In the contemporary global landscape, the wholesale “cancellation” of entire national cultures follows geopolitical conflict. As interstate confrontation is no longer restricted to the military and political spheres, innocent individuals find themselves swept up in the tide of great power rivalry as they face condemnation, accusations, and enduring suspicion for the crime of belonging to the “wrong” culture, writes Oleg Barabanov, Valdai Club Programme Director.
In contemporary world politics, a geopolitical divide between different groups of states is clearly taking shape. Owing to acute regional conflicts—into which many countries are directly or indirectly drawn—this divide continues to deepen. One can quite reasonably anticipate a further escalation of these contradictions.
A defining feature of modern conflicts has been the active use of the mental, humanitarian, and cultural dimensions as a new kind of weapon. What we are witnessing is a form of the “weaponisation” of culture. This manifests itself in attempts to dehumanise entire societies of geopolitical adversaries, in the demonisation of everyone and everything associated with them. Russia has become one of the targets of such an approach. Similar patterns of demonisation—albeit perhaps on a smaller scale—can also be observed in conflicts in other regions of the world, including the Middle East, and Africa.
Humanitarian and cultural ties between societies and individuals have been taken hostage by this approach. The “cancellation of culture” on geopolitical grounds has, regrettably, become a fairly widespread phenomenon. This includes, in particular, the victimisation of writers, artists, and composers of the past, whose supposed “guilt” today is reduced to the fact that they were citizens of the “wrong” country. This directly affects contemporary cultural and humanitarian exchanges as well—in education, sport, the arts, and civic initiatives. Quite often, for politicised reasons, such exchanges are either accompanied by media scandals, or disrupted and cancelled altogether.
The same applies to participants in international cultural events themselves. If they decide to engage in a project in a country on the other side of the geopolitical divide, they are often stigmatised at home—or across their broader alliance of countries—subjected to political persecution, and exposed to that very same “cancel culture”. An even larger number of cultural figures, understanding this and fearing the consequences, resort to self-censorship and deliberately limit their contacts with the other side—even when they personally harbour no grievances whatsoever.
To a somewhat lesser extent, similar pressure may also be exerted on students who choose to study at universities on the opposing geopolitical side. They, too, become hostages of this situation. They are warned that they won’t be able to find employment at home after graduating from a “wrong” university, and are sometimes even accused of forming a nascent “fifth column” of the adversary. This presumption of guilt extends not only to current students, but also to graduates of universities in “wrong” countries, who completed their studies long ago, perhaps in entirely different geopolitical eras. They may be accused of being “sleeper agents” of the same adversary. In some cases, outright purges targeting graduates from “wrong” educational institutions occur across entire sectors of public life.
The standard argument invoked in such accusations is that culture serves as an instrument—or even a weapon—of the adversary’s propaganda. Therefore, it is argued, its spread must be firmly obstructed. In this way, culture is directly linked to the practices of so-called “cognitive warfare” or “mental warfare”. One may choose different labels, but the essence remains unchanged. It is worth noting that only a few years ago, such terminology was often dismissed as bordering on conspiratorial thinking, at best provoking a smile. Today, however, this approach is increasingly becoming common practice amid genuine geopolitical confrontation.
Accusations of “weaponising” culture become the natural continuation of this logic. This carries profoundly negative consequences—not only in the present context of a sharply divided world, but also, inevitably, for future generations.
The Valdai Discussion Club was established in 2004. It is named after Lake Valdai, which is located close to Veliky Novgorod, where the Club’s first meeting took place.
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