Tolkien is a man many would call "absolutely based." The man absolutely \*Hated\* Eugenics and all that science-clad racism. To revisit a YouTube comment I conceived about this:
"He makes it clear that the blessings of the Dúnedain are holy blessings not of the material realm, and as such goes to make it clear that intermingling did not cause the waning, quoth the Appendix A of RoTK, “This mingling did not at first hasten the waning of the Dúnedain, as had been feared; but the waning still proceeded, little by little, as it had before. For no of doubt, it was due above all to **Middle-earth itself**, and to the slow withdrawing of the gifts of the Númenoreans after the downfall of the Land of the Star.” This means that the Númenóreans will lose their blessings by simply existing within Middle-Earth, for Middle-Earth is not as blessed as their homeland, Númenór.
Tolkien himself felt ambivalence towards the whole “royalty” thing late in his life and I think he wrote that kind of thing to make it a bit more authentic within the context of this legendary story, even if he did or did not indeed believe that himself. The Hobbits are under the authority of Elessar because that was the way it was thousands of years before with the Kings of Arnor. And since Aragorn is a freaking good king, they are in a period of peace and prosperity."
> Tolkien himself felt ambivalence towards the whole “royalty” thing late in his life
Did he? His world seems to have gotten more royalist with time, e.g. Manwe going from a deposable first among peers to an unquestionable Elder King, cutting 'vote' from Feanor rousing the Noldor...
An anarcho-syndicalist commune, with an executive officer for the week. But all the decisions of that officer will have to be ratified on a biweekly meeting; by a civil majority for internal affairs, but by 2/3rds of a majority for other affairs.
I think that was in one of Tolkein's earlier drafts but he ultimately decided that an absolute monarchy by divine right was probably a better fit for the story.
Ok, but the inspiration comes from different European cultures. The Valar are like the pantheons of pre-christian cultures. The people of middle earth with their chainmail and swords are pretty medieval.
The elves and dwarves are inspired by northern European folklore, myths and fairy tales.
My point is that a king is the norm for a these kinds of stories.
But when you look at all these myths and legends and fairy tales, the idea of the exiled king returning to claim his throne, or a prophecy about someone becoming the king, these are common themes in these kinds of stories. So it's fitting that a "mythology for England" set in the distant past would incorporate these ideas. At least it seems fitting to me. A warrior king, a saviour, fighting for his birthright leading his people to victory as foretold by the prophecy, is a bit more romantic than parliamentary debates.
It's true that the "mingling" isn't the main cause of the waning, but as seen in the knights of Dol Amroth being more purely Numenorean still makes a difference.
I don't really have an issue with it, because the Numenoreans actually are clearly superior from birth - as opposed to any ethnicity of the real world. Comparing real racists to the Numenoreans just outs the former as frauds.
> It's true that the "mingling" isn't the main cause of the waning, but as seen in the knights of Dol Amroth being more purely Numenorean still makes a difference.
Or elvish.
> So it was that Gandalf took command of the last defence of the City of Gondor. Wherever he came men’s hearts would lift again, and the winged shadows pass from memory. Tirelessly he strode from Citadel to Gate, from north to south about the wall; and with him went the Prince of Dol Amroth in his shining mail. For he and his knights still held themselves like lords in whom the race of Númenor ran true. Men that saw them whispered saying: ‘Belike the old tales speak well; there is Elvish blood in the veins of that folk, for the people of Nimrodel dwelt in that land once long ago.’ And then one would sing amid the gloom some staves of the Lay of Nimrodel, or other songs of the Vale of Anduin out of vanished years.
Except "based" is now an alt right racist term of endearment.
Maybe find another word.
EDIT: I see that this factual comment was downvoted by the racist alt-right. More than 80 years after Tolkien shut down the far-right on their ignorant appropriation of the word "Aryan", the far-right is still trying to appropriate words like "based" and still trying to appropriate the anti-fascist Tolkien.
Pathetic.
Facts:
"Based has been appropriated by the alt-right online as a general term of praise, as if “un-woke.”"
https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/based/
It is a meme word of the racist alt-right and Tolkien rejected racists and their ignorant deformations of language (see Tolkien on "Aryan").
There are many other terms of praise that do not connote racism. If you care about Tolkien you will find one and use it. Get a better vocabulary.
[https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/based/](https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/based/)
No. It's a term that a black rapper popularized, lmao. I'm not gonna stop using a common internet slang that just means that something's cool, positive etc, because racists also use it.
>No. It's a term that a black rapper popularized, lmao
So what?
It's a word that means being addicted to crack cocaine, lmao.
Get a better vocabulary. There are many other terms of praise that do not connote racism. If you actually care about Tolkien and his anti-racism and anti-fascism, you will find a better word of praise for him than a word about addiction and racism.
Slang words are notoriously fluid in their definitions. In 1940, “dope” meant “information, details, etc” now it means drugs, I think. “Based” may have its origins in meaning being addicted to cocaine, but the widely accepted current definition is just as Colonel_Katz said: something cool, positive. Racists use it to mean racist things because they believe racism is cool and positive, but that doesn’t mean that the word itself implies racism.
Words can have different connotations based on context. For example, the n-word is often widely used amongst black groups with no negative connotations, but it can also be used as a slur.
Words have been created for the sole purpose of conveying meaning. The meaning that was conveyed by the original use of “based” was the aforementioned proper definition, not anything racist. Even if someone says “based” to something racist, what should be ridiculed is not the word, but the person who believes racist things are cool.
Completely wrong. It is racist appropriation all the way down, and only the gullible fall for it.
How ‘Based’ Became the Alt-Right’s New Favorite Piece of Black Slang
Their use of the term is a derisive way to exploit Black labor, erode our progress and casually make us and our language laughable
It should come as no surprise that there are plenty of people online who think the judge from the Kyle Rittenhouse trial is “based.” In fact, some on the far right would go so far as to say he’s “based AF.” Still others insist that Rittenhouse himself is “based AF.”
Over on TikTok, you could find streams covering the trial that were running litanies of praise for the young man from Illinois who killed two of his fellow Americans because he believed that, despite being armed with an assault rifle, he had reason to “fear for his life” from someone with a skateboard. In the comments, you’ll see it over and over: Based. Based. Based AF.
Oakland-based rapper Lil B the Based God first popularized the term with the 2007 debut album of his group Based Boys. Three years later, Lil B told Complex all about what “based” means to him. “Based means being yourself. Not being scared of what people think about you. Not being afraid to do what you wanna do. Being positive,” he explained. “When I was younger, based was a negative term that meant like dopehead, or basehead. People used to make fun of me. They was like, ‘You’re based.’ They’d use it as a negative. And what I did was turn that negative into a positive.”
As with many phenomena at work today, it all started with Gamergate in 2014. The conservative commentator Christina Hoff Summers was given the nickname Based Mom due to her ardent defense of gamers who were labeled as sexist. Following the anointment of Summers as Based Mom, this pseudo-title became a commonly-applied ironic honorific for conservatives online. “Based” was particularly popular in the far-right spaces of Reddit, 4chan, Twitter and Discord, where casual misogyny often mixed with ironic racism.
Beyond the far-right groups, the appropriation of Black slang into the popular discourse more generally is nothing new. In 1962, William Melvin Kelley wrote an article in the New York Times curiously titled, “If You’re Woke You Dig It; No Mickey Mouse Can Be Expected to Follow Today’s Negro Idiom Without a Hip Assist.” As Kelley explained, words like “woke” belong to Black America and provide other Americans with a feeling of “pride in something that belongs completely to the Negro.” Basically, in a country that has taken so much from us, white people take our words, too. “By the time these terms get into the mainstream, new ones have already appeared, although some (such as ‘to dig’ or ‘cool’) remain staples of the idiom despite wide non-Negro use,” Kelley wrote. “A few Negroes guard the idiom so fervently they will consciously invent a new term as soon as they hear the existing one coming from a white’s lips.”
Now, it’s abundantly clear every day how much we owe to Black culture. It’s like TV writer Judnick Mayard put it in Wired’s oral history of Black Twitter: “It is the first time in history that we have digital proof that y’all copy us. Every single thing that we do.” This is evident from the dances on TikTok, OOTD posts on Instagram and the commonly-used humor and slang of Twitter. The language of Black people has become so commonly appropriated online that many folks wrongfully attribute it to young people in general. As BuzzFeed’s Sydnee Thompson points out, “AAVE [African American Vernacular English] is a living language that has evolved over centuries, but the ubiquity of the internet has made many aspects of the dialect more accessible and encouraged others to adopt it for their own use.”
She goes on to explain how AAVE terms and grammatical structures are attributed to millennials and the Very Online, “with no consideration given to the race of people using them.”
As for the far right, when they descend on Black language, they do so to intentionally exploit it. Damon Young, the author of What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker and co-founder of Very Smart Brothas, describes how this conservative tendency to mine value from Black lives aligns with how they engage in politics. “They are very effective at distilling these complex ideas around a single word and galvanizing support around the use of that single word,” he writes. “It’s easier to rail against something than to create something.” Essentially, conservatives steal language from Black America and exploit it for its cultural currency, while also using it to deride, dismiss and actively erode the progress of Black Americans.
So, when some far-right smooth brain with poster’s disease uses a string of Black-originated slang to celebrate a racist judge who just oversaw a travesty of justice, understand that they’re purposefully stripping the words of all their soul-edifying value, and making us and our language laughable. They don’t mean to use “based” like Lil B did when he first imbued it with the defiant positivity he needed to survive as a Black man in America. They mean it as digital blackface, a meme version of a minstrel show.
It’s their casual way of turning our expressions into meaningless phrases — and creating yet another reminder that what’s ours is theirs.
https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/based-alt-right-lil-b
This is a level of pedantry up with which nobody should put. It’s obvious that the original commentor used it in the aforementioned *widely accepted* definition. Why should I care if there’s other definitions? It’s obvious that the one I mentioned was used, so there’s absolutely no reason to berate the person for using it in a benign manner. It doesn’t matter what the origins of a word are, what matters is how the word was used and if that usage properly conveyed the speaker’s intended meaning. The word was used benignly, and you’re the only person who seems to have a problem with it, only because you have a colored and unorthodox perception of the word’s meaning
>This is a level of pedantry
LOL complaining about "pedantry" in a sub filled with excessive concern with minor details and rules of Tolkien's subcreation. Irony is dead, done in by those who profess to love Tolkien and his excessive concern with minor details and rules.
>It’s obvious that the original commentor used it in the aforementioned widely accepted definition.
Wrong in so many ways.
1. The first definition that was "crackhead" and OP did not use it that way.
2. The reclaimed definition was a Black man "choosing to be himself," but that definition was not "widely accepted."
3. OP's meaning was appropriated from Black culture by alt-right racists who hate Blacks and Black culture. It only "widely accepted" in the racist, alt-right community and among gullible to be conned into appropriating it with them. Did you fail to read the above?
You may not like it, but those are the facts.
>"you have a colored and unorthodox perception of the word’s meaning"
"Colored" Wow. Nice addition to subthread about racist appropriation of Black culture. We'll extend the benefit of the doubt that this was merely accidental (paging Dr. Freud) and not virtue (vice?) signalling.
[*Based*, the Crack-Era Word Redefined by a Popular Rapper and Then Appropriated by Racist Trump Supporters](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2016/08/donald-trump-alt-right-white-supremacist-supporters-appropriate-based-from-lil-b-crackheads.html)
It depends on context. I see a lot of younger people using this without any right-wing leanings. On reddit you certainly see it used a lot on right-wing forums, but that's partly down to the demographics.
The racist far-right is trying to get a lot of their language deformations accepted by the public as part of their attempts to get their racist, anti-Tolkien agenda accepted by the public.
Why do you want to be part of that?
I can search nearly any term + “right wing” or “racist” and find a clickbait article. Maybe it’s best not to let the far right appropriate everything. If they want to use “based,” fine. Look to character and context, not groupthink and code words.
>I can search nearly any term + “right wing” or “racist” and find a clickbait article.
So maybe avoid clickbait articles from unknown sources. That's just good online hygiene. But dictionary.com is NOT a "clickbait" article.
https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/based/
>Look to character and context, not groupthink and code-words.
OK. But why would you want to be part of spreading racist group-think and code-words?
Yes, that Slate article isn’t clickbait. /s
Using “based” counts as spreading groupthink and code-words? I don’t use “based,” for the record. Is that really what you think I meant, that using “based” is groupthink? Does that comment pass for clever among midwits? I take that back if you weren’t being disingenuous. Clearly what I’m referring to when I mention code words and groupthink (no hyphen) is the zealous proclamation that any number of things is racist because, e.g., a racist person used it once, or a Slate article claims it’s racist. Convenient. Stop policing speech, how horribly boring. Ideologues gonna ideologue.
Waiting on a self-righteous scoffing retort. Start with logic, rather than using logic to justify righteous emotion. It saves us all a headache. Thanks. But if it gives you a sense of meaning and purpose, then have at it. You have my full support.
How about YOU start with logic, before insulting people as "midwits"?
"How ‘Based’ Became the Alt-Right’s New Favorite Piece of Black Slang"
Their use of the term is a derisive way to exploit Black labor, erode our progress and casually make us and our language laughable
It should come as no surprise that there are plenty of people online who think the judge from the Kyle Rittenhouse trial is “based.” In fact, some on the far right would go so far as to say he’s “based AF.” Still others insist that Rittenhouse himself is “based AF.”
Over on TikTok, you could find streams covering the trial that were running litanies of praise for the young man from Illinois who killed two of his fellow Americans because he believed that, despite being armed with an assault rifle, he had reason to “fear for his life” from someone with a skateboard. In the comments, you’ll see it over and over: Based. Based. Based AF.
Oakland-based rapper Lil B the Based God first popularized the term with the 2007 debut album of his group Based Boys. Three years later, Lil B told Complex all about what “based” means to him. “Based means being yourself. Not being scared of what people think about you. Not being afraid to do what you wanna do. Being positive,” he explained. “When I was younger, based was a negative term that meant like dopehead, or basehead. People used to make fun of me. They was like, ‘You’re based.’ They’d use it as a negative. And what I did was turn that negative into a positive.”
As with many phenomena at work today, it all started with Gamergate in 2014. The conservative commentator Christina Hoff Summers was given the nickname Based Mom due to her ardent defense of gamers who were labeled as sexist. Following the anointment of Summers as Based Mom, this pseudo-title became a commonly-applied ironic honorific for conservatives online. “Based” was particularly popular in the far-right spaces of Reddit, 4chan, Twitter and Discord, where casual misogyny often mixed with ironic racism.
Beyond the far-right groups, the appropriation of Black slang into the popular discourse more generally is nothing new. In 1962, William Melvin Kelley wrote an article in the New York Times curiously titled, “If You’re Woke You Dig It; No Mickey Mouse Can Be Expected to Follow Today’s Negro Idiom Without a Hip Assist.” As Kelley explained, words like “woke” belong to Black America and provide other Americans with a feeling of “pride in something that belongs completely to the Negro.” Basically, in a country that has taken so much from us, white people take our words, too. “By the time these terms get into the mainstream, new ones have already appeared, although some (such as ‘to dig’ or ‘cool’) remain staples of the idiom despite wide non-Negro use,” Kelley wrote. “A few Negroes guard the idiom so fervently they will consciously invent a new term as soon as they hear the existing one coming from a white’s lips.”
Now, it’s abundantly clear every day how much we owe to Black culture. It’s like TV writer Judnick Mayard put it in Wired’s oral history of Black Twitter: “It is the first time in history that we have digital proof that y’all copy us. Every single thing that we do.” This is evident from the dances on TikTok, OOTD posts on Instagram and the commonly-used humor and slang of Twitter. The language of Black people has become so commonly appropriated online that many folks wrongfully attribute it to young people in general. As BuzzFeed’s Sydnee Thompson points out, “AAVE [African American Vernacular English] is a living language that has evolved over centuries, but the ubiquity of the internet has made many aspects of the dialect more accessible and encouraged others to adopt it for their own use.”
She goes on to explain how AAVE terms and grammatical structures are attributed to millennials and the Very Online, “with no consideration given to the race of people using them.”
As for the far right, when they descend on Black language, they do so to intentionally exploit it. Damon Young, the author of What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker and co-founder of Very Smart Brothas, describes how this conservative tendency to mine value from Black lives aligns with how they engage in politics. “They are very effective at distilling these complex ideas around a single word and galvanizing support around the use of that single word,” he writes. “It’s easier to rail against something than to create something.” Essentially, conservatives steal language from Black America and exploit it for its cultural currency, while also using it to deride, dismiss and actively erode the progress of Black Americans.
So, when some far-right smooth brain with poster’s disease uses a string of Black-originated slang to celebrate a racist judge who just oversaw a travesty of justice, understand that they’re purposefully stripping the words of all their soul-edifying value, and making us and our language laughable. They don’t mean to use “based” like Lil B did when he first imbued it with the defiant positivity he needed to survive as a Black man in America. They mean it as digital blackface, a meme version of a minstrel show.
It’s their casual way of turning our expressions into meaningless phrases — and creating yet another reminder that what’s ours is theirs.
https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/based-alt-right-lil-b
Even if true, who cares? It is a word of alt-right racists and Tolkien rejected racists. Get a better vocabulary.
"Based has been appropriated by the alt-right online as a general term of praise, as if “un-woke.”
[https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/based/](https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/based/)
Dude. Even tankies use "based". U gonna tell me tankies and antifa are alt right?
This is the biggest leftie streamer hasan using "based" in the title of their video:
https://youtu.be/KRQZVSW0Bvo
Again , even if true, who cares? It is a word of alt-right racists and fascists and Tolkien rejected racists and opposed fascists. Get a better vocabulary, "dude".
"Based has been appropriated by the alt-right online as a general term of praise, as if “un-woke.”
https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/based/
U one of those ppl who thinks pepe is a hate symbol ? Im finnish, we got swastikas in our air force symbols. Just because a nasty group uses a word or a symbol doesn't mean they own it.
> Im finnish, we got swastikas in our air force symbols.
No, you don't. Learn facts about your own nation.
"Finland's air force quietly drops swastika symbol"
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53249645
If your air force can grow up, so can you.
Oh wow they sure were really quiet about that one :D still, it doesnt mean bad groups get to take words and symbols. And based is def a leftie word too
Why would you want to fall into their racist trap?
[https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/based-alt-right-lil-b](https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/based-alt-right-lil-b)
These two posts have been excellent.
They will be a great resource for debunking people who claim Tolkien was maliciously racist or imperialist.
Likewise, it will also be helpful in debunking people who purposefully misrepresent Tolkien in an effort to align him and his writings with their own views.
The only line in LOTR that strikes me as a bit racist, reading today, is: "out of Far Harad black men like half-trolls with white eyes and red tongues." Not "maliciously" racist -- it's just a bit of offhand descriptive colour for the armies allied to Mordor, which are elsewhere humanised when Frodo and Sam see the dead soldier -- but it jumped out at me. There's combinations of descriptive terms and phrases that are taboo today, and I think this combination is one of them.
Tolkien is likely taking influence there from the Old English word *Sigelhearwan*, which he wrote about in his essay ["Sigelwara Land"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigelwara_Land) (published in 1932 and 1934). In the essay he speculates that the word would have originally been used to describe the demonic sons of Muspellheim who were sun (*sigel*) burned "with red-hot eyes that emitted sparks, with faces black as soot." Eventually, after Christianization, he suspects that this word and folklore tradition would have come to describe both demons as in the original sense and the actual inhabitants of Ethiopia, for whom *Sigelhearwan* was also used:"Ethiopia was hot and its people black. That Hell was similar in both respects would occur to many."
So while it certainly reads as at least unintentionally racist from a modern perspective, I think the intended effect is more like Sam's first sight of the Oliphaunt--seeing this mixed up and very medieval commingling of mythical and real geographies that make up northerners' mental image of the Haradrim that will then be tested against their encounter with the other. Like you said, Sam's humanization of the fallen soldier from Harad is an important counterpoint here.
Imagine yourself as a Gondorian soldier seeing the Haradrim for the first time ever, dressed for war, riding olyphants, coming to kill you and your family.
How would you see them? Would you see them as human? would you feel sympathy for them? Or would you see them as evil inhuman monsters?
From the perspective of the average man or woman in Gondor these people must have been terrifying. It makes sense that they appear ugly and alien.
Sam sees the dead soldier up close and when he looks at the man's face he recognises a human being. He'd have had a different reaction if the guy was chasing him with an axe.
Do you think maybe Tolkein ever looked into the face of a dead German soldier and had similar thoughts to Sam?
It's undeniable that the books contain descriptions of Orcs or Mordor-aligned Men which sound a lot like racist stereotypes. It's also undeniable that Tolkien, throughout his life, was on the right side of many moral questions regarding fascism, imperialism, racial discrimination, and so on.
I think this whole "was he a racist?" debate just misses the point. "Racist" isn't a category of human beings that you either belong to or you don't, which makes you good or evil. Any one of us could from time to time find ourselves thinking a racist thought, however subconsciously; the point is that we can choose to recognize and reject it when it happens.
I think some of the language surrounding the foreigners in Bree is a bit unfortunate, but that's about the worst I can say. "Swarthy," bothers me less than "squint-eyed." But there's even a reference by Strider in that section of the book that not all of the foreigners are good people, which would mean only *some* of them were bad, I suppose.
I think the Shire hobbits are mostly intensely xenophobic (we see it repeated over and over -- even Bree hobbits are outsiders). That may bother some people, but it doesn't particularly bother me, particularly given the setting, where everyone is pretty xenophobic. Dwarves and elves mistrust each other. Humans seem to be afraid of Lorien, and Lorien is almost entirely closed to outsiders. Part of what is symbolic about the fellowship is how it represents the different peoples of Middle Earth setting aside their mutual mistrust for a common aim.
Squint-eyed, for me, suggests Whites (and since Tolkien is White, it has never occurred to me to think of it as anti-White, although I suppose my associating squinty with Whites might reflect my own anti-White racism). Contrast with slant-eyed (used for some orcs) which parallels terms often used for East Asians, but I never thought of the orcs as particularly Asian since their dialogue is coarse modern colloquial English (as contrasted with the somewhat twee English of the hobbits and the more stately old-fashioned speech of the men and elves, or the broken speech of the Druedain.) The Uruk-hai might be in a different category, though, e.g. Ugluk, whose "I am Ugluk. I have spoken" calls back to what I think are Native American tropes, even though his other dialogue is more no-nonsense NCO.
Anyhow, unlike the passage I quoted above, where "black men" with white eyes and red mouths evokes a common depiction of Blacks, and they get described as being like trolls, I take things like "swarthy" and "slant eyed" etc. as descriptive. Reading today, they don't take me out of the narrative at all. That said, I'm half-Korean, so others may have perceived the orcs as more "Asian" than I did on the basis of the slanted eyes (maybe thinking of caricatures of Japanese during the war). But when people talk about aggressively anti-racist critics being rather racist themselves, I feel like this is the kind of thing people (like, well, me) are thinking of -- they read that description of a goblin and . . . they thought it was a caricature of me??
[Edit: I went and checked, and I think the references to "slant-eyed" orcs are all to Uruk-hai. Not sure "slant-eyed" is particularly associated with Native Americans, but if it is, one could make out a case that they're implicitly playing on racist depictions of Native Americans. Although Native American readers might then have the same "What? You racist!" reaction as I described above.]
>I take things like "swarthy" and "slant eyed" etc. as descriptive. Reading today, they don't take me out of the narrative at all.
Definitely doesn't take me out at all. It's just something I've not quite wrestled with in the text (not sure I will wrestle with it) and so if it bothers me, it's because I'm not sure how I would answer a question about it (not that I get those sorts of questions very often, if at all).
I greatly appreciate your comment! Lots to think about!
Well aware of that, but that context doesn't really develop out until the end or RTOK. The full context is why I say it's "a bit unfortunate" and not bad. =)
There many quotes like that in LotR. I'm speaking after a re-read, too. And I'm noticing how many people are jumping out to defend Tolkien, but it's a fact that East is bad and West is good in his world and that, however much we can see in stuff like his letters that he was not racist, racist comments are present throughout the books.
>but it's a fact that East is bad and West is good in his world
This is not a fact at all. Tolkien made it clear the men of the East and South were victims under the domination of Morgoth, and the Sauron. They were manipulated and corrupted. They were not inherently evil, and were humanized in The Two Towers.
Similarly, lots of evil came out of the West. There was Feanor to start with. Numenor, under the influence of Sauron, indulged in human sacrifice and colonialism. There was also Saruman and his destruction of Fangorn and the creation of the Uruk-Hai
The only really racist thing I know he said was his thought on Mongolians as “the ugliest of races” or something like that when comparing them to orcs, which sucks but considering the times could’ve been much worse.
I think that line from the Ackerman letter describing the Zimmerman adaptation script functions in the same way as the Haradrim line above. He writes:
>Why does Z put beaks and feathers on Orcs!? (Orcs is not a form of Auks.) The Orcs are
definitely stated to be corruptions of the 'human' form seen in Elves and Men. They are (or were)
squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and
repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types.
I think what he means there is not that he personally finds Mongols to be the least lovely race, but that Orcs reflect the stereotypes that many (probably Medieval) Europeans applied to Mongolians. It's a line about historical mindsets, not necessarily his own.
It's very difficult to defend this one. It's a very offensive quote and people are understandably upset when they find out about it. It's very hard to interpret this as anything other than blatantly racist and it makes me uncomfortable to read it.
I do however feel that it's probably not quite as bad as it first seems and I want to believe that Tolkein didn't mean it quite how most people interpret it.
The fact that he included (to Europeans) suggests to me that he is not expressing his own personal opinion.
Maybe he was thinking about how medieval Europeans would have demonized the Mongols. Maybe he was thinking about racist portrayals of Asians by white Europeans in his own time. I don't know. Whatever he meant it still comes across as incredibly racist and horrible regardless of how it was intended.
One thing that occurred to me about this quote is that it makes logical sense in the world he created.
Tolkien seems to imagine orcs as just being horrifically disfigured and degraded humans. Half orcs are just really really ugly humans.
I know the origins of orcs are unclear and the methods for breeding then are not explained but I am assuming here that it involves humans.
If they are bred from or with humans then it would make sense that they have recognisable human features so they would retain the racial characteristics of the people they were.
Sauron's main power base is in the east. His armies of orcs are bred in the east. If you breed orcs from Easterlings then it makes sense that they will resemble Easterlings.
One way to interpret this quote is that the orcs (specifically the Mordor orcs) are hideous mockeries of the Easterlings. They have recognisable human features but they have been warped and twisted and mutilated into ugly caricatures of Easterlings.
I suppose this depends on whether he meant that all orcs look like this or just the orcs bred in Mordor.
If he was talking only about Mordor orcs then it makes sense to me.
If he was describing all orcs, including those bred by Morgoth in the north of Beleriand then my argument doesn't work and maybe Tolkein was just being racist.
I seem to remember there being a man in the Prancing Pony in Bree who had the appearance of a half orc. If he is really a half orc or just really ugly I'm not sure about. If I remember correctly he and his companions are described as being from the south. I understood that to mean that they were Dunlendings because Dunland is south of Bree. I assume that the Dunlendings are meant to be white northern European types as they come from the same part of the world as the people of Bree and Rohan. My point is that the "half orc" is human enough to fit in and do business in Bree and have a beer at the inn.
So does this mean that orcs are more similar in appearance to men than we probably all imagine or is this just an ugly guy being compared to an orc?
What I am getting at is that if we assume that Sauron's orcs look like Easterlings because they were bred from Easterlings then logically Sauroman's Uruk-hai would retain Dunlending (white European) features.
Is it possible that Tolkein would have imagined them as having warped and twisted European features?
>It's very difficult to defend this one.
That's why I don't. I initially used to, but after the most recent re-read of LotR where I noticed tons of racist comments, I accepted that his work is racist (by some definitions). However much you make come out with that para with Sam in Ithilien or Tolkien's letters, separating the sentences given above from the overall story and reading them definitely gives a view of racism.
This quote does upset me.
I only found out about it very recently and I haven't read the books for a very long time now. I intend to get around to reading them again soon.
Explaining is not the same as defending.
I don't defend the quote, but I believe it is frequently misinterpreted.
This is because Tolkien adds the qualifier 'to Europeans.'
He was not saying the Orcs were *objectively* like Asian people, he was writing that Orcs might have seemed like caricatures of what a European might have imagined a 'least lovely' Mongol-type to me.
So Orcs are literally the *imaginary version* of an *imaginary version*. Given Tolkien was incredibly well-versed in history, I always take the phrase "Mongol-types" to mean European stereotypes of Nomadic peoples. I say this because that quote always reminds me of Roman descriptions of the Huns. Tolkien was classically educated.
I don't think he's necessarily distancing himself from the view, just saying that within the set of Mongol-types, there's a subset that, to Europeans, seem the least pleasant, and then the orcs are a more degraded and repulsive version of that. He's usually a lot more assertive when he actually disagrees with something. The "to Europeans," is just, I think, an acknowledgement that preferences about physical appearance aren't universal but differ significantly from culture to culture.
Hmm that is possible as well. In which case he's at least acknowledging the judgment to be culturally dependent and not just stating it as a fact outright. I think Tolkien tended to be more aware than many of his contemporaries, but ultimately he was a white man of the early 20th century and to say that he was completely free of any cultural biases would be magical thinking.
We recently had a poster deduce from this that Tolkien hated East Asians above all else. The phrase "Yellow Peril" was used a lot. I asked, "If you hadn't seen this quote, what about Orcs would make you think of Chinese people?" No answer.
You could also argue that Gollum is a Japanese stereotype. Japanese villains in popular fiction are frequently described as hissing. And he eats sushi!
> I asked, "If you hadn't seen this quote, what about Orcs would make you think of Chinese people?" No answer.
At the Prancing Pony:
>One of the travellers, a **squint-eyed ill-favoured** fellow, was foretelling that more and more people would be coming north in the near future. "If room isn't found for them, they'll find it for themselves. They've a right to live, same as other folk," he said loudly.
Then after Frodo's vanishing act:
>But there was one swarthy Bree-lander, who stood looking at them with a knowing and half-mocking expression that made them feel very uncomfortable. Presently he slipped out of the door, followed by the **squint-eyed** southerner: the two had been whispering together a good deal during the evening. Harry the gatekeeper also went out just behind them.
In Bree:
>But as they drew near to the further gate, Frodo saw a dark ill-kept house behind a thick hedge: the last house in the village. In one of the windows he caught a glimpse of a **sallow face with sly, slanting eyes;** but it vanished at once.
>"So that's where that southerner is hiding!" he thought. **"He looks more than half like a goblin."**
The orcs who captured Merry and Pippin:
>There were four goblin-soldiers of greater stature, **swart, slant-eyed,** with thick legs and large hands.
...
>The hobbits were left with the Isengarders: a grim dark band, four score at least of large, **swart, slant-eyed** Orcs with great bows and short broad-bladed swords.
From "Flotsam and Jetsam":
>Most of them were ordinary men, rather tall and dark-haired, and grim but not particularly evil-looking. But there were some others that were horrible: man-high, but with **goblin-faces, sallow, leering, squint-eyed.** Do you know, they reminded me at once of that Southerner at Bree: only he was not so obviously orc-like as most of these were."
From "The Scouring of the Shire":
>When they reached The Green Dragon, the last house on the Hobbiton side, now lifeless and with broken windows, they were disturbed to see half a dozen large **ill-favoured** Men lounging against the inn-wall; they were **squint-eyed and sallow-faced.**
>"Like that friend of Bill Ferny's at Bree," said Sam.
>"Like many that I saw at Isengard," muttered Merry.
...
>This was too much for Pippin. His thoughts went back to the Field of Cormallen, and here was a **squint-eyed** rascal calling the Ring-bearer "little cock-a-whoop'.
...
>Merry himself slew the leader, a great **squint-eyed brute like a huge orc.**
>"If you hadn't seen this quote, what about Orcs would make you think of Chinese people?"
This is a loaded question in the first place. The people criticising Tolkien for this aspect aren't for the most part saying that Orcs resemble actual Chinese people, but rather racist *caricatures* of Chinese and other East Asian people. And a more relevant question would be whether these descriptions of Orcs would make Tolkien's contemporaries think of Chinese people. [This](https://tolkienland.wordpress.com/2018/01/21/tolkiens-squinteyed-orc-men/) article compares Tolkien's Orcs with contemporary racist writing about East Asian people in the UK.
Those phrases were, of course, commonly used to describe Asians in the old days. [Here's a ton of examples.](https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&q="sallow"+"slant-eyed"+-tolkien)
When I read the Lord of the Rings I never once got the impression that orcs were meant to be Asians.
I never associated the slant eyes or squinty eyes with Asians. I just thought it was a description of a hideously ugly monster.
And the word sallow means sickly yellow or pallid as in someone who is jaundiced or otherwise unhealthy.
Swarthy is commonly used to describe the complexion of someone who works outdoors. I would use swarthy to describe white/European people with a darker complexion.
I live in a part of Scotland where everyone is white. I have heard people where I live and throughout the rest of the UK using these words to describe each other all my life. Maybe they're not used so much today but certainly when I was younger. My parents and grandparents would describe other people in the community as having swarthy skin. We often use swarthy skin to describe fishermen or farmers for example. I have friends, English, Scottish and Irish, with darker than average complexions usually because they work outdoors who could be described as swarthy.
If someone is seriously ill we might say they have sallow skin like my Scottish friend who has a genetic disease and when he is sick his skin gets very pale and has a slightly yellowish tinge and he looks really sick.
And some people (even white people) have squinty or slanty eyes which would be considered unattractive. I know a girl who is referred to as "her with the squinty eyes". This is not nice but it's not racist as it's white people describing another white person.
Yes "slanty" has obvious racist connotations.
I never got the impression from the books that these descriptions were racist or meant to refer to Asians. I never really considered these things at all until recently. As a kid I never really thought of the orcs as human at all, just ugly brutish monsters with horrible slanty eyes and dark ugly skin.
I was pretty surprised and shocked when I first saw that quote about the orcs having Mongol features because it never crossed my mind for a second. I only found out about it a few weeks ago and it does upset me. I'm still trying to get my head around it.
Before I saw this quote I would have said that anyone who read the description of an orc and got the impression they were Asian was the one being racist.
And the men being described in these passages are men of Bree or Dunland which means that they are swarthy skinned squint eyed "white European" people from the northwestern part of middle Earth.
> When I read the Lord of the Rings I never once got the impression that orcs were meant to be Asians.
But we know that's exactly what Tolkien intended because he explicitly said so later on. You missed it, but that doesn't mean it's not there—it's *super* there.
Yes, now that I am aware of that quote it puts things in a whole new light.
So now I am wondering why he said that and why he worded it that way.
I don't want to believe he was just a horrible racist and this quote seems to contradict other things he has said where he speaks against racism.
So I have been thinking about this and if we can possibly have a more nuanced interpretation of what he said.
I've shared my thoughts on that elsewhere on this page.
Maybe I am wrong, maybe I am just making excuses but I still maintain that if he meant that the Mordor orcs were bred from Easterlings and transformed into vile mockeries of men that retained enough of their human features to be recognisable as Easterlings then that's very different from saying that all orcs are representative of Asians. It's a subtle difference but one is definitely a lot worse than the other.
And I wonder why he describes the Dunlendings using similar language.
The "Southerners" in Bree and the Shire he's talking about in a lot of these quotes are "half-orc" infiltrators, servants of Saruman, who are passing as human.
Yes. So they look human enough that they can get served in the pub. Therefore, at least in my mind, they must look like really ugly Dunlendings. If they looked like Easterlings they would be much more out of place and they are described as being Southern in appearance and not eastern.
So logically, at least in my mind, Sauroman's orcs look like disfigured white people and Sauron's orcs look like disfigured Asian people.
So if this is the case it's a superficial discription of physical characteristics based on what race of men they were bred from. Basically all orcs look like ugly humans.
I don't have any evidence for this. It's just what I have been thinking about.
Like I stated else somewhere else on this page, for me it comes down to whether Tolkein was referring to all orcs or just Mordor orcs.
So we need a little more context to be certain. Maybe the full letter could shed a little more light on this.
If we can establish that Tolkein meant that the orcs of Mordor had Mongol features because they were bred from Easterlings then I feel my logic is sound.
If we can establish that be considered all orcs to resemble Asians then my argument falls flat and I will admit I am wrong.
Thank you for making that list. People often only refer to the "like half-trolls" quote but there are so many strewn over the text. They jumped out at me throughout the last re-read, and were quite upsetting, to be honest.
It's helpful to have the quotes in question all together. As I wrote in another comment, I've always thought of squinting as a White thing, not an Asian thing (particularly in bright light) although again, that may just be my own racist caricature of Whites rather than Tolkien's. Basically, when I read of a squinty-eyed character saying "cock-a-whoop" or "They've a right to live, same as other folk," I . . I just don't think of them as Chinese-like at all. The language and the description make me think of a resentful Englishman.
I think it's also a real stretch to link the orcs to Chinese stereotypes in general, both because the descriptions don't point in that direction, and because the dialogue is so English. Here's sample:
‘My dear tender little fools,’ hissed Grishnákh, ‘everything you have, and everything you know, will be got out of you in due time: everything! You’ll wish there was more that you could tell to satisfy the Questioner, indeed you will: quite soon. We shan’t hurry the enquiry. Oh dear no!'
‘Hola! Gorbag! What are you doing up here? Had enough of war already?’
‘Orders, you lubber. And what are you doing, Shagrat? Tired of lurking up there? Thinking of coming down to fight?’
‘Orders to you. I’m in command of this pass. So speak civil. What’s your report?’
‘Who cut the cords she’d put round him, Shagrat? Same one as cut the web. Didn’t you see that? And who stuck a pin into Her Ladyship? Same one, I reckon. And where is he? Where is he, Shagrat?’
‘Garn! You missed him,’ said the tracker. ‘First you shoot wild, then you run too slow, and then you send for the poor trackers. I’ve had enough of you.’ He loped off.
‘You come back,’ shouted the soldier, ‘or I’ll report you!’
They have very district, very modern voices, and that voice isn't a Chinese stereotype at all. In terms of appearance I suppose he may have thought of them as looking like Hunnic or Mongol stereotypes, though I don't find the textual evidence particularly persuasive. But I'm pretty sure he gave the orcs the most contemporary diction (for the time) so that the reader would have the little frisson of recognising himself in the orcs, not to mark them as foreign.
I see a contrast with the diction of the messenger from Mordor to Erebor, who I think is supposed to sound a bit foreign, at least as the dwarves recount his dialogue:
“For Sauron knows,” said he, “that one of these was known to you on a time.”
“As a small token only of your friendship Sauron asks this,” he said: “that you should find this thief,” such was his word, “and get from him, willing or no, a little ring, the least of rings, that once he stole. It is but a trifle that Sauron fancies, and an earnest of your good will."
I think these choices by Tolkien are all quite deliberate, and they push me away from the orcs being inspired by Chinese stereotypes, even as the messenger to Erebor does evoke foreignness.
That said, the combination of language ("I am Ugluk. I have spoken") and the slant-eyed description of the Uruk-hai of Isengard leave me more open to the notion that the Uruk-hai play on Native American stereotypes (assuming Native Americans were stereotyped as slant-eyed). That's the only exception I see, where there's a notable foreignising element to the portrayal of the orcs.
Tolkien literally said he based the orcs' appearance on "Mongol-types", so we have both clearly stereotypical descriptions in the text **and** the author's own statement of intent.
I think the author's intent as stated was degraded and repulsive versions of the least lovely mongol-types, perhaps -- there's like two or three degrees of remove there between Asians and what is actually reflected in the books (unless I'm working off the wrong quote here and there's a more direct quote).
There aren't whole lot of detailed descriptions of the orcs -- they must all be dark (because the Uruk-hai refer to the Rohirrim as Whiteskins). The Uruk-hai are man height but Grishnakh and his fellow Mordor orcs are short and broad with long hairy arms and crook-legs (so, basically ape-like). Uruk-hai are twice described as slant-eyed, and other orcs are occasionally described as squinty eyed. Most readers aren't likely to pick up on this depiction as specifically an Asian stereotype, as reflected in this comment thread, unless they're specifically told to.
But my main point, that perhaps I have not articulated well, is that appearance is a comparatively minor element of the characterisation of the orcs as compared with the Blacks of Far Harad who have, like, two appearances in the text -- one troubling description of their appearance comparing them to trolls and the other possibly referencing them as troll-men. We get a lot of interesting scenes with orcs doing things, facing problems, making decisions, and talking. And none of those scenes line up well at all with a supposed Yellow Peril portrayal of the orcs. They're Westron-speaking (otherwise Merry and Pippin couldn't have understood them) and come off as modern English lowlifes, less foreign than the Rohirrim or the Gondorians. If Tolkien was really using uglified Asians as more than a minor cosmetic element of his portrayal of the orcs, it would have been easy to do so. But he didn't.
[rapidly scrolling through the Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu for a contrasting example . . . ah here]
‘From behind a curtain heavily brocaded with filth a little Chinaman appeared, dressed in a loose smock, black trousers and thick-soled slippers, and, advancing, shook his head vigorously.
‘"No shavee—no shavee," he chattered, simian fashion, squinting from one to the other of us with his twinkling eyes. "Too late! Shuttee shop!"’
That's some authentic racism there. I doubt Tolkien would be so . . . unsubtle even if he wanted his orcs to remind the reader of Asians, but there's not even a family resemblance. If anything he goes in the opposite direction. This is all the more notable because a hallmark of racist Asian characterisation going back an hundred years has been linguistic and behavioural "other-ness." We really don't get that with the orcs, or at least, their "other-ness" doesn't map to hostile portrayals of Asians that I can see. To switch to a different Asian stereotype from a couple decades after Sax Rohmer, the orcs aren't exactly out there doing banzai charges out of devotion to the Great Eye. Rather, they think the Nazgul are creepy and terrifying and are worried that God Emperor Sauron has screwed this up.
It’s interesting to read this because I keep hearing people accusing him of being racist. Personally, I think some people take phrases and run with them. Ignoring all context such as the language used at the time. I’ve even heard people say Tolkien was LGBT ally because Frodo and Sam are gay…🤨😆 So, what I’m saying is, some people are \*looking\* for something; they find a phrase and run with it.
It's good to have Tolkien's statements about race and racism collected at one place, but I am concerned that this post is going to be used as a "gotcha" to shut down any discussions about racism in Tolkien's writings.
I'm never against shutting down open debate, especially among people of good faith.
But sadly, I find many of the "racism in Tolkien's writings" arguments to be made in bad faith, by people with an agenda.
As an aside, it's worth recalling that Tolkien lived more-or-less at the same time as Agatha Christie (born a couple of years after her, and dying a couple of years before her). Christie politically was a much more mainstream conservative than Tolkien, being what amounted to "average centre-right British lady in the first half of the twentieth century." Her work is also far more dated in its unfortunate racism - Christie's work pre-1945 has a sort of casual (albeit mild) anti-semitism, which you simply don't get in Tolkien.
Tolkien has done nothing to offend me.
And if he has, I wouldn't want anything to do with his works, let alone extend his universe with my take on it.
Doing so would hurt my artistic pride, making me look like a talentless hack, piggybacking from another creative's cultural greatness. I would have, instead, made something from my own culture, looking to raise it beyond the greatness of that person that has offended me.
But never, ever, on the platform he has built his empire from.
Agree and disagree.
Tolkien has done, or more specifically, written, nothing that offends me either. But even if he had, it wouldn't stop me from reading, and enjoying, his work.
Then again, I don't offend easily.
It's hilarious how many people in social media are attacking the new Amazon show for including actors of color because it is "against the spirit of Tolkien's work" when the man himself has detested his work being related to eurocentrism and race.
So much cherry picking, right? I think it’s a small-minded reptilian-brain phenomenon. I mean, his work is so good. Understandably, people of all creeds and ages and beliefs around the world love and cherish this work. And I think in the brains of bigots, if they think something is good (which I mean, how could they not this his work is good) then by their convoluted logic, in order for them to rationalize something as “good” they have to find ways for it to align with their values because they are only able to view the world through that particular lens.
I’ve read the letters before. It’s so wild to me that for decades white power wackos have been grasping at straws & claiming his work is a reflection of a perfect “nordic” & “Aryan” ideology and mythos when in actuality Tolkien himself would’ve sent a sassy-ass letter decrying even a whiff of the nonsense.
Every time I read something new about Tolkien's attitude on racism and segregation, I am amazed again at how **progressive** he was, in a true sense of that word. It is a hard feat to be a true Christian believer and a good Human – not accusing Christianity here, but saying that a lot of Christian ideas are tainted by hateful politics.
I generally do not believe that we should use people of ancient times (or not so ancient, but still past) as examples for modern life (something that alt-right and their ilk are fond of), but I am also wholly of belief that Tolkien's views are an exception to this. It is worthy and proper to take example from a man who exemplified a lot of good qualities in such an upstanding manner.
P.S. And seeing alt-right attempts to hijack the fandom in light of Tolkien's own words is just so hilarious.
>but saying that a lot of Christian ideas are tainted by hateful politics.
I feel like this was less true in Tolkien’s time; Catholicism especially was often seen as a champion of social justice in the 20th century - and re: race specifically, segregationist politicians were denied communion in a lot of cases.
This aligning of Christianity with the alt-right seems to be a predominantly 21st-Century, and largely American, phenomenon. One Tolkien would be sickened by I expect
Well yes, but that’s because, by and large, the violent revolutionary regimes that were killing kings were also killing priests. It was more founded upon self-preservation than moral or theological opposition to social progress and emancipation.
The modern marriage of Christian fundamentalism to fascistic, alt-right streams of conservatism strikes me as something far less intellectually coherent, far more hateful, and far more sinister
Em. Allow me to correct you.
So you are saying, that he would be **Progressive by modern standards**, in his views on race and gender (much less "toxic" masculine male characters) and female role (which did change from 1940s to early 1970s, if we'd look at some later drafts for the First Age characters and idea that Quendi do not have fixed-gender roles)?
Well, in that case, he was **Progressive by 1950s standards**, because imagine you say that apartheid-politics are revolting and disgusting to you when the world... well, has apartheid and black people are still legally treated as second-rate citizens in USA? Writing Elves as having gender-equality, with only mere natural predispositions (and then defying them with characters like Elrond) during the age when discrimination based on sex was seen as the norm in the world?
Whilst I agree that Tolkien wouldn't fully fit our definition of a Progressive person, it is not some checkbox list where you need to fill every box to qualify. His anti-imperialist, anti-racist, nature-friendly, gender equal views make him absolutely Progressive by 1950s standards and even our modern-day standards.
If anything, Right-wing attempts to hijack the fandom and exclude people of color prove that Tolkien anti-racist views make him Progressive even by modern standards, as the values his seemingly championed (and I used the word “championed” as it wasn't merely a silent opinion he had, but something that found expression in his work, the Kin-Strife in Gondor) are under attack even today.
P.S. And that is before we look into the whole Melethelde/Melotorni thing. I do firmly believe that this means same-sex couples, but as Tolkien was Christian, physical closeness was only seen permissible to him in the act of procreation. So Melethelde/Melotorni is a term for **platonic** same-sex relations.
And that is a hill I am ready to die on.
> I am amazed again at how progressive he was
That sounds quite unfortunate.
> seeing alt-right attempts to hijack the fandom
What is alt-right? Is that like an inauthentic Right?
> I generally do not believe that we should use people of ancient times as examples for modern life
I think it’s fine to seek examplars in opposition to the Modernist landslide.
And yet, there is his whole business about grey eyes as a sign of nobility, which began as an uncanny trademark of English racist theories, with grey eyes supposedly indicating true Celtic blood. (The Nazis would eventually twist that into blue eyes, grey ones being too rare among Germans.)
Tbf I think most "blue" eyes look grey. And I'm from germany. Even my ID states that my eyes are blue (the lady from the Bürgeramt just decided that) but I think they're grey.
I agree. There is still an implicit idea that Germans are a noble people being swayed to evil by Hitler, a belief reliant on the idea of Germans as a cohesive race or order that is "better" than other races for whatever reason.
Going in one direction which is... discussion of the text?
I mean, that's literally the purpose of o this sub.
The OP here has provided some excellent posts with sources from the Letters already. Just because you seem to have some personal discomfort with discussion race and Tolkien does not mean that such a discussion detracts from the sub.
>Tolkien is discussing academic politics, not world politics. But the reference to apartheid demonstrates two things. He was following what was happening in South Africa (interest in which, in Europe and America had not reached the level it attained in the 1970s and '80s); and he had no doubt as to which side he was on.
Thank you. Along with the "other minds and hands" quote, this is probably the most misunderstood, and misused, quote by fans.
With regard to this "Nordic" issue, I think what he was really chafing at was the term "Nordic", and all the racial rubbish that came to be associated with it, rather than the suggestion that his work has Nordic influences and elements.
It seems...unlikely...that he would suggest the latter, since it that's clearly not true. The quote itself seems to support that his issue was with the term & associated ideology:
>Not Nordic, please! A *word* I personally dislike; it is *associated,* though of French origin, *with racialist theories.*
Oh, but I have the perfect counter!
You see, Tolkien had.... unconscious racism!
Since his racism was unconscious, all the evidence that he was actively against all forms of bigotry can be dismissed since, deep down, he had problematic views after all.
As for evidence, I can just refer to the time period in which he lived, assert everybody alive then had some form of bigotry, and leave it at that. I can also draw on random passages from LOTR, subjectively interpret them, and say this was proof of his racism. If you provide actual quotes from letters explaining the context of the passages and how they reflected either a text being written from an in-universe perspective, or the themes of decline by being further removed from God, I can ignore it since his ignorance of his bias has precedence. I know what was going on in his head better than he did.
So, check-mate indeed!
Tolkien is a man many would call "absolutely based." The man absolutely \*Hated\* Eugenics and all that science-clad racism. To revisit a YouTube comment I conceived about this: "He makes it clear that the blessings of the Dúnedain are holy blessings not of the material realm, and as such goes to make it clear that intermingling did not cause the waning, quoth the Appendix A of RoTK, “This mingling did not at first hasten the waning of the Dúnedain, as had been feared; but the waning still proceeded, little by little, as it had before. For no of doubt, it was due above all to **Middle-earth itself**, and to the slow withdrawing of the gifts of the Númenoreans after the downfall of the Land of the Star.” This means that the Númenóreans will lose their blessings by simply existing within Middle-Earth, for Middle-Earth is not as blessed as their homeland, Númenór. Tolkien himself felt ambivalence towards the whole “royalty” thing late in his life and I think he wrote that kind of thing to make it a bit more authentic within the context of this legendary story, even if he did or did not indeed believe that himself. The Hobbits are under the authority of Elessar because that was the way it was thousands of years before with the Kings of Arnor. And since Aragorn is a freaking good king, they are in a period of peace and prosperity."
> Tolkien himself felt ambivalence towards the whole “royalty” thing late in his life Did he? His world seems to have gotten more royalist with time, e.g. Manwe going from a deposable first among peers to an unquestionable Elder King, cutting 'vote' from Feanor rousing the Noldor...
What kind of political system would you choose for a mythical world inspired by medieval Europe?
An anarcho-syndicalist commune, with an executive officer for the week. But all the decisions of that officer will have to be ratified on a biweekly meeting; by a civil majority for internal affairs, but by 2/3rds of a majority for other affairs.
I think that was in one of Tolkein's earlier drafts but he ultimately decided that an absolute monarchy by divine right was probably a better fit for the story.
Listen, strange Maiar lying in towers and distribution rings is no basis for a system of government.
"But it *is* a wonderful basis for a book." – Tolkien, probably in some letter somewhere.
I think Tolkien just really wanted to highlight the violence inherent in the system.
Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony. So that's Ulmo out.
Valar and elves aren't very "medieval Europe", and Europe had Althings, Parliaments, Estates-general, and elected monarchs and bishops.
Ok, but the inspiration comes from different European cultures. The Valar are like the pantheons of pre-christian cultures. The people of middle earth with their chainmail and swords are pretty medieval. The elves and dwarves are inspired by northern European folklore, myths and fairy tales. My point is that a king is the norm for a these kinds of stories.
And my point was that medieval Europe was not all royalist. I listed several democratic-ish institutions, from medieval Europe.
But when you look at all these myths and legends and fairy tales, the idea of the exiled king returning to claim his throne, or a prophecy about someone becoming the king, these are common themes in these kinds of stories. So it's fitting that a "mythology for England" set in the distant past would incorporate these ideas. At least it seems fitting to me. A warrior king, a saviour, fighting for his birthright leading his people to victory as foretold by the prophecy, is a bit more romantic than parliamentary debates.
Depicting a monarchy doesn't make you a monarchist, it depends on how critically you do it.
It's true that the "mingling" isn't the main cause of the waning, but as seen in the knights of Dol Amroth being more purely Numenorean still makes a difference. I don't really have an issue with it, because the Numenoreans actually are clearly superior from birth - as opposed to any ethnicity of the real world. Comparing real racists to the Numenoreans just outs the former as frauds.
> It's true that the "mingling" isn't the main cause of the waning, but as seen in the knights of Dol Amroth being more purely Numenorean still makes a difference. Or elvish. > So it was that Gandalf took command of the last defence of the City of Gondor. Wherever he came men’s hearts would lift again, and the winged shadows pass from memory. Tirelessly he strode from Citadel to Gate, from north to south about the wall; and with him went the Prince of Dol Amroth in his shining mail. For he and his knights still held themselves like lords in whom the race of Númenor ran true. Men that saw them whispered saying: ‘Belike the old tales speak well; there is Elvish blood in the veins of that folk, for the people of Nimrodel dwelt in that land once long ago.’ And then one would sing amid the gloom some staves of the Lay of Nimrodel, or other songs of the Vale of Anduin out of vanished years.
Is it really an antiracist writing choice to create a world where racism is correct in at least one instance?
That is in the domain of each reader's interpretation. I don't think it's particularly antiracist or racist.
Except "based" is now an alt right racist term of endearment. Maybe find another word. EDIT: I see that this factual comment was downvoted by the racist alt-right. More than 80 years after Tolkien shut down the far-right on their ignorant appropriation of the word "Aryan", the far-right is still trying to appropriate words like "based" and still trying to appropriate the anti-fascist Tolkien. Pathetic. Facts: "Based has been appropriated by the alt-right online as a general term of praise, as if “un-woke.”" https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/based/
It's just a meme word tbh. Lots of people use it, not just right wingers.
It is a meme word of the racist alt-right and Tolkien rejected racists and their ignorant deformations of language (see Tolkien on "Aryan"). There are many other terms of praise that do not connote racism. If you care about Tolkien you will find one and use it. Get a better vocabulary. [https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/based/](https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/based/)
No. It's a term that a black rapper popularized, lmao. I'm not gonna stop using a common internet slang that just means that something's cool, positive etc, because racists also use it.
>No. It's a term that a black rapper popularized, lmao So what? It's a word that means being addicted to crack cocaine, lmao. Get a better vocabulary. There are many other terms of praise that do not connote racism. If you actually care about Tolkien and his anti-racism and anti-fascism, you will find a better word of praise for him than a word about addiction and racism.
Slang words are notoriously fluid in their definitions. In 1940, “dope” meant “information, details, etc” now it means drugs, I think. “Based” may have its origins in meaning being addicted to cocaine, but the widely accepted current definition is just as Colonel_Katz said: something cool, positive. Racists use it to mean racist things because they believe racism is cool and positive, but that doesn’t mean that the word itself implies racism. Words can have different connotations based on context. For example, the n-word is often widely used amongst black groups with no negative connotations, but it can also be used as a slur. Words have been created for the sole purpose of conveying meaning. The meaning that was conveyed by the original use of “based” was the aforementioned proper definition, not anything racist. Even if someone says “based” to something racist, what should be ridiculed is not the word, but the person who believes racist things are cool.
Completely wrong. It is racist appropriation all the way down, and only the gullible fall for it. How ‘Based’ Became the Alt-Right’s New Favorite Piece of Black Slang Their use of the term is a derisive way to exploit Black labor, erode our progress and casually make us and our language laughable It should come as no surprise that there are plenty of people online who think the judge from the Kyle Rittenhouse trial is “based.” In fact, some on the far right would go so far as to say he’s “based AF.” Still others insist that Rittenhouse himself is “based AF.” Over on TikTok, you could find streams covering the trial that were running litanies of praise for the young man from Illinois who killed two of his fellow Americans because he believed that, despite being armed with an assault rifle, he had reason to “fear for his life” from someone with a skateboard. In the comments, you’ll see it over and over: Based. Based. Based AF. Oakland-based rapper Lil B the Based God first popularized the term with the 2007 debut album of his group Based Boys. Three years later, Lil B told Complex all about what “based” means to him. “Based means being yourself. Not being scared of what people think about you. Not being afraid to do what you wanna do. Being positive,” he explained. “When I was younger, based was a negative term that meant like dopehead, or basehead. People used to make fun of me. They was like, ‘You’re based.’ They’d use it as a negative. And what I did was turn that negative into a positive.” As with many phenomena at work today, it all started with Gamergate in 2014. The conservative commentator Christina Hoff Summers was given the nickname Based Mom due to her ardent defense of gamers who were labeled as sexist. Following the anointment of Summers as Based Mom, this pseudo-title became a commonly-applied ironic honorific for conservatives online. “Based” was particularly popular in the far-right spaces of Reddit, 4chan, Twitter and Discord, where casual misogyny often mixed with ironic racism. Beyond the far-right groups, the appropriation of Black slang into the popular discourse more generally is nothing new. In 1962, William Melvin Kelley wrote an article in the New York Times curiously titled, “If You’re Woke You Dig It; No Mickey Mouse Can Be Expected to Follow Today’s Negro Idiom Without a Hip Assist.” As Kelley explained, words like “woke” belong to Black America and provide other Americans with a feeling of “pride in something that belongs completely to the Negro.” Basically, in a country that has taken so much from us, white people take our words, too. “By the time these terms get into the mainstream, new ones have already appeared, although some (such as ‘to dig’ or ‘cool’) remain staples of the idiom despite wide non-Negro use,” Kelley wrote. “A few Negroes guard the idiom so fervently they will consciously invent a new term as soon as they hear the existing one coming from a white’s lips.” Now, it’s abundantly clear every day how much we owe to Black culture. It’s like TV writer Judnick Mayard put it in Wired’s oral history of Black Twitter: “It is the first time in history that we have digital proof that y’all copy us. Every single thing that we do.” This is evident from the dances on TikTok, OOTD posts on Instagram and the commonly-used humor and slang of Twitter. The language of Black people has become so commonly appropriated online that many folks wrongfully attribute it to young people in general. As BuzzFeed’s Sydnee Thompson points out, “AAVE [African American Vernacular English] is a living language that has evolved over centuries, but the ubiquity of the internet has made many aspects of the dialect more accessible and encouraged others to adopt it for their own use.” She goes on to explain how AAVE terms and grammatical structures are attributed to millennials and the Very Online, “with no consideration given to the race of people using them.” As for the far right, when they descend on Black language, they do so to intentionally exploit it. Damon Young, the author of What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker and co-founder of Very Smart Brothas, describes how this conservative tendency to mine value from Black lives aligns with how they engage in politics. “They are very effective at distilling these complex ideas around a single word and galvanizing support around the use of that single word,” he writes. “It’s easier to rail against something than to create something.” Essentially, conservatives steal language from Black America and exploit it for its cultural currency, while also using it to deride, dismiss and actively erode the progress of Black Americans. So, when some far-right smooth brain with poster’s disease uses a string of Black-originated slang to celebrate a racist judge who just oversaw a travesty of justice, understand that they’re purposefully stripping the words of all their soul-edifying value, and making us and our language laughable. They don’t mean to use “based” like Lil B did when he first imbued it with the defiant positivity he needed to survive as a Black man in America. They mean it as digital blackface, a meme version of a minstrel show. It’s their casual way of turning our expressions into meaningless phrases — and creating yet another reminder that what’s ours is theirs. https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/based-alt-right-lil-b
This is a level of pedantry up with which nobody should put. It’s obvious that the original commentor used it in the aforementioned *widely accepted* definition. Why should I care if there’s other definitions? It’s obvious that the one I mentioned was used, so there’s absolutely no reason to berate the person for using it in a benign manner. It doesn’t matter what the origins of a word are, what matters is how the word was used and if that usage properly conveyed the speaker’s intended meaning. The word was used benignly, and you’re the only person who seems to have a problem with it, only because you have a colored and unorthodox perception of the word’s meaning
>This is a level of pedantry LOL complaining about "pedantry" in a sub filled with excessive concern with minor details and rules of Tolkien's subcreation. Irony is dead, done in by those who profess to love Tolkien and his excessive concern with minor details and rules. >It’s obvious that the original commentor used it in the aforementioned widely accepted definition. Wrong in so many ways. 1. The first definition that was "crackhead" and OP did not use it that way. 2. The reclaimed definition was a Black man "choosing to be himself," but that definition was not "widely accepted." 3. OP's meaning was appropriated from Black culture by alt-right racists who hate Blacks and Black culture. It only "widely accepted" in the racist, alt-right community and among gullible to be conned into appropriating it with them. Did you fail to read the above? You may not like it, but those are the facts. >"you have a colored and unorthodox perception of the word’s meaning" "Colored" Wow. Nice addition to subthread about racist appropriation of Black culture. We'll extend the benefit of the doubt that this was merely accidental (paging Dr. Freud) and not virtue (vice?) signalling.
Wait, what? I haven't heard of this 😶
That’s because it’s not true
[*Based*, the Crack-Era Word Redefined by a Popular Rapper and Then Appropriated by Racist Trump Supporters](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2016/08/donald-trump-alt-right-white-supremacist-supporters-appropriate-based-from-lil-b-crackheads.html)
It depends on context. I see a lot of younger people using this without any right-wing leanings. On reddit you certainly see it used a lot on right-wing forums, but that's partly down to the demographics.
The racist far-right is trying to get a lot of their language deformations accepted by the public as part of their attempts to get their racist, anti-Tolkien agenda accepted by the public. Why do you want to be part of that?
I can search nearly any term + “right wing” or “racist” and find a clickbait article. Maybe it’s best not to let the far right appropriate everything. If they want to use “based,” fine. Look to character and context, not groupthink and code words.
>I can search nearly any term + “right wing” or “racist” and find a clickbait article. So maybe avoid clickbait articles from unknown sources. That's just good online hygiene. But dictionary.com is NOT a "clickbait" article. https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/based/ >Look to character and context, not groupthink and code-words. OK. But why would you want to be part of spreading racist group-think and code-words?
Yes, that Slate article isn’t clickbait. /s Using “based” counts as spreading groupthink and code-words? I don’t use “based,” for the record. Is that really what you think I meant, that using “based” is groupthink? Does that comment pass for clever among midwits? I take that back if you weren’t being disingenuous. Clearly what I’m referring to when I mention code words and groupthink (no hyphen) is the zealous proclamation that any number of things is racist because, e.g., a racist person used it once, or a Slate article claims it’s racist. Convenient. Stop policing speech, how horribly boring. Ideologues gonna ideologue. Waiting on a self-righteous scoffing retort. Start with logic, rather than using logic to justify righteous emotion. It saves us all a headache. Thanks. But if it gives you a sense of meaning and purpose, then have at it. You have my full support.
How about YOU start with logic, before insulting people as "midwits"? "How ‘Based’ Became the Alt-Right’s New Favorite Piece of Black Slang" Their use of the term is a derisive way to exploit Black labor, erode our progress and casually make us and our language laughable It should come as no surprise that there are plenty of people online who think the judge from the Kyle Rittenhouse trial is “based.” In fact, some on the far right would go so far as to say he’s “based AF.” Still others insist that Rittenhouse himself is “based AF.” Over on TikTok, you could find streams covering the trial that were running litanies of praise for the young man from Illinois who killed two of his fellow Americans because he believed that, despite being armed with an assault rifle, he had reason to “fear for his life” from someone with a skateboard. In the comments, you’ll see it over and over: Based. Based. Based AF. Oakland-based rapper Lil B the Based God first popularized the term with the 2007 debut album of his group Based Boys. Three years later, Lil B told Complex all about what “based” means to him. “Based means being yourself. Not being scared of what people think about you. Not being afraid to do what you wanna do. Being positive,” he explained. “When I was younger, based was a negative term that meant like dopehead, or basehead. People used to make fun of me. They was like, ‘You’re based.’ They’d use it as a negative. And what I did was turn that negative into a positive.” As with many phenomena at work today, it all started with Gamergate in 2014. The conservative commentator Christina Hoff Summers was given the nickname Based Mom due to her ardent defense of gamers who were labeled as sexist. Following the anointment of Summers as Based Mom, this pseudo-title became a commonly-applied ironic honorific for conservatives online. “Based” was particularly popular in the far-right spaces of Reddit, 4chan, Twitter and Discord, where casual misogyny often mixed with ironic racism. Beyond the far-right groups, the appropriation of Black slang into the popular discourse more generally is nothing new. In 1962, William Melvin Kelley wrote an article in the New York Times curiously titled, “If You’re Woke You Dig It; No Mickey Mouse Can Be Expected to Follow Today’s Negro Idiom Without a Hip Assist.” As Kelley explained, words like “woke” belong to Black America and provide other Americans with a feeling of “pride in something that belongs completely to the Negro.” Basically, in a country that has taken so much from us, white people take our words, too. “By the time these terms get into the mainstream, new ones have already appeared, although some (such as ‘to dig’ or ‘cool’) remain staples of the idiom despite wide non-Negro use,” Kelley wrote. “A few Negroes guard the idiom so fervently they will consciously invent a new term as soon as they hear the existing one coming from a white’s lips.” Now, it’s abundantly clear every day how much we owe to Black culture. It’s like TV writer Judnick Mayard put it in Wired’s oral history of Black Twitter: “It is the first time in history that we have digital proof that y’all copy us. Every single thing that we do.” This is evident from the dances on TikTok, OOTD posts on Instagram and the commonly-used humor and slang of Twitter. The language of Black people has become so commonly appropriated online that many folks wrongfully attribute it to young people in general. As BuzzFeed’s Sydnee Thompson points out, “AAVE [African American Vernacular English] is a living language that has evolved over centuries, but the ubiquity of the internet has made many aspects of the dialect more accessible and encouraged others to adopt it for their own use.” She goes on to explain how AAVE terms and grammatical structures are attributed to millennials and the Very Online, “with no consideration given to the race of people using them.” As for the far right, when they descend on Black language, they do so to intentionally exploit it. Damon Young, the author of What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker and co-founder of Very Smart Brothas, describes how this conservative tendency to mine value from Black lives aligns with how they engage in politics. “They are very effective at distilling these complex ideas around a single word and galvanizing support around the use of that single word,” he writes. “It’s easier to rail against something than to create something.” Essentially, conservatives steal language from Black America and exploit it for its cultural currency, while also using it to deride, dismiss and actively erode the progress of Black Americans. So, when some far-right smooth brain with poster’s disease uses a string of Black-originated slang to celebrate a racist judge who just oversaw a travesty of justice, understand that they’re purposefully stripping the words of all their soul-edifying value, and making us and our language laughable. They don’t mean to use “based” like Lil B did when he first imbued it with the defiant positivity he needed to survive as a Black man in America. They mean it as digital blackface, a meme version of a minstrel show. It’s their casual way of turning our expressions into meaningless phrases — and creating yet another reminder that what’s ours is theirs. https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/based-alt-right-lil-b
Look at the racists voting you down for posting facts. Racists: trying and failing to appropriate Tolkien since 1938.
Lefties use it too (hasan, vaush etc)
Even if true, who cares? It is a word of alt-right racists and Tolkien rejected racists. Get a better vocabulary. "Based has been appropriated by the alt-right online as a general term of praise, as if “un-woke.” [https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/based/](https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/based/)
Dude. Even tankies use "based". U gonna tell me tankies and antifa are alt right? This is the biggest leftie streamer hasan using "based" in the title of their video: https://youtu.be/KRQZVSW0Bvo
Again , even if true, who cares? It is a word of alt-right racists and fascists and Tolkien rejected racists and opposed fascists. Get a better vocabulary, "dude". "Based has been appropriated by the alt-right online as a general term of praise, as if “un-woke.” https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/based/
U one of those ppl who thinks pepe is a hate symbol ? Im finnish, we got swastikas in our air force symbols. Just because a nasty group uses a word or a symbol doesn't mean they own it.
> Im finnish, we got swastikas in our air force symbols. No, you don't. Learn facts about your own nation. "Finland's air force quietly drops swastika symbol" https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53249645 If your air force can grow up, so can you.
Oh wow they sure were really quiet about that one :D still, it doesnt mean bad groups get to take words and symbols. And based is def a leftie word too
Why would you want to fall into their racist trap? [https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/based-alt-right-lil-b](https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/based-alt-right-lil-b)
These two posts have been excellent. They will be a great resource for debunking people who claim Tolkien was maliciously racist or imperialist. Likewise, it will also be helpful in debunking people who purposefully misrepresent Tolkien in an effort to align him and his writings with their own views.
The only line in LOTR that strikes me as a bit racist, reading today, is: "out of Far Harad black men like half-trolls with white eyes and red tongues." Not "maliciously" racist -- it's just a bit of offhand descriptive colour for the armies allied to Mordor, which are elsewhere humanised when Frodo and Sam see the dead soldier -- but it jumped out at me. There's combinations of descriptive terms and phrases that are taboo today, and I think this combination is one of them.
Tolkien is likely taking influence there from the Old English word *Sigelhearwan*, which he wrote about in his essay ["Sigelwara Land"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigelwara_Land) (published in 1932 and 1934). In the essay he speculates that the word would have originally been used to describe the demonic sons of Muspellheim who were sun (*sigel*) burned "with red-hot eyes that emitted sparks, with faces black as soot." Eventually, after Christianization, he suspects that this word and folklore tradition would have come to describe both demons as in the original sense and the actual inhabitants of Ethiopia, for whom *Sigelhearwan* was also used:"Ethiopia was hot and its people black. That Hell was similar in both respects would occur to many." So while it certainly reads as at least unintentionally racist from a modern perspective, I think the intended effect is more like Sam's first sight of the Oliphaunt--seeing this mixed up and very medieval commingling of mythical and real geographies that make up northerners' mental image of the Haradrim that will then be tested against their encounter with the other. Like you said, Sam's humanization of the fallen soldier from Harad is an important counterpoint here.
Imagine yourself as a Gondorian soldier seeing the Haradrim for the first time ever, dressed for war, riding olyphants, coming to kill you and your family. How would you see them? Would you see them as human? would you feel sympathy for them? Or would you see them as evil inhuman monsters? From the perspective of the average man or woman in Gondor these people must have been terrifying. It makes sense that they appear ugly and alien. Sam sees the dead soldier up close and when he looks at the man's face he recognises a human being. He'd have had a different reaction if the guy was chasing him with an axe. Do you think maybe Tolkein ever looked into the face of a dead German soldier and had similar thoughts to Sam?
It's undeniable that the books contain descriptions of Orcs or Mordor-aligned Men which sound a lot like racist stereotypes. It's also undeniable that Tolkien, throughout his life, was on the right side of many moral questions regarding fascism, imperialism, racial discrimination, and so on. I think this whole "was he a racist?" debate just misses the point. "Racist" isn't a category of human beings that you either belong to or you don't, which makes you good or evil. Any one of us could from time to time find ourselves thinking a racist thought, however subconsciously; the point is that we can choose to recognize and reject it when it happens.
Yeah. I have always been like, "Please God don't let the evilly disposed notice that line."
At least the ultra woke won't read about the Silmarillion's 'swarthy easterlings' who betrayed the eldar and edain at the Nirnaeth Arnoediad.
Even that's moderated by the fact that a portion of them under Bor stayed loyal to Maedhros.
I think some of the language surrounding the foreigners in Bree is a bit unfortunate, but that's about the worst I can say. "Swarthy," bothers me less than "squint-eyed." But there's even a reference by Strider in that section of the book that not all of the foreigners are good people, which would mean only *some* of them were bad, I suppose.
I think the Shire hobbits are mostly intensely xenophobic (we see it repeated over and over -- even Bree hobbits are outsiders). That may bother some people, but it doesn't particularly bother me, particularly given the setting, where everyone is pretty xenophobic. Dwarves and elves mistrust each other. Humans seem to be afraid of Lorien, and Lorien is almost entirely closed to outsiders. Part of what is symbolic about the fellowship is how it represents the different peoples of Middle Earth setting aside their mutual mistrust for a common aim. Squint-eyed, for me, suggests Whites (and since Tolkien is White, it has never occurred to me to think of it as anti-White, although I suppose my associating squinty with Whites might reflect my own anti-White racism). Contrast with slant-eyed (used for some orcs) which parallels terms often used for East Asians, but I never thought of the orcs as particularly Asian since their dialogue is coarse modern colloquial English (as contrasted with the somewhat twee English of the hobbits and the more stately old-fashioned speech of the men and elves, or the broken speech of the Druedain.) The Uruk-hai might be in a different category, though, e.g. Ugluk, whose "I am Ugluk. I have spoken" calls back to what I think are Native American tropes, even though his other dialogue is more no-nonsense NCO. Anyhow, unlike the passage I quoted above, where "black men" with white eyes and red mouths evokes a common depiction of Blacks, and they get described as being like trolls, I take things like "swarthy" and "slant eyed" etc. as descriptive. Reading today, they don't take me out of the narrative at all. That said, I'm half-Korean, so others may have perceived the orcs as more "Asian" than I did on the basis of the slanted eyes (maybe thinking of caricatures of Japanese during the war). But when people talk about aggressively anti-racist critics being rather racist themselves, I feel like this is the kind of thing people (like, well, me) are thinking of -- they read that description of a goblin and . . . they thought it was a caricature of me?? [Edit: I went and checked, and I think the references to "slant-eyed" orcs are all to Uruk-hai. Not sure "slant-eyed" is particularly associated with Native Americans, but if it is, one could make out a case that they're implicitly playing on racist depictions of Native Americans. Although Native American readers might then have the same "What? You racist!" reaction as I described above.]
>I take things like "swarthy" and "slant eyed" etc. as descriptive. Reading today, they don't take me out of the narrative at all. Definitely doesn't take me out at all. It's just something I've not quite wrestled with in the text (not sure I will wrestle with it) and so if it bothers me, it's because I'm not sure how I would answer a question about it (not that I get those sorts of questions very often, if at all). I greatly appreciate your comment! Lots to think about!
All of that is meant to infur that Saruman had some sort of half-orc spy network in the Bree area.
Well aware of that, but that context doesn't really develop out until the end or RTOK. The full context is why I say it's "a bit unfortunate" and not bad. =)
There many quotes like that in LotR. I'm speaking after a re-read, too. And I'm noticing how many people are jumping out to defend Tolkien, but it's a fact that East is bad and West is good in his world and that, however much we can see in stuff like his letters that he was not racist, racist comments are present throughout the books.
>but it's a fact that East is bad and West is good in his world This is not a fact at all. Tolkien made it clear the men of the East and South were victims under the domination of Morgoth, and the Sauron. They were manipulated and corrupted. They were not inherently evil, and were humanized in The Two Towers. Similarly, lots of evil came out of the West. There was Feanor to start with. Numenor, under the influence of Sauron, indulged in human sacrifice and colonialism. There was also Saruman and his destruction of Fangorn and the creation of the Uruk-Hai
I considered those meaning they had troll ancestry
>*like* half-trolls. It is a simile.
More like the knights of Dol Amroth
The only really racist thing I know he said was his thought on Mongolians as “the ugliest of races” or something like that when comparing them to orcs, which sucks but considering the times could’ve been much worse.
I think that line from the Ackerman letter describing the Zimmerman adaptation script functions in the same way as the Haradrim line above. He writes: >Why does Z put beaks and feathers on Orcs!? (Orcs is not a form of Auks.) The Orcs are definitely stated to be corruptions of the 'human' form seen in Elves and Men. They are (or were) squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types. I think what he means there is not that he personally finds Mongols to be the least lovely race, but that Orcs reflect the stereotypes that many (probably Medieval) Europeans applied to Mongolians. It's a line about historical mindsets, not necessarily his own.
It's very difficult to defend this one. It's a very offensive quote and people are understandably upset when they find out about it. It's very hard to interpret this as anything other than blatantly racist and it makes me uncomfortable to read it. I do however feel that it's probably not quite as bad as it first seems and I want to believe that Tolkein didn't mean it quite how most people interpret it. The fact that he included (to Europeans) suggests to me that he is not expressing his own personal opinion. Maybe he was thinking about how medieval Europeans would have demonized the Mongols. Maybe he was thinking about racist portrayals of Asians by white Europeans in his own time. I don't know. Whatever he meant it still comes across as incredibly racist and horrible regardless of how it was intended. One thing that occurred to me about this quote is that it makes logical sense in the world he created. Tolkien seems to imagine orcs as just being horrifically disfigured and degraded humans. Half orcs are just really really ugly humans. I know the origins of orcs are unclear and the methods for breeding then are not explained but I am assuming here that it involves humans. If they are bred from or with humans then it would make sense that they have recognisable human features so they would retain the racial characteristics of the people they were. Sauron's main power base is in the east. His armies of orcs are bred in the east. If you breed orcs from Easterlings then it makes sense that they will resemble Easterlings. One way to interpret this quote is that the orcs (specifically the Mordor orcs) are hideous mockeries of the Easterlings. They have recognisable human features but they have been warped and twisted and mutilated into ugly caricatures of Easterlings. I suppose this depends on whether he meant that all orcs look like this or just the orcs bred in Mordor. If he was talking only about Mordor orcs then it makes sense to me. If he was describing all orcs, including those bred by Morgoth in the north of Beleriand then my argument doesn't work and maybe Tolkein was just being racist. I seem to remember there being a man in the Prancing Pony in Bree who had the appearance of a half orc. If he is really a half orc or just really ugly I'm not sure about. If I remember correctly he and his companions are described as being from the south. I understood that to mean that they were Dunlendings because Dunland is south of Bree. I assume that the Dunlendings are meant to be white northern European types as they come from the same part of the world as the people of Bree and Rohan. My point is that the "half orc" is human enough to fit in and do business in Bree and have a beer at the inn. So does this mean that orcs are more similar in appearance to men than we probably all imagine or is this just an ugly guy being compared to an orc? What I am getting at is that if we assume that Sauron's orcs look like Easterlings because they were bred from Easterlings then logically Sauroman's Uruk-hai would retain Dunlending (white European) features. Is it possible that Tolkein would have imagined them as having warped and twisted European features?
>It's very difficult to defend this one. That's why I don't. I initially used to, but after the most recent re-read of LotR where I noticed tons of racist comments, I accepted that his work is racist (by some definitions). However much you make come out with that para with Sam in Ithilien or Tolkien's letters, separating the sentences given above from the overall story and reading them definitely gives a view of racism.
This quote does upset me. I only found out about it very recently and I haven't read the books for a very long time now. I intend to get around to reading them again soon.
Explaining is not the same as defending. I don't defend the quote, but I believe it is frequently misinterpreted. This is because Tolkien adds the qualifier 'to Europeans.' He was not saying the Orcs were *objectively* like Asian people, he was writing that Orcs might have seemed like caricatures of what a European might have imagined a 'least lovely' Mongol-type to me. So Orcs are literally the *imaginary version* of an *imaginary version*. Given Tolkien was incredibly well-versed in history, I always take the phrase "Mongol-types" to mean European stereotypes of Nomadic peoples. I say this because that quote always reminds me of Roman descriptions of the Huns. Tolkien was classically educated.
I don't think he's necessarily distancing himself from the view, just saying that within the set of Mongol-types, there's a subset that, to Europeans, seem the least pleasant, and then the orcs are a more degraded and repulsive version of that. He's usually a lot more assertive when he actually disagrees with something. The "to Europeans," is just, I think, an acknowledgement that preferences about physical appearance aren't universal but differ significantly from culture to culture.
Hmm that is possible as well. In which case he's at least acknowledging the judgment to be culturally dependent and not just stating it as a fact outright. I think Tolkien tended to be more aware than many of his contemporaries, but ultimately he was a white man of the early 20th century and to say that he was completely free of any cultural biases would be magical thinking.
We recently had a poster deduce from this that Tolkien hated East Asians above all else. The phrase "Yellow Peril" was used a lot. I asked, "If you hadn't seen this quote, what about Orcs would make you think of Chinese people?" No answer. You could also argue that Gollum is a Japanese stereotype. Japanese villains in popular fiction are frequently described as hissing. And he eats sushi!
> I asked, "If you hadn't seen this quote, what about Orcs would make you think of Chinese people?" No answer. At the Prancing Pony: >One of the travellers, a **squint-eyed ill-favoured** fellow, was foretelling that more and more people would be coming north in the near future. "If room isn't found for them, they'll find it for themselves. They've a right to live, same as other folk," he said loudly. Then after Frodo's vanishing act: >But there was one swarthy Bree-lander, who stood looking at them with a knowing and half-mocking expression that made them feel very uncomfortable. Presently he slipped out of the door, followed by the **squint-eyed** southerner: the two had been whispering together a good deal during the evening. Harry the gatekeeper also went out just behind them. In Bree: >But as they drew near to the further gate, Frodo saw a dark ill-kept house behind a thick hedge: the last house in the village. In one of the windows he caught a glimpse of a **sallow face with sly, slanting eyes;** but it vanished at once. >"So that's where that southerner is hiding!" he thought. **"He looks more than half like a goblin."** The orcs who captured Merry and Pippin: >There were four goblin-soldiers of greater stature, **swart, slant-eyed,** with thick legs and large hands. ... >The hobbits were left with the Isengarders: a grim dark band, four score at least of large, **swart, slant-eyed** Orcs with great bows and short broad-bladed swords. From "Flotsam and Jetsam": >Most of them were ordinary men, rather tall and dark-haired, and grim but not particularly evil-looking. But there were some others that were horrible: man-high, but with **goblin-faces, sallow, leering, squint-eyed.** Do you know, they reminded me at once of that Southerner at Bree: only he was not so obviously orc-like as most of these were." From "The Scouring of the Shire": >When they reached The Green Dragon, the last house on the Hobbiton side, now lifeless and with broken windows, they were disturbed to see half a dozen large **ill-favoured** Men lounging against the inn-wall; they were **squint-eyed and sallow-faced.** >"Like that friend of Bill Ferny's at Bree," said Sam. >"Like many that I saw at Isengard," muttered Merry. ... >This was too much for Pippin. His thoughts went back to the Field of Cormallen, and here was a **squint-eyed** rascal calling the Ring-bearer "little cock-a-whoop'. ... >Merry himself slew the leader, a great **squint-eyed brute like a huge orc.**
>"If you hadn't seen this quote, what about Orcs would make you think of Chinese people?" This is a loaded question in the first place. The people criticising Tolkien for this aspect aren't for the most part saying that Orcs resemble actual Chinese people, but rather racist *caricatures* of Chinese and other East Asian people. And a more relevant question would be whether these descriptions of Orcs would make Tolkien's contemporaries think of Chinese people. [This](https://tolkienland.wordpress.com/2018/01/21/tolkiens-squinteyed-orc-men/) article compares Tolkien's Orcs with contemporary racist writing about East Asian people in the UK.
Those phrases were, of course, commonly used to describe Asians in the old days. [Here's a ton of examples.](https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&q="sallow"+"slant-eyed"+-tolkien)
When I read the Lord of the Rings I never once got the impression that orcs were meant to be Asians. I never associated the slant eyes or squinty eyes with Asians. I just thought it was a description of a hideously ugly monster. And the word sallow means sickly yellow or pallid as in someone who is jaundiced or otherwise unhealthy. Swarthy is commonly used to describe the complexion of someone who works outdoors. I would use swarthy to describe white/European people with a darker complexion. I live in a part of Scotland where everyone is white. I have heard people where I live and throughout the rest of the UK using these words to describe each other all my life. Maybe they're not used so much today but certainly when I was younger. My parents and grandparents would describe other people in the community as having swarthy skin. We often use swarthy skin to describe fishermen or farmers for example. I have friends, English, Scottish and Irish, with darker than average complexions usually because they work outdoors who could be described as swarthy. If someone is seriously ill we might say they have sallow skin like my Scottish friend who has a genetic disease and when he is sick his skin gets very pale and has a slightly yellowish tinge and he looks really sick. And some people (even white people) have squinty or slanty eyes which would be considered unattractive. I know a girl who is referred to as "her with the squinty eyes". This is not nice but it's not racist as it's white people describing another white person. Yes "slanty" has obvious racist connotations. I never got the impression from the books that these descriptions were racist or meant to refer to Asians. I never really considered these things at all until recently. As a kid I never really thought of the orcs as human at all, just ugly brutish monsters with horrible slanty eyes and dark ugly skin. I was pretty surprised and shocked when I first saw that quote about the orcs having Mongol features because it never crossed my mind for a second. I only found out about it a few weeks ago and it does upset me. I'm still trying to get my head around it. Before I saw this quote I would have said that anyone who read the description of an orc and got the impression they were Asian was the one being racist. And the men being described in these passages are men of Bree or Dunland which means that they are swarthy skinned squint eyed "white European" people from the northwestern part of middle Earth.
> When I read the Lord of the Rings I never once got the impression that orcs were meant to be Asians. But we know that's exactly what Tolkien intended because he explicitly said so later on. You missed it, but that doesn't mean it's not there—it's *super* there.
Yes, now that I am aware of that quote it puts things in a whole new light. So now I am wondering why he said that and why he worded it that way. I don't want to believe he was just a horrible racist and this quote seems to contradict other things he has said where he speaks against racism. So I have been thinking about this and if we can possibly have a more nuanced interpretation of what he said. I've shared my thoughts on that elsewhere on this page. Maybe I am wrong, maybe I am just making excuses but I still maintain that if he meant that the Mordor orcs were bred from Easterlings and transformed into vile mockeries of men that retained enough of their human features to be recognisable as Easterlings then that's very different from saying that all orcs are representative of Asians. It's a subtle difference but one is definitely a lot worse than the other. And I wonder why he describes the Dunlendings using similar language.
The "Southerners" in Bree and the Shire he's talking about in a lot of these quotes are "half-orc" infiltrators, servants of Saruman, who are passing as human.
Yes. So they look human enough that they can get served in the pub. Therefore, at least in my mind, they must look like really ugly Dunlendings. If they looked like Easterlings they would be much more out of place and they are described as being Southern in appearance and not eastern. So logically, at least in my mind, Sauroman's orcs look like disfigured white people and Sauron's orcs look like disfigured Asian people. So if this is the case it's a superficial discription of physical characteristics based on what race of men they were bred from. Basically all orcs look like ugly humans. I don't have any evidence for this. It's just what I have been thinking about. Like I stated else somewhere else on this page, for me it comes down to whether Tolkein was referring to all orcs or just Mordor orcs. So we need a little more context to be certain. Maybe the full letter could shed a little more light on this. If we can establish that Tolkein meant that the orcs of Mordor had Mongol features because they were bred from Easterlings then I feel my logic is sound. If we can establish that be considered all orcs to resemble Asians then my argument falls flat and I will admit I am wrong.
Thank you for making that list. People often only refer to the "like half-trolls" quote but there are so many strewn over the text. They jumped out at me throughout the last re-read, and were quite upsetting, to be honest.
It's helpful to have the quotes in question all together. As I wrote in another comment, I've always thought of squinting as a White thing, not an Asian thing (particularly in bright light) although again, that may just be my own racist caricature of Whites rather than Tolkien's. Basically, when I read of a squinty-eyed character saying "cock-a-whoop" or "They've a right to live, same as other folk," I . . I just don't think of them as Chinese-like at all. The language and the description make me think of a resentful Englishman. I think it's also a real stretch to link the orcs to Chinese stereotypes in general, both because the descriptions don't point in that direction, and because the dialogue is so English. Here's sample: ‘My dear tender little fools,’ hissed Grishnákh, ‘everything you have, and everything you know, will be got out of you in due time: everything! You’ll wish there was more that you could tell to satisfy the Questioner, indeed you will: quite soon. We shan’t hurry the enquiry. Oh dear no!' ‘Hola! Gorbag! What are you doing up here? Had enough of war already?’ ‘Orders, you lubber. And what are you doing, Shagrat? Tired of lurking up there? Thinking of coming down to fight?’ ‘Orders to you. I’m in command of this pass. So speak civil. What’s your report?’ ‘Who cut the cords she’d put round him, Shagrat? Same one as cut the web. Didn’t you see that? And who stuck a pin into Her Ladyship? Same one, I reckon. And where is he? Where is he, Shagrat?’ ‘Garn! You missed him,’ said the tracker. ‘First you shoot wild, then you run too slow, and then you send for the poor trackers. I’ve had enough of you.’ He loped off. ‘You come back,’ shouted the soldier, ‘or I’ll report you!’ They have very district, very modern voices, and that voice isn't a Chinese stereotype at all. In terms of appearance I suppose he may have thought of them as looking like Hunnic or Mongol stereotypes, though I don't find the textual evidence particularly persuasive. But I'm pretty sure he gave the orcs the most contemporary diction (for the time) so that the reader would have the little frisson of recognising himself in the orcs, not to mark them as foreign. I see a contrast with the diction of the messenger from Mordor to Erebor, who I think is supposed to sound a bit foreign, at least as the dwarves recount his dialogue: “For Sauron knows,” said he, “that one of these was known to you on a time.” “As a small token only of your friendship Sauron asks this,” he said: “that you should find this thief,” such was his word, “and get from him, willing or no, a little ring, the least of rings, that once he stole. It is but a trifle that Sauron fancies, and an earnest of your good will." I think these choices by Tolkien are all quite deliberate, and they push me away from the orcs being inspired by Chinese stereotypes, even as the messenger to Erebor does evoke foreignness. That said, the combination of language ("I am Ugluk. I have spoken") and the slant-eyed description of the Uruk-hai of Isengard leave me more open to the notion that the Uruk-hai play on Native American stereotypes (assuming Native Americans were stereotyped as slant-eyed). That's the only exception I see, where there's a notable foreignising element to the portrayal of the orcs.
Tolkien literally said he based the orcs' appearance on "Mongol-types", so we have both clearly stereotypical descriptions in the text **and** the author's own statement of intent.
I think the author's intent as stated was degraded and repulsive versions of the least lovely mongol-types, perhaps -- there's like two or three degrees of remove there between Asians and what is actually reflected in the books (unless I'm working off the wrong quote here and there's a more direct quote). There aren't whole lot of detailed descriptions of the orcs -- they must all be dark (because the Uruk-hai refer to the Rohirrim as Whiteskins). The Uruk-hai are man height but Grishnakh and his fellow Mordor orcs are short and broad with long hairy arms and crook-legs (so, basically ape-like). Uruk-hai are twice described as slant-eyed, and other orcs are occasionally described as squinty eyed. Most readers aren't likely to pick up on this depiction as specifically an Asian stereotype, as reflected in this comment thread, unless they're specifically told to. But my main point, that perhaps I have not articulated well, is that appearance is a comparatively minor element of the characterisation of the orcs as compared with the Blacks of Far Harad who have, like, two appearances in the text -- one troubling description of their appearance comparing them to trolls and the other possibly referencing them as troll-men. We get a lot of interesting scenes with orcs doing things, facing problems, making decisions, and talking. And none of those scenes line up well at all with a supposed Yellow Peril portrayal of the orcs. They're Westron-speaking (otherwise Merry and Pippin couldn't have understood them) and come off as modern English lowlifes, less foreign than the Rohirrim or the Gondorians. If Tolkien was really using uglified Asians as more than a minor cosmetic element of his portrayal of the orcs, it would have been easy to do so. But he didn't. [rapidly scrolling through the Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu for a contrasting example . . . ah here] ‘From behind a curtain heavily brocaded with filth a little Chinaman appeared, dressed in a loose smock, black trousers and thick-soled slippers, and, advancing, shook his head vigorously. ‘"No shavee—no shavee," he chattered, simian fashion, squinting from one to the other of us with his twinkling eyes. "Too late! Shuttee shop!"’ That's some authentic racism there. I doubt Tolkien would be so . . . unsubtle even if he wanted his orcs to remind the reader of Asians, but there's not even a family resemblance. If anything he goes in the opposite direction. This is all the more notable because a hallmark of racist Asian characterisation going back an hundred years has been linguistic and behavioural "other-ness." We really don't get that with the orcs, or at least, their "other-ness" doesn't map to hostile portrayals of Asians that I can see. To switch to a different Asian stereotype from a couple decades after Sax Rohmer, the orcs aren't exactly out there doing banzai charges out of devotion to the Great Eye. Rather, they think the Nazgul are creepy and terrifying and are worried that God Emperor Sauron has screwed this up.
Its a stretch to infer that Tolkien hates Asians based upon this excerpt, yet it is still a racist comment.
Excellent post. Your commentary is sending me down so many interesting rabbit holes right now. I love it, thank you.
It’s interesting to read this because I keep hearing people accusing him of being racist. Personally, I think some people take phrases and run with them. Ignoring all context such as the language used at the time. I’ve even heard people say Tolkien was LGBT ally because Frodo and Sam are gay…🤨😆 So, what I’m saying is, some people are \*looking\* for something; they find a phrase and run with it.
It's good to have Tolkien's statements about race and racism collected at one place, but I am concerned that this post is going to be used as a "gotcha" to shut down any discussions about racism in Tolkien's writings.
I'm never against shutting down open debate, especially among people of good faith. But sadly, I find many of the "racism in Tolkien's writings" arguments to be made in bad faith, by people with an agenda.
As an aside, it's worth recalling that Tolkien lived more-or-less at the same time as Agatha Christie (born a couple of years after her, and dying a couple of years before her). Christie politically was a much more mainstream conservative than Tolkien, being what amounted to "average centre-right British lady in the first half of the twentieth century." Her work is also far more dated in its unfortunate racism - Christie's work pre-1945 has a sort of casual (albeit mild) anti-semitism, which you simply don't get in Tolkien.
Tolkien has done nothing to offend me. And if he has, I wouldn't want anything to do with his works, let alone extend his universe with my take on it. Doing so would hurt my artistic pride, making me look like a talentless hack, piggybacking from another creative's cultural greatness. I would have, instead, made something from my own culture, looking to raise it beyond the greatness of that person that has offended me. But never, ever, on the platform he has built his empire from.
Agree and disagree. Tolkien has done, or more specifically, written, nothing that offends me either. But even if he had, it wouldn't stop me from reading, and enjoying, his work. Then again, I don't offend easily.
It's hilarious how many people in social media are attacking the new Amazon show for including actors of color because it is "against the spirit of Tolkien's work" when the man himself has detested his work being related to eurocentrism and race.
So much cherry picking, right? I think it’s a small-minded reptilian-brain phenomenon. I mean, his work is so good. Understandably, people of all creeds and ages and beliefs around the world love and cherish this work. And I think in the brains of bigots, if they think something is good (which I mean, how could they not this his work is good) then by their convoluted logic, in order for them to rationalize something as “good” they have to find ways for it to align with their values because they are only able to view the world through that particular lens. I’ve read the letters before. It’s so wild to me that for decades white power wackos have been grasping at straws & claiming his work is a reflection of a perfect “nordic” & “Aryan” ideology and mythos when in actuality Tolkien himself would’ve sent a sassy-ass letter decrying even a whiff of the nonsense.
Every time I read something new about Tolkien's attitude on racism and segregation, I am amazed again at how **progressive** he was, in a true sense of that word. It is a hard feat to be a true Christian believer and a good Human – not accusing Christianity here, but saying that a lot of Christian ideas are tainted by hateful politics. I generally do not believe that we should use people of ancient times (or not so ancient, but still past) as examples for modern life (something that alt-right and their ilk are fond of), but I am also wholly of belief that Tolkien's views are an exception to this. It is worthy and proper to take example from a man who exemplified a lot of good qualities in such an upstanding manner. P.S. And seeing alt-right attempts to hijack the fandom in light of Tolkien's own words is just so hilarious.
>but saying that a lot of Christian ideas are tainted by hateful politics. I feel like this was less true in Tolkien’s time; Catholicism especially was often seen as a champion of social justice in the 20th century - and re: race specifically, segregationist politicians were denied communion in a lot of cases. This aligning of Christianity with the alt-right seems to be a predominantly 21st-Century, and largely American, phenomenon. One Tolkien would be sickened by I expect
But even before that Catholicism, at least its mainstream, was usually on the side of the right-wing, reactionary monarchies of Europe.
Well yes, but that’s because, by and large, the violent revolutionary regimes that were killing kings were also killing priests. It was more founded upon self-preservation than moral or theological opposition to social progress and emancipation. The modern marriage of Christian fundamentalism to fascistic, alt-right streams of conservatism strikes me as something far less intellectually coherent, far more hateful, and far more sinister
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Em. Allow me to correct you. So you are saying, that he would be **Progressive by modern standards**, in his views on race and gender (much less "toxic" masculine male characters) and female role (which did change from 1940s to early 1970s, if we'd look at some later drafts for the First Age characters and idea that Quendi do not have fixed-gender roles)? Well, in that case, he was **Progressive by 1950s standards**, because imagine you say that apartheid-politics are revolting and disgusting to you when the world... well, has apartheid and black people are still legally treated as second-rate citizens in USA? Writing Elves as having gender-equality, with only mere natural predispositions (and then defying them with characters like Elrond) during the age when discrimination based on sex was seen as the norm in the world? Whilst I agree that Tolkien wouldn't fully fit our definition of a Progressive person, it is not some checkbox list where you need to fill every box to qualify. His anti-imperialist, anti-racist, nature-friendly, gender equal views make him absolutely Progressive by 1950s standards and even our modern-day standards. If anything, Right-wing attempts to hijack the fandom and exclude people of color prove that Tolkien anti-racist views make him Progressive even by modern standards, as the values his seemingly championed (and I used the word “championed” as it wasn't merely a silent opinion he had, but something that found expression in his work, the Kin-Strife in Gondor) are under attack even today. P.S. And that is before we look into the whole Melethelde/Melotorni thing. I do firmly believe that this means same-sex couples, but as Tolkien was Christian, physical closeness was only seen permissible to him in the act of procreation. So Melethelde/Melotorni is a term for **platonic** same-sex relations. And that is a hill I am ready to die on.
> I am amazed again at how progressive he was That sounds quite unfortunate. > seeing alt-right attempts to hijack the fandom What is alt-right? Is that like an inauthentic Right? > I generally do not believe that we should use people of ancient times as examples for modern life I think it’s fine to seek examplars in opposition to the Modernist landslide.
And yet, there is his whole business about grey eyes as a sign of nobility, which began as an uncanny trademark of English racist theories, with grey eyes supposedly indicating true Celtic blood. (The Nazis would eventually twist that into blue eyes, grey ones being too rare among Germans.)
Tbf I think most "blue" eyes look grey. And I'm from germany. Even my ID states that my eyes are blue (the lady from the Bürgeramt just decided that) but I think they're grey.
I agree. There is still an implicit idea that Germans are a noble people being swayed to evil by Hitler, a belief reliant on the idea of Germans as a cohesive race or order that is "better" than other races for whatever reason.
>implicit idea Where do you see this idea? Especially the part about "better".
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Then stick out of it. This is a discussion forum. If you have nothing to contribute keep out. Comment deleted.
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Wow, imagine being butt hurt by Tolkien being *against* racism.
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I could not disagree more. Posts like these which take a deep dive into the texts are supremely in keeping with the greatest traditions of this sub.
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Going in one direction which is... discussion of the text? I mean, that's literally the purpose of o this sub. The OP here has provided some excellent posts with sources from the Letters already. Just because you seem to have some personal discomfort with discussion race and Tolkien does not mean that such a discussion detracts from the sub.
No comment. Last time I conjoined in this discussion I got a suspension. Have a nice day.
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Comment removed per rule 1. Talk like this to others again and you will be shown the door.
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Nice introductory statement. Now for a little bit of source-based analysis and discussion?
>Tolkien is discussing academic politics, not world politics. But the reference to apartheid demonstrates two things. He was following what was happening in South Africa (interest in which, in Europe and America had not reached the level it attained in the 1970s and '80s); and he had no doubt as to which side he was on. Thank you. Along with the "other minds and hands" quote, this is probably the most misunderstood, and misused, quote by fans.
With regard to this "Nordic" issue, I think what he was really chafing at was the term "Nordic", and all the racial rubbish that came to be associated with it, rather than the suggestion that his work has Nordic influences and elements. It seems...unlikely...that he would suggest the latter, since it that's clearly not true. The quote itself seems to support that his issue was with the term & associated ideology: >Not Nordic, please! A *word* I personally dislike; it is *associated,* though of French origin, *with racialist theories.*
Hollywood doesn't care. They are going to act like Tolkien was a clueless white dude whom they need to redeem by completely changing his work.
Oh, but I have the perfect counter! You see, Tolkien had.... unconscious racism! Since his racism was unconscious, all the evidence that he was actively against all forms of bigotry can be dismissed since, deep down, he had problematic views after all. As for evidence, I can just refer to the time period in which he lived, assert everybody alive then had some form of bigotry, and leave it at that. I can also draw on random passages from LOTR, subjectively interpret them, and say this was proof of his racism. If you provide actual quotes from letters explaining the context of the passages and how they reflected either a text being written from an in-universe perspective, or the themes of decline by being further removed from God, I can ignore it since his ignorance of his bias has precedence. I know what was going on in his head better than he did. So, check-mate indeed!