Walt Disney: a racist and anti-Jew?

[badlands]

Was he really a racist, Nazi or other nasty things they say about him?

[august]

Who says these things about him? If it's on the internet, then you already know your answer.

[Michael]

Actually, a LOT of people say he was a racist, including his niece.

Walt Disney's Grandniece Agrees With Meryl Streep: He Was 'Racist'

And if you are going to have mixed feelings about a family member (and we all do) take it from me, you really need to be as honest as possible about those feelings, or else you are going to lead yourself into many a blind alley in life!! ... Anti-Semite? Check. Misogynist? OF COURSE!! Racist? C'mon he made a film (Jungle Book) about how you should stay 'with your own kind' at the height of the fight over segregation! As if the 'King of the Jungle' number wasn't proof enough!! How much more information do you need? But damn, he was hella good at making films and his work has made billions of people happy. There's no denying it. So there ya go. Mixed feelings up the wazoo.

[august]

Aha - from the internet, as I suspected. I note that Disney's great niece was six when he died, and that Meryl Streep never met him. Her tirade at an awards show was
described in the press like this: "then, a little bizarrely, (she) lit into Walt Disney..."

That report has a link to a more in-depth article in which experts explain the reality.

[Michael]

One should not discount family knowledge handed down to younger generations. And some of the defenses offered by the "experts" are equivocations. Not very convincing defenses, in my opinion. I disagree with the "man of his times" argument regardless of who it's applied to or what side of an equation it falls on. I think Disney's actions over time show that he was indeed racist. People were aware of racism even then. The decision to go along with common practices is as racist as the decision to establish them. Made an effort to reach out to the NAACP, and other overtures, but it's not that easy to shed racism.

[Boomstick]

I don't know about Disney, I've always heard about it, and seen jokes about it on shows like Family Guy. But if he was, there's probably some solid evidence of it. Some famous folks didn't take great lengths
to mask their antisemitic sentiments. Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford being a good examples.