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Chesterton - Blog Posts
While I'm also fond of a lot of what G.K. Chesterton wrote, I'm a little surprised and disappointed by the fact that in your many mentions of and tributes to him you have not drawn attention to his frequently reactionary and frankly antisemitic views, nor the influence he had on his nephew A.K. Chesterton - who would grow up to be a member of the BUF and later co-found the National Front. I know many members of your family were murdered in the holocaust, and while I don't think his writing should be dismissed entirely by any means, I do find it odd that you've been such a champion of his without any caveat. Perhaps you expect readers to work out his views themselves, which is an understandable though optimistic view of people. I write this not as admonishment but out of genuine curiosity.
Also, when's the leather jacket coming back?
And I, for my part, am not actually surprised and disappointed that in your obviously extensive readings of what I've said and written about Chesterton you've somehow missed the bits where I talked and wrote about both his antisemitism and his racism, because the world is big and nobody can be expected to read everything or even Google to keep up. But I've talked and written about it -- for example, here on Tumblr in this very blog. Chesterton was a big person and he contained multitudes: that doesn't mean that he gets a Free Pass for the small-minded and disappointing and sometimes creepy bits of the writing, but it means that I'm more interested in the bits where he was better than that.
The leather jacket will come back when my hair is either white or mostly gone and when I look like an old guy who doesn't care what people think and is wearing his leather jacket because he loves it, and not like a gentleman in late middle age wearing a leather jacket because he misguidedly thinks it might make him look younger.
