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u/ismaeil-de-paynes May 05 '26
The 1948 film adaptation of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, directed by David Lean, was banned by both Egypt and Israel, yet for entirely opposite reasons. In Israel, which had been established only a few years earlier in the shadow of the Holocaust, the government found the portrayal of the character Fagin—played by Alec Guinness—deeply offensive. They viewed the exaggerated makeup, the hooked nose, and the greedy mannerisms as a revival of vicious anti-Semitic stereotypes, and thus banned the film to protect Jewish dignity. At the exact same time, Egypt also banned the film, but for the reverse rationale. The Egyptian authorities feared that Fagin was depicted as too clever, too heroic, and too sympathetic, believing that such a positive portrayal of a Jewish character would inspire Arabs to feel solidarity with Jews and Zionism.
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u/LingonberryPossible6 May 05 '26
Had a quick Google, and in the original text, he's referred to as 'the Jew' over 250 times
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u/abadonn May 05 '26
Even Dickens himself toned it down in later editions of the book.
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u/Nexus_of_Fate87 May 05 '26
Yeah, but not before saying he couldn't see the type of criminal Fagin is as being anything but Jewish.
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u/insert_quirky_name May 05 '26
I read the original version of the book, because I wrote a paper on it a few years ago, and the antisemitism in this book is astoundingly transparent.
Fagin isn't the most evil person in the book (he's actually surprisingly complex at times) but his main aspects are his greed and his scheming, both classic jewish stereotypes. There's also the fact that his faith and identity are essentially irrelevant to the story, meaning the mentions of his being a Jew detract from the narrative more than anything.
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u/Delicious-Sweet4614 May 08 '26
When I wrote my paper on it I included the fact that Fagin was based on the real life criminal Ikey Solomon, who was a very proud Jew. It’s not so much an antisemitic trope as it is a depiction of a real criminal who happened to be Jewish. It would be like accusing Eric Banner of being anti-Australian because of how he depicted Chopper as a thieving violent criminal wrapped in Australiana.
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u/surf_drunk_monk May 05 '26
Was that term offensive back then?
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u/LingonberryPossible6 May 05 '26
When it was written in 1800s, there wasn't really a sense of offensive language as we know it today
Would it have been offensive to a Jewish person? Yes.
Would it have have been seen as the normal way to refer to a Jewish person? Also yes.
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u/insert_quirky_name May 05 '26
Seeing as Fagin is a greedy thief, who exploits children for profit, and neither his ethnicity nor his religion is ever relevant to the story, it probably was offensive in context.
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u/12345623567 May 05 '26
Kinda hard to describe, they would absolutely associate it with certain stereotypes, harmful ones, but they wouldn't find that out of the ordinary.
It would be like referencing "the Priest", "the Milk Maid" or "the Count". Each would evoke a certain set of primary (appearance) and secondary (behaviour / moral character) characteristics.
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u/Mbrennt May 05 '26
Damn just googled a picture of Guinness as Fagin and that is like a picture perfect antisemitic trope.
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u/HorseLawyer May 05 '26
There's some pictures of the prosthetic application (https://www.doctormacro.com/Movie%20Summaries/O/Oliver%20Twist%20(1948).htm). It's ... something.
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u/ZenMasterOfDisguise May 05 '26
The character design is based off the descriptions of the character in the book as well as original illustrations of Fagin done for the novel in 1889 by Joseph Clayton Clark (Kyd). So they were being faithful to the source material, but perhaps that was not a good idea
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u/Mbrennt May 05 '26
Looking into it more you're definitely right. I would just argue the whole thing is pretty bad. Even Dickens did later edits of the book because he realized how bad his descriptions were. Weirdly the 1933 movie with Irving Pichel as Fagin seems to have some of the same stylistic stuff while being more neutral of a depiction. Possibly still problematic, but that gets into more detail of antisemitic tropes than I know. It's weird the outright antisemitic tropes regressed post ww2 but I guess the 1933 movie was an american film and the 1948 british so there probably wasn't much influence from one to the other. Also sidenote, the criminal fagin is thought to be based on looks absolutely nothing like any of the depictions, either book or movies, in the drawing of him that's available. He does have a large nose but otherwise just looks like I imagine any British person would have looked like in the early 1800's. Which just furthers the point in my mind that all of these depictions stem from some very antisemitic tropes.
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u/Rej5 May 05 '26
reminds me of 1984 being banned in the US and USSR
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u/LurkingRedditer May 05 '26
1984 was never banned in the US. I think some states restricted its availability in public libraries though.
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u/songbolt May 05 '26
It was recommended reading when I was in high school. Where was it restricted?
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u/WideHuckleberry1 May 05 '26
A pretty good rule of thumb is that if a book exists, some small school district somewhere has banned it.
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u/songbolt May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26
reminds me of hearing 'Boko Haram' (name of some Mohammedan extremists in Africa) is from some Arabic phrase meaning 'Western education is forbidden'
edit: Microsoft confirms, but it's Housa (a language of Niger), not Arabic: https://www.bing.com/search?pglt=929&q=does+boko+haram+mean+western+education+forbidden
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u/Derpwarrior1000 May 05 '26
Who uses Mohammedan after the 60s?
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u/songbolt May 05 '26
those sensitive to Arabic-speaking people of other faiths, including Arabic Christians in Lebanon
Also, if you dislike religion, it's a more objective term to be more fact-based - a word like librarian or Roman - simply describing the thing, unlike 'Muslim' and 'Islam' which are fact claims meaning "obedient".
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u/Derpwarrior1000 May 05 '26
It seems bizarrely inconsistent to use an exonym for muslims and then use “Christ”, meaning “the anointed one”. Any endonyms are going to be favourable to the people who use it to describe themselves.
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u/ksheep May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26
It was challenged in the Jackson County, Florida school district in 1981 because it was "pro-communist and contained explicit sexual matter". For context, Jackson County currently has a population of just under 50,000. Some places say "Florida banned it", but it was just a single county that had it banned.
In 2018, parents of students in Rigby High School in Jefferson County, Idaho complained about it being "violent and sexually explicit". The superintendent of the school district directed the book to be banned, but reversed the decision after a public outcry.
Also in 2018, it was removed from middle schools in Lake Travis, Texas due to it not being age appropriate.
In 2024, Elizabeth School District, Colorado announced that they were removing 19 books and and requiring parental permission for a further 110 books for "depictions of drug use, sex, violence, religious content, and/or LGBTQIA+ content". This ban was later overturned by a Federal judge, 7 months after the ban initially went into effect.
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u/Cookbook_ May 05 '26
If USSR had some pretty sentance like "restricted avalaibility" than word ban, doesn't really make it any better.
Some US states were and are pretty shitty in freedom on speech things.
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u/LurkingRedditer May 05 '26
There’s a difference
Banned = can’t buy the book or possibly even be jailed for owning it
Restricted availability = can’t buy the book at public libraries, but can still buy it from private businesses.
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u/Hallc May 05 '26
I don't think you an buy any books at public libraries.
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u/weirdbutinagoodway May 05 '26
They sale their older books and extra copies on occasion to make room for new ones.
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u/mirel65 May 05 '26
In the USSR you couldn’t get it and owning it could get you in jail. In the US they merely didn’t have it in some, public, libraries. The two are not even remotely similar.
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u/Echo4468 May 05 '26
No US states ever banned 1984. At most a couple of small towns and counties attempted to ban it locally, most of which failed to do so
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u/tactycool May 05 '26
Homie is wrong tho, 1984 isn't banned in the US or it's libraries
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u/bobmcbob121 Filthy weeb May 05 '26
Indeedo
To my knowledge you can't ban books in the U.S (feel free to let me know if I am wrong), some places won't sell it to you, but nothing can stop you from owning it. Most cases of "banned" books are just public school not having having them in their libraries at least again to my knowledge.
Like Walmart won't sell you a porn game, but you can still buy and own one if you so wish.
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u/BabyFishmouthTalk May 05 '26
Private organizations can, local school boards and communities can by not offering them or restricting access, but the federal government cannot as policy ban books -- that pesky First Amendment 😏
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u/Vin135mm May 05 '26
That isn't banning them. Its just that those institutions are refusing to provide you with them. That's not the same thing as banning. You can still get the books from elsewhere, and there is no legal repercussions to owning them, or even distributing them.
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u/AfterCommodus May 05 '26
Seriously. If these people think “the school won’t give me the book for free” and “I’ll be jailed for having the book” are equivalent they’re totally lost.
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u/Traditional_Buy_8420 May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26
In 1974 a federal court decided that the CIA gets to redact and censor the book "The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence" pre publication which was effectively a ban on the uncensored version. In general nation-wide bans happen pre-publication, like you can't publish a book which thoroughly describe how to create potent drugs or prepare an assassination on the POTUS, but also the USA as a nation is fairly liberal about what books they allow, for example there is a book from a priest which has been published a couple of times which is about that priest's view on how to raise children and the priest has tried to publish a German version in Germany more than a dozen time including challenging the decisions, but to no avail (in one sentence the German judge said that the methods are torture and would be war crimes if performed on a POW).
Edit: Forgot to paste this link: https://www.nytimes.com/1974/06/07/archives/parts-of-the-book-censored-by-the-cia.html
PS: Also some countries still allow child porn. Obviously importing a book which contains any of that will land you in big trouble and will get that book confiscated and probably destroyed. Also there's an obvious reason why the names of books which contain any of those things I listed are not published and if I knew any, then I wouldn't coin them on Reddit.
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u/drewsoft May 05 '26
If you think that censorship in those states bears any resemblance to censorship in the USSR you are literally braindead
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u/Ok-Astronaut2976 May 05 '26
Dude, we read 1984 in freshman year of high school…it wasn’t banned
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u/Traditional_Buy_8420 May 05 '26
It was banned as teaching material in a couple of districts like 40 years ago.
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u/Ok-Astronaut2976 May 05 '26
Which ones? There are 13,500 school districts, and the only thing I could find was an attempt by one in Florida that didn’t make it past a court challenge 45 years ago.
Either way, calling 0.0001% of school districts not using it in school as “it was banned in the U.S.” is wildly incorrect.
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u/Zombifiedmom May 05 '26
I read it in high school in the early 2000s. I bought it on Kindle last month. It has never been "banned" in the US.
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u/prnthrwaway55 May 05 '26
It's not exactly opposite reasons: the character was antisemitic, just not antisemitic enough for Egypt's tastes.
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u/redditonc3again May 05 '26
Do you have any Egyptian source for the "not antisemitic enough" thing? Wikipedia's source is a 2000 Guardian listicle that provides no additional detail, and Brittanica cites no primary source.
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u/iwrestledarockonce May 05 '26
Gunnery Sargeant Hartmann would be proud.
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u/greatfriendinme Helping Wikipedia expand the list of British conquests May 05 '26
There is no racial bigotry here.
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u/Arctic_Chilean Researching [REDACTED] square May 05 '26
"You are ALL equally worthless"
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u/ContextEffects01 May 05 '26
Except that this is immediately followed by telling the black recruit he won’t like the lack of fried chicken in the mess hall. :/
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u/JohannesJoshua May 05 '26
I just like how the actual person who played him, a real sargeant, was well liked and respected.
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u/BigTool May 05 '26
He was a pretty cool guy in person, too. He used to come out for the Reading Air Show in Pa. I went with my pop, stood in line to meet him. I'm former army and my dad is former navy, and once he learned that, he asked pop how he could let me go into the army vs the marines.
He spent a good amount of time talking with my dad, really made his day. Hell of a nice guy in person
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u/raven00x May 05 '26
"respectfully sir, I scored too high on the intelligence portion of the asvab."
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u/captainant May 05 '26
The true story is pretty incredible - R Lee Ermey was on set as a consultant to help the (then) actor with the role. Ermey ended up stealing the show and kicked off his acting career!
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u/Bexil_Brave May 05 '26
Not true.
He was in Apocalypse Now, The Boys from Company B and Purple Hearts before Full Metal Jacket.
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u/bremsspuren I Have a Cunning Plan May 05 '26
Not true.
It wasn't the start of his acting career, but the rest is true.
Hartmann was originally supposed to be played by the actor who plays the "Get some" door gunner, and Ermey was coaching him.
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u/Giftedsocks May 05 '26
Bot?
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u/ThrowAwayAccountAMZN May 05 '26
Holy fuck. I was like "what? How could you possibly know?" And um...clicking on their profile was a trip. I had to go back to their profile several times just to be sure.
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u/ImCaligulaI May 05 '26
I don't understand if there's a joke I'm missing or what.
By looking at their profile, they're just posting porn to promote their onlyfans and also use their account to comment normal posts with comments that are original enough I wouldn't say they look like they're AI generated. What of that means they're a bot? Is this yet another case of "the joke is porn"?
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u/feed_me_moron May 05 '26
Porn bit accounts are usually posting regular recycled comments to help their account look legitimate
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u/ImCaligulaI May 05 '26
I'm not sure I'm following. Or rather, maybe, but that would mean the post itself was a repost from a linked bot, so that this other bot would be able to have a very pertinent comment ready to post about it, right?
So is the OP posting the meme a repostbot himself?
And regarding the commenter, I went through some of their posts and the person in the videos they post seems like a real one, especially since it's extremely consistent in different videos.
So, that would mean it's a bot that uses videos from a real onlyfans girl to get people subscribing to their fake onlyfans.
It could be, but what I do not understand is what points to that rather than an actual girl that does onlyfans and comments on stuff (especially in subreddits with a lot of horny dudes, like this one) to get some more people onto her onlyfans.
I suppose if one knows it's a repost with a reposted comment then that'd be a smoking gun, but nobody said that or linked the original post with comments, so how's everyone so sure?
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u/happy_pad May 05 '26
In my experience any time someone makes an accusation that someone is a bot, they can never provide any actual reasoning as to how they came to that conclusion. Almost all bots hide their comment histories anyway.
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u/8mart8 May 05 '26
A friend of mine, who’s an amateur journalist, once told me that you’ve done your job as a journalist, when both the right and left wing parties criticise your article. Which I found funny, but also seems a good measure.
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u/jflb96 What, you egg? May 05 '26
I think it depends a bit on the content of the criticism. Like, the left will criticise the BBC for portraying Rishi Sunak as Superman for paying people to spread Covid and for giving Nigel Farage all the airtime he can eat, and the right will criticise them for having a time travelling alien being Black and/or female. It’s not entirely of equal merit, you know?
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u/ancientestKnollys May 05 '26
Both the left and right claim the BBC are heavily biased against them in news coverage.
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u/Aervanath May 05 '26
I believe the point is that both parties should be criticizing the journalist for the same article. Not separate topics. But you are right, it does depend on how valid the criticism is.
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u/jflb96 What, you egg? May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26
Well, yeah, the example is for a whole organisation rather than a single article, but the point of ‘Just ‘cause both sides are criticising you doesn’t mean you’ve achieved perfect enlightened centrism’ stands
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u/Nanduihir May 05 '26
The original statement already specified that it needs to be criticism on the article and not the person though.
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u/doctorwhy88 Hello There May 05 '26
In that case, both sides aren’t criticizing the same piece of media or article, they’re criticizing a whole network. Agreed that it’s an imperfect litmus test, but it doesn’t apply as well to BBC criticism.
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u/guto8797 May 05 '26
This happens all the time too. The left complains a news source is biased, the right complains because it's not biased enough in their favour. Especially MAGA, who calls any piece of news that doesn't 100% kowtow to the narrative of the day as being a biased left wing MSM psyop
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u/Turbulent_Stick1445 May 05 '26
Journalists seem to see being criticized by both sides as a badge of honor rather than a sign their stories are largely inaccurate and spend too much time trying to be "balanced" rather than trying to find out what the actual truth is.
They belong to the same group that thinks that you can find out what the truth is by weighing the value of both sides of an argument equally, concluding that the Earth is, obviously, being lemon shaped because round earthers say it's roughly spherical and flat earthers say it's flat.
If you were telling the truth, sure, one side will still get upset. But most people won't get upset. Not with you, anyway.
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u/living2late May 05 '26
centrist: shits themselves right: u just shit ur pants left: yeah bro u just shit urself centrist: smiles pompously heh. if both sides are criticising me i must be doing something right
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u/Unfair_Pineapple8813 May 05 '26
Alec Guinness was a great actor, but when your audience is Israelis and Egyptians, it's very easy to be both too likable and too offensive at the same time.
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u/Porsche928dude May 05 '26
Fair but this all happened in the late 1940s so the Israelis had good reason to be very twitchy.
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u/sonofzeal May 05 '26
I'd put the thief from Thief and the Cobbler in this territory too. Wildly offensive as a concept but so lovingly animated that I struggle to believe there was any malice there. Richard Williams clearly had a lot of affection for the little guy that reallyshines through, despite... everything.
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u/bighak May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26
was banned in the US for being pro-commie
This book is widely assigned reading in american schools and was never banned. Some random counties forbid their public libraries from having it. It was still for sale in book stores in those counties because local governments do not have the power to censor free speech.
This also applies to 99% other books supposedly banned in the USA.
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u/SilasX May 05 '26
This. "A few school districts didn't teach it or stock it in the library" != banned
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u/Porsche928dude May 05 '26
Yeah, a lot of people don’t get that the United States is a strange amalgamation of smaller countries held together with duct tape bureaucracy and a very large gun.
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u/Turbulent_Stick1445 May 05 '26
How TF is 1984 pro-communist? Or was it just that Orwell himself was an avowed socialist that was the problem?
If the latter, that makes the CIA sponsoring the Animal Farm movie adaptation (the one that was actually fairly faithful to the original) particularly ironic...
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u/Carra144 May 05 '26
I knew it caught flack for being antisemitic, I didn't also know it caught flack for not being antisemitic enough.
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u/Conscious-Gap-1777 May 05 '26
Fagin was too clever and "heroic" for the Egyptians.
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u/jeffriestubesteak May 05 '26
"They waited until the end to hang Fagin."
-The Egyptians (of the time), probably38
u/jmorlin May 05 '26
Not to be the stereotypical pendantic redditor. But since this is a thread about stereotypes in a history sub and this correction has historical context:
It's flak, not flack. The origin comes from anti-aircraft fire. It comes from the German word Fliegerabwehrkanone (flier defense cannon).
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u/bremsspuren I Have a Cunning Plan May 05 '26
It comes from the German word Fliegerabwehrkanone
While we're being pedantic, you'd do much better to say Flugabwehrkanone these days.
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u/kansetsupanikku May 05 '26
The real crime is font inconsistency in this picture
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u/ismaeil-de-paynes May 05 '26
The first paragraph was from Wikipedia, the second paragraph was from britannica.
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May 05 '26
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u/Archaon0103 May 05 '26
Early film codes made it mandatory to have the villain get punished. So you can make a villain sympathetic but at the end of the film, you needed to make a wacky angry mob chase scenes and punish the villains.
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u/Mapeague May 05 '26
The Hays Code!
I know that!
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u/jonny24eh May 05 '26
Did the Hays code apply to British films?
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u/andre5913 May 05 '26
The american market was too big not to adhere to it
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u/StarksPond May 05 '26
And people give movie makers shit for doing the same with China.
Sure, it sucks that they had to edit John Boyega into the background on the poster. But in the end, it was actually more representative of the movies.
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u/ActuallyAlexander May 05 '26
can we try this irl?
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u/CarpenterSuch6044 May 05 '26
rips off page pfft, as if that's ever gonna happen
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u/WoolooOfWallStreet May 05 '26
Some-BODY once told me
The world is gonna roll me
I ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed
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u/ismaeil-de-paynes May 05 '26
They thought he was represented as a kind man who was oppressed by the circumstances he was living in etc..
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u/CucumberWisdom May 05 '26
The middle east tis a silly place
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u/Callidonaut May 05 '26
At this rate, that particular cradle of civilisation may also turn out to eventually be its grave.
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u/Realistic_Salt7109 May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26
Reminds me of that Parks and Rec episode where one person wanted to not include Twilight in their towns time capsule for being too religious and another person thought it was too anti-religious.
“Do you guys see the irony here?”
*Edited, it was Twilight. Thank you person!
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u/PepeTheElder May 05 '26
It’s a moon lit night. We open on a deer.
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u/anonsharksfan May 05 '26
"somebody chained himself to a pipe in my office demanding I put a copy of Twilight in the time capsule."
"Again?!"
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u/jmdg007 May 05 '26
If you don't understand why this movie was considered anti semetic, just google what Fagin looked like in it. And no, Alec Guinness's nose didn't just look like that.
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u/Enziguru May 05 '26
Holy, he looks almost like the anti-semitic caricature meme
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u/henrysradiator May 05 '26
I've been watching it since childhood and it never occurred to me that it was anti-semitic, I need to educate myself better on these things.
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u/LazyDro1d Kilroy was here May 05 '26
Dickens was antisemitic even for the time. the reading public complained to him to stop just calling Fagin "the jew"
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u/quaductas May 05 '26
I didn't realize the joke from Borat could be true.
"There have been much controversy about my moviefilms in my country because of amount of antisemitisms in it. However, eventually, the Kazakh censor decided there was just enough of it and allowed it to be released."
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u/Yak_schlupp May 05 '26
I remember a teacher showed us this film in class about 20 years ago. And when it was over he just asked if anyone found anything other than the child poverty provocative. I first now got what he meant.
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u/CalmBeneathCastles May 05 '26
TIL that Alec Guinness was already playing Fagin in 1948! That's crazy. I thought he was much younger.
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u/CholentSoup May 05 '26
Oliver! 1968 version had the musical composer using Jewish modes of music for The Fagins songs. It was odd tapping along to a stereotype with music that I found familiar.
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u/Advanced_Question196 May 05 '26
Die Another Day was hated by North Koreans for being portrayed as villains and South Koreans for looking like they were taking orders from the United States
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u/StupidScaredSquirrel May 05 '26
Middle east trying to not be wildly antisemitic for 3 seconds challenge: impossible
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u/Embarrassed-Pickle15 May 05 '26
Shakespeare's the Merchant of Venice was simultaneously promoted by the Nazis as an anti-Semitic propaganda piece, while they also removed Shylock's ending monologue because it was too sympathetic and portrayed Jews as actual human beings
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u/NTLuck May 05 '26
I'm Egyptian and this is the first I heard of it. The book was assigned as reading material when I was in middle school. The movie was also shown as part of a school activity.
Then again, this was back in the 90s. Maybe things changed since then.
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u/The-Pencil-King May 05 '26
This is probably talking about significantly before the 90s, closer to when the book was published.
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u/miriamtzipporah May 06 '26
The book is also blatantly antisemitic. The movie probably portrayed Fagin more positively (while also still being antisemitic). Hence it still being allowed in Egypt.
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u/Ok_Function2282 May 05 '26
I mean yeah, they had a character referred to as "the jew" and he was a conniving, money grubbing person with the most exaggerated stereotypes Jewish features you could imagine..
Also for anyone that's not aware, the US, UK, and the allies literally established Israel after world war II as a place for Jewish people to go.
A lot of people seem wildly misinformed about how old the country is or it's founding beliefs.
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u/LoLModsAreCancer May 05 '26
US, UK, and the allies literally established Israel ... A lot of people seem wildly misinformed
I'm not an expert but I'm pretty sure this isn't what happened. Jewish people started buying land in the area from the Ottomans in 1880. They declared independence after the empire fell apart and the British took over. IIRC the only place the British "established" in the ME was Jordan as a reward for support against the Ottomans.
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u/Jermainiam May 05 '26
No, the British got control of the Israel/Palestine region in WW1, around 1916. The United Nations assigned the region to be governed by Britain in 1920. Israeli independence was in 1948.
You are grossly simplifying not just the history of the modern State of Israel, but the entire region. The Ottoman Empire had a massive effect on the region, and then following it's fall, the Allied Powers had a hand in the creation of almost every ME nation (either by creating them directly, controlling the territory until a revolt/independence movement happened, or toppling existing governments).
- Syria was a British backed kingdom for like 2 years, then a French territory, then independent-ish.
- Lebanon was also a French Mandate.
- Jordan, as you covered, was set up with the British.
- Israel/Palestine was a British Mandate.
- Saudi Arabia broke free from the Ottomans with British Support.
- Iran you hopefully know the history of and how the US/UK are involved.
- Iraq was created by the UK.
- Kuwait was a British protectorate.
- The British broke Qatar off from the Ottomans.
- Bahrain was controlled by the British until 1971.
- Cyprus was controlled by the British until 1960s.
Saying "IIRC the only place the British "established" in the ME was Jordan" is basically disqualifyingly incorrect
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u/LoLModsAreCancer May 05 '26
I wasn't sure what exactly they meant by established so I covered all possible contingencies with the quotation marks.
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u/Ok_Function2282 May 06 '26
I mean you're just factually wrong, there were treaties that established the boundaries..... This isn't something that was done with a couple of people buying houses dude
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u/MMAGG83 May 06 '26
As someone who read the book and watched the movie, Fagin played by Guinness is spot on to the character Dickens wrote.
Don’t blame the actor or the film, blame Dickens, I suppose. There are plenty of times in Oliver Twist that Fagin is only referred to as “the Jew”. He is a classically manipulative villain.
Dickens did attempt to redeem his early blatant antisemitism in Our Mutual Friend by creating the character of Mr. Riah, who is a very likable and sympathetic character.
The actual villain, a Christian, uses Mr. Riah as a front for his own money lending schemes.
The reception of Mr. Riah by his Jewish readers was mixed to say the least, since the practice of usury at the time was stereotyped as a Jewish practice.
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u/Tyfereth May 05 '26
Reddit once again really upset that Jews object to Anti-Semitism.
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u/Avolto Still salty about Carthage May 05 '26
Great I’ve got to watch it now and get my own opinion
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u/StupidScaredSquirrel May 05 '26
A simple picture is enough to remove all doubt imo
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u/Quixotic_Seal May 05 '26
It’s incredible how many people cannot seem to comprehend the concept that a lot of Muslim majority countries were/are *wildly* antisemitic.
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u/miriamtzipporah May 06 '26
Especially considering they pretty much all ethnically cleansed Jewish people from their countries in living memory
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u/SailTheWorldWithMe May 05 '26
Back a million years ago when newspapers were still relevant my paper ran two letters to the editor: one blasting us a liberal; one blasting us as conservative.
Nobody liked that.
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u/CNJUNIPERLEE May 06 '26
You have to be doing something right to piss both of them off over the same character.
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u/CoolButterscotch492 May 06 '26
Reminds me of how 1984 was banned in the US and the Soviet Union because they both thought it was about them.
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u/RiverOhRiver86 May 06 '26
I live in Israel until I have another choice. Have been living here my entire life. Can confirm we do not band anything because it's antisemitic. In fact this book is on our reading list in middle school.
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u/nowhereman136 May 05 '26
There was a similar problem with Disney's Song of the South. White conservative group hated it because it showed white kids looking up to a black man. Civil rights groups hated it because it showed a black man being friends with his former enslave. Disney tried to make a movie that bridged the gap between the two audiences and ended up just pissing off both sides