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Hall of Shame

Charles Dickens

(1812 - 1870)

Charles John Huffam Dickens, the famous English writer, best known for his social criticism and works like The Pickwick Papers, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol and The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, was unfortunately also known for his specific condescending remarks about native peoples and his antisemitism. Antisemitism was profoundly expressed in Oliver Twist (1838) in the character of "Fagin the jew", he criticized explorer John Rae who led the Franklin Expedition

"It is not the miserable nature of the noble savage that is the new thing; it is the whimpering over him with maudlin admiration, and the affecting to regret him, and the drawing of any comparison of advantage between the blemishes of civilisation and the tenor of his swinish life. There may have been a change now and then in those diseased absurdities, but there is none in him"

from: The Noble Savage

(short essay 1853)

to the Inuit in his story The Frozen Deep (1856), wrote a very insulting short essay about American Indians in The Noble Savage as a response to the paintings by George Catlin and actually called for the genocide of (Asian) Indian people in The Perils of Certain English Prisoners as a response to the Indian Rebellion of 1857. Well, rebellions do not come out of the blue for no reason Mr Dickens and even the most civilized of men have some breaking point where they feel enough is enough.

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