TIL that his museum says that "Roald Dahl’s racism is undeniable and indelible"
TIL that his museum says that "Roald Dahl’s racism is undeniable and indelible"
This is the first I've heard of it, but here's one of his infamous quotes:
"There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity, maybe it’s a kind of lack of generosity towards non-Jews.
I mean, there’s always a reason why anti-anything crops up anywhere; even a stinker like Hitler didn’t just pick on them for no reason.”
His other quotes tend to be condemnation about specifically Israeli zionism and barbaric murder, but i don't have context as to whether he's referring to palestine or not. Some people might have more sympathy for these statements these days, but a lot of his other quotes have to do with Jews controlling money and media, less defensible prejudice.
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"There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity, maybe it’s a kind of lack of generosity towards non-Jews.
Taken out of context, this is literally anti-semitism though, not racism. Thereby maybe not the best quote to underline the post title.
Antisemitism is racism lad
There are asian jews, black jews, white jews, etc. So, nah, you can't just lump antisemitism into racism. That's lazy and requires little nuance
But special racism for white people apparently.
No need for their own name of racism...that's weird.
Does history not exist to you? You really can't understand? Or do you say something so stupid because you think it serves some purpose?
It's pretty anti-semitic in context too.
Do you mean you don't find anti-Semitism a form of racism?
Do you mean you don’t find anti-Semitism a form of racism?
To be fair, that's a difficult question because the forms of anti-semitism changed a lot over the course of recent and not-so-recent history.
By definition, semitic people are not just jewish people, and indeed, "semitic" describes an ethnicity, and by that, anti-semitism would also be racism.
However, many contemporary forms of anti-semitism are exclusively directed at jewish people, at which point they typically occur in people who are often also quite racist shitbags, but their anti-semitism in and of itself is not racist, because they direct their hatred at everything that is jewish, and for example the conspiracy theories surrounding jewish influence in the world have nothing to do with ethnicity, and all with religion.
As I learned it, one of the main historical factors contributing to this (and to anti-semitism) is that jewish people were not forbidden by religion from taking interest on money loans (from non-jews), whereas christians were. All the while in medieval times some other jobs were forbidden to them. So naturally there was an overrepresentation of jewish people in the emerging finance sector, and for the simple mind it is convenient to hate on people who you owe money to. And this form of anti-semitism I see as absolutely unrelated to racism.
PS: I intentionally write "jewish" and "christian" in lowercase because all religions suck donkey balls and while they can be tolerated, they deserve no special emphasis.
You're overanalyzing racism.
Racism is prejudice toward an ethnic group.
Angry about money lenders - prejudiced against money lenders - not anti-semitic, not racist
Angry about money lenders - prejudiced against Jewish people - anti-semitic, racist
And I disagree that these are the only two options you can observe in society. You can very much observe anti-semitism that has nothing to do with perceived ethnicity. Especially because - as much as racists don't like to admit that - the ethnicity of jewish people is very diverse.
Can you elaborate?
Racism isn't about perceived ethnicity specifically, it's about prejudice toward an ethnic group regardless of whether you can perceive the ethnicity accurately.
When someone racist toward Arabs discovers that someone they didn't think was Arab is Arab, then demonstrates prejudice, obviously the perceived ethnicity doesn't matter as much as the prejudice of the idea of being an error.
I don't see the disconnect between anti-Semitism and perceived ethnicity, or how such a theoretical disconnect removes racism from anti-Semitism.
Honestly, I don't think our viewpoints differ enough to waste our time on a discussion. The usefulness of debating nuances is a bit too academic in nature and better done over a beer or so. I like to make a distinction between anti-<insert religious group here> and racism in order to deface the blatant racism disguised as anti-<whatever religion>-ism.
E.g. 95% of the European citizens claiming they're "not racist, but" (we call them but-Nazis) they have an issue with islamic traditions, are just stupid racists against brown people but don't have the spine to admit that.
I can't imagine how anti-(fill in the ethnicity) cannot be perceived as racism, so I assumed our perspectives on racism were diametrically opposed.
Thank you for "but-Nazis", haha, I haven't heard that term before and I'm definitely going to be propagating it in the wild.
I can’t imagine how anti-(fill in the ethnicity) cannot be perceived as racism
Notice I wrote anti-<whatever religion>, and religion is not an ethnicity per se.
Enjoy the "Aber-Nazis" (I'm German, we have too many of those (again?), unfortunately)
So are you separating semitism with ethnicity? I think I understand what you're saying then, although especially with the Jewish religion, ethnicity is almost intrinsic.
So I'm talking specifically about Dahl's ethnic racism, and you're just remarking that prejudice or racism does not have to be based on race?
Is your brain hardwired to interchangeably read / see the word "religion" as "ethnicity"? How else could you possibly invent a quote that "racism does not have to be based on race"?
Furthermore, I do not use the word "race" because that's not a thing - what is a thing is "ethnicity" - and in a broader biological sense, "species". We're all the same species, but ethnicities differ and only racists take perceived ethnicity and proceed to use "race" as a talking point.
I make a point to differentiate between the kind of anti-semitism that is directed at "everything jewish" and racism, because it helps dismantle people's talking points, especially to out racists.
Your desire to protect antisemites is certainly an interesting choice of things to devote energy to but I don't think they'll care about your careful semantics when they're choosing who to hate - you really think they only hate practicing jews? They hate anyone with Jewish ancestry, Roald was talking about a born predisposition not about some aspect of the Jewish religion.
In don't know if you're bending over backwards because to protect a childhood icon of yours or because you've got so wrapped up in the Palestine situation you've been befriending antisemites and telling yourself it's OK but you really are making shitty arguments that have been made by a million racists already
And let's not even get started about the disgusting mix of rightful criticism of the Israeli government with anti-semitism and racism. This topic is so emotionally charged, and gets "overcharged" each time a new sequence of Hamas-Israel mutual war crimes is started (whatever the name), and every time civilians suffer, and people nurture their hate. Mankind is so messed up.