Today I Learned

I was called into this thread to give my opinion as a bona fide and official Jew. I will say this about Roald Dahl- yes, he was an antisemite. But I still grew up with his books. Even my dad, who was incredibly sensitive to antisemitism and definitely knew about Dahl could not deny that he was an amazing writer both of children's books and macabre adult fiction. I remember specifically that he gave me The Twits when I was a kid, while at my also very sensitive to antisemitism grandparents' house. I don't remember others he gave me, but I really enjoyed that one, so I remember it.

I don't know, I guess we all have the occasional intentional blind spot for these things. Sometimes people are just so talented that you have to overlook their flaws. Of course, some flaws can't be overlooked. I won't watch a Woody Allen film anymore. I won't watch the work of a pedophile.

But Roald Dahl's racism was one where didn't actually do anything to hurt Jews. As the quote says, he wasn't even pro-Hitler. So I can get past it due to his talent. He was not the real danger to my ancestors in his lifetime and he was not responsible for a genocide. On top of that, he didn't extend his bigotry to any of his novels that I ever read.

You can't say as much for H. G. Wells, who had a virulently antisemitic moment in War of the Worlds. It's considered a classic these days. And what about beloved Charles Dickens' novel Oliver Twist? I would bet that the character of Fagin caused a lot more issues with British Jews than anything Roald Dahl said or did considering that novel was and is so popular that 19 films based on it have been made, including one based on a hit Broadway musical.

Piece of shit rapist Roman Polanski made a straight remake as recently as 2005 (and that's just weird because he's Jewish). It did really well at the box office and got a lot of positive reviews.

Imagine if a book with a character that was a disgusting caricature of a black person in it who is also one of the villains of the book and they were still making movies about it within our lifetime.

Edit: Also re Oliver Twist, I hear that in the version Alec Guinness is in, he's an especially antisemitic Fagin, but I'm going to choose to never watch it and pretend that isn't true because that man was amazing. Never mind Star Wars, ever see Kind Hearts and Coronets? He plays 8 members of the same family- believably- including a woman.

I much prefer this stance to shutting down the museum. They acknowledge the issue in a way that allows people to form opinions and act in a way they are comfortable with.

don't have context as to whether he's referring to palestine or not

In 1990, during an interview with The Independent, Dahl explained that his issue with Israel began when they invaded Lebanon in 1982. "they killed 22,000 civilians when they bombed Beirut. It was very much hushed up in the newspapers because they are primarily Jewish-owned. I'm certainly anti-Israeli and I've become antisemitic in as much as that you get a Jewish person in another country like England strongly supporting Zionism. I think they should see both sides. It's the same old thing: we all know about Jews and the rest of it. There aren't any non-Jewish publishers anywhere, they control the media—jolly clever thing to do—that's why the president of the United States has to sell all this stuff to Israel."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Dahl

He doesn't need to be specifically referring Gaza when speaking about the large scale land theft and genocide of the Palestinian people perpetrated by the state of Israel. The region of Palestine was stolen, not just area that is Gaza.

Israel was created largely because powerful people in Europe wanted the Jewish people out of Europe. Its very foundations are antisemitic. These notions of a Jewish state in Palestine started to have widespread antisemitic support before WWII and immediately after WWI.

Dahl may have been the type of bigot to be antisemitic and against Zionism. They aren't directly linked hand in hand.

When an interviewer asked Maurice Sendak (of Where the Wild Things Are fame) about Dahl, his response was memorable: "The cruelty in his books is off-putting. Scary guy. I know he's very popular but what's nice about this guy? He's dead, that's what's nice about him."

Yep, he was a piece of shit in many ways.

The stories are still pretty great, though.

He was a POS, much like Lovecraft and Rowling.

The reality is that most people are terrible people, especially when we look at them years later, once the dust has settled.

(Look into what Dr. Seuss did to his first wife)