Just How Evil WAS Walt Disney?

[Placebo]

[bigwillq]

1. Not as evil as Shrub (nt)

[PurityOfEssence]

2. hated Jews, crushed unions, plagarized, subjugated,

demanded unquestioned loyalty and expected immunity from any insult.

He dominated his family and close associates, and repeatedly tried to force a worldview of abandonment as a premise for renewal.

On the other hand, he brought much joy.

On the other foot, though, he was a quintessential conservative, trying to demand the resurgence of an intolerant and storybook fantasy past.

He was a mess and an authoritarian to the marrow.

[jmowreader]

3. IOW, he was Dubya with talent

[bertha katzenengel]

4. My favorite quote of Disney's:

Hey! Who put this god damned orange grove here?! RAZE IT! NOW!

[kodi]

5. i heard he used to keep Mickey in a cage.

.

[Lorien]

6. Eh, I know his nephew Roy, and he's a nice guy

always showed us artists respect. I know various people who used to work with Walt, and most of them had a love/hate relationship with the guy. I guess he's was no more or less flawed than every other corporate CEO out there.

[Zuni]

7. Do you know why Donald Duck never had any pants?

:scared:

[Jack Rabbit]

8. What a Mickey Mouse question!!

[mitchum]

9. An anti-semitic union-busting douchebag who unleashed Mickey Mouse and...

the banalities of Disneyland and Disney World.
Plenty evil.

[Bucky]

10. With all due respect to Hannah Arendt...

Banality isn't evil. Evil can seem banal sometimes, but banality by itself is simply boring, not destructive.

[Dirk39]

13. With all due respect to Micky Mouse....

ask your local library for the text-version of Hannah Arendt. There is one.

Hello from Germany,
Dirk

[Placebo]

11. He hated Jews?

I had no idea. :o

[Aristus]

12. All except for the ones who were, you know, good with money.

n/t

[mitchum]

14. Yes, his father was heavily involved with the Populist movement...

of the 1890s. When all of the farmer's woes were caused by "the Jew bankers back east" A prejudice Walt carried for a lifetime.
Side note; This is why I DO NOT consider Wm Jennings Bryan's "Cross of Gold" speech to be admirable. He was just Jew-baiting with high-flown demagoguery.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

16. 1890's Populism was complex...

There was a strong streak of nativism and anti-semitism to it. That's how Pat Buchanan can call himself a populist and still keep a straight face.

[Maddy McCall]

17. But some of Walt's early movies demonstrated populism.

And some historians say that, early in his career, he was a populist.

There were problems with the Populist Movement of the late 19th century, but it wasn't evil. There were a lot of good aspects of it, too.

According to Lawrence Goodwyn, the Populist Movement was the last true democratic movement in America. I agree with him. And William Jennings Bryan wasn't a Populist. He only latched on near the end, when xenophobia and racism consumed the movement. IMO, making silver the central issue, and allowing outsiders to split black and white farmers from each other, caused the failure of the movement. If it had succeeded, we would live in a completely different America.

At the formation of the movement, black and white farmers participated equally in the movement and each accepted the other. It was only because of race baiters that the movement broke the two apart.

[Zhade]

18. He didn't just hate Jews...

Go Google "mickey mouse" and "racism". I've seen the strips he drew wherein Mickey uses the "N" word.

Yes, they exist.

[Maddy McCall]

15. Also a villain of the HUAC hearings.

He named names. People lost their jobs, became unemployable, and committed suicide because of him.