Who were some of your childhood heroes that turned out to be horrible people?

8 months ago by TheImpressiveX to c/asklemmy

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residentoflaniakea 52 points 8 months ago

As a teenager I loved to read Lovecraft. It was a way to learn English as a nice side effect because it isn't my native language but that also obscured the appalling racism from me which lead to disappointment when I found out later.

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Kyrgizion 43 points 8 months ago

Lovecraft deserves some redemption. First of all he wasn't especially racist, just the "normal" amount for his time (take with a grain of salt please!). More importantly he significantly mellowed out in his later years primarily due to exposure to talented black writers which made him realize the error of his ways.

But yeah, I wouldn't ask him to name my void cat.

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DonPiano 31 points 8 months ago path: 0 22018901 22019662 22021772, hotness: undefined, score: 31, children: 0
Grail 28 points 8 months ago

No, he was really really racist for the time. But he did get better at the end.

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alternategait 10 points 8 months ago
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Duamerthrax 14 points 8 months ago

Other people have already confirmed he was a racist, but think Clinical Xenophobe is a more apt distinction. He was a unconformable around minorities, but he was also unconformable about the ocean and the color violet. And he wrote about his discomfort. He didn't write political manifests. This isn't a case of separating the art from the artist, but seeing the art to see the broken person behind it.

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