Realtime host Bill Maher criticized cancellation culture for “mixing the Russians too much with their government”, stating that if it happened in America, it would be called “racism”.
Maher, 66, took issue with “lumping everyone together” and canceling “all Russians” for invading Ukraine in Realnoe Vremya’s Saturday edition.
Do you think we are mixing the Russians too much with their government? he asked his three panellists. “It seems to me that what we are doing in this country is that everything Russian is bad and every Russian is bad. And, first of all, it’s unfair. If they weren’t white, I think we’d call it racism,” he said on the show.
“To lump everyone together – not everyone – but a lot of Russians don’t know what’s going on.”
Jury member and Echelon Insights founder Kristen Soltis Anderson, who made her twelfth appearance on the show on Saturday, agreed with Maher, saying, “This has gone too far.”
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Realnoe Vremya host Bill Maher, 66, criticized “too much Russian confusion with their government” because “a lot of Russians don’t know what’s going on.”
Maher (second from right) said he hoped Putin had someone close to Trump who had Mark Milley to go against his destructive plans.
“I don’t like all these stories about a young Russian pianist who was canceled to play with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra because he is Russian,” she continued. Anderson was referring to 20-year-old child prodigy Alexander Malofeev, who was scheduled to perform three times with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra on March 9, 10 and 13. Malofeev, who has family in Ukraine, has been open about his distaste for the Russian invasion. before the performance.
The symphony orchestra said it felt “inappropriate to host Mr. Malofeev” for a performance after several Ukrainians living in Montreal sent emails asking for Malofeev’s performances to be cancelled. The symphony also cited that it was not about his stance on the war that supported Ukrainians, but rather about promoting a Russian “cultural product”.
The Americans have also supplanted Russian vodka and have vandalized Russian restaurants and churches since the start of the war.
The second panellist, Max Brooks, agreed that abolishing everything Russian was “unreasonable” and compared this to how the world treated Germany after World War II.
“During the Second World War, we acted very wisely: we knew that the war was coming to an end, and we knew that if we punished all Germans in the way that we did after the First World War, we would drive them into a corner.
Panelist Max Brooks (left) said the world needed to get the Russians out of Putin, as it did the Germans during World War II with Hitler, in order to have a post-war plan. He also said: “If we do not stop Putin, we will condemn our children [and] our grandchildren to another century of war.” Panelist Kristen Soltis Anderson (right) said she “didn’t like the stories” that the Montreal Symphony Orchestra canceled a performance by a Russian pianist because he was from Russia.
A third panellist, Ernest Moniz, also criticized NATO for creating a crisis liaison “mechanism” with Russia, but threw it away when the second conflict began.
“So we created the story that Hitler led you astray because we knew – even if it wasn’t true in some cases – we were telling the average Nazi that you should still be running the post. So we have to think that we can’t corner the Russians as a group.
“If we can separate Putin from the Russians at all, then we will not only have a victory, we will have a post-war plan,” Brooks concluded.
A third panelist, nuclear physicist and CEO of the Energy Futures Initiative, Ernest Moniz, described how NATO and Russia had created “a new mechanism for negotiating in case of crises” before 2014. In April 2014, NATO unanimously decided to suspend cooperation with Russia in response to the annexation of Crimea – where Russian forces annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine. However, the Russia-NATO Council still exists.
“As soon as the crisis hit, we said we weren’t going to talk,” Moniz said. ‘It doesn’t make any sense.’
Maher also said he hoped Putin would have someone like Mark Milley, who worked for Trump and told the Chinese he was not going to follow Trump’s order to attack the country if that happened.
“I have to say, under Trump, Milley assured the Chinese that, ‘If this nutcase I work for gives an order, I’m not going to follow it,'” Maher said. “I would like to think that there is someone like that around Putin.”
If we don’t stop Putin, we will condemn our children. [and] our grandchildren to another century of war. – Max Brooks in real time
Brooks went on to say that the only way for “the smallest country in the world that didn’t join” the Iran nuclear deal to survive was “an atomic bomb.”
“Ukraine was born nuclear. He was born independent with a Soviet nuclear arsenal,” he said. “She only agreed to give up these nuclear weapons with the express promise that Russia would never invade. And now [Russia’s] did this.
“The Iran nuclear deal is just one of many, many nuclear deals that we have to circulate.”
Anderson mentioned Australia, which is now trying to become a larger nuclear power.
“Even a country like [Australia]to whom you used to be able to say, “Well, they’re under US protection, everything will be fine,” even they say, “We’d like to take care of our own defense a little more,” Anderson said on the show.
DECODING PUTIN’S NUCLEAR THREAT
According to Viktor Abramovich, Putin’s warning to put his nuclear forces on “high alert” is seen as only the second of four steps towards nuclear war.
Expert Pavel Podvig adds that this likely puts them on a “preliminary command” that will allow missiles to be fired on order.
But at this stage, he believed that they would only be fired if the president suddenly disappeared and enemy nuclear bombs hit Russian territory first.
David Cullen of the Nuclear Information Service likened it to British nuclear submarine commanders who were given authority by the British Prime Minister to launch missiles if London came under a nuclear attack.
Australia was worried that it would be a target for Russia if Putin tried to prove his point and scare the West into thinking that a bigger city like Perth might be next on the cards. He feared that Russia might launch a nuclear strike on Perth as a show of strength and determination, while avoiding drawing the US into a mutually assured nuclear Armageddon.
While up to half a million people have potentially died as a result of the nuclear bombing, the future effects will be limited, and the radioactive fallout will be limited to the vast desert hinterland.
However, Perth was at the top of the nuclear list in the 1980s during the Cold War, which caused hysteria across the country.
Maher took on a sadder tone when he asked, “How many times can you do this to countries, saying we’ll be there but we won’t be there?”
Brooks compared the invasion to Ukraine and the retreat of the world as “a Haile Selassie moment”. The Ethiopian emperor turned to the League of Nations in 1936 and begged them to help the country from Mussolini’s attack. Brooks said that the passivity of the League of Nations led to the emergence of new dictators such as Hitler.
“He begged them to stop the dictator Mussolini from invading his country. He said, “Today we, tomorrow you.” And the world didn’t do anything, and that gave the green light to another dictator, Adolf Hitler,” he said on the show. “If we don’t stop Putin now, he will continue.”
He went on to say that he did not suggest that America get involved in the war, since NATO countries “should never, under any circumstances, shoot at Russian troops.”
“It’s a line,” he said. “But if Ukrainians are ready to shed their blood – not only for themselves, but for the whole world – we must help our children. Because if we don’t stop Putin, we will condemn our children. [and] our grandchildren to another century of war.”