WEBVTT - The Interview 0:00:00.080 --> 0:00:03.440 Before we start. One production note. In this episode, we 0:00:03.520 --> 0:00:06.120 again have quotes from Roll Dall. Rather than just have 0:00:06.280 --> 0:00:08.720 me read them in my terrible British accent, we decided 0:00:08.760 --> 0:00:11.320 to bring them to life, so we use an actor's 0:00:11.320 --> 0:00:15.880 performance and some custom software to create a Doll like voice. Okay, 0:00:16.079 --> 0:00:20.639 onto the episode, Roll Dall says, comfortably at home giving 0:00:20.640 --> 0:00:23.159 which should be a casual, breezy phone interview to a 0:00:23.160 --> 0:00:26.880 popular magazine called The New Statesman. It's nineteen eighty three. 0:00:27.320 --> 0:00:30.480 Doll is at this point, without question, the most famous 0:00:30.560 --> 0:00:34.000 and most successful children's author of all time. The BFG 0:00:34.080 --> 0:00:36.680 came out just last year and was a phenomenon. The 0:00:36.720 --> 0:00:40.360 Witches is about to be published. A critical acclaim on 0:00:40.479 --> 0:00:43.160 the phone with Dall is Michael Koran, a young theater critic. 0:00:43.520 --> 0:00:45.879 Koran is just out of college. He's not an experienced 0:00:45.960 --> 0:00:49.000 journalist or some sort of master interrogator. This isn't some 0:00:49.080 --> 0:00:52.120 kind of brilliant gotcha moment, but Doll is in one 0:00:52.159 --> 0:00:56.120 of his dark moods. Koran asked about a book review 0:00:56.120 --> 0:00:58.840 that Dall recently wrote. The book centered on the very 0:00:58.880 --> 0:01:02.320 thorny topic of the Israel's invasion of Lebanon. The previous year. 0:01:02.800 --> 0:01:04.520 Doll decides he doesn't just want to talk about the 0:01:04.560 --> 0:01:07.479 book or his review of it. He wants to widen things. 0:01:07.959 --> 0:01:11.440 He wants to talk about the Holocaust, you know, the 0:01:11.520 --> 0:01:15.040 generational tragedy where six million Jewish men, women and children 0:01:15.080 --> 0:01:18.600 were systematically exterminated. It might be the most softball topic 0:01:18.640 --> 0:01:21.640 in all of journalism. Anyone in their right mind recognizes 0:01:21.680 --> 0:01:24.119 the immense scale of the horror and expresses a firm 0:01:24.160 --> 0:01:26.479 desire for it never to be forgotten and to never 0:01:26.520 --> 0:01:30.120 happen again. Instead, here's what Roald Dahl says to the 0:01:30.160 --> 0:01:33.679 young journalist. There is a trait in the Jewish character 0:01:33.840 --> 0:01:36.840 that does provoke animosity. Maybe it's a kind of lack 0:01:36.880 --> 0:01:40.320 of generosity towards non Jews. I mean, there's always a 0:01:40.360 --> 0:01:44.840 reason why anti anything crops up anywhere. And then he 0:01:44.880 --> 0:01:48.600 goes on to say, even a stinker like Hitler didn't 0:01:48.640 --> 0:01:53.600 just pick on them for no reason. Ugh, Okay, this 0:01:53.640 --> 0:01:56.200 is what we've been waiting for, folks. Here we go 0:02:00.000 --> 0:02:04.240 in my hard podcast, Imagine Entertainment and Parallax. I'm Aaron Tracy, 0:02:04.640 --> 0:02:14.520 and this is the Secret world of Roald Dahl. Episode seven. Now, 0:02:14.560 --> 0:02:16.240 if you're worried, we're about to waste a whole lot 0:02:16.240 --> 0:02:19.720 of time dissecting one unrepresentative quote that didn't really reflect 0:02:19.800 --> 0:02:22.040 who Doll was or what he believed in. Don't be 0:02:22.560 --> 0:02:24.880 the quote I just read wasn't a one off comment. 0:02:25.160 --> 0:02:30.799 There's extensive evidence of Doll's bigotry. Dall biographer Jeremy Treglone 0:02:30.919 --> 0:02:33.560 records a bunch of problematic stuff that Dahl said and 0:02:33.560 --> 0:02:36.440 did throughout his life. At a social club, for instance, 0:02:36.639 --> 0:02:39.800 Doll's daughter Tessa remembers her father complained about the number 0:02:39.800 --> 0:02:42.720 of Jews who were members. He got drunk one night 0:02:42.880 --> 0:02:45.480 and stood up to make a speech. Diners at nearby 0:02:45.520 --> 0:02:48.200 tables told him to shut up. Doll was thrown out 0:02:48.360 --> 0:02:52.959 and his club membership was revoked, says Treglone. Dall's editor, 0:02:53.080 --> 0:02:56.080 the legendary Robert Gottlieb, who worked with so many brilliant writers, 0:02:56.120 --> 0:02:59.120 from Nora Ephron to Tony Morrison to Robert Carrow. He 0:02:59.200 --> 0:03:02.640 believes that dolls prejudice against Jews grew worse after he 0:03:02.680 --> 0:03:05.960 and Dahl had a falling out. Now a little context. 0:03:06.520 --> 0:03:09.760 Career wise, Doll was on top, having already published most 0:03:09.760 --> 0:03:12.840 of his iconic children's books. But in his personal life, 0:03:13.000 --> 0:03:15.160 Dall was a bit of a mess. He had divorced 0:03:15.160 --> 0:03:18.160 Patricia Neil after thirty years of marriage. He was in 0:03:18.200 --> 0:03:21.280 constant physical pain from back surgery stemming from that crash 0:03:21.320 --> 0:03:23.720 in the desert decades earlier. And while he's having all 0:03:23.760 --> 0:03:26.720 this career success, he's very insecure about people thinking he 0:03:26.760 --> 0:03:30.000 can only write for kids. So when he's offered the 0:03:30.080 --> 0:03:33.320 chance to review a book about Israel in a literary journal, 0:03:33.560 --> 0:03:36.680 he sees it as a rare opportunity to write for adults, 0:03:37.120 --> 0:03:39.920 and he's going to make the most of it. As 0:03:39.960 --> 0:03:42.360 I mentioned, the review comes out in nineteen eighty three. 0:03:42.840 --> 0:03:45.680 It's not excusing Dall to say that certain prejudices were 0:03:45.680 --> 0:03:48.680 more common in mainstream culture back then. Just look at 0:03:48.680 --> 0:03:50.960 our movies of the era. Some of the biggest films 0:03:50.960 --> 0:03:54.040 of nineteen eighty three to nineteen eighty four were Sixteen Candles, 0:03:54.160 --> 0:03:57.880 the John Hughes classic featuring Long Duck Dung, The Chinese Exchange, 0:03:57.880 --> 0:04:01.040 student Trading Places, The Edding If You Break Out, which 0:04:01.080 --> 0:04:04.320 includes blackface along with a bunch of class based stereotypes, 0:04:04.720 --> 0:04:07.640 Indiana Jones, and The Temple of Doom, where Indian characters 0:04:07.640 --> 0:04:11.400 are depicted as either noble mystics or bloodthirsty savages. And 0:04:11.440 --> 0:04:14.400 on TV three's Company is The Big Show, which is 0:04:14.440 --> 0:04:19.520 basically one long gay panic joke. Now a confession, I 0:04:19.560 --> 0:04:21.760 still love some of those movies, and that's part of 0:04:21.800 --> 0:04:24.240 why this is so complicated. I can still laugh at 0:04:24.279 --> 0:04:26.280 a lot of the jokes in trading places and just 0:04:26.520 --> 0:04:29.240 ignore the offensive ones. But I know I'm in a 0:04:29.279 --> 0:04:31.480 privileged position to be able to do that, and of 0:04:31.480 --> 0:04:35.000 course not everybody wants to do that. So back to 0:04:35.040 --> 0:04:37.800 that book review, it's just as problematic as the interview 0:04:37.839 --> 0:04:40.760 he gives about it. It's for the journal Literary Review. 0:04:41.320 --> 0:04:43.640 The book tells the story of the recent Israeli siege 0:04:43.640 --> 0:04:46.919 of Baybery, but in his review, Dog goes beyond the 0:04:46.960 --> 0:04:49.920 contents of the book. He takes the opportunity to write 0:04:49.920 --> 0:04:54.360 a passionate denunciation of the entire Israeli Palestinian conflict, which 0:04:54.360 --> 0:04:56.760 he brought ends into an attack on Israel and Jewish 0:04:56.760 --> 0:05:01.680 people everywhere. And yes, this has a of contemporary relevance. 0:05:02.040 --> 0:05:05.119 The same stuff is happening all over again today. Here's 0:05:05.160 --> 0:05:06.760 the beginning of Dolls book review. 0:05:07.800 --> 0:05:10.800 In June nineteen forty one, I happened to be in 0:05:10.960 --> 0:05:14.680 of all places, Palestine, flying with the Arif against the Bishi, 0:05:14.680 --> 0:05:17.960 French and the Nazis. Hitler happened to be in Germany, 0:05:17.960 --> 0:05:20.320 and the gas chambers were being built, and the mass 0:05:20.320 --> 0:05:24.039 slaughter of the Jews was beginning. Our hearts bled for 0:05:24.080 --> 0:05:27.400 the Jewish men, women and children, and we hated the Germans. 0:05:28.240 --> 0:05:30.920 Okay, so far dolls throwing in some of his own 0:05:30.920 --> 0:05:33.760 biography to relate to the contents of the buck, and 0:05:33.800 --> 0:05:35.640 then he continues. 0:05:35.760 --> 0:05:39.720 Exactly forty one years later, in June nineteen eighty two, 0:05:39.839 --> 0:05:42.360 the Israeli forces were streaming northwards out of what used 0:05:42.400 --> 0:05:45.440 to be Palestine into Lebanon, and the mass slaughter of 0:05:45.480 --> 0:05:48.960 the inhabitants began. Our hearts bled for the Lebanese and 0:05:49.000 --> 0:05:52.480 Palestinian men, women and children, and we all started hating 0:05:52.480 --> 0:05:53.680 the Israelis. 0:05:54.360 --> 0:05:57.120 Okay, so he's connecting what he saw as a pilot 0:05:57.120 --> 0:05:59.479 in the war with what he sees now, but then 0:06:00.200 --> 0:06:02.640 ramps up to this referring to the Jewish people. 0:06:03.320 --> 0:06:05.479 Never before in the history of Man has a race 0:06:05.520 --> 0:06:09.240 of people switched so rapidly from being much pitted victims 0:06:09.800 --> 0:06:13.479 to barbarous murderers. Never before has a race of people 0:06:13.600 --> 0:06:17.120 generated so much sympathy around the world, and then, in 0:06:17.160 --> 0:06:20.440 the space of a lifetime, succeeded in turning that sympathy 0:06:20.720 --> 0:06:24.760 into hatred and revulsion. It is as though a group 0:06:24.800 --> 0:06:28.160 of much loved nuns in charge of an orphanage had 0:06:28.200 --> 0:06:31.599 suddenly turned around and started murdering all the children. 0:06:32.320 --> 0:06:33.800 He continues, It is. 0:06:33.839 --> 0:06:36.880 Like the good old Hitler and Himler times all over again. 0:06:38.960 --> 0:06:41.960 Wow, there's a lot there, like calling a whole race 0:06:42.000 --> 0:06:46.320 of people, namely the Jews, barbarous murderers because he opposes 0:06:46.360 --> 0:06:49.880 the actions of a handful of people in the Israeli government. Honestly, 0:06:50.120 --> 0:06:52.120 I'm just not enough of an expert in these issues 0:06:52.240 --> 0:06:55.200 to do this conversation justice, So I want to bring 0:06:55.279 --> 0:06:58.320 in someone who is Yeah, you're Rosenberg has dedicated his 0:06:58.400 --> 0:07:01.520 professional life to study and thinking about this stuff in 0:07:01.560 --> 0:07:04.960 a really brilliant way. Yayir is a writer for The Atlantic. 0:07:05.120 --> 0:07:07.720 He's also written for The Washington Posts, The New York Times, 0:07:07.720 --> 0:07:10.240 the Wall Street Journal, you name it. He speaks around 0:07:10.280 --> 0:07:13.000 the world on the topic of anti Semitism and I 0:07:13.080 --> 0:07:16.240 love this. He's credited with coining the sarcastic Internet term 0:07:16.440 --> 0:07:18.760 Gerbel's gap, which is the amount of time between a 0:07:18.800 --> 0:07:21.600 negative event transpiring in the world and someone finding a 0:07:21.640 --> 0:07:23.760 way to blame it on the Jews. I'm going to 0:07:23.760 --> 0:07:28.240 ask Gayer to help provide context for various things Dall said. 0:07:30.360 --> 0:07:34.000 First up, I asked Gayer why blaming all Jews for 0:07:34.080 --> 0:07:37.120 the actions of the Israeli leadership is thought to be antisemitic. 0:07:37.720 --> 0:07:42.000 Yeah, so there's a general human tendency here and a 0:07:42.040 --> 0:07:46.320 particular anti Jewish one. Generally speaking, a lot of prejudice 0:07:46.360 --> 0:07:48.960 takes the form of people looking at a minority group 0:07:49.080 --> 0:07:52.640 and saying, anybody in this minority community that does anything 0:07:52.960 --> 0:07:55.360 or says anything reflects on the entire group and every 0:07:55.400 --> 0:07:57.960 person in it, such that if you're a member of minority, 0:07:58.040 --> 0:08:00.800 you're collectively culpable for what anyone else and that minority 0:08:00.960 --> 0:08:02.840 may say or do anywhere, no matter where they are, 0:08:02.920 --> 0:08:04.600 and no matter your connection or lack there off to 0:08:04.640 --> 0:08:07.200 those people. And that's not unique to Jews, right, that's 0:08:07.400 --> 0:08:12.720 textbook racism, textbook bigotry. Think the spike in anti Muslim 0:08:12.760 --> 0:08:15.480 hate crimes after nine to eleven, which was people taking 0:08:15.520 --> 0:08:19.040 out anger at a specific group of fundamentalist terrorists on 0:08:19.320 --> 0:08:22.720 everyday Americans who happened to have some identifying characteristic that 0:08:22.760 --> 0:08:25.160 they associated with them. And so that is the general 0:08:25.240 --> 0:08:28.200 human tendency towards prejudice. That's an old, old thing that 0:08:28.560 --> 0:08:31.160 many of us have experienced or seen. And then there's 0:08:31.160 --> 0:08:34.120 this specifically Jewish version of it where you see people 0:08:34.160 --> 0:08:36.080 saying that, yeah, old Jews are to blame for anything 0:08:36.120 --> 0:08:39.079 else any other Jew did in my perception, but you 0:08:39.160 --> 0:08:41.079 have to think of Rode Doll in this particular context. 0:08:41.080 --> 0:08:44.960 He was raised on a continent that for centuries persecuted, abused, expelled, 0:08:44.960 --> 0:08:48.880 and murdered Jews over allegations of what other Jews thousands 0:08:48.880 --> 0:08:51.080 of miles away did in the Middle East, namely they 0:08:51.120 --> 0:08:54.400 allegedly killed Jesus, and that was seen to justify centuries 0:08:54.440 --> 0:08:57.200 of anti Semitism on the European continent. Roade Doll grows 0:08:57.280 --> 0:08:59.839 up in that place, right, that sort of way of 0:09:00.040 --> 0:09:01.880 thinking about Jews, and you know, is part of what 0:09:01.960 --> 0:09:04.280 pays the way for the Holocaust and the ideas of 0:09:04.280 --> 0:09:07.320 the Nazis spread. It's not particularly new. It does get 0:09:07.360 --> 0:09:11.199 secularized later on, where the Jews in Europe and the 0:09:11.280 --> 0:09:15.240 United States and elsewhere get attacked over whatever Jews thousands 0:09:15.280 --> 0:09:17.000 of miles away in the Middle East may have done, 0:09:17.120 --> 0:09:20.160 and that somebody is angry about. It's not exactly different, 0:09:20.200 --> 0:09:23.120 it's just the name's changed. And so in that way, 0:09:23.240 --> 0:09:25.800 Dallas reflecting a general human tendency towards prejudice, and he's 0:09:25.800 --> 0:09:28.040 also reflecting a very age old story that people tell 0:09:28.040 --> 0:09:30.920 about Jews. And I think actually he's not particularly unique 0:09:30.920 --> 0:09:32.280 in this respect. As you can see, this is a 0:09:32.360 --> 0:09:35.840 very common way of thinking about minorities as mendacious monoliths. 0:09:36.080 --> 0:09:38.480 What is unique is us asking the question and saying, 0:09:38.520 --> 0:09:41.400 maybe we shouldn't do that. We're the exception. He's actually 0:09:41.400 --> 0:09:41.760 the rule. 0:09:42.360 --> 0:09:44.800 Interesting, and I mean we see this a lot today. Obviously, 0:09:45.240 --> 0:09:47.440 what's going on in Israel and Gaza right now is 0:09:47.920 --> 0:09:50.520 you know, on the front page every day, and people 0:09:50.520 --> 0:09:53.679 are doing it again. People are blaming Jews in America, 0:09:54.080 --> 0:09:57.360 Jews all over the world with what the Israeli government 0:09:57.559 --> 0:09:59.880 is doing right now to the Palestinians. 0:10:00.120 --> 0:10:03.120 Yeah, it's a very similar dynamic. If Rodal was alive today, 0:10:03.160 --> 0:10:04.880 he would be doing the same thing. He'd be blurring 0:10:04.920 --> 0:10:07.520 these lines between actions committed by an Israeli government and 0:10:07.559 --> 0:10:10.080 a specific place in time for specific people with all 0:10:10.200 --> 0:10:12.880 Jews around the world, rather than treating everybody as individuals 0:10:12.920 --> 0:10:16.199 and judging them based on those characteristics. It's disheartening and 0:10:16.240 --> 0:10:18.480 obviously it's wrong, but it's just something that's always been 0:10:18.480 --> 0:10:20.240 with us as human beings. It's a sort of a 0:10:20.320 --> 0:10:22.959 shortcut we use for thinking about minority groups that we 0:10:23.000 --> 0:10:24.480 don't know well. Rather than trying to get to know 0:10:24.520 --> 0:10:27.040 them and to understand them in their complexity and diversity, 0:10:27.120 --> 0:10:30.240 we often try to reduce them to stereotypes, and in 0:10:30.240 --> 0:10:32.959 some cases that means negative stereotypes or the worst thing 0:10:33.000 --> 0:10:34.760 that anyone has ever said or done in that group. 0:10:35.080 --> 0:10:37.040 There is a parallel to this, because it's a very 0:10:37.080 --> 0:10:39.000 old thing. Ever since Israel has existed, there have been 0:10:39.000 --> 0:10:40.680 people who have been angry about this or that Israeli 0:10:40.679 --> 0:10:42.640 policies that have taken that out on proximate Jews. And 0:10:42.720 --> 0:10:45.200 before Israel existed, whatever Jews in the Middle East did 0:10:45.280 --> 0:10:48.480 was also taken out on any nearby approximate Jews, no 0:10:48.480 --> 0:10:50.880 matter what connection they had to what happened in that place. 0:10:51.760 --> 0:10:57.000 Dahl also makes reference to quote those powerful American Jewish bankers, 0:10:57.240 --> 0:10:59.839 any asserts that the United States government is quote a 0:11:00.000 --> 0:11:03.960 literally dominated by the great Jewish financial institutions over there. 0:11:04.240 --> 0:11:06.960 Can you talk a little bit about those anti Semitic trips. 0:11:07.480 --> 0:11:07.760 Sure. 0:11:08.160 --> 0:11:11.280 There are two kinds of anti semitism, generally speaking. One 0:11:11.320 --> 0:11:14.120 is the personal prejudice. This is the kind of bigotry 0:11:14.120 --> 0:11:16.320 that most of us are familiar with, which is, I 0:11:16.320 --> 0:11:18.800 don't like that person because they're different, they're too Jewish, 0:11:18.800 --> 0:11:21.320 they're too Muslim, they're too black. And that's a social 0:11:21.360 --> 0:11:24.120 prejudice and it's very harmful to the people targeted by it. 0:11:24.360 --> 0:11:28.320 There's also a different kind of antisemitism that's the conspiratorial 0:11:28.360 --> 0:11:31.199 expression of anti semitism, and this one posits that Jews 0:11:31.200 --> 0:11:34.040 are a sinister string pulling cabal that is behind all 0:11:34.080 --> 0:11:37.200 the world's social and economic problems. It's a theory about 0:11:37.200 --> 0:11:39.160 how the entire world works, and it all traces back 0:11:39.160 --> 0:11:41.560 to Jews. And if you see something going wrong, there's 0:11:41.679 --> 0:11:44.040 definitely a Jew behind it, right, you perceive that there's 0:11:44.040 --> 0:11:46.920 an invisible hand, it belongs to an invisible Jew, and 0:11:47.000 --> 0:11:49.280 so Rodal here is expressing that he did it. That 0:11:49.360 --> 0:11:51.600 my understanding is in other contexts as well, not just 0:11:51.640 --> 0:11:54.240 saying Jews controlled the banks, not just saying they controlled 0:11:54.280 --> 0:11:56.720 the government. He also said they controlled the media. You know, 0:11:56.800 --> 0:11:59.960 Jews are zero point two percent of the human population, right, 0:12:00.240 --> 0:12:02.600 if you were to think about this logically, even if 0:12:02.600 --> 0:12:04.560 they punched one hundred percent above their weight, they would 0:12:04.600 --> 0:12:06.640 zero point four percent of the power. It's just not 0:12:06.720 --> 0:12:09.760 how the world actually works in reality. Of course, Jews 0:12:09.760 --> 0:12:12.840 have been persecuted and exterminated for much of their existence 0:12:12.840 --> 0:12:15.120 because they're a tiny group that doesn't really have this 0:12:15.240 --> 0:12:18.760 kind of power influence. And Jews themselves are extremely diverse 0:12:18.800 --> 0:12:20.640 and fractious and disagree with each other, and there are 0:12:20.679 --> 0:12:23.040 many different sects and different beliefs, and they'll argue with 0:12:23.080 --> 0:12:25.360 each other. And anyone who's ever spent time in a 0:12:25.400 --> 0:12:28.480 Jewish community or with Jews are around shabatar passover a 0:12:28.520 --> 0:12:32.599 table knows right that Jews can't set the therm? Is 0:12:32.679 --> 0:12:34.120 that let alone? How do you know, I don't know, 0:12:34.160 --> 0:12:37.120 control Western civilization. But again, this is sort of a 0:12:37.200 --> 0:12:40.360 very long standing stereotypical way of thinking about Jews, and 0:12:40.600 --> 0:12:43.559 you know, Dollas reflecting it. In the case of Jewish 0:12:43.600 --> 0:12:45.760 bankers and others controlling the government, you might wonder, how 0:12:45.760 --> 0:12:47.840 did two out of every three European Jews get killed 0:12:47.840 --> 0:12:50.640 on the Holocaust. If this incredible Jewish conspiracy was there 0:12:50.720 --> 0:12:53.480 running the show, it seems extremely bad at its job. 0:12:53.840 --> 0:12:56.439 And similarly speaking, there's so many when the state of 0:12:56.480 --> 0:12:58.400 Israel was found that in nineteen forty eight, America put 0:12:58.400 --> 0:13:00.640 it under an arms embargo is very strange thing to 0:13:00.720 --> 0:13:02.640 do if the Jews control of the government. There's a 0:13:02.679 --> 0:13:05.000 lot of examples of this in history. Lots of Jewish 0:13:05.000 --> 0:13:07.520 activists did lobby Franklin Dollan or Roosevelt to try to 0:13:07.559 --> 0:13:10.120 bomb the railway tracks to Auschwitz, the death camp where 0:13:10.120 --> 0:13:11.880 some many Jews were being killed, and he didn't do it. 0:13:12.120 --> 0:13:15.240 Lots of Jewish activists tried to get the United States 0:13:15.280 --> 0:13:17.360 and other countries to lift their immigrant quotas to allow 0:13:17.440 --> 0:13:20.319 more Jewish refugees to flee the Holocaust. They didn't do it. 0:13:20.679 --> 0:13:23.520 There are so many examples of this, it's kind of perverse. 0:13:23.760 --> 0:13:26.000 The anti Semitic world view is kind of an inversion 0:13:26.000 --> 0:13:28.360 of the reality. It posits that this tiny group of 0:13:28.440 --> 0:13:30.760 Jews determines the fate of all the non Jews were 0:13:30.760 --> 0:13:33.560 in fact, logically speaking right, the large non Jewish majority 0:13:33.559 --> 0:13:34.800 of the world desides what the world is going to 0:13:34.840 --> 0:13:37.800 be like for a lot of different minorities, not just Jews. 0:13:38.600 --> 0:13:40.960 Here's another one, and this is when I'm certainly less 0:13:40.960 --> 0:13:43.959 familiar with than the other troops. Talking about Jewish victims 0:13:43.960 --> 0:13:46.960 of the Holocaust, Dahl said, quote, if you and I 0:13:47.000 --> 0:13:49.040 were in a line moving towards what we knew were 0:13:49.040 --> 0:13:51.959 gas chambers, I'd rather have a go at taking one 0:13:51.960 --> 0:13:54.840 of the guards with me. But they, meaning the Jews, 0:13:55.080 --> 0:13:57.559 were always submissive. What is that about? 0:13:58.120 --> 0:14:01.040 So this is more complicated than simply some of antisemitic idea. 0:14:01.120 --> 0:14:03.760 It's actually a critique that many people have leveled against 0:14:04.040 --> 0:14:05.840 Jewish victims of the Hana Claust, which is a hard 0:14:05.960 --> 0:14:08.679 thing to do, to critique victims of the Holocaust, but 0:14:08.760 --> 0:14:10.520 it's been done. And some of those people who leveled 0:14:10.559 --> 0:14:14.320 that critique, ironically, were people that Dahl hated. Scientists, some 0:14:14.480 --> 0:14:17.160 Zionists said that the problem of the Jews of Europe 0:14:17.240 --> 0:14:19.200 is that they didn't defend themselves and that they weren't 0:14:19.200 --> 0:14:20.920 strong enough, and so that they need a state and 0:14:20.960 --> 0:14:23.160 an army so things like this can never happen again. 0:14:23.400 --> 0:14:26.000 And the irony is that road Dall was criticizing these 0:14:26.160 --> 0:14:28.280 Jewish victims of the Holo claust in the same way 0:14:28.680 --> 0:14:30.400 as some of the founders of the State of Israel 0:14:30.440 --> 0:14:34.000 criticized their Jewish warbears, and yet he doesn't support anything 0:14:34.000 --> 0:14:37.360 that Israel does militarily. And Dahl says that Jews were 0:14:37.360 --> 0:14:39.400 too weak and pathetic and they went like lambs to 0:14:39.400 --> 0:14:42.040 their slaughter and they didn't fight back. But then when 0:14:42.240 --> 0:14:44.080 Jews go along and say, you know what, we're going 0:14:44.160 --> 0:14:45.440 to found a state and have an army, and then 0:14:45.440 --> 0:14:47.280 we're going to fight back when we perceive ourselves to 0:14:47.320 --> 0:14:49.760 be threatened, well then he says they're incredibly evil, bloodthirsty 0:14:49.760 --> 0:14:53.280 and militaristic heads world. Dall wins tails the Jews lose. 0:14:53.680 --> 0:14:56.600 And this is a very common way that bigots relate 0:14:56.640 --> 0:14:59.280 to the minorities they don't like. Basically, there's nothing they 0:14:59.280 --> 0:15:01.720 can do that is right, and they're attacked for absolutely 0:15:01.760 --> 0:15:04.200 contradictory things. No matter what they do and no matter 0:15:04.200 --> 0:15:06.880 how they change, they're always subject to the same prejudice, 0:15:06.880 --> 0:15:10.840 because where prejudice comes from prejudging, you've already prejudged the community, 0:15:11.000 --> 0:15:13.880 and then you come up and backfill the justifications afterwards. 0:15:14.760 --> 0:15:17.760 To go back to this specific instance, for just a Yeacond, 0:15:17.880 --> 0:15:20.600 just because it's really something I don't know about. There's 0:15:20.640 --> 0:15:24.000 an idea among people that the Jews during the Holocaust 0:15:24.440 --> 0:15:28.200 should have wrestled their Nazi guards to the ground. More, 0:15:28.240 --> 0:15:30.880 they should have gotten together and wrestled them. What is it? 0:15:31.000 --> 0:15:32.640 Yeah, no, so I think so exactly So this is 0:15:32.680 --> 0:15:33.880 good because you give me a chance to say something 0:15:33.880 --> 0:15:35.200 I should have said. The outset, which is, I think 0:15:35.200 --> 0:15:37.880 it's an unfair critique, whether leveled by Zionists or level 0:15:38.000 --> 0:15:41.000 by Rod Doll, the anti Zionist. I think the idea 0:15:41.000 --> 0:15:44.200 that the Jews could have somehow overturned or bought back 0:15:44.240 --> 0:15:47.800 in any really effective capacity against this Nazi empire is 0:15:47.840 --> 0:15:50.640 not a reasonable critique. That being said, the other thing 0:15:50.680 --> 0:15:52.400 to note is that plenty of Jews did. The critique 0:15:52.440 --> 0:15:55.040 is wrong because plenty of Jews did attempt to file back. 0:15:55.080 --> 0:15:56.840 The reason we know it wouldn't work is because they 0:15:56.840 --> 0:15:59.440 failed or they weren't successful in saving so many of 0:15:59.480 --> 0:16:02.280 the Jews. You have the War Sot Ghetto Uprising, perhaps 0:16:02.280 --> 0:16:04.800 the most famous example of resistance to the Nazis, but 0:16:04.920 --> 0:16:07.680 it did ultimately fail. You similarly had plenty of Jews 0:16:07.720 --> 0:16:10.440 who joined the various resistance movements in different European countries 0:16:10.440 --> 0:16:12.840 against the Nazis and helped fight back and also helped 0:16:12.840 --> 0:16:15.760 spirit Jews and others away to safety. All of these 0:16:15.760 --> 0:16:18.640 things actually did happen, and they did make a difference, 0:16:18.640 --> 0:16:21.040 but they weren't the same thing as defeating the Nazis. 0:16:21.280 --> 0:16:24.720 It wasn't something that the Jews, in their tiny numerical 0:16:24.800 --> 0:16:27.680 rounding era in the human population ever could have possibly done. 0:16:27.760 --> 0:16:29.680 So it's good that you circled back because I do 0:16:29.800 --> 0:16:31.440 think you actually kind of at the foreground by saying 0:16:31.520 --> 0:16:34.080 I think personally right, the critique is wrong, it's historically wrong, 0:16:34.080 --> 0:16:36.640 and it's morally inadequate. At the same time, it is 0:16:36.720 --> 0:16:39.360 very revealing about Doll that he can make this critique 0:16:39.400 --> 0:16:42.240 and that at the same time attack Jews for being, 0:16:42.320 --> 0:16:44.800 you know, so pathetic and so inept and so weak, 0:16:45.080 --> 0:16:48.520 and then when they act strong and they're militaristic, then 0:16:48.520 --> 0:16:52.000 they're evil for being bloodthirsty and villainous. Did he ever 0:16:52.040 --> 0:16:54.160 spell out what he actually thinks Jews were allowed to 0:16:54.160 --> 0:16:56.480 do and what they should be or you know, is 0:16:56.520 --> 0:16:58.640 it no matter what they do, they can ever please Rodal. 0:17:00.160 --> 0:17:03.040 That was Iier Rosenberg, staff writer at The Atlantic and 0:17:03.120 --> 0:17:05.919 author of the newsletter Deep Stuttle. I also want to 0:17:05.920 --> 0:17:09.520 mention that while Dahl died without apologizing for his antisemitic comments, 0:17:09.760 --> 0:17:12.520 years after his death, the Doll family did issue a 0:17:12.520 --> 0:17:15.400 formal apology. It was around the same time that Netflix 0:17:15.440 --> 0:17:19.120 purchased his whole catalog. Here's the statement in its entirety, 0:17:19.280 --> 0:17:22.879 which you can also see at rolldall dot com slash apology. 0:17:23.720 --> 0:17:26.760 The Doll Family and the Roll Doll Story Company deeply 0:17:26.800 --> 0:17:30.480 apologized for the lasting and understandable hurt caused by Roll 0:17:30.560 --> 0:17:35.400 Dall's antisemitic statements. Those prejudice remarks are incomprehensible to us 0:17:35.600 --> 0:17:38.119 and stand in mark contrast to the man we knew 0:17:38.240 --> 0:17:40.920 and to the values at the heart of Rolldahl's stories, 0:17:41.080 --> 0:17:45.280 which have positively impacted young people for generations. We hope that, 0:17:45.680 --> 0:17:48.280 just as he did at his best, at his absolute worst, 0:17:48.600 --> 0:17:51.360 role Dahal can help remind us of the lasting impact 0:17:51.600 --> 0:17:55.239 of words. So what are we supposed to do about this? 0:17:55.720 --> 0:17:58.240 Do we accept that apology from his family? Do we 0:17:58.440 --> 0:17:59.920 chalk it all up to it being a different area, 0:18:00.800 --> 0:18:03.399 or do we stop reading Doll, stop giving his books 0:18:03.400 --> 0:18:06.320 to our children. One thing that makes it especially complicated 0:18:06.320 --> 0:18:09.400 for me is that Doll's personal prejudices didn't really make 0:18:09.400 --> 0:18:11.119 it into his books as far as I can tell. 0:18:11.600 --> 0:18:14.200 Some critics say they see antisemitic tropes in The Wishes. 0:18:14.680 --> 0:18:17.080 It's possible, but I don't know if I agree. And 0:18:17.160 --> 0:18:20.199 if we can't definitively locate those problematic views in his 0:18:20.240 --> 0:18:22.760 writing and he's no longer profiting off the sales of 0:18:22.760 --> 0:18:25.919 his books, does it still make sense to stop reading them. 0:18:26.160 --> 0:18:29.520 I'm fascinated by this question. I'm someone who constantly does 0:18:29.560 --> 0:18:32.240 the mental gymnastics that's required of all of us when 0:18:32.240 --> 0:18:35.159 we consume art from previous generations. I'll just say it, 0:18:35.200 --> 0:18:38.159 all right, some of my favorite writers and favorite filmmakers 0:18:38.280 --> 0:18:40.760 have done awful things. I don't want to have them 0:18:40.760 --> 0:18:43.879 over for dinner. But I still read the novels, still 0:18:43.880 --> 0:18:46.960 worship the movies. And of course it's not always even 0:18:47.040 --> 0:18:51.160 previous generations. The writer Alice Monroe, who died not long ago, 0:18:51.520 --> 0:18:54.159 was revealed to have stayed with her second husband after 0:18:54.240 --> 0:18:57.520 learning that he'd sexually abused her daughter With Roald Dahl, 0:18:57.720 --> 0:18:59.720 I think the issue was even more complicated by the 0:18:59.720 --> 0:19:02.399 fact that we encourage our kids to consume him. I 0:19:02.440 --> 0:19:05.840 would never allow a babysitter with clear, open prejudices to 0:19:05.840 --> 0:19:08.280 be around my kids in real life. Why should authors 0:19:08.320 --> 0:19:10.800 and filmmakers be any different. Maybe because we think we 0:19:10.840 --> 0:19:13.320 have more control over how they're presented to the kids, 0:19:13.680 --> 0:19:16.120 Like we can offer a warning and we know it's 0:19:16.119 --> 0:19:18.560 in there and what's not in there. We know nothing 0:19:18.600 --> 0:19:20.439 crazy is going to be said off the cuff, the 0:19:20.480 --> 0:19:22.680 way it might be if a bigoted old grandmother or 0:19:22.720 --> 0:19:27.120 somebody was left alone with them. Also, forcibly taking away 0:19:27.119 --> 0:19:30.080 books and movies feels like a slippery slope. It feels 0:19:30.080 --> 0:19:32.359 a little bit like censorship, and I hate the idea 0:19:32.359 --> 0:19:35.880 of that. I firmly believe that experiencing art is essential 0:19:35.920 --> 0:19:38.679 to being human, and that art has the capacity to 0:19:38.720 --> 0:19:41.600 do great things, even if it's created by crappy people. 0:19:42.680 --> 0:19:46.680 And I'm absolutely including children's books in that definition of art. 0:19:46.720 --> 0:19:50.040 All kinds of art can affect positive change, often even 0:19:50.040 --> 0:19:53.560