Bill Maher rips cancel culture 'lumping' Russians with Putin: If they weren't White, we'd call that 'racism'
The HBO star says 'it's not fair,' insisting many Russian people 'don't know what's going on'
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"Real Time" host Bill Maher took aim at what he claimed was the canceling of Russian citizens who have nothing to do with Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
"Do you think we're, um, lumping the Russians too much with their government?" Maher asked the show's panelists during Friday night's "Overtime" segment. "I feel like in this country what we're doing now, everything Russian is bad and every Russian is bad.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"First of all, it's not fair," Maher said. "If they weren't White, I feel like we'd call that racism, you know. To lump everybody together -- not every, I mean, a lot of the Russian people don't know what's going on."
Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Associated Press)
GOP pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson agreed, citing how Russian pianist Alexander Malofeev had his concerts in Canada canceled.
"There is a way that this has gone way too far," Anderson said.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}‘We crafted the narrative’
"Also strategically, it's unwise," author Max Brooks jumped in. "Because what we were very smart about doing in World War II is, we knew the war was going to come to an end. And we knew that if we punished all Germans the way we did after World War I, we would back them into a corner. So we crafted the narrative that ‘You Germans are led astray by Hitler,’ because we knew, even if in some cases it wasn't true, you know, we said to the average Nazi, you still got to run the post office.'
"So we have to think, we cannot back the Russians as an entire group into a corner. If we can separate Putin from the Russians in general, then we don't only have a victory, we have a post-war plan," added Brooks, 49, the son of comedic filmmaker Mel Brooks and the late actress Anne Bancroft.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"We cannot back the Russians as an entire group into a corner. If we can separate Putin from the Russians in general, then we don't only have a victory, we have a post-war plan."
Recent weeks have brought reports of seeming retaliation against Russians because of Putin's actions. Russian restaurants and churches being vandalized in North America, the Metropolitan Opera dropped famed Russian soprano Anna Netrebko after 20 years, a Russian Formula 1 driver was fired by his racing team, a U.K. tour of the Russian State Ballet of Siberia was canceled and Russian athletes were barred from competing at this year's Paralympic Games in Beijing.
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Russian soprano Anna Netrebko. (Associated Press)
A North Carolina deli is reportedly swapping out Russian dressing from its Reuben sandwich, using Ukrainian dressing instead.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Even Russian-bred cats have been banned by the International Cat Federation from participating in the FIFe show.
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Michael McFaul, the former Obama-era U.S. ambassador to Russia, declared on Twitter, "There are no more ‘innocent’ ‘neutral’ Russians anymore," saying they must declare they "support or oppose this war."