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Interestingly, Dahl himself addressed the idea that he was only anti-Israel, not anti-Semitic: he said “I am certainly anti-Israel, and I have become anti-Semit
by PhasmaFelis 4y ago
Interestingly, Dahl himself addressed the idea that he was only anti-Israel, not anti-Semitic: he said “I am certainly anti-Israel, and I have become anti-Semitic.”
It's not at all uncommon, in fact it's a cliche, for racists to carve out exceptions for "the good ones" that they know personally. That doesn't mean they're not racist.
Dahl wrote some amazing books, many of which still stand up today. (I rolled my eyes at the article trying to claim that the wild wackiness of Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator was somehow bad and uncreative.) You can acknowledge that and still acknowledge that he was also very racist.
- teddyh 4y agoIs it also common for the people who know them personally, who belong to the group in question, to defend the accused?
- PhasmaFelis 4y agoDoes it matter? At the risk of Godwinning myself, Hitler was friends with a young Jewish girl, and personally intervened to protect a Jewish man who had been his commanding officer in WWI. Obviously Dahl was nowhere near Hitler's level of hatefulness, but the point is that being kind and generous to a handful of Jews you know personally is perfectly compatible with being an anti-Semite. Especially when you also openly describe yourself as an anti-Semite. He was not a genocidal monster, but he was racist. It is not unreasonable to judge a man by his own words.
- teddyh 4y agoI though he was accused of being anti-semitic, not racist? Are antisemites racists? Or, put another way, are jews a race? I didn’t think they were, and that’s why we had a special word “antisemitism” to describe this phenomenon. Words are slippery things. I prefer to judge by actions, not words.
- PhasmaFelis 4y ago> Are antisemites racists? Or, put another way, are jews a race? They're an ethnic group, so yes. (They're also a religious group. It's confusing. But anti-Semites don't usually care much about the distinction.) > Words are slippery things. I prefer to judge by actions, not words. You don't think "I am an anti-Semite" is evidence of anti-Semitism? That seems very naive. Is it not racism until one physically attacks people?
- teddyh 4y agoPeople use words sometimes confusingly and/or provocatively. I would really prefer to hear something Roald Dahl actually did which can be considered antisemitic before I want to seriously consider him to be an antisemite, is all I’m saying.