|
I don't think it is so easy to just say "ignore it, it's fiction."
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion started out life as fiction. Fiction that captured the imagination of certain populations and over time came to be accepted as fact. Would we be correct in telling all of the Russian Rabbis and Jewish leaders who tried to debunk to just "chill out, it's just fiction."
Now, do I think that The Da Vinci Code is going to be nearly as harmful as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion? No, the Catholic Church is certainly in a much stronger position than ghettoized Jews in Russia were. And if people were just taking The Da Vinci Code as simple fiction I would think the best course is to just ignore it. But a lot of people aren't taking it that way.
They think it is a dramatized account of something that is true or could easily be true. And the central truth presented is a refutation of the central beliefs of hundreds of millions of people. I think it is fair for them to stand up and say so.
Just as it would be if I were to right a massively popular bestseller, that purported to be mostly true, and was just a retelling of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Fiction that touches a cultural nerve like The Da Vinci Code has, has a way of becoming mythology. And mythology has a way of becoming history. Not history that will be accepted as such in the halls of academia but history that will be accepted as such down at the corner coffee shop.
|