Posted on 06/29/2020 11:11:15 PM PDT by Borges
Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, a former Green Party councillor has daubed the Charles Dickens museum with the words "Dickens Racist, Dickens Racist". that he will make "no apology" for what he has done because the author was a "notorious genocidal racist". Ian Driver from Kent, said he will make "no apology" for what he has done because the author was a "notorious genocidal racist".
Mr Driver cited the famous character of Fagin in Oliver Twist as being an anti-Semitic stereotype.
The words were daubed on The Dickens House Museum in Broadstairs, Kent.
But, father of three Mr Driver told how he perceived this area of Kent to have an underbelly of racism.
Mr Driver said today: "I have been campaigning for quite a long time about what I regard to be institutional racism in Thanet and Broadstairs in particular.
anything about it.
"I think it is quite demeaning towards black people and there is no justification for it.
"But after the Black Lives Matter protests and seeing people learn their local history like the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol, I decided to do some digging into my hometown of 12 years.
"Charles Dickens is celebrated in Broadstairs like a local hero and money maker just because he wrote a few books here.
"In reality, he was a notorious genocidal racist and should be depicted as such.
"That's the real Dickens."
The former councillor explained how Charles Dickens was an enthusiastic supporter of British Imperialism.
He said: "He supported the Morant Bay rebellion in Jamaica in 1865.
"He also supported the suppression of the Indian rebellion in 1857 saying their race should be wiped out and also referred to black and Asian people as savages.
"There is no defending him yet there is a whole museum dedicated to him on my doorstep with no mention of his other life as a racist.
"The National Portrait Gallery even has a few paragraphs explaining this other side of history.
"I think it's important to get both sides and a balanced view."
Oh oh...
Yes, Dickens HATED the USA and was quite unimpressed by the people of this nation, even though he was given a gigantic reception here, treated like a great hero, and lauded mightily; all of which he lived for. OTOH...he hated that America didn't have the kind of class system that England had and that people were more open. He was a rather secretive man and only wanted his version of himself to be seen WHEN he decided to show his version of it.
There's more...but the above should explain his complete distaste for the USA a bit.
LOL...that pipe tobacco joke is so old, most people have NO idea what the “joke” is! And FYI...it was ( is? ) an American brand and had less than nothing at all to do with the UK nor Prince Albert, except for the name. ;^)
Dickens wasn’t a realist in the modern sense. He created his own universe and populated with more diverse types than any other writer since Shakespeare.
Is that WHY he used newspaper articles and Henry Mayhew's books ( LONDON'S UNDERWORLD and MAYHEW'S LONDON ) as basis for many characters, as well as his fictionalized own life for his novels?
You might just as well then claim that Dominick Dunne's books weren't "realistic".
What about Dickens' best friend, Wilkie Collins' works? Are you going to tell me that his characters weren't just as "diverse", if not more so?
Dickens was not a realist in the Literary sense of the word. Realism was Howells and Twain. I’ve read “The Woman in White” and “The Moonstone” both are wonderful but they are the only two Collins works still read with regularity.
I remember reading something quite a while back about why they used Prince Albert with that brand, but can’t recall. I’m sure it’s out there on the internet somewhere.
I can't imagine ever going back to the UK now, even though my best friend from college lives there. So I'm glad that we were able to travel, long ago, to places that have become so horrible now. The problem is...so have many places in this nation, become "NO GO ZONES" now too. And I can't see things change for the better any time soon...if ever.
Really? I’ll have to look it up.
How about you show how you’re not stupid, and expain what your post meant?
Just on Dickens’s dislike of the USA...the one feature of life in the US which recurs again and again in the accounts not only of Dickens, but of many other British visitors of the period (Trollope etc), and which seems to have darkened their general perception of the country, was the apparently near-universal habit of tobacco-wad spitting in public.
(And btw your following post about your reluctance to visit the UK...all I can say is that in 95%+ of the country you might be pleasantly surprised. ‘Don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers’...)
Sadly, it doesn't say why. Perhaps Reynolds just liked the guy.
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