The decision by actor Al Pacino to withdraw from a Danish play because its author supported the Nazis during World War II has reopened a long-simmering debate over cultural contributions by individuals whose racial or political views are anathema.
Pacino, the Academy Award winning star of such films as The Godfather and Scent of a Woman, pulled out of the Copenhagen production of a play adapted from novel “Hunger,” after learning that its author, the late Knut Hamsun, backed the Nazis.
How come there’s no such sanction against celebrities who back communism? Communism killed more people than Nazism. I wonder if it has something to do with the large number of Jews (though a distinct minority among Jews) who supported communism. By 1950, a million American Jews were either communists or socialists (estimated sociologist Nathan Glazar in 1966).
This supposedly “long-simmering debate over cultural contributions by individuals whose racial or political views are anathema” seems to break down to whether or not someone or something was/is good for the cool kids. Is that humanity’s ultimate litmus test?
