The esteemed Russian conductor was fired because he would not publicly condemn Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine. Rotterdam, Vienna, Carnegie Hall also let him go.
Valery Gergiev, Mariinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg, Russia, January 7, 2014. (Kremlin/Wikimedia Commons)
No Freedom of Silence
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium New
Valery Gergiev, the conductor of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, was fired for privately refusing to denounce Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine. It is not a freedom of speech issue as he was not sacked for something he said, but for what he would not say.
Gergiev, who led the orchestra since 2015, made no public announcement at all regarding the war. But that evidently was not good enough for many in Munich’s classical music community. Some of his concerts had been cancelled in the past week and he was made to resign from honorary posts for not speaking out about the intervention.
His manager, Marcus Felsner, dropped Gergiev because he supported Putin. Felsner said in a statement:
“In the light of the criminal war waged by the Russian regime against the democratic and independent nation of Ukraine, and against the European open society as a whole, it has become impossible for us, and clearly unwelcome, to defend the interests of Maestro Gergiev.”
Felsner told The Guardian that dropping Gergiev was “the saddest day of my professional life.” He called Gergiev “the greatest conductor alive and an extraordinary human being with a profound sense of decency,” but he was unable to “publicly end his long-expressed support for a regime that has come to commit such crimes.”
After the pressure mounted, Munich Mayor Dieter Reiter gave Gergiev an ultimatum. After Gergiev refused to answer by Monday, Reiter said he had no choice but to dismiss him. “I had expected him to rethink and revise his very positive assessment of the Russian leader,” Reiter said in a news release. “After this didn’t occur, the only option is the immediate severance of ties.”
Gergiev has yet to say a word about the military action. He was not fired for publicly supporting Putin and the war, but because when goaded he remained silent rather than give in to the pressure to utter something he clearly did not believe.
A friend of Putin’s, Gergiev was the artistic director of the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg for 27 years before leaving for Munich. In 2013, Putin honored him as a “Hero of Labor.”
Munich is not the only orchestra that has punished Gergiev for his views.
From 1995 to 2008 he was lead conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, but it told him he would be dropped from its September festival if he did not denounce Putin. La Scala in Milan wrote to Gergiev asking him to declare support for a peaceful settlement in Ukraine or he would not be able to finish his engagement conducting Tchaikovsky‘s The Queen of Spades.
Carnegie Hall in New York canceled two May performances of Gergiev conducting the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra. He had been the principal guest conductor of the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1997.
The Vienna Philharmonic also pulled Gergiev from a five-city U.S. concert in the tour. Here is Gergiev conducting a victory concert after ISIS was defeated in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra:
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and numerous other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @unjoe
What Putin actually said was that for the Russian people the collapse of the USSR was a major disaster of the 20th century.
Thank you Mr. Lauria.
Oh, and by the way: Mr. Lauria, the YouTube video you posted a link to “is not available in your country” …
That’s because it is an RT video and RT’s YouTube channel is intermittently being shut down in the censorship war, depending on where you are.
He will be working again soon as this whole anti-Russian mess will clear soon. Once Russia has finished it’s cleanup of the Ukraine, the west will be forced to accept the terms dictated by Putin and every sanction will be dropped because the west will be desperate for Russian products.
It’s the era of the “take”. Everybody has to have one, and if you don’t one will be assigned to you. Usually not to your benefit. I don’t have much hope that humanity will wise up.
Frankly, if I read another person lamenting the audacity of invasions and the horrible regimes that commit them, I might have a psychotic break. Every time someone says that they “can’t in good conscience” continue a relationship with so-and-so, I want to say “No, no! Stop right there. You can’t in good conscience is all you need to say because you LITERALLY have NO CONSCIENCE.” Gah.
Thanks for your work, Joe, and everyone else who contributes.
The world has gone insane.
And you thought Germany would never change . . .
Musically, I am pretty much a philistine, I never heard of Valery Gergiev, but I know Anna Netrebko, an astonishing singer and actress — opera combining music and drama. Anna Netrebko said that she is against the war, but did not personally condemn her President, so she had to go from Zurich Opera and the West in general. The article I am linking gloats at length, complete with analogies with Nazi Germany and additional thought crimes of the “exiled” starts:
“Mr. Gergiev, who has repeatedly and explicitly worked as a government propagandist, leading battlefield concerts in South Ossetia, a breakaway region of Georgia, in 2008, and in Palmyra after that Syrian site was retaken by Syrian and Russian forces in 2016. In Ossetia, he even led Shostakovich’s “Leningrad” Symphony, completed during the German siege of that city in World War II and as charged a musical memorial as there is to Russian suffering.”
Liberation of Palmyra from ISIS fanatics who devastated Roman ruins is bad.
Mourning victims of the massacre (massive shelling) that started 2008 war is bad.
At par with performing for the Nazi regime.
hxxps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sleep_of_Reason_Produces_Monsters
hxxps://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/02/arts/music/ukraine-putin-valery-gergiev-anna-netrebko.html
I suppose there is such a thing as “thought-crime” after all. I honestly thought our species were more sophisticated than this.
As a child many decades ago I learned the invaluable contribution Russia had made, still makes, to performing arts.
Their classical ballet, orchestral, opera institutions have a dedication that rises above most others I believe.
It was a thrill to see the Bolshoi perform Swan Lake in Montreal over 60 years ago.
Gergiev is one of the masters of classical orchestral music today, perhaps THE master.
The performances he conducted with the gifted pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii are some of the best I’ve heard (I rely a lot on youTube)
hxxps://youtu.be/Bj_DgWSI5ZM
It’s tragic that he is another victim of the West’s bullhead views of foreign policy that will surely not end well unless wiser heads, like Jack Matlock’s stand up and take some responsibility if they dare in this toxic environment.
I’ve spent the last week fending off my whole family defending Putin by understanding his actions. Over decades he’s tried to befriend America to no avail. Everything he says, every hand he extends is rudely slapped down without a second of consideration. The Monroe Doctrine is now on steroids and includes the Wolfowitz/Bush Doctrine which means not only does the U.S. control the southern hemisphere, but the entire world, by absolute right. We are the only superpower that rules all (World Order) and no one can ever be allowed to oust us from that pentacle. We are the country that has illegally warred (decades!) against sovereign countries and murdered millions of innocent people and pulled off endless illegal coups and yet has the gall to criticize Putin who gave every opportunity to diplomatically end the crisis before it began. Censorship is rampant; apparently, the US, et.al., lose all memories of McCarthyism and past errors regarding censorship and ostracization of anyone who disagrees. It’s odd that Israel is giving support to a Nazi-run country (the Azov Battalion, Svoboda, the Right Sector and followers of Fascist Stefan Banders that Hillary Clinton, Victoria Nuland, Joe Biden, Barack Obama installed in Ukraine in 2014) whose military want all Jews dead. Children are extremely trained in military camps by Nazis. This article was written in 2015 right after our bloody coup:
“Ukraine’s “Neo-Nazi Summer Camp. Military Training for Young Children”
You can find it online. It’s shocking. The U.S. did that. I suggest our idiotic government listen to Putin for once. Disgusting how the UN walked out on Sergei Lavrov, the most intelligent foreign minister in the world.
“He was not fired for publicly supporting Putin and the war, but because when goaded he remained silent rather than give in to the pressure to utter something he clearly did not believe.”
Deplatforming and turning into social pariahs those with outspoken contrarian views is certainly authoritarian, but this goes beyond even that. It is totalitarian hypocrisy by those proclaiming themselves to be a vanguard of the liberal-democratic “free world,” employing facile misreadings of a Popperian “paradox of intolerance” taken to their logical extreme (ostensibly limited authoritarianism to combat purportedly totalitarian ideologies and viewpoints seamlessly quickly devolving into totalitarianism to defeat purportedly totalitarian ideologies and viewpoints).
“You must love Big Brother. It is not enough to obey him: you must love him.”
Good for you Munich! Russian Conductor Semyon Bychkov came out shortly after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and issued a statement critical of the Russian government that really said it best, ‘Silence in the face of evil becomes its accomplice and ends up becoming its equal. Russian aggression in Ukraine brings us to what my generation hoped would never happen again: War,’ Bychkov said. ‘One has to be demented to refer to the collapse of the Soviet Union as the greatest tragedy of the 20th century, which is how Putin defined it, rather than rejoice at the fact that it happened without bloodshed and brought an end to the kidnapping of many nations in addition to Russia itself.’
THANK YOU SEMYON BYCHKOV!!
Looking at the Wikipedia article on him, I discover that he emigrated from the Soviet Union to the USA as a 23-year-0ld political dissident, and has resided in the USA for over 45 years since then. So he should really be called “Russian-American”. I think.
Were you silent in the face of the evil done to 300 Russians killed by Chechen terrorists in Beslan in 2004? When Gergiev, who is a great humanitarian, raised money for the victims’ families (half of them were children) and denounced any acts of retaliation? Were you silent in the face of the evil done to the Russian speakers of Eastern Ukraine when approximately 6000 of them (UN statistics) were killed by Ukrainian forces? You probably were. But all you know is the emotional hype of your media masters. PS You got the quote about the Soviet Union all wrong and Putin is less communist than half the people on Bidet’s staff
Were you silent in the face of the evil endured by Russia when 300 people were killed, half of them children, by Chechen terorists in 2004 and Gergiev raised money for their families and implored Russians not to retaliate against Muslims? Were you silent when 6000 Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine were killed in the past half decade by Ukrainian forces, a number verified by the UN? And the Soviet Union quote from Putin is incorrect.
I don’t feel sorry for him at all. He is a dictator and an autocrat. He was responsible for the firing of Altynai Asylmuratova, one of the greatest post-war Russian ballerinas, from her teaching post at the Vangana Academy. This humiliation forced her to return to her native Kazakhstan and virtually banned her from her tole as mistress of the (then) arguably greatest ballet teaching school in the world. Now is is getting a taste of him own medicine and I am delighted!
This seems to be a smear. First, no clear role of Gergiev, second, nothing clear that the change at Vangana had a character of “humiliation”, “ban” or “exile” (very prestigious position in new Kazakhstan capital, she was probably quite aggressively recruited), even less clear that she was replaced by a “convenient person”.
Dear David Johnson,
Yes, there is strong evidence that Gergiev is responsible for ruining Altynai Asylmuratova career in Russia and a lot worse. Based on Gergeiv’s statements, it is clear he looks down on ballet as a whole. I would go so far as to say that Gergiev is one of Putin’s oligarchs and that is why he has supported all of Putin’s actions. Putin has made Gergiev so powerful in classical music in Russia that he has become dictator of musical life in Russia. There was an excellent article about this in Dance Magazine by Wendy Perron titled “Will Gergiev Destroy Russian Ballet?” on March 7, 2017.
You are entirely full of BS, I am sorry
Kulturkammer practices are here again.
I just verbally shared this info with someone who gets his news exclusively from the legacy media. His response was that it is too outrageous to believe. And he’ll believe it only if he sees this in the legacy media (i.e. the media of Saddam’s WMD, Russian collusion, etc.).
Well, you could point him towards the well publicized similar conduct of most domestic and international sporting organizations. The NHL is the latest to cut ties with Russia – including any future activity:
hxxps://twitter.com/PR_NHL/status/1498393869188313097?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1498393869188313097%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nbcsports.com%2Fchicago%2Fblackhawks%2Fnhl-suspends-business-relationships-russia-amid-ukraine-invasion
How about USAToday? Main stream enough? It’s hockey again but here you go:
hxxps://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nhl/2022/03/02/ccm-hockey-no-longer-use-alex-ovechkin-other-russians-marketing/9344016002/
hxps://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nhl/capitals/2022/02/28/alex-ovechkin-vladimir-putin-capitals-star-support-russian-president/6973283001/
And I believe EA games is literally just erasing Russian sports stars and teams from its games. hxxps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-02/electronic-arts-removes-russian-teams-from-fifa-nhl-games
It’s scary.
Tell him that all the German MSM have been full of this story, and it has also received international coverage in “legacy media”. Perhaps he will claim these are all Putin-lovers….
I have not seen the Saudi, UAE, US and UK thrown out of Fifa or olympics becasue of their aggressive destruction of Yemeni people and their sovereign country. Neither have all Nato members thrownout of these bodies for destroying Libya or Iraq orSyria, all sovereign nations. Seems like we are very selective in our outrage, which is the very cause of this conflict.
Well said. The Western hypocrisy stinks to high heaven (or hell)
This feels like the fake news machine come full circle to its roots. Today’s petty Russophobia so vividly recalls the first work of the infamous Edward Bernays and the Creel Committee, duplicating the puerile Germanophobia of the Great War, when German-language books were taken off shelves, loyal American children banished their evil dachshunds, and sauerkraut became “liberty cabbage.” And the Hunnish brute out to enslave the world was none other than Queen Victoria’s devoted grandson Wilhelm, who had just been celebrated worldwide on the 25th anniversary of his reign in 1913 as the prince who saved the peace of Europe. Now we are back where it all began, small-minded smears about the reborn Hitler and his henchmen, or whatever the title of today’s Two Minute Hate might be decided upon.
An investigation of Ukrainian corruption impacting the United States is in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s new series of exposés of how a Ukrainian oligarch laundered dirty money in Cleveland skyscrapers and Ohio steel mills, bankrupting the latter and costing many American jobs. His name is Ihor Kolomoisky, and he is the man who bankrolled the campaign of the compliant puppet who is enjoying (not so much!) his last few days reprising his sitcom role as President of Ukraine. The series starts at hxxps://www.post-gazette.com/news/crime-courts/2022/02/20/Ihor-Kolomoisky-US-banks-warren-ohio-steel-plant-ukraine/stories/202202200063
Interesting comment. I had forgotten that Liberty Cabbage was the precursor to Freedom Fries. I guess Russian salad dressing (which anyway doesn’t exist in Russia) will become Democracy Dip or something similar. The current demonization of Russian people and culture these days sure resembles the demonization of the Germans in the first World War.
In any event, Putin’s brutal gamble in Ukraine sure has been a major gift for all the neocons and Russiagaters – from Anne Applebaum to Jennifer Rubin to William Kristol – who are coming out of the woodwork to say that they were right all along, “we told you so” etc., even though they were consistently wrong, actually helping create the problem, not the solution.
Zelinsky said in a speech at the Munich Security Conference on Feb. 19 that there should be talks about modifying or abolishing the Budapest Memorandum, under which Ukraine renounced its nuclear weapons. No wonder Russia attacked Ukraine and occupied Chernobyl within a week.
I see from those very interesting articles that Deutsche Bank helped launder billions stolen from a leading Ukrainian bank into the USA to buy up industrial plants and commerical buildings. I wonder if that has anything to do at a secondary level with the US and German governments’ frantic support for the Zelensky government? Certainly Biden was involved in looting the Ukrainian economy, and Scholz is known to aid big-business criminals.
How does blacklisting Russian artists differ from blacklisting American artists during the McCarthy era?
It doesn’t differ. We’ve gone full McCarthy.
Arthur Miller would have a field day.
“The Crucible’ would have a sequel, perhaps by a different name but it would share the great insights of Miller.
It doesn’t.
American style “democracy” is rapidly approaching old German style fascism. The Azov and the Svobodas who Victoria Nuland (under the watchful eyes of Obama, Biden, & Hillary) made the heroes of her Ukraine regime coup in 2014 have taken over the government with their new version of Nazism.
Biden’s oligarchical son Hunter probably set this up with Papa during his stay in Kiev. That also introduced Hunter to how corruption works. Now, with his non-negotiable negotiations with Putin, Father Joe has spent 8 years figuring out how to corner the Russians and like anyone cornered you can count on a violent reaction.
So our Democrat President backs those who would kill all Jews and LGBTs. Where did my America go?
Imagine the media reaction if a world renowned US citizen denounced Biden for his warmongering and NUMEROUS policies, both domestically and abroad, that are directly responsible for the deaths and subjugation of millions? I believe the word “traitor” would be thrown around a lot
Compelled speech fits an autocracy not a democracy. I’m confused, which one are we?
RT now banned in Britain and not even mentioned as a news item!
You’re absolutely right if you don’t follow the TYRANNY of governments you will be arrested. Democracy requires FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION!
The Germans are sending weapons to kill Russians. Do the Germans think the Russians have forgotten who killed 25 million Soviet citizens just a handful of decades ago?
The German brain has been taken over by the US parasites, who have ordered Germany to commit suicide.
Welcome to the Fourth Reich! Germany thinks it has finally overcome its “Vietnam” moment and can embrace Nazism again. How mistaken they are. In reality it is their seppuku moment. As Michael Hudson has said, “America defeats Germany for the Third Time on a Century”
hxxps://thesaker.is/america-defeats-germany-for-the-third-time-in-a-century-the-mic-ogam-and-fire-sectors-conquer-nato/
I have a soft corner in my heart for Germany. Sad, so sad …..
Exactly. But don’t forget that on the anniversary of the end of WWII, the Russians were not even invited to commemoration ceremonies in Germany. That’s appalling considering that without the Soviet Union, the Allies would very likely have lost the war.
The hypocrisy of the West is reprehensible. Remember the moving concert that President Putin sponsored in Palmyra Syria during the war against ISIS in which Valery Gergiev conducted. The sonorous tones of Bach’s “Chaconne” ringing out in the ruins of Palmyra gave such a beautiful testament to the true nature of mankind. This is the way to replace the sirens of war with the love of mankind.
hxxps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9b0hFIf4Zaw
This is EXACTLY what the German Nazis did during WWII, in the countries they occupied, or at least in Holland.
They instated a so called “Kulturkammer” (Ministry of Culture local to that country), that demanded of every author, every person active in Culture, to sign a declaration of allegiance to the (German) government.
Those that refused were imprisoned, some officially taken as “hostage”.
I recall when it was the Nazis and Stalinist who engaged in conduct such as this, which we in the “Liberal” world found indefensible, but which, during the past five years, has become the norm among United States’ culture warriors. What does that say about them, and what does it say about those of us who do not criticize and reject them? Never again! Yeah, right!
Reminiscent of Hitler’s Nazi Germany…all against Jews.
What a bunch of infantile hypocrites, I second the above comment. I hope eventually this mass formation psychosis exhibited by the West blows over, but it certainly doesn’t say much for rational thinking of western based humans. Gergiev is a great orchestral conductor, what an age we’re living through!
You are free to express your opinion but only if it matches mine…Becoming quite clear that the Western “Empire” is declining.
Something very dangerous is going on here – there is really a wartime hysteria where individual, human rights and values such as tolerance – which one likes to associate with the West – are being cast aside in favor of a witchhunt against a specific national culture and population.
The brutal invasion by Russia of Ukraine deserves condemnation, but why penalize individual Russian citizens like musicians or athletes who had nothing to do with the invasion of Ukraine and are just doing their job?
In the case of a Gergiev or Netrebko, if one doesn’t like the political associations or views, don’t go to their concerts and don’t buy their recordings – that’s one’s perfect right – boycott them economically. But requiring some kind of loyalty oath in order to be allowed to work is rank McCarthyism.
Some might say that because Ukrainian musicians and athletes can’t perform these days, Russians shouldn’t either, but that’s really besides the point. I have the strongest sympathy for the Ukrainian sportsmen and artists, who should be given every extra support at this time. But subjecting Russian musicians and athletes to collective punishment isn’t worthy of a civilized society.
There never was any condemnation, or sanctions for that matter, while the US attacked Iraq, Korea, Vietnam, etc. etc. etc. Two wrongs don’t make a right but…the ‘other side’ of this should not be buried.
I have not seen the Saudi, UAE, US and UK thrown out of Fifa or olympics becasue of their aggressive destruction of Yemeni people and their sovereign country. Neither have all Nato members thrownout of these bodies for destroying Libya or Iraq orSyria, all sovereign nations. Seems like we are very selective in our outrage, which is the very cause of this conflict.
It’s time to re-evaluate which societies in the world are civilized.
West has proved its capability to do again the atrocities of Germany during ww2. It all begins by demonization of certain group. The hypocricy of the West is unbelievable. Nazis must be laughing in their graves.
Ukraine’s National Guard Azov Battalion uses Nazi insignia. Any plans to ostracize the Ukrainian government for its sizeable Nazi element?
hxxps://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2022/02/GettyImages-1229073971-azov-regiment-ukrainian-army-nationalist.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&q=90&fit=crop&w=3000&h=1500
hxxps://www.sott.net/article/464999-Greek-in-Mariupol-on-Ukraines-neo-Nazi-Azov-Battalion-The-fascists-would-kill-me-they-wont-let-us-leave-the-city
Management group Marcus Felsner (in Munich, for all places), any ideas about the Nazi regime in Ukraine established by Nuland-Kagan from the Kagans’ clan of warmongers?
Zelensky’s call for ‘anyone to come help defend Ukraine’ is going to attract SO MANY neo-Nazi types, radical fringe groups,
and assorted others who will become very problematic.
Ukraine is already the centre for such people and groups. They will likely increase in size, influence and violence against so-called Untermenschen such as Jewish, non-white and LGBT+ people. I recommend this 2019 piece by Lev Golinkin in The Nation which began:
“Five years ago, Ukraine’s Maidan uprising ousted President Viktor Yanukovych, to the cheers and support of the West. Politicians and analysts in the United States and Europe not only celebrated the uprising as a triumph of democracy, but denied reports of Maidan’s ultranationalism, smearing those who warned about the dark side of the uprising as Moscow puppets and useful idiots. Freedom was on the march in Ukraine.
Today, increasing reports of far-right violence, ultranationalism and erosion of basic freedoms are giving the lie to the West’s initial euphoria. There are neo-Nazi pogroms against the Roma, rampant attacks on feminists and LGBT groups, book bans, and state-sponsored glorification of Nazi collaborators.
These stories of Ukraine’s dark nationalism aren’t coming out of Moscow; they’re being filed by Western media, including US-funded Radio Free Europe (RFE); Jewish organizations such as the World Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal Center; and watchdogs like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Freedom House, which issued a joint report warning that Kiev is losing the monopoly on the use of force in the country as far-right gangs operate with impunity.
Five years after Maidan, the beacon of democracy is looking more like a torchlight march.”
hxxps://www.thenation.com/article/archive/neo-nazis-far-right-ukraine/
Remarkable the hypocrisy that is typically found in “enlightened” Western democracies. Who was forced to resign for not condemning the US’s illegal invasion of Iraq, for fomenting the Ukrainian coup in 2014, for its activities in Syria and Libya, and about 70 other acts of overt and covert meddling over the decades to undermine or overthrow the governments of sovereign nations? Perhaps that should have been a priority by those who claim to stand up for democracy and rule of law. Quiet as a mouse. But here they are now, puffed up with their partisan self-righteousness. I don’t know if America invented the term “regime change” but it brandishes it as if it did. Is this not
a badge of pure, self-serving hypocrisy..?
In any case, no consequences for these American acts of aggression on other nations. Hypocrisy is truly one of the foulest acts with the US as the poster child for this sort of hypocrisy. And the people and leaders who support it are fouler still.
Thanks Mgr. I agree and suspect that this Everest of Hypocrisy cannot be reversed. The “puffed-up” crowd have been very successful at achieving mass support for Ukrainian neo-Fascists. Their methods are world-class. Now in an ultra-woke move the Germans demonstrate that one must genuflect to the approved narrative or endure exile. Our pluralist societies are no more. The thought police define acceptable opinion. They will be outside my door next; if not today then soon. But inside my private space I can know that democracy and the rule of law are dead and adjust my behavior to reflect the facts. I’m busily doing that right now. Everyone can.
This seems beyond hypocrisy, it seems like fanaticism that approaches madness, possibly insincere. Some proceed from conviction, some from fear, the purge of those who do not follow “Western unity” is accelerating.
I join your lament.
And of course, none of these hypocrites demanded that British musicians denounce their government’s actions any time in the last 20 years, or British, French, Italian etc. musicians in the last 10 years, either.
But as the ancient Romans said, “Quod licet Iovis, non licet bovis”…