completely false..just because you “heard” it doesn’t make it so...if you’ve read any book on Disney the antisemitism accusation is one of the most absurd...
MERYL STREEP: “He formed and supported an anti-Semitic industry lobbying group.”
FACT: This is the most grotesquely misinformed statement presented by Streep during her vitriolic speech. Streep is referring to Walt’s involvement in the formation of the Motion Picture Alliance for Preservation of American Ideals (MPA). This was not a fringe organization nor was its purpose anti-Semitism. It was a mainstream, if miguided and reactionary, organization enacted by the movie industry’s conservative elite, and its membership included a who’s who of Hollywood, among them directors Cecil B. DeMille, John Ford, Norman Taurog, King Vidor, Victor Fleming, Leo McCarey and Sam Wood; actors John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Ginger Rogers, Clark Gable, Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Montgomery, George Murphy (who later became a U.S. Senator) and Ronald Reagan (who later became president of the United States); MGM art director Cedric Gibbons; and gossip columnist Hedda Hopper.
When the MPA was formed in 1944, of which Disney became its first vice-president, its agenda was spelled out clearly in the group’s mission statement:
We believe in, and like, the American way of life: the liberty and freedom which generations before us have fought to create and preserve; the freedom to speak, to think, to live, to worship, to work, and to govern ourselves as individuals, as free men; the right to succeed or fail as free men, according to the measure of our ability and our strength.
Believing in these things, we find ourselves in sharp revolt against a rising tide of communism, fascism, and kindred beliefs, that seek by subversive means to undermine and change this way of life; groups that have forfeited their right to exist in this country of ours, because they seek to achieve their change by means other than the vested procedure of the ballot and to deny the right of the majority opinion of the people to rule.
In our special field of motion pictures, we resent the growing impression that this industry is made of, and dominated by, Communists, radicals, and crackpots. We believe that we represent the vast majority of the people who serve this great medium of expression. But unfortunately it has been an unorganized majority. This has been almost inevitable. The very love of freedom, of the rights of the individual, make this great majority reluctant to organize. But now we must, or we shall meanly lose “the last, best hope on earth.”
The group’s formation has to be viewed in the context of the much bigger ideological and cultural turfwar that was taking place in Hollywood at the time. The era and its politics are extensively documented in the recent book When Hollywood Was Right: How Movie Stars, Studio Moguls, and Big Business Remade American Politics. As part of that era’s politics, name-calling was fervent (sound familiar?). Conservatives referred to liberals as Pinkos, New Dealers, and Commies. Liberals, in turn, branded conservatives, like Walt, as Fascists and anti-Semites. Labelling the MPA an anti-Semitic organization was a rhetorical tactic used by the left to attack it, and while there were surely anti-Semites in the group, it was not an inherently anti-Semitic organization nor was that Walt’s reason for being involved in the group.
Walt’s involvement with the MPA peaked in 1947 when the group’s members testified in Washington D.C. in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Disney was among those who spoke as a “friendly” witness and he called out the leader of the Disney studio strike, David Hilberman. Disney presumably felt vindicated after exposing who he believed were subversive elements within the Hollywood industry, because his involvement in the MPA—minimal as it had been—waned after his testimony. Disney’s actions speak powerfully to the notion that his involvement in the group was to settle personal scores against those whom he felt had wronged him, and never an ideological stance against Jews.
Walt was right. Look at the cesspool Hollywood and his own studio have become. The names listed like Robert Montgomery were true WW2 heroes as well as great actors. Nothing reactionary about them!
CalArts, founded by Disney and located in Valencia, CA, also teaches Walt was an anti-Semite, the damned ingrates. My nephew goes there but he turned out to be a decent fellow.