Roald Dahl was an anti Semite. He wasn’t a neo-nazi, wasn’t really politically affiliated at all. Didn’t hold extremist views, wasn’t a ‘white supremicist’, he just didn’t like Jews. Any of them. He didn’t know me, specifically, but he wouldn’t have liked me if he had done. On principle. Not the principle that I’m not a very nice person, but the other one, that I’m a member of ‘that club’. That ‘tribe’.

Oddly, I really like him. As a writer. And having read virtually everything the man wrote, often repeatedly, again and again as the kids (when they were kids) went through their James & the Giant Peach phase, or their Matilda phase, or The Twits, and even through the critical hypersensitivity of knowing the author was an anti Semite, there are no tropes, no references, no allusions to anything of that type in any of his work.

Dahl was no Jeremy Corbyn. Because he admitted openly his dislike of the Chosen People. Whereas Corbyn proclaimed (and is still proclaiming) his innocence whilst doing everything short of nuking Stamford Hill or organising his own pogrom.

The Dahl family have in fact published an apology. Sincere and heart-felt. As this version of Jew-hate was so out of character with a man so brilliant and cuddly. Even though his ‘kids books’ are all exceptionally dark and sinister, they are also exceptionally funny and clever.

The apology is, apparently, buried quite deep in the Roald Dahl website. You have to search quite hard to find it. Adhering to the theory that when something wrong or bad is published, it is a banner headline, but the apology is at the foot page 17, just under the article about the birth of a new panda in Xendong.

Dahl actually stated in an interview that Hitler might have had a point. You really can’t get more antisemitic than that.

But Alexa can.

Yes, everyone’s favourite link to music, news, weather reports and the Chinese secret service has been accused of antisemitism too. And with good reason. Because if you ask her loaded questions about ‘Jews controlling the media’ or ‘the protocols of the elders of Zion’, she will find an answer that google selects for her on the closest available website. Which is often www.nazis-live.com or www.no-bagels-for-me.net. Or she stalks the dark web for extremist right wing answers. Like Donald Trump does.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Alexa’s a bitch. I just wish I could bring myself to hate Roald Dahl, but I find it difficult. Particularly when reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

He remains my absolute favourite anti Semite.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx