Cardiff Philharmonic Orchestra deciding to stop playing works by the Russian composer Tchaikovsky, I can’t help but wonder whether we are living in a time, just over a century from the end of World War One, where we have replaced the concept of ‘The Beastly Hun’ with ‘The Beastly Russian’? This decision by the CPO is stupid in lots of ways. This decision makes no distinction between the Russian government and the Russian people, it treats them both as a singular entity, where the group represents the individual and the individual the group, the very thing that people like MLK said was a bad idea. Secondly, Tchaikovsky has been dead for years. His music is nothing to do with the current European war and he worked when the Russian government and indeed Russian society was considerably different from what it is now. For example: Tchaikovsky was born when serfdom was a thing in Russia, that’s how far chronologically he is from modern Russia. He’s nothing to do with Russia now nor anything to do with the Russian government and people who should know better should start to realise that.
Thirdly I believe that the decision by the CPO to drop Tchaikovsky shows that the management there is a bunch of weak mob appeasing cowards. They caved to propaganda and the mobs that such propaganda drives to remove a cultural artefact, one that should be seen, judged and appreciated on its own merits, rather than its geographical or national origin. I appreciate how difficult it must be for the management of the CPO which is a volunteer rather than professional orchestra and one that is currently apparently in a parlous financial state, to stand up to the cancel culture types who are agitating against everything Russian, but stand up to them they should. A basic appreciation and respect for artistic freedoms should have seen them defend the inclusion of Tchaikovsky.
This is disgraceful behaviour by the CPO. It’s completely over the top. If the Israeli national orchestras can play, as they do now, the works of Richard Wagner, a notorious and vehement Jew hater and see his music not as the musical accompaniment of the Third Reich but as music that has intrinsic merit in and of itself, then why cannot the CPO do the same with Tchaikovsky?
This action by the CPO is cancel culture writ large. I hate cancel culture wherever it raises its head and no matter who promotes it or in what cause. I doubt very much that the sort of behaviour that the CPO has engaged in by banning Tchaikovsky will end well. It will merely encourage more artistic entities to purge themselves of Russian works for fear of the mob. When that happens and when films of the great dancer Nureyev, the writings of Soviet dissident Solzhenitsyn and the photography and graphic design of Rodchenko disappear into the artistic memory hole, then we will have truly as a society embraced the concept of the ‘Beastly Russian’ and we will be all the poorer for that.
Censorship is always wrong. It’s wrong when the state does it. It’s wrong when Big Tech, broadcasters and the dead tree press do it. But it is particularly wrong and self defeating for artists to censor which is what the CPO have done. Rolling back this decision by the management of the CPO is one that may do us all a favour in the long run because it will show independence of mind rather than its opposite and that is something that will benefit everyone who believes in artistic freedom.
Were there any works by Tchaikovsky in any of their programmes planned for the near future? If not then this might just be empty posturing. I’ve been listening to Mussorgsky in my car recently, I never really gave it a thought. Since reading this post I’ve had the overture to the Nutcracker playing in my head.
Yes, I agree with you totally Mr Fahrenheit on this one! But I do wonder if the cancel culture against anything Russian is not just virtue signalling but a genuine fear of attacks on staff, also a depressing thought. C.F. Sainsburys vodka? Also some of it has been overblown, some of the cancelled arts programmes have been restored for instance?
You might be correct that there is an element of fear for staff. We can see from what happens to gender critical feminists that fear of violence from groups opposed to gender critical feminism causes venues to refuse bookings by gender critical feminist groups.
Pretty sure that soon it won’t be correct to use the “R-word”.
Yes it’s getting a bit silly. I heard recently that a big Amateur Radio you tube channel got taken down. No idea at present what actually happened but I suspect that it might be along the lines of the host telling radio hams (because HF radio crosses borders very readily) that the Russian at the other end of a conversation is an ordinary person with an ordinary life and not anything to do with Putin. I can well imagine that it would only take a few fraggles putting in complaints to YT to get the guy’s channel pulled.
I don’t like vodka but, if I had some in the house, there is no way that I would commit such a stupidly pointless and empty gesture as throwing it away.
It is indeed utterly stupid.
“I’ve seen some utter crap behaviour …”.
But there is nothing crappier than the behaviour of that incompetent, lazy, ignorant, hypocritical, anti-human, misogynistic, emotionally inadequate, discriminatory (in a racist kind of way), vindictive, sadistic tyrant – the one you call the ‘Eternal One’ (EO). The only defence that ‘EO’ can offer is that ‘he’ is insane. Which, by implication, says a lot about the people who created this monstrous entity in the first place, and about those who since then continue to worship ‘him’. No wonder that only the Jews accepted him after all the others had, not unsurprisingly, totally rationally, rejected him.
I’ve not got the time for a full on theology debate but what I will say is that peoples adhere to deities that may today have a totally different image from that which the ancients had. The Bronze Age was a harsh time and that created harsh laws and harsh deities. The difference between the ancient deities and the deity of the Jews and Christians is that that there are groups of people who still follow deity of the Christians and Jews and that’s because although the words are the same about the deity the words have been reinterpretated over the millenia. Just because the ancients stoned adulterers to death doesn’t mean that I have to.
I am not discussing theology.
I am discussing jewish mythology where its “theological” component is just one, though all pervasive part, of the jewish myth. The component is designed to give the jewish mythology an authority it does not have and does not deserve.
All religions incorporate cultural myths whether they are internally generated or acquired in order to shore up authority. The Christians did it when they Christianised ancient Briton by incorporating stories of ancient pagan deities into stories about Christian saints. Come to think of it secular ideologies do much the same.
‘Censorship is always wrong’
There little more unedifying than to see those bleating that the Russians in Russia are censoring news about the war, after the anti-Russian EU (with others) has closed down RT ….
I agree with you there. It would have been better to let RT continue to operate but challenge the channel’s viewpoint in the media and elsewhere.
“Censorship is always wrong”,
except I guess when it is Jews trying to censor (shutup) anyone expressing anti-semitic views, no matter how true, or anyone even daring to hold such views, even when they are dead.
And the more opprobrium that Jews and their supporters pile onto ‘anti-semites’, the more effective they are at keeping from public view the moral bankruptcy of Judaism.
When I look around the world today I do sometimes wonder whether the moral bankruptcy is less with those who hold a moderate religious view and more so with the rabid secularists.
As for censorship. I want those who have nutty views about Judaism to have a voice even though I disagree with them. This is not only so that they can be challenged where possible but because I want to know who my opponents are, what they are saying, who they are saying it to and whether or not the speaker represents a credible threat to me and mine or whether they are just a gobshite.
I look at history and Jews have never done well in places where there is harsh censorship or a lack of liberty. Jews suffered under the Soviets (and indeed I believe some were conned by the Bolsheviks but that is subject for a future more theologically tinged article) but did well in places like the United States and in early 20th century Britain. Jews gained freedom in free nations and because of that I cannot support censorship. If I have the right to speak then surely that right also applies to everyone else whether they be sensible and thoughtful or merely a ranting wanker.
“I want those who have nutty views about Judaism to have a voice [….]”.
And I want those suffering from the dementia of judaism to have a voice.
Then I (and others) can expose the poisonous nature of their morally degenerate beliefs.
And eventually judaism (together with its fellow jewish doctrines, christianity and islam) will be thrown into the dung heap where it belongs, and there will be one less impediment to the progress of humanity.
There is nothing moderate about jewish “religious” beliefs.
Methinks that you have not come across those on the wilder shores of Progressive Judaism. Some of them are so open minded that their brains have fallen out.
“I hate cancel culture …”
That is not the view of the ‘Eternal One’ (EO) you worship. He promises to ‘cancel’ anyone who does not worship him, or dares to worship any thing else. [This is the Jewish equivalent of the muslim apostasy laws; yes, this is just one of the many muslim practices which appear in embryo in Judaism.]
In fact, EO cancelled the entire human race after Eve dared to disobey EO’s orders – a collective punishment far worse than any effected by the Nazis or the followers of any other totalitarian doctrine.
Ah but, have you forgotten that Tchaikovsky wrote the 1812 overture to celebrate the victory of the beastly Russians over the Europeans from France. And doesn’t that bring to mind anti-French propaganda of War and Peace, the novel by Russian Tolstoy?
Not to mention the symphonies by Shostakovich celebrating the struggle, and eventual (pyrrhic) victory, of the Russian people against our (current) German allies, and recorded by close friend of Putin, Valery Gergiev.
PS do you think the members of this orchestra also voted in support of the corrupt campaign to keep the UK in the “totalitarian” EU? From this, it seems they may be silly enough to have ….
But the point stands that Tchaikovsky nor any other Russian artist of the 19th century have anything to do with the current Russian government. There are probably people out there who like music by Russian composers but know nothing of the life of said composer, they like the music that’s it.
I don’t blame or condemn Russian artists from celebrating the victory in WWII or The Great Patriotic War, other nations did similar things. It might be a different issue for a Russian conductor working in a Western orchestral organisation who makes explicitly pro-Putin statements, in that case we have a contemporary individual commenting on a contemporary matter.
No idea as to how the members of the Cardiff orchestra voted in the Referendum and may not be relevant now. I understand that it was a member of the orchestra of Ukraine heritage that suggested the removal of Tchaikovsky. This orchestra is an amateur orchestra that might be more susceptible to requests to drop composers that come from inside their organisation and I wonder if the outcome would have been the same with a professional orchestra where making such a request might harm a player’s career?
I was being (more or less) totally tongue-in-cheek; myself taking the reaction to the extreme which many people have. [but you couldn’t be sure of that] I won’t bother to spell my underlying point(s) in detail. In this instance, overall, I am pretty much in agreement with you.
As an aside, it is very easy for people to condemn Russians who don’t denounce the war. They don’t have to live in Russia, (or go back there.) How many of those people are just using this as a pretext to express their underlying meanness, while “virtue signalling”? What about those who are quite happily using this war as a pretext not just to defeat Putin, but to destroy the Russian people?
Completely agree with you on he Russian thing. There are a lot of Russians who cannot speak up and cannot voice a view counter to that of their government for fear of what might happen. I also am wary of those who are targeting Russian individuals rather than the current government that the Russians live under.