Don't Cancel Alice Walker. Hold Her Accountable.

Four years ago, I accidentally canceled Alice Walker. In December 2018, I was attending a seminar for journalists at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum, and was supposed to be on a break from writing. But then the New York Times published an interview with Walker, the celebrated author of The Color Purple, in which she recommended a cartoonishly anti-Semitic book to readers, and the paper printed her approbation uncritically. The book, And the Truth Shall Set You Free, was written by conspiracy theorist David Icke. It mentions the word "Jewish" 241 times and the name "Rothschild" 374 times. These citations are not compliments. Among other pearls of wisdom, Icke claims that the Jews bankrolled the Holocaust and secretly control neo-Nazi groups and the KKK, all while approvingly citing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.