Even anti-imperialist Mark Twain reproduced Orientalist stereotypes of Muslims.

Evidence

Greater familiarity with the Middle East in the nineteenth century came from visitors to the Holy Land and from missionaries. Mark Twain, who went on to become a staunch anti-imperialist, wrote in 1869 about his trip to the Holy Land in a book titled The Innocents Abroad, which sold nearly a hundred thousand copies. While Twain witheringly (and hilariously) critiqued his fellow travelers for their hubris and lack of cultural sensitivity—a characteristic of American tourists that would continue into the next century and become grist for the Hollywood mill—he also had harsh words to say about Muslims. He called them “a people by nature and training filthy, brutish, ignorant, unprogressive [and] superstitious,” and saw the Ottomans as “a government whose Three Graces are Tyranny, Rapacity, [and] Blood.” — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 136

Categorization

• XREF: Twain’s simultaneous anti-imperialism and racism echoes the paradox Kumar elsewhere identifies in older empires; connects to how liberalism and empire coexisted in US self-image. — connects to: The Middle East itself is a product of Orientalist construction. — Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Understanding…, 161; The War on Terror weaponizes an invented Orientalist past to victimize Muslims today; Romanticism projected an exotic Orientalist fantasy rather than accurate knowledge — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 89 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Even distinguished literary novelists voice crude anti-Muslim prejudice #exemplifies (0.80)
• Even anti-Islamophobic Muslim novels indirectly accept the frame they oppose. #corroborates (0.70)
• Orientalism supplied the pre-existing tropes that the War on Terror redeployed against Muslims #corroborates (0.40)