[ad_1]
Roald Dahl, who died in 1990, would have been 100 years old in 2016. But the Royal Mint, traditionally issuing commemorative coins for the landmark anniversaries of notable British personalities – among them Jane Austen and Mary Shelley – has never presented the Author to the author. from "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", "Fantastic Mr. Fox" and "Matilda" in the Celebration Circulation.
As the Guardian reports, the reason for this curious choice has now been revealed: Dahl's anti-Semitism.
According to the records leaked to The Guardian as a result of a request under Freedom of Information laws, the decision to not honor Dahl was taken at a 2014 meeting on Potential coins for 2016. The minutes of this meeting indicate that the centenary of Dahl was evoked, but he was "Associated with anti-Semitism and not considered an author of the highest reputation. "
Dahl's admirers might argue with this last statement, but the author's anti-Semitism was not just something others had observed, it was something he had proclaimed openly.
"I am certainly anti-Israel and I have become anti-Semitic to the extent that you attract a Jew to a country like England that strongly supports Zionism," Dahl told The Independent in 1990.
"It's the same thing: we know all the Jews and everything else," he added. "There are no non-Jewish publishers anywhere, they control the media – a pretty smart thing – that's why the President of the United States must sell all this material to Israel."
As the attacker said at what would have been Dahl's 100th birthday – September 13, 2016 – Dahl's anti-Semitic statements also included a note, in a 1983 book review of the Literary Review, that the US government was "totally dominated by the big financial institutions out there. The same year, he told the New Statesman: "There is a trait in the Jewish character that causes animosity, which is perhaps a kind of lack of generosity towards non-Jews. I mean, there is always a reason why no matter what happens anywhere; even a stink like Hitler did not turn to them for no reason. "
The Royal Mint's decision precedes the recent anti-Semitism clashes in the UK following the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labor Leader in September 2015. Rather than Dahl, the Mint chose Shakespeare and Beatrix Potter for the commemoration of 2016, much less controversial choices. Perhaps. After all, 2016 has marked 420 years since the creation of Shakespeare's film "Merchant of Venice" and only a few fewer years of ongoing conflict over whether this piece is anti-Semitic. That the Mint has discussed this issue has not yet been unveiled.
[ad_2]
Source link
