While I was travelling my blog attracted the attention of a Danish Fascist group, the Danish National Front, for its posts on Tolkien and fascism. A post went up on their message board indicating that the Tolkien books are recommended reading for fascists and giving my post on Tolkien’s racial theories as an explanation of why. I’m not, of course, going to give a link to the message board, since I don’t want to give them traffic (from my thousands of readers, ha!) and neither do I want to draw their attention (more than I have). The post about my blog only has two replies but one of the replies, translated in google translate, gives an excellent insight into how fascists and nazis think about Tolkien. Here it is, post-google:
There is no doubt that Tolkien’s books based on a Germanic mythology, even his linguistic inventions are rooted in language studies.
In contrast, Harry Potter pure fiction mixed with Marxist ideology of equality. I would never let my children read Harry Potter, but even read Tolkien’s books aloud to them – there is a readily available version of them as suitable for children and adolescents.
The post above this one also claims CS Lewis for the fascists, because
CS Lewis, author of the Narnia series, was surely also a racist or at least accused of it (especially for being anti-Muslim and producing Middle Eastern people as bad guys, etc). May I look at a time.
These two comments also give support to some of my claims about the conservative appeal of high fantasy.Note as well that this stuff transcends any individual national interpretation of Tolkien – now I’ve found it in the UK, Italy, America and Denmark. All strands of fascist thought in the Western world seem to have a strong appreciation of Tolkien’s racial and hierarchical themes, and see them as excellent propaganda material to expose their children to. They also don’t seem to have any concerns about the putative multiculturalism of the Fellowship, presumably because they see all the races of the West as representative of “white” men, and don’t care about the (huge) differences between dwarves, elves, halflings and men. The fact that there are no black men or “mongoloids” (Tolkien’s term) is more relevant to them than the fact that elves and dwarves are so racially different that they can’t even inter-breed[1].
This last point perhaps also is relevant in defense against the claim that the colours of the antagonists in Lord of the Rings are not symbolic of anything. Fascists take the whiteness of dwarves and elves as symbolically more important than the fact of their racial difference. This is a pathological level of focus on the real world notion of race, since their perception of skin colour transcends the very real, “scientific” differences described in the book. But they are largely only able to do this in the works of people like Tolkien and Lewis. I think that this ability to transcend the actual racial codification in the books, and to map onto it their own models, is made possible by the reassuring conservative environment of the books, and the germanic mythology underlying them. These books contain a lot of coda that reassure fascists that they are reading the “right” type of conservatism, and thus able to draw the “right” conclusions about the racial messages in the book.
I’ve read a lot of apologies for Tolkien’s worldview in my various posts about the racial theories inherent in them, but I think the way fascists view him and his work is a pretty clear sign that his politics is not worth rehabilitating. It’s possible to read Tolkien critically without losing enjoyment of the books, and it’s possible to play the fantasy RPGs that inherit his conservatism and racism with the same critical eye, without losing enjoyment of them (or indeed, enjoying those unrealistic aspects of their racial theory that make them so different to the real world). What it’s not possible to do, as far as I can tell, is read Tolkien while somehow claiming he is presenting a world devoid of racial theory, or even (as some seem to want) a world that is at least neutral with respect to modern standards of racial equality and racial determinism. This view of the books is only possible through sleight of hand (e.g. pretending the Fellowship is a multicultural symbol) or outright deception (e.g. claiming, as regularly happens, that the Southrons weren’t meant to be black). Fundamentally, it’s a text on scientific racism, and needs to be read as such.
Which doesn’t change the fact that it’s a great book. It just means that it’s a product of its times and, seen in a certain light, a work of virulent conservatism and racism. But so what? It’s still a fun read.
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fn1: as far as we know…
Compromise and Conceit 
September 24, 2010 at 10:46 pm
I’ve read a lot of apologies for Tolkien’s worldview in my various posts about the racial theories inherent in them, but I think the way fascists view him and his work is a pretty clear sign that his politics is not worth rehabilitating.
Mate, this is just crazy talk. Fascists are, by and large, mentally deranged. The fact that lots of fascists like Tolkien means about as much as the fact that Hitler apparently liked Nietzche or, for that matter, that John Wayne Gacy liked Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. The guys who murdered Stephen Lawrence apparently all liked to watch Die Hard, you know – clearly that must make Bruce Willis a scientific racist!!! And let’s not forget that Mussolini really liked Mozart – what a fucking fascist Mozart must have been!!!! Maybe in bizarro world, anyway…?
Fundamentally, it’s a text on scientific racism, and needs to be read as such.
I’m pretty sure you’re deliberately trying to be provocative here, but even if you’re going to make the argument that Tolkien was a scientific racist, there’s absolutely no sensible argument that his work is fundamentally a text on scientific racism. That’s just manifestly bizarre, as race barely features as an aspect of the plot of the Lord of the Rings. If there is any deep philosophical or cultural theme on which the Lord of the Rings hangs, it’s surely Christianity, as any fule know.
Anyway, I know you probably won’t bother, but if you’re going to make posts like this you really need to actually read some of what Tolkien himself said about these things (in e.g. his letters, in which he rails against racism generally and scientific racism specifically all the time), as well as the work of ‘apologists’ who are genuinely familiar with his work, like Tom Shippey. I also recommend Cory Olsen’s excellent podcast, called The Tolkien Professor, which you can get on iTunes.
September 25, 2010 at 6:52 am
“I’ve read a lot of apologies for Tolkien’s worldview in my various posts about the racial theories inherent in them, but I think the way fascists view him and his work is a pretty clear sign that his politics is not worth rehabilitating.”
Noisms, I’m going to have to disagree with you. Faustus has finally convinced me that we can look for the worst person to touch anything and thereafter assume that because they are associated with it, the thing is marred forever. Now any time a horrible idiot supports something I’m going to regard that thing as being ipso facto horrible.
I just hope that no one does anything stupid like supporting environmentalism by taking Discovery staff hostage, or promotes community sharing by forcing collectivisation that leads to the starvation of millions.
Oh. Shit.
Well. I suppose I can console myself by saying that while these concepts need to be “seen in a certain light” where they are “It’s still a fun read.”
September 25, 2010 at 1:42 pm
This is weak even by your standards of trolling, Noisms. You’ve engaged with every other post in this series and you know full well that the arguments I’ve made don’t come down to “fascists like him so he’s a fascist.”
As usual, there’s a whole bunch of other stuff you could have talked about in this post, but you’ve gone the silliest most distracting route you can. And the argument that fascists are mentally deranged so we don’t have to consider their worldview at all is really quite pathetic. Particularly in a series of posts attempting to understand the influence of Tolkien on that worldview.
The influence of philosophers like Nietzche and Heidegger on Fascism isn’t exactly an area of inquiry without its academic antecedents either, is it? The rest of your arguments are absurd.
I don’t think christianity is the core cultural theme on which Lord of the Rings rests; you might be able to argue it’s nordic romanticism, or something, but it ain’t christianity. I’m happy to concede the less provocative claim that at its heart Lord of the Rings is based on a scientific racist version of Nordic romanticism. And what other movements were big on nordic romanticism in the 20th century, I wonder?
I think we visited the work of Tom Shippey once before, and he started off with a fundamental misunderstanding of (or is it a misrepresentation of?) Tolkien’s critical acclaim. Given he doesn’t seem to have any kind of grasp at all of the critical environment for Tolkien’s work, I don’t know that he would be the best person to add to a debate about Tolkien’s critical reception among fascists.
The letters I’ve seen used in defense of Tolkien against claims of racism are pretty thin on the ground and really very equivocal. But if you have some better ones to add to the pot, I’d love to see them.
September 25, 2010 at 1:44 pm
Paul, what we’re doing here is not looking for the worst person to touch something and assuming therefore that they’re marred forever. We’re looking at whether Tolkien and modern fascists share a worldview, and asking whether the use of Tolkien as propaganda by fascists is supportive of that claim.
Maybe you think that Rand and libertarians have nothing in common, and that any use of Rand as propaganda by libertarians is just a coincidence? Or that anarchist use of The Dispossessed as an educational and inspirational text is not an argument against the (weak) position that it’s actually a critique of anarchism?
Anyway, why don’t you try addressing the multiculturalism point (since you raised that issue in a previous post); or arguing that the fascists are wrong to use Tolkien in support of their racist views?
September 25, 2010 at 1:49 pm
oh, and “It’s not worth rehabilitating” should be taken to mean that you can’t rescue the political background of Tolkien’s work from its racism, and you can’t claim that its influence hasn’t been in at least some ways pernicious. It doesn’t mean “don’t read Tolkien” or “all of Tolkien is bad because it’s racist” or any one of a raft of other claims.
I would say that being an inspiration to fascists is a pernicious influence. I would also say that Tolkien’s scientific racism has had a strong influence on the role-playing world, and on the fantasy genre, and this influence is mostly pernicious. The fascist undertones of Tolkien’s work mean that it has had a fascist influence on our gaming milieu. This is not good. As I’ve said multiple times before, however, this doesn’t mean that his other influences (e.g. on world-building and the role of legend in fantasy) should be discounted or devalued.
September 25, 2010 at 5:20 pm
You’ve engaged with every other post in this series and you know full well that the arguments I’ve made don’t come down to “fascists like him so he’s a fascist.”
Of course I’m not accusing you of saying “fascists like him so he’s a fascist” (I was engaging in a little bit of silly hyperbole in the name of humour – remember humour?); I’m pointing out how absurd it is to make the argument that, since nasty person x finds inspiration in the work of nice person y, there must be something pernicious about nice person y, after all. And that’s really all your argument boils down to. I mean, who are you, bloody Aesop? A man is known by the company he keeps!
If you really can’t see how daft this all is, how about we take it to an absurd extreme: Islamofascists take their inspiration from the Koran. Does that make the Prophet a “pernicious influence”, or not? How about this: Stalin took his influence from Karl Marx. Does that make Karl Marx a “pernicious influence”, or not? Mark David Chapman was heavily influence by the Catcher in the Rye. Does that make J. D. Salinger a “pernicious influence”, or not? And, since this is sort of germane, Adolf Hitler took some inspiration from the work of Charles Darwin; does that make Darwin a “pernicious influence”, or not?
You’re initial thesis (God knows why you’re now calling this a “silly distracting route” – it’s the core of your post) that since fascists can find inspiration in Tolkien his own politics are not worth rehabilitating, is just flat wrong. It’s worse than wrong; it is, like I said, sheer crazy talk.
I don’t think christianity is the core cultural theme on which Lord of the Rings rests…
Then you’re not at all familiar with what you’re criticising. Everything in Tolkien, from the intertextuality to the obsession with eucatastrophe to the extended meditation on predestination versus free will that his stories represent, is steeped in his own Christian beliefs and his Roman Catholicism in particular.
Come on, man, if you’re really this interested or invested in the topic you owe it to yourself to do some genuine study. Pick up some of Shippey’s stuff. Listen to that Tolkien Professor podcast. You may be pleasantly surprised. And if you’re not, it’ll at least provide fresh rant material for your blog, right?
September 25, 2010 at 5:21 pm
Wow, there were a lot of grammatical and spelling errors in that last comment of mine.
September 26, 2010 at 12:55 am
I think, if you believe that the Koran is a book that advocates violence as a solution to all problems, then yes you will see it as having a pernicious influence on “islamofascism.” I don’t think you have to look far to find people of all political persuasions arguing that Karl Marx had a pernicious effect on the 20th Century, and in fact you’ll probably find quite a few leftist political forces that reject Marxism on the basis that it’s not worth rehabilitating – the Green movement is an example of this, I think, and of course a lot of 20th century anarchists. You shouldn’t think that because I’m saying Tolkien’s work had a bad effect on fantasy and is an encouragement to (and propaganda tool for) fascists across Europe that he himself is a bad person (“there must be something pernicious about nice person y”). Rather, you should see it as what it is – that his politics has had a bad effect. It’s not hard to point out Tolkien’s influence, and to see where it’s good and where it’s bad. Creatively his work has been important, but I don’t think we could claim its political legacy is particularly charming or helpful.
The issue of Darwin’s role in “social darwinism” and the like is an interesting one, and I think it has been explored in detail though I don’t know anything much about it. Whether his work is seen as a pernicious influence or just misread would be the key point in the analogy. My argument here is that fascists aren’t misreading Tolkien, they’re finding many themes in his work that support their worldview.
I’m not sure why you want to claim that “not worth rehabilitating” is my “initial thesis” when it’s in the last paragraph (bar one sentence) of a post which first covers: the transnational nature of fascist respect for Tolkien; the problem of the fellowship-as-multiculturalism and the role of Tolkien’s conservatism in evading this conclusion; and the coda in the novel that give it appeal to fascists (where, for example, other high fantasy like A Wizard of Earthsea fails). As usual, you’re focussing on the pointing finger and missing all the glory of the heavens.
September 26, 2010 at 12:55 am
oh, and I will investigate that podcast. Shippey I’m not so impressed by…
September 26, 2010 at 3:12 am
I think you’re basing your lack of interest in Shippey purely on the fact that he didn’t perform a google search to check exactly how many English departments in the UK teach Tolkien. If so that’s not really very fair.
I know you’re not saying Tolkien was a bad person. But I think you’re missing the point. Of course one can believe all kinds of things about the Koran, Marx, Salinger, Darwin, etc. The point is that just because very sinister and weird people have liked their work and used it for propaganda purposes, does not make the politics of the authors themselves “not worth rehabilitating”. I think Marx had a horrific influence on the history of the world, but I think you can legitimately rehabilitate Marx’s politics, as many people have done. Nietzche is probably an even better example; we’ve now been able to rightly set to one side the fact that Hitler liked him, to recognise him for what he was – the most important philosopher of the last 200 years, without any of the creepy trappings which were once associated with him. He’s been thoroughly rehabilitated.
(This all assumes that Tolkien’s politics need rehabilitating, of course. I don’t think they do. The things he believed in are not very fashionable these days but they’re not particularly objectionable for it. He was primarily a luddite, a Catholic, and a conservationist, and none of those are really pernicious even if you think they’re misguided.)
September 26, 2010 at 10:51 am
I’m not so confident that Marx’s politics can be rehabilitated. Some people think it was misuse of his ideas that led Stalin et al to be bastards, but I don’t think Stalin’s big acts of cruelty had much to do with Marxist politics, really. But there are other aspects of Marx’s ideals, for example his view about the objective stages of societies through history, and of course his ideas on the political organisation of societies, that have been universally bad. I think dialectical materialism is a useful critical tool sometimes (to the extent that I know much about it) but I don’t know that it warrants rehabilitating Marx’s politics overall. There were other people at the time thinking critically about class who could have, for example, informed the union movement and the social democratic parties. As concrete examples of the uselessness of Marx’s politics, the two most successful revolutions – Cuba and China – arose from a military campaign by a small group of the bourgeoisie that united a peasant society, which according to Marx was at the wrong stage of political development to entertain any communist ideals. The most successful of them – China – then went on to radically change the economic relations of its society away from Marxism. It seems that Marx didn’t get much right…
I agree that not all of Tolkien’s politics were bad but the scientific racism and old-world conservatism are what have had an enduring influence on fantasy (obviously through no fault of Tolkien’s). I don’t think this has to be an exclusively leftist concern either. Not only is scientific racism rejected by large parts of the right now (I hope!) but, for example, attempts at libertarian or even democratic conservative societies in high fantasy can seem strangely out of whack with the genre (I’m thinking e.g. of Goodkind here, whose books just seem kooky to me, and I think this is partly because the world they’re set in is not a straight kings-and-elves type Tolkienesque). Even strongly left-wing/anarchist texts like A Wizard of Earthsea started from a right-of-kings classically conservative world, something le Guin herself now regrets (though she always avoided the racism).
Of course it’s in the nature of genres to limit freedom of expression, since there are elements that are essential to the genre. But I think we’re well past the point where Tolkien’s politics need to be an essential element of the genre, and to the extent that they are, I think they cramp our style and drain the high fantasy genre of the opportunity to be more speculative and involved. And I don’t think that we need to (or should) try to find ways to keep or defend the political elements that have stayed in the genre – we should just be considering dumping them, or at least reducing their central role in defining the genre.
September 26, 2010 at 6:23 pm
I find it weird that I (as a faustusnotes monikered “conservative”) find myself defending Marx to you. 😉 Marx was useless as a prophet, that’s true – it wasn’t just Cuba and China in which a small coterie of middle-class revolutionaries united a peasant society, it happened that way in Russia, Cambodia, Ethiopia etc. too. I think the only “Marxist” revolution that really happened in anything like the way Marx envisaged was, ironically, Germany just after WWI, though it probably says a great deal that it was also one of the least successful Marxist revolutions.
But Marx’s fundamental understanding of the world seems to be to be very persuasive and coherent, even if I don’t completely agree with it in the end. And a lot of Marxian theorists have had extremely valuable insights in law, philosophy, economics, sociology, you name it. In the long run given the way Marxism became interpreted, it has been an incredibly damaging ideology, but why shouldn’t we be able to separate the initial theory from what followed?
Marx isn’t the best example, here. Darwin is better. I’m sure you’d agree that Darwin inspired a lot that was bad – eugenics, Nazi race theories, “social darwinism” generally – but that doesn’t by any stretch make his work “not worth rehabilitating”.
Which is sort of beside the point anyway, because I don’t think Tolkien was a scientific racist (there’s just no evidence of this even from a formalist reading of the texts) and I don’t think that a) you can really call him an old world Conservative and b) that old world Conservatism is necessarily bad anyway, on balance.
September 27, 2010 at 2:18 am
Of all people, Faustus, I would not expect you to say we have nothing to learn from examining the world through the lens of class conflict.
September 27, 2010 at 8:38 am
Noisms, you make a strong case for rehabilitating Marx (or for a debate about same). Darwin obviously has been largely misread by the eugenics crowd, and so I don’t have difficulty saying his work is above reproach – but Darwin’s work is apolitical, so his politics and its political influence are largely irrelevant to its findings. In comparison, I don’t think that Tolkien is being misread by his fascist “critics.”
Let me try and explain a bit more what I mean by “not worth rehabilitating,” because I think you’re taking it to mean “should ignore his work,” which I don’t. As I tried to point out in a previous comment, by “not worth rehabilitating” I mean to say, that you can’t find a way to repackage the political meaning in a way that makes it palatable to its 21st century readers, or even politically meaningful in the modern context. There are some themes in Tolkien that aren’t about race, but they aren’t specific to Tolkien’s work necessarily, and they aren’t necessarily separable from the bad elements. e.g. his conservationism isn’t from a strictly environmentalist origin, but is tied in with his romantic and conservative view of how society should be organized as a pastoral idyll where everyone knows their place. Even his views on the causes of war and political corruption seem to be intricately tied in with his tale about the decline of races through interbreeding, and his discussion of the movement of peoples is an uncritical acceptance of colonialism. Even the lessons he supposedly learnt from the first world war seem to foreshadow subsequent fascist activity, with his unquestioning assumption that the losing side in a war should be completely exterminated. Is the lesson he presents here that war is wrong, or that war needs to be prosecuted to its ultimate nadir in order to be successful? I don’t think Tolkien was pro-genocide when I say this, but for someone who is supposedly anti-war I don’t see much of an attempt to present the conclusion of a war in terms of mercy or forgiveness or forbearance.
Notice as well that I didn’t say Tolkien’s work is not worth rehabilitating, I said his politics. Even though I think that Tolkien has had undue influence on the fantasy genre, and his political influence is largely negative, I do like his work and think it should retain an important place in the genre. I just think it should be downgraded in the canon, a little, which I think can be done without reducing his importance as the first big fantasy writer, and I think that a more critical review of his political influence might help to free the genre from its shackles. I think, actually, this is what my whole series of posts started from – me and Mieville agreeing that he has had too much influence, and me attempting to trace some of the negative aspects of that influence.
If I get time I might write a follow-up to the conservatism post, outlining some of the problems I have with modern fantasy writing and its political straitjacket, and comparing it to SF, which I think is a very liberated and open genre. But I am supposed to be busy this week 😦
Greg, I like to hope there are other ways of analysing class than Marxism. I still use a kind of naive Marxist interpretation of class conflict, but I think there are other views on class – from the anarchists, for example – that can be useful too, and don’t have the legacy of failure and disaster that Marxism has. I think Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler gives some good examples of the political straitjacket that Marxism represented for the forces of working class politics in the mid-twentieth century, and I wonder what the union movement would have been like without it. Presumably, more like the Wobblies.
September 27, 2010 at 12:36 pm
Faustus,
I am not pulling a ‘no-true-scotsman’ here, but Marxism has no real record of implementation. That’s why we have Leninism. Every state that has fallen to communism has done so as a non-industrialized nation, unless there is some example I am missing. Every communist country that I know of lacked the economic base to really have ever implemented Marxism. Instead you got a hastily thrown together philosophy intent on converting peasants directly into proletarians without actual industrialization in the process.
So from a philosophical standpoint, the ideas are almost totally untested except in mild forms as marginal parties in major European states.
September 27, 2010 at 4:12 pm
I’m sympathetic to that view Greg but I think it’s wrong empirically. As Noisms observed, Marxism has been tried many times. At some point you have to recognise that if a political theory fails to work every time it has contact with the real world, it’s a failed theory. Sure on every occasion there were external factors, but this is equally true of many other types of political experiment, and of course it’s true of capitalism and Social Democracy too. Capitalism has been under assault from communism and national liberation movements and has survived largely unscathed; national liberation movements have a mixed history but some of them – in latin America and Asia – have been very successful, even if they had to, ah, break a few eggs along the way. It looks like experiments in Islamic democracy in Turkey and Oman are working after contact with the real world, and for all its flaws the Afghan model looks pretty enduring (if not very nice). But in almost every case Marxism has not just floundered, but has caused a lot of suffering along the way. The main Marxist experiments that have worked have been the ones that allied themselves with the aforementioned national liberation movements, in Cuba, Vietnam and China, rather than the internal revolutions in Russia or Germany.
I think the problem for Marxism is that it envisions a state of war (revolution) allied with / followed by a dictatorship of the proletariat. Dictatorship + war is a recipe for disaster, and as far as I can tell (I could be wrong – as I said I’m not an expert on Marx!) it’s built into the political model. I presume this is why Lenin rejected Social Democratic parties as liberal capitalism with a nice face – because attempts to change the system through the ballot box don’t fit the Marxist fantasy of cleansing war. And at the time of these fantasies, war really was cleansing – there was no Geneva convention, and political enemies were dealt with summarily and horribly. Che Guevara’s diaries a good illustration of the casual and terrible way in which revolutionaries will cast off their ideological foes, and as far as I can tell by the standards of Marxist revolution the Cuban one was pretty light-hearted. I don’t think the body count of cold-blooded murder goes much past 40 in Che’s diary, but it’s remarkable for the casual way in which it’s described – “we needed to move on quickly, so we dealt with him and broke camp” is the style of presentation.
Once you’ve tested your political mettle in that crucible, it’s only natural that you will take a ruthless approach to people who stand in your way in peace time. I think that’s a fundamental flaw of the political model – you can’t build a dictatorship of the proletariat with a ruling vanguard party forged in war, and expect that it will just fade away. And I would argue too that you can’t have a successful social revolution that rests on the notion of a “vanguard party,” i.e. replacing one class (based on possession of capital) with another class (based on possession of political and military power).
I suppose i think that the “real record of implementation” for Marxism is precisely reflected in the collapse of its dreams into a nightmare of authoritarianism and cruelty. It’s what any modern liberal would predict as the outcome of that kind of political model, and it’s pretty much what happened for most of them. The ones that have endured have either preserved some form of grassroots democracy (like in Cuba), been allied with national liberation ideology (like in Vietnam) or have rapidly revitalized their model (like in China)[1].
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fn1: I actually have a theory that the Chinese Communist party works in many ways exactly like the Imperial court of old, and really just represents a restoration of Imperial rule under a different name. But I’m probably hopelessly wrong, even though I think ti’s a cute theory.
September 27, 2010 at 6:07 pm
I mean to say, that you can’t find a way to repackage the political meaning in a way that makes it palatable to its 21st century readers, or even politically meaningful in the modern context. There are some themes in Tolkien that aren’t about race, but they aren’t specific to Tolkien’s work necessarily, and they aren’t necessarily separable from the bad elements. e.g. his conservationism isn’t from a strictly environmentalist origin, but is tied in with his romantic and conservative view of how society should be organized as a pastoral idyll where everyone knows their place. Even his views on the causes of war and political corruption seem to be intricately tied in with his tale about the decline of races through interbreeding, and his discussion of the movement of peoples is an uncritical acceptance of colonialism. Even the lessons he supposedly learnt from the first world war seem to foreshadow subsequent fascist activity, with his unquestioning assumption that the losing side in a war should be completely exterminated.
I’d love to know where you’re getting this from – specifically, where Tolkien espoused any of the views that you’re attributing to him. The last point is particularly weird – he thought the losing side in a war should be completely exterminated? What the fuck? I can only assume you’re basing this on the fact that at the end of the Lord of the Rings Mordor gets utterly destroyed and at the end of the First Age Thangorodrim gets utterly destroyed… but this is patently because Tolkien was interested in good eventually triumphing completely over evil, not losing sides being completely exterminated per se. And the number of incidences where a losing side gets completely exterminated is tiny compared to the number of instances where they don’t. It’s such a weird assertion I can barely believe I’ve just read it.
His views on the causes of war and political corruption have nothing, and I mean nothing, to do with the decline of races through interbreeding. The most important war in his entire legendarium, the one around which all his other stories revolve, is the war between the Noldor and Melkor over the Silmarils. Race has nothing whatsoever to do with this conflict, which stems rather from greed, corruption and jealousy – all of the things that Tolkien saw as inevitable consequences of worldly power. The War of the Ring, similarly, has nothing whatsoever to do with race, and everything to do with greed, corruption, and jealousy. You have to remember that Tolkien took his Catholicism very seriously; to him, original sin was a given and worldly power was always ultimately corrupting – with war being an inevitable consequence of this corruption.
As for his ideas on the “movement of peoples” indicating uncritical acceptance of colonialism, you have it absolutely backwards. The only instances of colonialism in Tolkien’s work are unquestionably negative. Whether it’s the Noldor returning to Middle Earth and setting up their empires, whether it’s the Numenoreans returning to Middle Earth in the Second Age to hold dominion over other peoples, or whether it’s Mordor in the Third Age spreading its tendrils over the continent, colonialism in Tolkien’s writings is ALWAYS bad. Tolkien himself was clearly an anti-colonialist and it flies in the face of everything we know about his personal beliefs to assume otherwise – this was a man who was almost pathologically opposed to the idea of people having power or dominion over others. Remember, his ideal society, the one which he wished to live in, was The Shire – a place without a government of any kind and in which nobody hold any sort of sway over anybody else. The idea of hobbits having empires is laughable, and that’s the way Tolkien wanted it.
And as for his conservationism not really being about the environment… Come on now, I can’t imagine anybody reading The Lord of the Rings and failing to realise that the writer was a man who just loved nature – particularly trees – for its own sake.
September 28, 2010 at 12:11 am
You really seem to lose your rag when I say anything negative about the big T, noisms. I think you need to ease down before you blow a transaxle.
I don’t think a person has to write in their good guys exterminating their bad guys more than once for us to assume that they think complete extermination in war is okay. The fact that it didn’t happen every time is by the by, and the excuse you present – he believed in evil triumphing over good, did he? – is as old as, well, it’s as old as the process it excuses.
The only instances of colonialism in Tolkien’s work are not unquestionably negative. The driving out of the wild men, and the gifting of land to the Rohirrim at the expense of its original occupants (who then side with Saruman) are two examples of colonialism accepted uncritically. And what is the fate that awaits those who side with Saruman to reclaim their lost land? Complete destruction (unless you assume that the Rohirrim didn’t proceed to complete that deed outside of Helm’s Deep?) What also happened with the Numenoreans coming to the West and interbreeding?
To claim that someone is clearly an anti-colonialist in the era of Tolkien, it’s not sufficient to say they were pathologically opposed to people having power or dominion over others, particularly when their main works enshrine the divine right of kings; but even if they didn’t. There were many people at the time of Tolkien who didn’t like the dominion of some people over others, but simply redefined “people” or “dominion” to allow them to keep looting their colonies, or looking the other way while their colonial princelings did it for them. You really need to find some justification for this position that weighs up against the uncritical acceptance of the rohirrim’s colonisation of their lands, or Tolkien’s key hero regaining complete dominion over everyone around him, as a representative of a master race that has a divine right to rule.
September 28, 2010 at 4:40 am
I don’t think a person has to write in their good guys exterminating their bad guys more than once for us to assume that they think complete extermination in war is okay. The fact that it didn’t happen every time is by the by, and the excuse you present – he believed in evil triumphing over good, did he? – is as old as, well, it’s as old as the process it excuses.
Sure it’s old. Is anybody pretending it’s new? But it certainly isn’t excusing anything. If evil, true evil, exists, then its destruction is an unqualified good and excuses are not needed. And in Tolkien’s Middle Earth, true evil does exist. It’s not as if Melkor was just misunderstood and the elves were using his supposed evilness as an excuse to commit genocide against innocent orcs. It’s that Melkor is the actual embodiment of evil and his creations, the orcs, are actually irredeemably wicked.
Which is kind of beside the point anyway because at no point anywhere in his work are orcs massacred for no reason, and he certainly doesn’t glorify that sort of thing.
Here’s a relevant quotation: “There was a solemn article in the local paper seriously advocating systematic exterminating of the entire German nation as the only proper course after military victory: because, if you please, they are rattlesnakes, and don’t know the difference between good and evil! (What of the writer?) The Germans have just as much right to declare the Poles and Jews exterminable vermin, subhuman, as we have to select the Germans: in other words, no right, whatever they have done.” (From a letter in 1944.)
The driving out of the wild men, and the gifting of land to the Rohirrim at the expense of its original occupants (who then side with Saruman) are two examples of colonialism accepted uncritically. And what is the fate that awaits those who side with Saruman to reclaim their lost land? Complete destruction (unless you assume that the Rohirrim didn’t proceed to complete that deed outside of Helm’s Deep?)
So what, you’re just making stuff up now? The Rohirrim must have wiped out the Dunlendings after Helm’s Deep, mustn’t they? I mean, they just must have, right?
The Rohirrim did not steal Rohan from the Dunlendings. They were awarded it by Gondor, which it was historically part of.
What also happened with the Numenoreans coming to the West and interbreeding?
I have no idea what this refers to. The fall of Numenor, if that’s what you mean, has nothing to do with interbreeding – it came from hubris and the corruption of, guess what, power and dominion over others. If you’re referring to Numenoreans colonising and oppressing the East (i.e. Middle Earth) then I have to say I have trouble understanding what on earth you’re on about.
To claim that someone is clearly an anti-colonialist in the era of Tolkien, it’s not sufficient to say they were pathologically opposed to people having power or dominion over others, particularly when their main works enshrine the divine right of kings…You really need to find some justification for this position that weighs up against the uncritical acceptance of the rohirrim’s colonisation of their lands, or Tolkien’s key hero regaining complete dominion over everyone around him, as a representative of a master race that has a divine right to rule.
You’re right, it probably isn’t sufficient. Some more quotes:
“For I love England (not Great Britain and certainly not the British Commonwealth (grr!)) ….”
“… I know nothing about British or American imperialism in the Far East that does not fill me with regret and disgust …”
“I have the hatred of apartheid in my bones; and most of all I detest the segregation or separation of Language and Literature.”
“I should regret giving any colour to the notion that I subscribed to the wholly pernicious and unscientific race-doctrine.”
Taken together with the clear tone of disdain with which he treats imperialist ventures in Middle Earth I think it’s pretty obvious what his views on colonialism were.
September 28, 2010 at 8:51 am
True evil exists, does it? From a narrative standpoint this might be a justification for slaughter, but it doesn’t support the idea that Tolkien had learnt from the trauma of the great war the way some people suggest. A plot that demands a war of extermination based on absolute notions of good and evil is not a plot for a new world scarred by experiences of the great war; it’s a replication of same.
I suppose if the rohirrim were awarded their lands it doesn’t matter that they drove out the dunlendings, and created the historical conditions for their siding with Saruman? After all, what could possibly be colonialist about a distant leader (in Gonder) handing over a portion of land settled by one of its subject races (the Gondorian king is a high man; the Dunlendings common men) to another subject race, and tacitly allowing them to drive out the former? And funnily enough, when we read the tale of these two races some hundreds of years later, we discover that the race driven out are low and savage – possibly even slightly swarthy, from memory – and the race rewarded are noble and nordic.
I was referring to the Numenoreans coming to the East; they interbred with the locals, creating three races of men (common, mixed, high) and appointed the master race (the Dunedain) as the leaders of a kingdom that merged together several previously separate ones. Some of them also ran off to the South and took over someone else’s land. The movement of peoples in Middle Earth is not universally derided as bad; when the Numenoreans do it they’re a civilising force on lesser men.
With our language here we’re getting back to the age old teenage debate about whether the author believed a or b. I have been trying to keep this out of the discussion of Tolkien, though you always drag it back to being a play on the man. His books have an uncritical acceptance of colonialism by “higher” races, regardless of whether he personally thought that British Imperialism was bad. Maybe he thought British Imperialism would be good if it were guided by a more noble hand? Regardless of his personal views, that seems to be the message of the books.
Incidentally, I take his comments on the “wholly pernicious and unscientific race-doctrine” as being specific to the Nazi interpretation of racial science of that time, and their claim that races need to be kept separate (and/or exterminated). There were many people at the time who, for example, thought blacks inferior to whites but thought Slavics, Russians and Jews equal to whites, and didn’t see any relationship between race and bolshevism. The race-doctrine I take as a reference to a specific theory from Nazi Germany (which is what the letter was in response to, I believe).
September 28, 2010 at 1:52 pm
Faustus, you’re denying a fantasy author the right to have a “true evil” exist in their fantasy world if they should have learned from WW1. Of course Tolkien had such an evil, but you can’t support your assertion that this was a failure to learn on his part rather than a reflection of his relgious beliefs. As such, killing objectively evil beings is not a rejection of lessons from WW1, it’s just not equating “EVIL!” and “Those guys who I fought”, which is actually in line with the quotes Noisms provided where he opposes wiping the Germans out.
On your comment of “There were many people at the time who, for example, thought blacks inferior to whites but thought Slavics, Russians and Jews equal to whites,” do you have a reason to suppose that “I have the hatred of apartheid in my bones” refers to anything other than South Africa, especially given his South African links.
Given that, how about you concede that there is nothing in his other writing that suggests than man was racist. You’ve basically done this anway by saying “I have been trying to keep this out of the discussion of Tolkien, though you always drag it back to being a play on the man.”.
If you allow that, then the hypothesis that needs to be supported is either that:
A) His fantasy writings are difficult to interpret in a non-racist manner, OR
B) His fantasy writings are easy to interpret in a racist fashion
Noisms, myself and oter Tolkien supporters would probably concede B), because it says nothing about Tolkien and merely posits that nutcases can find support for their insanity in a bowl of cereal [1].
On the other hand proving A) requires that you not only prove that nutcases are nuts, but that to not see the same message as nutcases is difficult or impossible. Given the degree of disagreement this argument stirs up I think you’d be hard pressed to suggest alternate interpretations are invalid.
If you do settle on option B) then yes, there are lessons we can learn from Tolkien’s writing style, setting and story. It can raise all sorts of interesting tropes that are interesting to explicitly subvert or invert. But this position doesn’t allow:
1. Tolkien is a drag on fantasy writing (actually you’d have to blame copy cats after him)
2. Science Fiction supports greater numbers of social models (as it doesn’t, it’s just that the starting assumptions have led that way more frequently to date [2])
Or of course you could put forward a different one sentance hypothesis. I’d be interested to see your summary if different to above.
[1] Which matches observed facts if you google Jesus face cereal.
[2] I’d actually argue that Science Fiction’s greater range of assumptions means that its actually less useful for causing people to question their assumptions. A king in Fantasy may be assumed to hold a divine mandate, which means that showing him to be a bastard tells a story, but a Chancellor or Emperor in Science Fiction can safely be assumed to be a bastard to the point where even George Lucas knows it – which means it doesn’t offer any new perspective on the world. [3]
[3] Basically, once Lucas does a film on it we can assume that the idea will never be thought of again, as we’ll all be too busy hating on the squeaky voiced alien.
September 28, 2010 at 2:36 pm
I’m not denying the right for true evil to exist under those circumstances, but a true evil that has to be wiped out rather than e.g. reformed doesn’t seem to hold up in light of someone who supposedly was influenced by the evils of the war. It’s also of a piece with the racial theory of the time, and the racial theory of the books, that evil (or, in the real world as it was mostly seen then, barbarism/savagery) is inherent to a race and can’t be reformed – it can only be contained, exterminated or bred out. And – although I won’t claim this of Tolkien – objecting to wiping out the Germans doesn’t mean that you don’t object to wiping out, say, Aborigines (a plan in place at that time), or Armenians (already tried by the Turks), etc. You can’t infer from Tolkien’s objection to wiping out the Germans that he doesn’t have a view of racial theory that might suppose such dire action for whatever race he thinks is “pure evil.” I don’t believe he had this belief (he rejects “race-doctrine” after all), but it’s in his writing and it was common at the time.
I have no reason to suppose Tolkien’s view on apartheid extended anywhere else because Apartheid is a particular name for a particular policy. Tolkien’s letters suggest a desire not to separate languages and cultures but we don’t know that he’s not playing the usual trick of people at the time, and for example ignoring some cultures and languages. This isn’t just playing silly-buggers either, consider e.g. all the brave judges of that era who strongly supported property rights, and simultaneously upheld the doctrine of terra nullius.
I’m happy to concede that there’s no way to conclude from his writing that he’s racist. After all you enjoy running and playing in games built on scientific racism (e.g. D&D), even the bits where you exterminate pure evil (that is mostly green-skinned), and you’re not racist. I sincerely doubt Gygax was, but he designed a game founded on racial essentialism. I’ve been trying to keep this line throughout these posts that I’m writing about the books not the man; I know this is difficult because a) we use “his writings” and “he says that” as a shorthand for “what you can infer from the books,” and b) some of his defenders here are desperately sure I hate him. But I do want to try and maintain this distinction.
So, then I choose your position A), not B), because
a) see all my other posts
and
b) “Nazis are nut-cases” is not an argument. It may be wrong but they have a coherent philosophy and racial “science” and they choose cultural work to fit that model well. Tolkien doesn’t fit their model because they’re crazy and they just happened to randomly pick him from under their tin-foil hats; it fits their model because it fits their model. They will never ever try and rehabilitate le Guin or Rowling or Delany for their model because those authors can’t be made to fit it.
And remember, the modern nazi model is essentially a transplant of the racialist model from the time that Tolkien was writing, pretty much wholesale.
The position does allow
1) Tolkien is a drag on modern fantasy, though obviously if nobody copies him he’s not (which leads to some interesting discussion about the mechanisms by which he became the centre of the canon)
and
2) SF supports greater social models
because it does, though I don’t think it necessarily has to. Obviously you can’t count them though. I’m thinking about a separate post on that, in which I’ll also explore this idea of “pure evil” and the “causes” of war that Noisms mentions (greed, etc, i.e. sins) as fundamentally conservative ideas that both limit the value of fantasy as a speculative genre, and contaminate one of its most useful central conceits (magic). But I won’t go into that further now.
I’m sure you can’t wait.
Also I agree entirely about the danger of letting George Lucas near any kind of important social issue. And all squeaky voiced aliens should be wiped out, ’cause they’re inherently evil.
September 28, 2010 at 6:25 pm
I love it when somebody who didn’t fight in WWI starts lecturing somebody who did on what lessons they should or should not have learned from it. Real classy, that.
A plot that demands a war of extermination based on absolute notions of good and evil is not a plot for a new world scarred by experiences of the great war; it’s a replication of same.
The plot “demands” that only inasmuch as Mordor wishes to exterminate Gondor and the only way Gondor can survive is to destroy Mordor. And generally speaking it doesn’t even really happen – the only “extermination” that I’ve conceded to you is that after the First Age Thangorodrim gets utterly destroyed, and after the Third Age Mordor gets utterly destroyed, but these are totally obvious eucatastrophic elements of the overarching intertextualised plot. They are patently not the same thing as genocide, which never happens anywhere in any of the books. Presumably, since the corruption of the Haradrim and Easterlings came explicitly from the influence of Sauron and not because of anything inherent, they were rehabilitated after the Third Age.
Your comment that Tolkien’s vision of good and evil “replicates” WWI is just arse-about-tit; clearly he didn’t believe that good or evil applied to either side in that war (see quotes in previous comment), but that war itself was an evil (if sometimes necessary).
I was referring to the Numenoreans coming to the East; they interbred with the locals, creating three races of men (common, mixed, high) and appointed the master race (the Dunedain) as the leaders of a kingdom that merged together several previously separate ones. Some of them also ran off to the South and took over someone else’s land. The movement of peoples in Middle Earth is not universally derided as bad; when the Numenoreans do it they’re a civilising force on lesser men.
No, when the Numenoreans do it they’re a hubristic and corrupted society who are taking the first steps down the ruinous path which will lead to their oblivion. You have actually read the Silmarillion, haven’t you?
With our language here we’re getting back to the age old teenage debate about whether the author believed a or b. I have been trying to keep this out of the discussion of Tolkien, though you always drag it back to being a play on the man. His books have an uncritical acceptance of colonialism by “higher” races, regardless of whether he personally thought that British Imperialism was bad. Maybe he thought British Imperialism would be good if it were guided by a more noble hand? Regardless of his personal views, that seems to be the message of the books.
His books don’t have an uncritical acceptance of colonialism by “higher” races. Where they discuss colonialism at all, they see it as corrupting and wrong. Talk about begging the question!
The reason why we’re discussing Tolkien’s personal beliefs is that you seem to have a deep-seated desire, almost a need, to read a certain worldview into Tolkien’s work that simply doesn’t exist. To play armchair psychologist for a moment, it seems to me that you simply aren’t willing to countenance the idea that somebody who was expressly conservative and a devout Roman Catholic could at the same time despise racism and colonialism in all their forms. This would chip away at your carefully constructed “four legs good two legs bad” approach to the world of politics, in which conservatives are basically baby-eating vampire Nazis in disguise, and the forces of the left are unswervingly on the side of the Angels. The notion that a dyed-in-the-wool arch-conservative like Tolkien could share your views on race, colonialism, and environmentalism is anathema to you, because it would mean you would have to reconsider the way in which you conceptualise what conservatism really is. This creates a sort of cognitive dissonance which leads you to the kind of weird head-in-the-sand arguments you’re making.
That’s just to play armchair psychologist though.
I’m not denying the right for true evil to exist under those circumstances, but a true evil that has to be wiped out rather than e.g. reformed doesn’t seem to hold up in light of someone who supposedly was influenced by the evils of the war.
The only evil things in Tolkien that realy can’t be reformed are those such as Melkor, Sauron, Ungoliant, etc. who specifically do not want to be reformed. This is a key element of his legendarium. Melkor and Sauron (and Gollum) all get their chances at redemption, but ultimately their own selfishness prevents them from achieving it.
The orcs probably also cannot be reformed, but this is because of the actions of their creator, Melkor – which Tolkien describes as the worst of his crimes: the creation of a race who are irredeemably bad.
I have no reason to suppose Tolkien’s view on apartheid extended anywhere else because Apartheid is a particular name for a particular policy.
So since Tolkien only condemned apartheid, but didn’t condemn, say, the conquest of New Zealand or the Armritsar massacre, QED he’s a racist? That’s sort of like saying, since I haven’t read on this blog any sort of condemnation of the genocide committed against the Ona of Tierre del Fuego, you must be a racist.
Look, wherever racism or scientific racism are discussed by Tolkien explicitly, they are viewed highly negatively. This should be indicative enough.
Tolkien doesn’t fit their model because they’re crazy and they just happened to randomly pick him from under their tin-foil hats; it fits their model because it fits their model. They will never ever try and rehabilitate le Guin or Rowling or Delany for their model because those authors can’t be made to fit it.
And we’re back to the crazy talk. They may not have tried with le Guin or Rowling, but they certainly have tried to rehabilitate Darwin and Nietzche for their model. But this doesn’t say anything about the value of the works of Darwin or Nietzche. And ditto Tolkien. Can we just put this one to bed now please? It’s just plain idiotic.
September 28, 2010 at 6:37 pm
I thought you’d return to trollish form, Noisms, and that first sentence is right up there with your best. I’m not lecturing anyone on what lessons they should have taken from the war; Tolkien didn’t make any such claims I’m aware of, you did, and I’m commenting that the text doesn’t support your claims. So why don’t you just give up with the mean-spirited bullshit? And while you’re at it, put aside your silly armchair philosophies. The reason we’re discussing Tolkien’s personal beliefs is that you can’t distinguish between a critique of a text and an attack on its author, even though you did a major in English lit. Shall I armchair philosophize your obssessive defence of Tolkien?
I was asked about Tolkien’s attitude to apartheid, and I answered it. Again, I wasn’t saying anything about his views on race generally by that statement. Attempting to read a condemn-a-thon into that is a fucking ridiculous, trollish ploy.
Why is it crazy talk to say that Nazis try to rehabilitate political texts that fit their worldview? Do you have anything to add to this discussion, or just spittle-flecked accusations of accusations of racism?
September 28, 2010 at 7:15 pm
having said that, I do want to add to this point :
(plus the Orcs).
The Nazi theory on the evil bolshevism of Jews was precisely this, that they can’t be reformed, don’t want to, and everywhere and always will undermine the workings of good society (“the eternal jew”). This is different to the Catholic view of Jews as prone to conversion (though earlier Catholics were not so lenient on witches).This is why Nazis believed that imprisonment or reform was not an option, and extermination was the only choice. This ideology represents a specifically nasty combination of scientific racism and anti-semitism (the latter probably related to Germany’s historical anti-semitism, but possibly unique to the crucible of post-Versailles Europe, depending on who you read). The Orcs of Middle-Earth are a perfect simulacrum of this racial model of evil – they don’t want to be reformed, and they were created by a dark god (think of Morkoth as Abraham, though obviously this was not Tolkien’s intent[1]). Now, you can chug on all you want about how Tolkien didn’t want to be racist, that he agrees with modern ideas on blah and blah, but the fact remains that his racial model is perfectly adaptable to a Nazi worldview in a way that racial models in other books (e.g. Harry Potter) are not. It doesn’t matter if Tolkien was a being of pure light, his work is shot through with these images of racially-determined evil.
The same applies with colonialism, which you haven’t offered a reasonable rebuttal of. You claim that the Numenoreans are a “hubristic and corrupted society” who are “taking the first steps down the ruinous path which will lead to their oblivion.” I don’t think this is the correct order of things (their colonization of Middle Earth happened after their oblivion was assured by Morkoth, who they mistakenly freed – you have read the silmarillion, haven’t you?) But let’s suppose for a moment that this is the model of Numenorean colonialism that Tolkien presented. Was Aragorn, the rightful Dunedain king, a representative of a “hubristic and corrupted society”? No, he was a superior man presented as a savior for the race of men, who would reunited fragmented and debased peoples under a common banner inherited from the Numenoreans under a racial line. How do you square the vision of Aragorn looking at the broken sword in Rivendell, consumed with fear of his destiny as the Great Uniter, with the claim that Numenorean colonialism was presented as a bad thing?
In fact the colonial model the Numenoreans represented is one in which a magically, intellectually, artistically, culturally and physically superior race move Eastward, pacifying and civilizing weaker races of men as they go. They displace some truly debased ones to make way for some Northerners, and in the process they also sublimate an Indigenous culture seen as culturally valid but doomed (i.e. a race of noble savages, the Woses). Wherever they meet the inferior local races and interbreed with them, their superiority (including magical, i.e. technological, and artistic) is degraded, but the locals are raised up.
Does this model have any real-world equivalents? It’s the Aryan history theory, almost to the geographical detail, combined with a decent spot of scientific racism about Indigenous people and a nice splash of white men’s burden. It’s boilerplate turn-of-the-century colonial thinking. If you think this stuff doesn’t square with Tolkien’s personal views, fine – it also probably doesn’t square with Queen Victoria’s. But so what? It’s the politics represented in the books, and if you want to dispute it you need to dispute the content of the books, rather than defending Tolkien from accusations of racism that I am not making.
—
fn1: And let me reiterate how much I fucking hate having to add these little caveats just because you can’t cope with a bit of literary criticsm
September 28, 2010 at 7:21 pm
Blimey, seems I touched a nerve there.
You haven’t really brought up anything substantive in answer to my previous post, so I suppose I’ll just leave it at that, other than to reiterate why I think your whole “Nazis can fit Tolkien into their model and therefore Tolkien’s work is Nazi enabling” (or whatever the fuck your argument is – I can’t even tell anymore) is crazy talk. And it’s this. Nazis can fit all kinds of stuff into their model. They can and did fit Nietzche and Darwin in there, and I daresay they can fit Tolkien in there too. But this is utterly meaningless as a statement about the work of either Tolkien, Nietzche or Darwin. All it shows is that Nazis are as capable of cherry picking as anybody else is.
I also hear that bears shit in the woods and the pope is not a Dutchman, though don’t quote me on that.
September 28, 2010 at 7:27 pm
Yeah funnily enough coming to my blog and insulting me for responding to something you said has touched a nerve. How strange.
I didn’t say anything about “nazi-enabling” or any other new age crap. I really wish that when you visited this joint you would try arguing with me rather than the stupid leftist in your head. It’s frustrating, distracting and trollish.
September 28, 2010 at 7:33 pm
Okay, seems you actually have brought up something substantive now. Here goes:
The Nazi theory on the evil bolshevism of Jews was precisely this, that they can’t be reformed, don’t want to, and everywhere and always will undermine the workings of good society (“the eternal jew”).
Except Melkor, Sauron and Ungoliant are individuals, not a race. So much for that comparison.
I don’t think this is the correct order of things (their colonization of Middle Earth happened after their oblivion was assured by Morkoth, who they mistakenly freed – you have read the silmarillion, haven’t you?)
They freed Sauron actually – you have read the Silmarillion, haven’t you?
No, he was a superior man presented as a savior for the race of men, who would reunited fragmented and debased peoples under a common banner inherited from the Numenoreans under a racial line.
Under a familial line.
Wherever they meet the inferior local races and interbreed with them, their superiority (including magical, i.e. technological, and artistic) is degraded, but the locals are raised up.
Nope. Numenor just before its fall (i.e. after all this supposed “interbreeding”, which I’m not sure Tolkien ever even mentioned) is actually presented at the peak of its technological and economic power. That’s what gives the Numenoreans the hubris to attack Valinor.
The Numenoreans are degraded for two reasons. Firstly, they let their own power go to their heads. And secondly, because of the influence of Sauron, they start worshiping Melkor and then ultimately themselves. Interbreeding with “lesser” races has nothing to do with it.
Does this model have any real-world equivalents? It’s the Aryan history theory, almost to the geographical detail
Except Tolkien despised allegory, and regularly poked fun of the Aryan theory.
It’s the politics represented in the books, and if you want to dispute it you need to dispute the content of the books, rather than defending Tolkien from accusations of racism that I am not making.
Begging the question again. It isn’t the politics represented in the books – that’s the point we’re disputing.
I think you may be confusing racial essentialism with the notion that once somebody has seen the light of Valinor, they are raised up, and this passes to their descendants. Again, this reinforces the deep underlying Christianity of Tolkien’s work, not its scientific racism.
September 28, 2010 at 7:53 pm
You’re a patronizing little man aren’t you? Managed to skip the entire content on the orc-bolshevism comparison because it didn’t suit you.
You really think that Aragorn’s familial line is unrelated to his racial heritage? This is pretty shallow stuff, even from you.
Numenor before its fall wasn’t interbred. The interbreeding happened after the movement of the survivors to Middle Earth, and their creation of the various -dains. You’re right that Numenor before its fall was at the peak of its power; this power was diluted amongst the fleeing survivors as they interbred with common men on the mainland.
There follow a few brief attempts to relate my comments on the content of the books to an attack on Tolkien (again).
You don’t seem to understand racial essentialism or racial theory. The fact that Tolkien chucks in a few religious explanations for the source of the racial heritage has no relevance to the racial content of the stories. The properties of these “raised up” peoples are passed down racially and the degraded peoples pass their barbarism racially. That this is set in motion by Valinor and Morkoth is irrelevant to the scientific theory – they could be God and Satan, or Abraham and Jesus, or whatever. This stuff fits perfectly well into modern Nazi theory, in which God’s people are hereditarily superior to Abraham’s. There are plenty of religiously-inspired accounts of racial essentialism, in fact they are rife in modern christian conservative survivalism movements, and if you check out any of the major Nazi boards – stormfront is a good place to start if you’re feeling really degraded on a Tuesday morning – then you’ll find that a religious inspiration for a racial theory is often seen as a feature, not a bug.
September 29, 2010 at 5:17 am
Whoever claims CS Lewis for the Facists apparently hasn’t read That Hideous Strength…
September 29, 2010 at 7:56 am
Thanks for commenting. I don’t know much about fascist views of CS Lewis but I suspect they’re based on reading the Narnia chronicles only, and/or (possibly) some of CS Lewis’s essays or opinion (that’s a guess – I haven’t read any myself); I suspect it’s based on a very particular reading too. CS Lewis probably isn’t popular with a lot of modern fascists either, since quite a few of them are distrustful of strong religious views or see the church as a leftist force.
September 29, 2010 at 4:58 pm
@Noisms: Faustus has conceded that he is not trying to describe Tolkien as racist, jus that his books cannot be interpretted in a non-racist manner. Fortunately this is a testable proposition as it no longer involves necromancy to put the question. Sadly it does mean that non-fiction works by Tolkien are irrelevant to the debate as they definately display his personal view and do not reflect his writings.
@Faustus: Please feel free to refine a different hypothesis to the one I proposed above. Please keep in mind that Noisms and I are simple folk. He’s opposed to philosophies that attempt to define the world in simplistic terms [1] and I’m a right wing nutbag.
Given those constaints, we can examine whether Tolkien’s fiction novels are uniquely racist by a process of:
1. Establishing whether his novels can have their thinking attributed to alternative viewpoints.
2. Determining whether Darwin and Nietzche have some redeeming feature that Tolkien lacks.
On the first question, I think have previously established that Noisms and I interpret it that way. I submit we don’t need to verify this again and that we probably don’t want to tread over that ground again.
On the second point, I submit that Darwin and Nietzches’ writings are irrepairably racist. I know that that have much to recommend them, but the ease with which neo-Nazi’s can bend their arguments to supporting racist causes is disgusting. As such we should enjoy them as scientific or philosophical tracts but we should always keep in mind the racist sub-text to the work – exactly as Faustus recommends for Tolkien. We must remember that “”Nazis are nut-cases” is not an argument. It may be wrong but they have a coherent philosophy and racial “science” and they choose cultural work to fit that model well. “[Darwin and Nietzche]” doesn’t fit their model because they’re crazy and they just happened to randomly pick [them] from under their tin-foil hats; it fits their model because it fits their model.”
Of course, my second point is purely a strawman argument that I’m standing up to see how Faustus knocks it down. Whatever grounds he uses to excuse those texts should be the primary thrust of the defence of Tolkien’s work.
On another line of argument, Faustus – will you concede that Tolkien’s writings are not irredeemably and inhernetly racist if I can get a Neo-nazi to agree to the proposition that Le Guin’s novels are useful lesson for neo-nazi kids? After all, to date your proof of Tolkien’s writings’ problems have been that neo-nazi’s reference them and that you can’t imagine it happening to another author. I submit that if a neo-nazi agrees with my proposition then Le Guin would also meet your criteria for being racist. [2]
[1] Which I can only imagine vastly complicates the process of building a mental model of the world. BTW I’m being cute in describing you like this, please don’t take offence, though do feel free to expand on your world view if you like.
[2] I’m already planning my argument to the neo-nazi’s to revolve around the dragon’s of the later books representing white people who have to come back and save the brown people (Ged) from the consequences of their actions (representing saving Africa so that the non-Europeans can leave Europe). The dragon’s speak the true language of magic (which of course references English’s current role as the language of science which it inherited from Latin before it) and in the final book they manage to return the dragon’s stolen land to them (which refers indirectly to returning Europe to the whites). All of the problems in the book are caused by the greed of the brown skined people. Of course, I’ll tell them that I don’t really think a true skinhead should fully buy into the prospect of saving Africa, but if that’s what it takes to get Europe back it’s an acceptable school of thought. [3]
[3] This racist interpretation of Le Guin took about as long come up with as it does to type. I shudder to have to bother saying this, but I don’t endorse the message in it at all. But it does illustrate that you can take whatever you want from a book if you really want.
September 29, 2010 at 5:29 pm
That would work Paul but my argument isn’t that Tolkien’s politics (<-apply usual caveats here) is irredeemable because Nazis love his work; it's that there is lots of strong evidence that the theories in the book are scientific racism bordering on fascism, that there's lots of strands of fascist theory in the books, support of colonialism, etc.[1] and that therefore this makes them possible fascist propaganda material, which they are in fact used as. You’ve proposed an alternative viewpoint on Tolkien – the multicultural fellowship – and I’ve pointed out that Nazis don’t see it this way and, rather than claim this is because they’re nutcases, I argue this is because other aspects of the conservatism of the novels enable them to interpret all the “multicultural” elements of the fellowship as diversity-within-whiteness. You haven’t rebutted that yet[2]. Noisms has proposed a Catholic interpretation of ultimate evil as stemming from religious/ spiritual sources (let’s call this the “original sin model”) and I accept this as a good explanation of the cause of the evil but it doesn’t liberate the novels from the model of racially-inherited evil that follows from the original cause; and I’ve discussed how that fits with some types of fascist/nazi/racialist/survivalist theory.
So your 1., both holds, and isn’t sufficient, as an argument against Tolkien’s appeal to modern fascists. And, since the appeal of Tolkien to fascists is only the final piece of evidence in a long chain of evidence in favour of my claim about the politics of the books, I don’t think it matters in any case.
Now, about Darwin I can talk only a little and Nietzche not at all (I know nothing about the big N). Darwin I would guess was racist. It’s also known that he took a long time to come to terms with his own theories due to his religious ideals. But it’s pretty well established I think that most racialist interpretations of Darwin are basically crap, i.e. they are based on a fundamental misreading of his work, and when you “misread” Darwin that means you have to falsify evidence, break scientific laws etc. – which you don’t have to do for Tolkien. Now, I argue that the fascist interpretation of Tolkien is based on a correct reading of his work. By correct here I obviously don’t mean they’re right, I mean that it fits their worldview without having to be bent out of shape. For example, sometime back Noisms tried to claim (as evidence against racial stereotyping) that the Southrons aren’t black/brown. A simple check of the book showed he was reading incorrectly and that a correct reading of the book supports the contention that the colours of races in the book match certain models[3]. This correct reading of Tolkien vs. incorrect reading of Darwin is important.
Now, Darwin could be seen as a general model for social order, rather than a strict scientific model, but in this case you’re still on shaky ground. Fascists aren’t the only users of Darwin as a social model – libertarians do, some types of market conservative do, and I have no doubt that at some point a wide range of marxist-leninists did too[5]. Also, Darwinism seems to have a lot of appeal to fascists as a model for inter-species competition but not so much on the social level – within their own societies they often favour standard capitalist models with heavy authoritarian social ordering. In any case social models based on natural selection are also known to be a shallow misreading of Darwinism, since natural selection also selects social cooperation. Also, as far as I know there is no model of social competition based on Darwinism which posits a particular political model (e.g. a single authoritarian ruler), which makes it again a vague candidate for misuse by fascists (or anyone else!) So I don’t think Darwin gets to be seen as a particularly strong candidate for being non-rehabilitable politically.
Finally we could look at the eugenic work that Nazis do (e.g. wiping out the disabled to improve the gene pool). But this doesn’t actually have much to do with Darwin – eugenics has a heritage in many different scientists’ work, and much of breeding practice was understood before the scientists came onto the stage (Darwin used this knowledge to construct a theory about how species change). So blaming this on Darwin would be both ignorant of what natural selection is, and of the history of genetic science. On top of which, at the time Tolkien wrote pretty much everyone in the West was a eugenicist of one form or other, so again it’s hard to say that he (or any other eugenicist or body of eugenicists) had a model that was particularly suited to a Nazi worldview – it suited everyone’s.
I now have to go role-play, so don’t have time to deal with your le Guin racist trope. Shall we flesh it out in a blog post?
—
fn1: bear with me, I’m reducing 3 or 4 (or is it 5?) posts to less than 20 words here
fn2: by the way, I think the multicultural elements of Tolkien you’ve put forward are worth talking about some more, and I might get into that too. Is it possible that Tolkien’s view on inter-species relations within boundaries was ahead of its time, and because modern nazis are way behind their time they don’t see this, just plainly overlook it?
fn3: we’re going back a way here and I’m using a lot of shorthand in this sentence, so I hope you get my point[4]
fn4: And please please don’t anyone set us back 3 months by claiming my argument rests entirely on “southrons are black”
fn5: Once they got over that whole broken model they were trying to replace Darwin with – Lysenkoism?
September 29, 2010 at 8:36 pm
But here’s the problem we’re hitting: “it’s that there is lots of strong evidence that the theories in the book are scientific racism bordering on fascism, that there’s lots of strands of fascist theory in the books, support of colonialism, etc. and that therefore this makes them possible fascist propaganda material, which they are in fact used as. ”
The core of your argument expressed here seems to be that if a text:
– has lots of elements that can be taken in racist ways, and
-some people are taking it in a racist way
then it is therefore a racist text.
Please feel free to redefine this, but please try to keep it simple. Refer my post above on my limitations.
This means that anything that someone can mount an argument is racist and is used as such by racists must be racist. You mention a “long chain of evidence” as being part of the test to support this judgement, but this isn’t an objective test you’re proposing. Looking at Tolkien the evidence you’ve got is “I wrote some posts on it and a Nazi quoted me.” If you want to propose an objective series of tests then I’m happy to get to work ensuring that something near and dear to your heart meets the criteria [1].
So for laughs, let’s try to apply these tests to Darwin. I don’t think we need to have much debate on whether Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” meets the two criteria above. It certainly has elements that have been used to support racist opinions which would qualify it as a racist text, but you want to add an addition check which we can see when you say “But it’s pretty well established I think that most racialist interpretations of Darwin are basically crap, i.e. they are based on a fundamental misreading of his work, and when you “misread” Darwin that means you have to falsify evidence, break scientific laws etc. – which you don’t have to do for Tolkien.” I’ll focus on this.
Some quick checks turn up quotes like: “In The Modesto Bee, Bret Carroll, Weikart’s colleague in the Stanislaus history department, wrote “That ‘intelligent design’ is not a scientific theory” and the Expelled movie “misuses Weikart’s research by mistakenly implying that Darwin led inevitably to Hitler. In fact, scientific theories, even those like Darwin’s that address organic life, are morally neutral.””
Personally I agree with this statement, but look at the assumptions built into it! “Scientific theories… are morally neutral”. If the sort of defence needed to save Darwin is to dismiss the concept of morality being relevant then allow me to say “Alternative fantasy worlds that don’t advocate any real world actions are morally neutral”. Apparently dismissing the fact that nasty people can take succour from a text wins the moral argument. Who knew? Are you willing to let Tolkien off the charges now?
The other arguments supporting it I saw in a quick and shallow search were equally dismissive of the ability of a scientific text to support a moral argument (i.e. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13689-evolution-myths-evolutionary-theory-leads-to-racism-and-genocide.html). If you can find any other articles that argue it on a moral ground then I’d love to see them.
This seems to address the point you raise about “correct” reading of Darwin, as I can’t find an example of them violating scientific fact to get racist interpretations -they just have to read it with an absolute will to reach a dodgy conclusion.
Given that dismissing the moral element of the text is not a sufficient defence, we can move onto other checks. Here are a couple of attempts:
– “Darwin is being misinterpreted.” This isn’t a defence, as Tolkien’s Middle Earth writings can’t use that. Let me know if you decide it’s valid. I’m pretty sure Noisms is willing to assert the same for LotR.
– “Other evolutionary research shows this to be false.” This is disallowed on the same grounds that Tolkien’s other writings on fantasy, real world events and linguistics are disallowed – namely that they’re not the text being examined. The defence has to be “Your reading of this text contradicts the text itself.” If you have any evidence of Darwin’s book directly contradicting the Neo-Nazi’s theories please speak up. Note that merely not supporting the racist interpretation is also not sufficient defence, there has to be a direct contradiction.
To start down some of the defences you mounted for Darwin:
“Now, Darwin could be seen as a general model for social order, rather than a strict scientific model, but in this case you’re still on shaky ground. Fascists aren’t the only users of Darwin as a social model – libertarians do, some types of market conservative do, and I have no doubt that at some point a wide range of marxist-leninists did too”
These are all very true points. But the test that Tolkien and Darwin are being held to is whether -Neo-Nazi’s refer to it to support their beliefs. Whether other people also refer to the text is held as irrelevant as “[ Establishing whether his novels can have their thinking attributed to alternative viewpoints] holds, and isn’t sufficient, as an argument against Tolkien’s appeal to modern fascists.”
*Shrug*. The tyranny of applying fair tests to multiple texts, eh?
“Also, Darwinism seems to have a lot of appeal to fascists as a model for inter-species competition but not so much on the social level – within their own societies they often favour standard capitalist models with heavy authoritarian social ordering.”
Yeah, Neo-Nazi’s believe all sorts of nutty things, but ““Nazis are nut-cases” is not an argument. It may be wrong but they have a coherent philosophy and racial “science” and they choose cultural work to fit that model well.”. Apparently we’re not looking for discrepancies in their world view, we’re taking as read the idea that their model makes sense to them.
“Finally we could look at the eugenic work that Nazis do (e.g. wiping out the disabled to improve the gene pool). But this doesn’t actually have much to do with Darwin – eugenics has a heritage in many different scientists’ work, and much of breeding practice was understood before the scientists came onto the stage”
You’re not wrong, but the test you’ve put here has nothing to do with the debate. If Neo-Nazis refer to lots of sources, Darwin and Tolkien amongst them, then either all sources are equally racist for being referred to by the Neo-Nazis or all are excused by the presence of others. The fact that the idiots refer to Darwin doesn’t exclude Tolkien, nor does the idiots’ reference to other eugenics texts. In this case we are testing the seminal works, and if we want to cast the blame for the underlying ideas we can safely assume that Darwin is closer to the core of the problem than a fantasy book.
“On top of which, at the time Tolkien wrote pretty much everyone in the West was a eugenicist of one form or other, so again it’s hard to say that he (or any other eugenicist or body of eugenicists) had a model that was particularly suited to a Nazi worldview – it suited everyone’s.”
1. This is irrelevant. We’re debating the text, not the man.
2. If we were debating the man, the range of available texts is showing that you’d lose this debate because the best you can point to is one interpretation of his novels then carefully ignore everything where he was really clear of his dislike of such ideas (as per quotes Noisms has provided).
As an aside, I’ve just referred back to your original post, which I note has the original standard you were judging Tolkien (and trying prove). The original standard was “his books are a model of interwar racial theory, which holds that whites are superior to blacks, that when whites interbreed with blacks they civilise them but dilute the “good qualities” of whites, and that in general race determines psychological as well as physical traits, and racial mixing is bad. This doesn’t change the significance of Tolkien’s work, but it has ramifications for the political position of the genre it spawned.” which I’d disagree with as it could be read as “his books are exclusively XYZ” (which I disagree with) rather than “His books can be interpreted as XYZ” (which I’m happy to either agree with or argue against).
Would you like to return to that point?
[1] Not in order to hurt, but just to prove it can be done with pretty much anything. The Neo-Nazi’s you quoted aren’t very smart, but I’m pretty capable of mounting an argument that Voldemort is the true hero of Harry Potter. [2]
[2] I’m capable of this because, much like Voldemort, other Slytherins and bloggers everywhere, I’m argumentative, manipulative and not overly bound to interpretations of facts that don’t align with my viewpoint. 🙂
September 29, 2010 at 8:37 pm
By the way, could you or Noisms tell me how to italics text? It’d make it much easier for me to quote.
September 29, 2010 at 11:49 pm
You put an i in these brackets: before the text and a “/i” in the same brackets at the end of it.
I’m too brain dead now to answer your quandaries, but on a first reading it seems that you’re missing the important caveat that some arguments are just plain wrong and some are right. I’ll get back to it tomorrow.
September 29, 2010 at 11:50 pm
Those would be angle brackets
September 30, 2010 at 6:45 am
“that some arguments are just plain wrong and some are right.”
I look forward to seeing this, but it sounds like your invoking some divine right of science to be above question.
I’m curious why such a right would exist as I’m pretty sure they haven’t found a “Science is right! So shut-up!” particle.
Yeah, I agree in practice that science is right, but I also say that fiction novels don’t need to be judged for racism unless they’re actively urging people to burn crosses on the neighbours lawn so apparently my opinion on such things doesn’t count.
September 30, 2010 at 8:42 am
This is a long and difficult comment to answer, Paul, but I’m going to give it a go. Yes, the core of my argument is, as you say, that
Putting aside the rather un-nuanced use of “is” rather than “can be seen as”, can you tell me: what is a better test for whether a text is racist? Is there a stronger test? Or do you propose a weaker one?
What this doesn’t mean is
because the argument has to be correct. You say that the evidence I’ve got is “I wrote some posts and a Nazi quoted me.” That is not the evidence I’ve got. The evidence is the content of the posts, which you and Noisms have failed to rebut. And it’s not that a Nazi quoted me; it’s that Nazis across Europe and America claim that Tolkien supports their worldview. They quote Tolkien. One of them quoting me was simply the impetus for this post. Please note this difference.
Now, just for laughs, we can apply this to Darwin. If you read this post you’ll see that there is no evidence in The Origin of Species that racist theory and natural selection are linked. The author of this post claims (with supporting evidence based on quotes from The Origin of Species) that Darwin showed:
* People cannot be classified as different species
* All races are related and have a common ancestry
* All people come from “savage” origins
* The different races have much more in common than was widely believed
* The mental capabilities of all races are virtually the same and there is greater variation within races than between races
* Different races of people can interbreed and there is no concern for ill effects
* Culture, not biology, accounted for the greatest differences between the races
* Races are not distinct, but rather they blend together
What this tells us is that the first condition of our test isn’t met. It further tells us that arguments which try to make the opposite case (that Darwin’s work showed strong racist tendencies) are wrong.
So now, putting aside the moral neutrality of scientific texts, let’s move on to your next part. You tried two other checks.
I have never anywhere said that Tolkien’s writings can’t use this defence. I have yet to see any proof that they’re being misinterpreted by me or by nazis. You and Noisms have tried and failed to put across this proof. If you don’t agree with me about this then fine, we disagree as to whether or not racial heritability of moral traits is described in LoTR. That’s a different issue. You then try
This is only true if you assume that an argument doesn’t have to be correct to fit the first condition of our test. But I maintain that arguments have to be correct. If there were a strong argument that Darwin’s work supported racist interpretations, and you couldn’t refute it, that would be sufficient evidence to say “the text can be interpreted as racist.” BUT, the argument has to stand up to scrutiny and as the post I linked to shows, the arguments really don’t. (I claim further that the linked post shows a direct contradiction, but I don’t think it has to)[1].
You next address my point that Nazis tend not to use Darwinism as a social model, by saying
But here I’m not presenting a discrepancy in their world view. I’m saying that their worldview doesn’t include Darwinism, at least in respect of one key element where I’m supposing Darwinism might be employed (social). Here I’m testing Darwinism against different political elements separately, to make analysis easier.
Next, when I point out that Darwin doesn’t have much to do with eugenics, you say
but I think here your’re misinterpreting my “much to do with.” This was an attempt at calm understatement. Darwinism is not a eugenic theory. Eugenics is a different theory. If Nazis were using Darwin as evidence of eugenics they would be mounting an incorrect argument.
I then pointed out that you can’t claim a specific influence to a text if every text is saying the same things. I fail to see how this is an argument “about the man” and I think you’ve slipped back into a model we’re not applying here. I think you need to clarify what you’re saying there because I don’t understand it.
Finally, you make some point about how my original argument was that “his books are exclusively XYZ.” I can’t see that in the quote you’ve used. I don’t understand how “it has ramifications for the political position of the genre it has spawned” can mean “his books are exclusively XYZ.” I just don’t get this leap of logic.
That’s a direct answer; I’ll add some other points in a separate comment.
—
fn1: You seem to be saying here that if a text doesn’t contain a direct claim at some point saying “this is not intended to be racist” that it must be racist. I think this is a bit extreme.
September 30, 2010 at 8:51 am
Right, so, separate comment number 1.
Your approach to this seems to have taken a turn into a belief that every interpretation of a text is equally valid, that is, that anyone can make any kind of claim about any text and they have to be considered right. So, here’s some examples.
1. Nazis claim that Tolkien supports their worldview.
The Nazi worldview is that moral traits are racially inherited, some races are naturally evil, and wherever the “superior” race (that happens to be white) blends with lower races they lose their superiority but raise up the lower races slightly. This is exactly what Tolkien says. Thus, the Nazi claim kind of works. Obviously, other aspects of Tolkien don’t fit their worldview, so a stronger claim they could make would be “Tolkien supports our views on race.”
2. Nazis claim that le Guin supports their racial theories because Ged is a powerful white mage and Tehanu is a weak black woman.
Since Ged is not white and Tehanu is not black, this argument is wrong[1].
3. Richard Dawkins claims le Guin’s Left Hand of Darkness is a pro-polygamy text[1]
There are no marriage ceremonies of any kind mentioned anywhere in The Left Hand of Darkness so this is a pretty weak claim, polygamy being about marriage.
So, arguments 2 and 3 don’t hold up. Maybe 3 could be bolstered by some additional claims about the sexual behaviour in the book being equivalent to marriage; if so you’d need to enter into a debate about the extent of similarity between the practices, and probably still lose.
But your argument seems to be that any argument mounted is prima facie valid. It ain’t, which is why Darwin does not support racist interpretations.
—
fn1: obviously I made this up
September 30, 2010 at 9:27 am
So I went to the Stormfront website, my go-to guys on modern Nazi theory, and they have a whole thread devoted to evolution and racial theory.
Unfortunately the thread is quickly hijacked by a debate as to whether or not evolution is true[1].
Those trying to carry on the evolution thread seem largely to be ignoring Darwin, and to be
a) presenting evidence for the genetic inferiority of black people[2], or
b) demanding to know why modern evolutionary science is so “politically correct.”
I found another thread by someone who claims that “equality” goes against “Darwinism” and advises the use of evolutionary theory as a refutation of claims blacks and whites are equal. Bingo! But within 10 comments we get this:
And who put this pearler of racial analysis on the board? A member called “WhiteLordGandalf.” This thread also gets hijacked by a debate about whether evolution is true on the second page.
Evolution is very much a disputed theory in Nazi circles. Many think it’s a jewish conspiracy (i.e. they don’t agree with it); others think it’s too politically correct (i.e. it doesn’t support their claim that blacks are inferior to whites), many believe in creationism, and a few think it supports scientific racism. But, as I pointed out before – those few are wrong. They’re also in a significant minority in their own community, and not representative of Nazi theory (see also my points below).
In fact, the main people making claims about Darwin’s relationship to fascism and nazism seem to be
a) The catholic church (because killing God leads to Nazism; this argument is not about race, but about the prominence of God in the political world – it’s wrong for so many reasons that have nothing to do with Darwin or race)
b) The Discovery Institute, who are trying to poison the well, because they think that their silly creationist theories will be advanced by proving that evolution causes genocide
c) Glenn Beck, who is a fuckwit.
Because the Nazis certainly aren’t. The Calvin University German propaganda archive has a single piece of Nazi propaganda from the war that mentions natural selection in one paragraph, in the section on “The Prevention of the Mentally Ill.” It doesn’t mention Darwin at all and is clearly eugenicist, not more specific than that. There are no other books, articles or speeches in that archive that mention Darwin or evolution at all.
I’m not sure where Noisms got this idea that Darwin and Nazism are linked. I think he might be confusing natural selection with eugenics/genetic theory, but in fact natural selection depends on genetic theory, and eugenics uses genetic theory as well. There is no direct link between Darwin and eugenics (as far as I can tell).
—
fn1: In fact by page 3 they’re also disputing the germ theory of disease.
fn2: Finding a paper that claims black people can do X but not Y is not and has no relationship to natural selection, evolution or Darwinism, even if the authors of the paper happen to present a natural selection argument as to why the traits may have evolved.
September 30, 2010 at 9:57 am
What I’m attempting to do is separate the argument into multiple testable propositions that we can assess. At the end of that process we may find we agree on X points and disagree on Y points. Our final conclusions may also differ in the reasoning behind them or in the end result due to value and judgement differences.
What I’m trying to get away from is an endless argument of “Middle Earth books support Nazism” -> “Tolkien is not racist” -> “Tolkien is racist but that wasn’t my point anyway” -> “Now you’ve said everyone then was racist!” -> ad nauseam.
The trick to this will be successfully breaking your argument apart so the assumptions and conclusions can be individually assessed. While doing this I’m likely to put up counterarguments I don’t support just to try to tease out an understanding of your logic. Feel free to apply the same principle to me.
The aim is either to get you to realise you’ve got cognitive dissonance occurring which is causing you to unfairly dismiss Tolkien’s works or to expose an inconsistency in my logic. Given that I’m a value free zone I’m afraid we can’t apply a more meaningful test against me. I’m perfectly happy to swap sides in the debate if you’d like. 🙂
Your approach to this seems to have taken a turn into a belief that every interpretation of a text is equally valid, that is, that anyone can make any kind of claim about any text and they have to be considered right.
I stand by my belief that I don’t have any beliefs 😀 . As such this is just an attempt to test your logic. The thing I’m getting from your arguments thus far is that Tolkien can be interpreted in a fascist light and that makes it bad. You seem to believe that other novels can’t be interpreted in this light, with examples being le Guin and Darwin. I don’t think that you’re applying your method of interpretation fairly so I’m aiming to interrogate it by applying the same principles on other texts. If they yield fascist interpretations then we can safely say “Both Tolkien and the other author support Nazi views on race”. Note that a stronger test would be getting a Nazi to actually say this, but given I’m not going to attack people with a different skin colour just so I can win a debate we may need to leave the stronger level of proof untested. [1]
To examine the examples you put down we have Tolkien, le Guin and the Left Hand of Darkness. Please note that Richard Dawkin’s opinion of the LHoD is a false lead in this debate as 1. He’s not actually said that, and 2. He’s not an example of our “theoretical fascist” which is the assessment level we’re aiming for first.
Tolkien you have demonstrated is used by actual fascists to support their arguments. Our discussions around the “real” meaning of the book also show that the test being applied is not that the “real” meaning is X but that fascists use it as such. Please let me know if you want to apply a different test on this.
If we skip to the Left Hand of Darkness we can see you propose a clearly falsifiable test. If anyone wants to argue that a book concerns a topic it doesn’t mention directly or indirectly then we can agree that they’re outside the scope of rational argument. Note on this that the interpretation test we’re applying means the topic can’t be covered even indirectly, so to not discuss polygamy LHoD would need to not have a lifelong partnership between people (i.e. no small corporations) nor have metaphors for marriage (i.e. no people chained together). In the event it did have such events then it may become a reasonable interpretation. I haven’t read it, so I can’t say. That doesn’t detract from what it’s showing us about our assumptions and the rules of the test.
Back on le Guin, you mention a clearly false interpretation of the text which directly contradicted the text (by claiming Ged was white). This violates the LHoD check I’ve mentioned above and therefore can’t be a valid interpretation, but this test doesn’t demonstrate that le Guin can’t be interpreted in a racist way. The only way to test that is to apply the interpretation most favourable to a racist reading and then assessing if it was racist. In my post above I put together an outline of an interpretation that would be racist. Alternatively you could say that the powerful white priestess Tehanu saves the black Ged in the second book. This doesn’t fail the LHoD test, therefore we need to see if they form a racist narrative. My essential point is that from these books it is possible to form an interpretation that is racist. I’m willing to put more work in to demonstrate if you disagree.
Assuming you’re willing to allow that some interpretation of Earthsea is racist we then need to assess why Tolkien is a fascist text while le Guin is not. Accepting the existence of a fascist interpretation of le Guin means that the presence of the message is not the difference. You could argument that the usage by Nazi’s is the difference, but if you do that I just need one Nazi to accept my le Guin argument and le Guin goes from being a left wing pro-feminist text to being a fascist text (or possibly being both simultaneously). Alternatively you can propose a test that defines a fascist text, as it seems the one we have currently is the text:
1. has a fascist interpretation
2. is referenced by fascists (personally I think this is a very weak test, it means a book called “The How-To book on racism for fascists” written by Hitler would fail the test if fascists didn’t know it existed)
3. does not clearly contradict the text itself (the LHoD test as I refer to it above)
We’ve also seen “Science is special” proposed from the comments (not from this site) I quoted above that “Science has not statement on morality”, but I reject that as an argument for the purposes of this debate. Allowing such logic allows the possibility of an exception for fantasy writing that we’re not granting – if you would like some an exemption for science please explain why it applies for science but not fantasy. I’m willing to accept “Darwin doesn’t say that” but this has to be under the third test where the book cannot be interpreted that way or explicitly contradicts the interpretation.
Please feel free to propose a different set of tests.
[1] I suspect that we’ll reach a level where I’m comfortable I’ve demonstrated fascist interpretations of other texts but you don’t feel I’ve meet the standard. At that stage we can investigate further or agree to disagree.
September 30, 2010 at 10:07 am
Your revised test adds an irrelevant point (3, doesn’t contradict the text itself) because this is contained in 1, since the “fascist interpretation” has to be correct, in the sense that it can be cogently and strongly argued.
I don’t understand this:
This isn’t the test I’m applying at all. To repeat, the test I’m applying is that
And I’m presenting the use of Tolkien by fascists as a piece of evidence in support of this. I’m also saying that at the point where your racist theory is loved by fascists, it’s pretty bad, and your politics aren’t very useful for the rest of the world. The latter is a political claim about a book, not an argument that the book is X or isn’t Y.
And the claim that a book “can be interpeted as consistent with fascism” or (more simply) “this book has fascist racial views” is borne out by the argument, pure and simple.
If you have an argument that A wizard of earthsea is racist, and I think it’s persuasive, I’ll agree with you. That’s all it comes down to. I don’t understand what the rest of your “tests” and arguments are all about.
September 30, 2010 at 12:34 pm
This isn’t the test I’m applying at all. To repeat, the test I’m applying is that
The book can be interpreted as providing a racist theory that is consistent with fascism
This is the same test. I’m just being clearer that if there is a “real” meaning of the text [1] it doesn’t impact the test we’re applying, which is whether there is any interpretation that can be regarded as fascist.
The third test I’ve added is so that my first test can be passed with “Winnie the Pooh is fascist as I read it that way” without also having to prove it is internally consistent with fascism. By separating the tests out we have:
1. Does someone read it as fascist
2. Does it make sense to read it as fascist
Doing this means you can explicitly call me on not following a fascist interpretation when I claim something is fascist and we can do so in a clear manner.
and your politics aren’t very useful for the rest of the world. The latter is a political claim about a book, not an argument that the book is X or isn’t Y.
OK, but its not then relevant to the discussion, is it? If not I won’t bother responding on it further.
I don’t understand what the rest of your “tests” and arguments are all about.
I get sick of the endless internet debates where the terms of the debate are never agreed. To avoid that I hoped to propose a set of tests that were falsifable and agreed. Oh well.
If you have an argument that A wizard of earthsea is racist, and I think it’s persuasive, I’ll agree with you.
And to check, if I succeed at that, do you then hold le Guin as permanently tainting the genre associated with her, or do you revoke that judgement on Tolkien? Either way I’ll see what I can come up with.
[1] As I don’t want to get bogged down in a debate on whether texts have an author approved meaning. Instead I’m assuming that the meaning the reader finds there is a sufficiently “real” meaning that we can test it. If we don’t do this we have to read Tolkien’s mind and determine if he was racist, which we agree is best avoided.
September 30, 2010 at 12:50 pm
and a few think it supports scientific racism. But, as I pointed out before – those few are wrong.
No you didn’t point it out, you asserted it. I did some shallow research and found that the closest we come to having them found wrong was to dismiss the validity of the judgement. Simple dismissal doesn’t count as proving anything.
not representative of Nazi theory (see also my points below).
Do you want to be clearer with us on how many Nazis need to agree on something before it becomes a Nazi thought? I’d say that one racist believing something is probably where the problem begins. How about you propose a number and then we can study if embracing Tolkien racism is wide spread enough in the nazi community to meet your test. Your current sample size is two posts about your blog and a guy called WhiteLordGandalf, so I’d suggest setting the bar pretty low.
Obviously lots of people, including Nazis, believed it in Germany in the 1930s, especially given that a certain blog writer I know has said that “pretty much everyone in the West was a eugenicist of one form or other”. And I think we can accept that eugenics is based on a (highly biased and flawed, but not necessarily “incorrect/wrong”) reading of Darwin/evolution.
“the main people making claims about Darwin’s relationship to fascism and nazism”
I agree that people’s assertion on Darwin in no way influences Darwin’s relation to fascism/nazism. On the other hand, your assertion on Tolkien doesn’t influence his either.
Given that, I’ve shown that Nazi’s have held this belief, even if it’s no longer in vogue. The sole remaining defence for Darwin is that their reading is wrong. At this stage you need to prove it is wrong by means other than a dismissal. And given that evolution is a theory that doesn’t aim to have anything to say on morality it’s going to be hard finding something to show it disagrees with a stupid interpretation of it.
Incidently, this is the same problem Tolkien has. The nasty people referencing him don’t understand his viewpoint and are selectively picking elements of his book to support their arguments. Contradictory elements of the text are being disgarded or read in a way that makes minimal sense but supports the nasty person’s argument. But according to you this isn’t enough to clear him!
September 30, 2010 at 12:57 pm
Your revised test is what I’ve been laying out in these posts. Someone does read lord of the Rings as fascist, and it makes sense to read it as fascist.
Well, actually, let’s not say “fascist” because that involves a whole lot of additional political, economic and cultural theories. Let’s say “fascist racial theory.”
So, if we take as accepted that quite a few people read the LoTR as supporting fascist racial theory (fascists do, in fact, and quite a few of them), then all that remains is to prove that it makes sense to do so. And I’ve yet to see a compelling argument from you or Noisms (or anyone else on the internet) to the contrary. Noisms has presented a strong argument that Tolkien himself wasn’t a fascist; but that’s not the point at issue.
Now, Ursula le Guin has herself said that A Wizard of Earthsea fails to meet her own basic standards for good feminist writing, and she says this is because she was young and trapped in the genre tropes. But I think you’ll be struggling to find evidence of any strong racial theory. Have at it!
September 30, 2010 at 1:13 pm
So, if we take as accepted that quite a few people read the LoTR as supporting fascist racial theory (fascists do, in fact, and quite a few of them), then all that remains is to prove that it makes sense to do so. And I’ve yet to see a compelling argument from you or Noisms (or anyone else on the internet) to the contrary.
Yeah, given the need to delve into fascist racial theory in order to prove that Tolkien doesn’t match it I’m hesitant to put in the study lest I be put on a security service watch list.
Furthermore, given that Noisms and I have already demonstrated there are interpretations of Tolkien that violate fascist racial theory, such as:
1. the multi-cultural fellowship, or
2. the fact that the Southrons were not inherently evil
Even if I were to prove that Tolkien had a million hidden messages saying “Fascism is bad and racism is wrong” then it wouldn’t help. The text would need to explicitly say that and I would need to be able to provide a page reference to demonstrate this.
By the way, watch out. This same test applies on other texts – if the text can be read in a non-racist manner that doesn’t help. It has to explicitly say racism is wrong. Or if you want you can weaken or better define this test, but I’m OK with it being a broad amorphous mass that it absolutely impossible to avoid. The fact it hits my argument now will aid me later.
“But I think you’ll be struggling to find evidence of any strong racial theory.”
Are you crazy? It’s dead easy to find a racist theme! It’s just not a Nazi racist theme. Maybe you missed the bit of the 2nd book where the white people where rabid xenophobes who took slaves and sacrificed people to horrible gods. It took the redeeming power of the black man to save Tehanu’s soul from serving and worshipping evil the way the rest of her race do.
But of course, that’s not Nazi racial theory, its just racist to tar an entire skin colour with the actions of few. And to not give them protagonist status unless they reject their racial upbringing to become “Uncle Tom” figures.
So yeah, finding Nazi thought in there is going to be a little hard.
September 30, 2010 at 1:24 pm
No, I linked to a pretty solidly researched post, with a lot of quotes from the original work, showing that there is little link between Darwin and scientific racism. I gave a list of reasons in a comment here.
No, my current sample size is covered in a post on my blog which shows that there are Nazis in the US and the UK who support it, to the point of wanting to write a reader about it (and starting but stopping); this post includes a link to a well-researched piece of work outlining the historical appreciation of Tolkien in Italian fascism, which gives evidence that it was extensive and also draws out some of the reasons why. I then have another post pointing out that Danish fascists agree with the US and UK ones. I think putting numbers on these things is silly gotcha stuff. Go take a cruise through the Stormfront website if you doubt me. They have a tag, “High Fantasy and the Lord of the Rings” that makes the search easy. The 10 page thread on “Jewish professor calls LoTR racist” should give you an insight into how they think; also the 5 page thread on “Learn all you need to know about race from D&D” or “Isn’t it clear who the orcs represent” (137 replies). Incidentally, that “Jewish professor” they’re hating on is the same one I linked to earlier doing the research on Italian fascism and Tolkien. Coincidence?
No, we can’t. It’s based on a reading of genetic theory that is both much older than and independent of natural selection. People have known about selective breeding for millenia, and Darwin used the existing knowledge of selective breeding and genetics to put forward a theory about how species change. Eugenics uses the same knowledge Darwin used to put forward a theory about how to “improve” society. You can find some information about that in the post I linked to earlier. And as I observed in my other comment, there doesn’t appear to be any reference to Darwin or natural selection in Nazi propaganda.
Actually we don’t have to go that far, because you’re confusing eugenics and natural selection, which are two separate ideas born of the same body of knowledge (selective breeding/genetic theory).
No, the nasty people reading him aren’t selectively picking elements of his book and they aren’t misunderstanding “him”. The racial theory in his books maps very closely to scientific racism and to its predicted outcomes. Contradictory elements are being read in a way that makes plenty of sense (though they could be read differently). You and Noisms have failed to present any evidence to support your claim of selective misreading, which is why we’re now chasing the dream that Darwin=racism, a dream only ever propounded by a creationist front group who want to disprove evolution by showing Darwin was a genocidal maniac who hated God.
September 30, 2010 at 1:31 pm
Your two arguments:
I’ll get back to 1 in a post – the fellowship is not multicultural, and the races are easily interpreted as models of European whiteness.
I showed with a direct quote that the Southrons were inherently evil (they were one of the races touched by Morkoth). Noisms just ignored it.
A text doesn’t have to explicitly say racism is wrong, it just has to not have a racist message.
For example, where in le Guin’s book does it say that the slave-taking and sacrificing of the white people is inherent to their race and not just a cultural phenomenon? Is there any suggestion that this behaviour is heritable and pre-determined by race, rather than being raised in a xenophobic culture? Is there any implication that one race or group is of lesser human worth than another?
le Guin herself accepts that these books fail to address some issues of duality and cultural conflict that she later returned to in LHoD. But there’s a difference between writing two different races that are culturally different and being racist. Or are you such a po-mo multiculti hippy that any form of cultural difference is racism to you?
September 30, 2010 at 7:38 pm
Faustusnotes: It’s beating-head-against-brick-wall time here, but I’ll just reiterate that you actually need to familiarise yourself with a work before you criticise it in the fashion in which you’re doing. This paragraph:
Numenor before its fall wasn’t interbred. The interbreeding happened after the movement of the survivors to Middle Earth, and their creation of the various -dains. You’re right that Numenor before its fall was at the peak of its power; this power was diluted amongst the fleeing survivors as they interbred with common men on the mainland.
Is meaningless drivel; surely if we are to draw any conclusions from the history of the Numenoreans it’s that at the height of their power and racial purity they were also at their most evil and stupid – so if the book says anything at all about racial purity (which it doesn’t!) it is saying the exact opposite of what you think it is.
Paul said: [1] Which I can only imagine vastly complicates the process of building a mental model of the world. BTW I’m being cute in describing you like this, please don’t take offence, though do feel free to expand on your world view if you like.
Basically, I’m a skeptic. I try not to build a mental model of the world because I don’t believe it’s in the power of any one person, or indeed any group of people, to do so accurately. The world, especially the modern world, is too complex, and any philosophy which attempts to “explain” it is both quixotic and reductive.
To the extent I have any ideology, I like thinkers such as Oakeshott, Burke, Taleb, Hayek, even Wittgenstein, who argue against overarching top-down theory and in favour of tinkering and the very slow bottom-up evolution of ideas.
September 30, 2010 at 7:43 pm
I showed with a direct quote that the Southrons were inherently evil (they were one of the races touched by Morkoth). Noisms just ignored it.
What direct quote is this? I must have missed it. And would you stop saying “Morkoth”? It’s Morgoth.
September 30, 2010 at 7:46 pm
(I shouldn’t have to point out, but will, that the sentence “I showed with a direct quote that the Southrons were inherently evil (they were one of the races touched by Morgoth)” actually contradicts itself!)
September 30, 2010 at 7:56 pm
Noisms, first of all: fuck off with the snarky “you haven’t read the book” crap. Stop being so fucking rude. Okay?
Next, we’ve been over the issue of “elves are evil too” and all its associated variations[1]. They don’t have to be pure, they just have to be better than the Orcs. In Tolkien’s racial model there is no perfection, just grades of corruption, but this isn’t saying anything about the presence or absence of racially heritable moral traits. I don’t like having to go over this basic theory with you over and over again.
At the height of their power and racial purity the Numenoreans were easily corrupted to evil, due to their arrogance. They were corrupted by a late encounter with Sauron, and those who escaped learnt from their lesson and set up a new, humbler society in Middle Earth, where the aforementioned blah blah blah happened. Now, which Orcs learnt from their lessons? That’s right, none. This process is called “free will,” it’s an option denied to savages in any kind of racial theory – the savages are assumed to be creatures of their baser instincts, unable to overcome them. Like Orcs.
Of course you missed the direct quote about the Southrons being touched by Morkoth, it disputes your perception of the books. You also claimed they weren’t brown. Notice how I didn’t accuse you of not reading the books?
We’ve already been over the concept of “inherent” as represented in Tolkien’s works. Playing silly buggers with well-established concepts doesn’t help you, it just makes you look petty, which is what your little train of gotchas is.
—
fn1: at which point you’re going to say “but I’m talking about the Numenoreans” in your usual petty gotcha style. Can you just fucking leave this shit out?
September 30, 2010 at 9:58 pm
The thing is, all these little errors you’re making just reveal your argument to be what it is: baseless. You may not like the fact that somebody’s pointing out that you can’t even remember what the main bad guy’s name is, but it’s symptomatic of something bigger – namely that you’re not really familiar with Tolkien’s work and yet you feel as if you have the authority to judge it. You have form on trying to teach your grandma to suck eggs, of course, so I suppose it’s nothing new.
At the height of their power and racial purity the Numenoreans were easily corrupted to evil, due to their arrogance. They were corrupted by a late encounter with Sauron, and those who escaped learnt from their lesson and set up a new, humbler society in Middle Earth, where the aforementioned blah blah blah happened. Now, which Orcs learnt from their lessons? That’s right, none. This process is called “free will,” it’s an option denied to savages in any kind of racial theory – the savages are assumed to be creatures of their baser instincts, unable to overcome them. Like Orcs.
First off, Tolkien’s orcs are not savages. They are actually more technologically advanced than the other races of Middle Earth, and are indeed approaching an industrialised Satanic Mills sort of society in Mordor. Evil in Tolkien is always associated with technological advancement. (That he was a luddite and a naive pastoralist are charges which actually stick.) So, the savage argument is arse-about-tit.
Secondly, the orcs were corrupted by MorGoth from elves, who he enslaved and worked to his will at the very beginning of his reign on Middle Earth. At this time Morgoth was at the height of his power, and was able to mould an entire new race of beings from the stuff of these unfortunate elves. (A process which Tolkien describes as his worst crime.) This makes the situation of the orcs totally different from the Numenoreans in a number of ways.
First, the Numenoreans were corrupted by Sauron, who is always described as working in a subtler and more insiduous way than Morgoth; moulding the Numenoreans into an entirely new race akin to orcs would thus not have been his mode of choice even if he had had the power to do so, which he didn’t. (The Numenoreans were more powerful than him and captured him in battle, let’s not forget.) He knew a more effective method of triumphing over the Numenoreans than brute force, and he succeeded excellently.
Secondly, Tolkien like all medievalists had a view of the world as gradually becoming less and less powerful and vibrant as time went by; he believed in the opposite of progress. So while Morgoth, working at the very beginning of time, was able to create an entirely new race (the orcs), this simply was not possible for Sauron millenia later in Numenor, when creation had steadily devolved and power was everywhere diminished.
The orcs, in other words, were exposed to something altogether different from the Numenoreans in any number of important ways. From the very moment of their creation orcs were imbued with the hatred, selfishness and jealousy of Morgoth, and hence were irredeemable from that time onwards (a fact which, again, Tolkien describes as Melkor’s worst crime). It only has anything to do with racial essentialism inasmuch as it was all Melkor’s fault – but this is represented as an explicit negative in the text. Using it as a stick to beat Tolkien’s work with is a bit like saying that Othello is pro-jealousy.
The Numenoreans, on the other hand, were exposed to something at once less potent (because Sauron possessed neither the will nor the power to change them) and more deadly (because it led to the destruction of an entire continent). Their outcome was thus altogether different to that of the orcs. Not because they were of a different race but of a different time and place entirely, with a different antagonist.
Of course you missed the direct quote about the Southrons being touched by Morkoth, it disputes your perception of the books. You also claimed they weren’t brown. Notice how I didn’t accuse you of not reading the books?
No, I didn’t miss the direct quote about Southrons being touched by Morgoth. I’ve said as much a number of times – that the Haradrim, Southrons, Easterlings etc. were corrupted by Morgoth (or Sauron) and thus were not inherently evil. If you were paying any attention you’d notice I missed the direct quote about Southrons being inherently evil, which is what you were talking about in the previous comment. Show me that quote, would you? The direct one which says Southrons are inherently evil?
As for the Southrons not being brown… I have a feeling you’re getting confused with earlier statements in a previous entry in which I said that the Black Numenoreans, who live in the South, are not brown or black, but white skinned. As far as I know this isn’t at all controversial. If I did somewhere say that “Southrons are not brown” I’d like to see that quote.
September 30, 2010 at 10:31 pm
You’re still denying the provenance of “inherently”. This is a pretty basic point about racial theory. Many people used to believe the Jews were “Inherently” evil – because they were corrupted by satan. The model is exactly the same here. I’ve been over this multiple times. If you have some particular evidence that this isn’t how scientific racism works, then feel free to present it.
The story of the corruption of the Numenoreans is further evidence of their possession of free will. I made the point about the distinction between the “evil” of the good races and the evil of the evil races many posts ago. They’re different qualities, because one is caused by a failure of free will and one is inherent[1].
Your argument that the Orcs are not savage is really an entertaining turn. The whole thing where they eat their own, enjoy murder and slaughter, and can’t create anything beautiful or lasting is completely irrelevant to their savagery, right?
—
fn1: yes, inherent, as part of their nature, even if that inherent nature was put there by someone. Do please try to keep up.
September 30, 2010 at 11:06 pm
You’re still denying the provenance of “inherently”. This is a pretty basic point about racial theory. Many people used to believe the Jews were “Inherently” evil – because they were corrupted by satan. The model is exactly the same here. I’ve been over this multiple times. If you have some particular evidence that this isn’t how scientific racism works, then feel free to present it.
So in other words you don’t have a direct quote stating that the Southrons are inherently evil, do you?
I’d like you to provide some evidence for the notion that scientific racism is all about the Jews being corrupted by Satan, because I don’t think that’s how it works at all. It certainly isn’t the basis for 20th century antisemitism, and even in earlier times any religious basis for being antisemitic revolved around the death of Jesus and the blood libel, or on the rejection of the prophets (from an Islamic perspective).
The notion that “inherent” traits can also include traits that were put there by somebody else is totally moronic if you think about it for even a second. In Tolkien’s legendarium everything was created (i.e. “put there by somebody else”). Given that this is the case, it is a meaningless statement to say that “inherent traits include those put there by somebody else” because that essentially means that all traits are inherent – which begs the question in the most obvious way.
The story of the corruption of the Numenoreans is further evidence of their possession of free will. I made the point about the distinction between the “evil” of the good races and the evil of the evil races many posts ago. They’re different qualities, because one is caused by a failure of free will and one is inherent[1].
The notion that the orcs didn’t have free will isn’t in dispute – that’s why their corruption was Morgoth’s worst crime. Again, your argument is a bit like saying that Othello is a pro-jealousy play.
Your argument that the Orcs are not savage is really an entertaining turn. The whole thing where they eat their own, enjoy murder and slaughter, and can’t create anything beautiful or lasting is completely irrelevant to their savagery, right?
Bloody hell, this is pretty obvious sophistry even by your own standards. Of course the orcs are “savage” if we define “savage” as a mere adjective akin to brutal, cruel, sadistic, or bloodthirsty. But that’s different to the notion of “a savage” (who may or may not be “noble”) as in an uncivilized or unadvanced person living in Africa, Asia or the Americas, which is the meaning in which you intended it, surely? The point I’m making is that orcs are in no way analogous to “savages” as they were defined in olden times and that therefore the nature of orcs is in no way comparable to any sort of statement about the nature of “savages” or indicative of any sort of racism within the text.
September 30, 2010 at 11:37 pm
Noisms, inherent means “existing in someone or something as a permanent and inseparable element, quality, or attribute.” It doesn’t exclusively mean “there before they were created” or “there from the start.” So for example “evil is inherent to orcs” means that you can’t separate evil from Orcs, not that evil is a quality that they didn’t receive from anyone else. The word you’re looking for is “native to” or “original to.” For equivalent words to inherent, see “inbred,” “essential” or “innate.” The word “inherent” does not speak to the origin of the inherent quality. For example, “original sin” is defined as “inclination to evil, inherent in human nature” or “the hereditary stain with which we are born on account of our origin.” So you see, the Southron can be inherently evil and have gained that evil from somewhere.
Scientific racism combines a traditional religious concept of anti-semitism (i.e. Jews are evil) with a (flawed) racial definition of Jews, and a (flawed) ideal of racially immutable moral traits to create a fiction of a monstrous, unconvertible and inherently evil jew. There is no underlying racial reason why Jews are evil – this is injected into the mix as an “Inherent” property of Judaism, just as smoothly as the “Inherent” savagery of blacks is injected into it. In fact there are lots of Nazis (see previous comments) who believe openly religious explanations for the evil of the Jews – the blood libel and the murder of christ are common tropes, as are ideas that Jews were touched by satan. The key idea is that a long, long time ago they became evil, and they remain racially evil. A few “enlightened” nazis have some bogus evolutionary claim for why they’re evil but they tend to avoid evolutionary claims (as I pointed out earlier) because if a race can evolve into evil it can evolve out of evil with the right prodding, i.e. can be reformed. Reform doesn’t fit with hatred. The book Blood in the Face describes some of these religious underpinnings of scientific racism, and I recommend it if you have the time (though it appears there’s a new edition claiming that GW Bush is going to lead America to a fascist promised land, but maybe the Amazon reviews are misrepresenting it).
Of course there are other versions of scientific racism that reject the idea that Jews are evil – it welcomes Jews as part of the “judaeo christian” worldview, and focuses on Islam and/or indigenous cultures as evil/degenerate/savage. This doesn’t change the problem of Tolkien’s depiction of race, which ascribes inherent qualities to races, with those inherent qualities differing by race and immutable.
Now, I know that the free will of orcs isn’t in dispute. You claimed that Numenoreans were evil too and I’m pointing out that they are evil due to a failure of free will. Their evil was not inherent. They had to be manipulated into a temporary period of evil; the orcs were created evil and will always be evil. This is another example of one of your really sly little tricks, where you suddenly switch to accusing me of a line of argument that I never started in order to back out of a line of argument you know is doomed.
If you look up the definition of savage, you’ll find “technologically backwards” is not part of it, though one word associated with it is “uncivilised.” If you look up Orcs in the Tolkien Gateway (or indeed the Tolkien Bestiary) you’ll find this: “Although not dim-witted, they are portrayed as dull and miserable beings, who corrupt words (an insult to a philologist like Tolkien) and are only able to destroy, not to create.” The only technologically advanced example of Orcs in the Lord of the Rings are those cultivated by Saruman, though goblins are said to be able to create functional weapons, but their smithing is generally inferior to that of the Dwarves. The greatest smiths of course were the Dwarves and elves, and the Orcs lack any of that other technology specific to middle earth – magic. Magic is purely the province of elves and Maiar, and Sauron had to corrupt elves and maiar to his cause. There are no Orc shamen or witch doctors, and throughout the stories it is made clear that Orc and Goblin technology is rough and functional.
Do you have any other made-up facts and personal redefinitions of words that you want to share with me?
October 4, 2010 at 7:49 pm
Noisms, inherent means “existing in someone or something as a permanent and inseparable element, quality, or attribute.” It doesn’t exclusively mean “there before they were created” or “there from the start.” So for example “evil is inherent to orcs” means that you can’t separate evil from Orcs, not that evil is a quality that they didn’t receive from anyone else. The word you’re looking for is “native to” or “original to.” For equivalent words to inherent, see “inbred,” “essential” or “innate.” The word “inherent” does not speak to the origin of the inherent quality. For example, “original sin” is defined as “inclination to evil, inherent in human nature” or “the hereditary stain with which we are born on account of our origin.” So you see, the Southron can be inherently evil and have gained that evil from somewhere.
This really is just argument for argument’s sake now, isn’t it? I mean, this is just irrelevant semantics, which doesn’t address the substance of the argument at all. Whoever’s definition of “inherent” we use, the point surely is that the “bad guy races” in Tolkien’s are not the way they are off their own bat. Orcs are elves who were warped by Morgoth, while Southrons are humans who (like all humans) can be easily corrupted and were so by Sauron. There is no racial motif here. (If you’re going to now raise the argument that it’s only black or brown people who get corrupted by Sauron then that’s clearly flat wrong on any reading of the texts.)
Scientific racism combines a traditional religious concept of anti-semitism…
I’m aware of all of this, but I don’t believe the traditional Christian or Islamic antisemitisms relied on a notion that the Jews were corrupted by Satan, which is what you are alleging. The root seems to have been “The Decide” (i.e. that the Jews killed Jesus) or the rejection of Jesus and Mohammed as prophets.
Now, I know that the free will of orcs isn’t in dispute. You claimed that Numenoreans were evil too and I’m pointing out that they are evil due to a failure of free will. Their evil was not inherent. They had to be manipulated into a temporary period of evil; the orcs were created evil and will always be evil.
I just have to direct you to my previous comment here. You haven’t addressed it directly and there’s no point just copying and pasting it.
If you look up the definition of savage, you’ll find “technologically backwards” is not part of it…
Gimme a break. What part of “uncivilised” or “a member of a preliterate society” does not imply technological backwardness?
Although not dim-witted, they are portrayed as dull and miserable beings, who corrupt words (an insult to a philologist like Tolkien) and are only able to destroy, not to create.
Creation has a specific meaning to Tolkien. It doesn’t mean “making stuff”. (Look at what he has to say in Mythopoeia or Leaf, by Niggle.) The Orcs, like all evil beings and like their master, Morgoth, are not able to “create” but instead corrupt or make mockeries of creation. (“Good” beings are likewise not able to “create” – but instead can make echoes of creation, rather than mere mockeries.) I think it’s fair to say that to Tolkien, machine technology was a corruption or mockery of creation, and his comment that orcs cannot create has to be taken in this context. (The whole thing about their smithing is clearly another reflection of this good/evil dichotomy. Elves and dwarves, when they smith, are echoing creation in some way, but orcs are only “mocking” it. This is what makes them inferior smiths.)
It’s clear that orcs (and indeed, evil things in general – Saruman and Sauron in particular) are more technologically advanced than other races. Not necessarily when left to their own devices, but certainly when they apply themselves. I don’t think it’s possible to read the passages in which Mordor is described, or the sieges of Isengard and Minas Tirith, and come to any other conclusion.
I have to confess I don’t really understand what magic has to do with it. The idea that magic is a “technology” is totally anachronistic, out of keeping with everything we know about magic and the way it is used, and absolutely alien to Tolkien’s world view.
October 4, 2010 at 7:59 pm
Yes Noisms, if you’re going to quibble over whether orcs are inherently evil then claim “irrelevant semantics” when I point out the definition of inherent, then we are just arguing for argument’s sake. Particularly given that you follow up that pearler with a very weird definition of “savage” and “create.” Orcs are inherently evil the way that original sin is inherent to humans. They are savage, lower races and there is little evidence that they were technologically more advanced except under the rulership of Saruman.
October 4, 2010 at 8:31 pm
Hmm
For example, where in le Guin’s book does it say that the slave-taking and sacrificing of the white people is inherent to their race and not just a cultural phenomenon? Is there any suggestion that this behaviour is heritable and pre-determined by race, rather than being raised in a xenophobic culture? Is there any implication that one race or group is of lesser human worth than another?
So to check, your objection to Tolkien is that the orcs are shown to be evil due to their race and that the good races are good due to theirs. But if I’m going to try to address this in an Earthsea context can you tell me how you know that for the good races being good “is inherent to their race and not just a cultural phenomenon? Is there any suggestion that this behaviour is heritable and pre-determined by race,” because I can certainly see it for the orcs, but the argument for the good (“white”) races doesn’t seem to be followed. Tolkien repeatedly has the good races acting in bad ways, even if they’re generally true to the good guy script.
If you can only show that the stereotype applies on one side of the equation, does that give you enough proof to assume it right through the book?
Please note, the main reason for these questions is so I can apply them to le Guin.
October 4, 2010 at 9:26 pm
It’s the problem of free will, Paul… they don’t have to be pure good, just have free will, i.e. they have to make a decision to be evil.
There’s another example of the slave-taking xenophobic white people that needs to be taken account of in a critique of le Guin… she herself comes from a nation with a history of xenophobia and slave-taking, primarily by the white people. So it would be easy to interpret her book as an allegory for the failings of her own nation…
October 4, 2010 at 10:41 pm
Sorry Faustusnotes, Noism’s (and others) rebuttals are much more convincing than your initial argument. You have a not-uninteresting hypothesis, but it doesn’t hold up to all that much investigation and fails to impact the reading of the works as a whole or in part.
October 4, 2010 at 10:51 pm
Thanks for the comment Shilling, did you really drag yourself through that torrid debate? If so you deserve a medal. But did you check the previous posts in the series? This post is the one that presents the least supporting information, relying as it does on the previous posts for support.
October 5, 2010 at 9:53 am
“It’s the problem of free will, Paul… they don’t have to be pure good, just have free will, i.e. they have to make a decision to be evil.”
Sorry, I’m not sure how this relates to racial essentialism. The orcs have to be evil. OK. That’s a racist opinion on them and on any group that they’re extrapolated to represent.
But the elves/dwarves/humans in Tolkien have a choice of being evil. We see that the main groups who make this choice are the Southrons and the Numenoreans, though the elves also get in on the act when they war on Melkoth (who is called Morgoth). What does that say about them and the groups that they’re extrapolated onto? This seems to suggest that their evil is a cultural or individual choice and as such so is their virtue. You’ve said that the fact the brown skinned Southron’s supporting Sauron shows racism in the text, but we have no evidence that their fall is more permanent than the Numenoreans, who go on to found Gondor.
If only one side of the argument demonstrates racial essentialism are you able to claim it’s a central theme in the books?
It seems at the moment that the “white” races in Lord of the Rings (and associated texts) are failing your tests to be an example of racial essentialism. Do you mean that the orcs demonstrate racial essentialism, but the Numenoreans/elves/other white races are racist on more general grounds?
On a different tack, would you claim that le Guin is exhibiting racial essentialism in her portrayal of dragons? They’re clever and they eat anyone they like save Dragonlords. It’s not an entirely negative depiction of them but it does cast them all in the same light and shows no signs of any exceptions. If you don’t think her work casts them in this light, can you explain why? (Again, I’m going to examine your response to this as a test against Tolkien’s texts).
” There’s another example of the slave-taking xenophobic white people that needs to be taken account of in a critique of le Guin… she herself comes from a nation with a history of xenophobia and slave-taking, primarily by the white people. So it would be easy to interpret her book as an allegory for the failings of her own nation…”
Yeah. It would. On the other hand alternate explanations for the text don’t excuse the text if it has racist interpretations, otherwise the alternative explanations for Tolkien let him off. Also the authors intended meanings have no bearing on the debate, otherwise Tolkien’s non-fiction writing has to be considered.
October 5, 2010 at 4:09 pm
I think the problem you and Noisms are having here is that you think that a proper theory of “scientific racism” should posit “whites” as pure good, and “blacks” as evil, and leave no grey area. In fact what it does is assign whites a superior cultural and moral ideal, and the ability to avoid evil. It doesn’t require that they be purely good, just that their ability to do evil not be inherent and unavoidable. For example, Nazi analysis of the downfall of the United States blames it on corruption by a key ruler. Similarly, any theory of scientific racism has to explain the propensity of “good” white people to do bad things – in the standard Nazi interpretation, ” bad things” is a) consorting with Jews or b) supporting Jews or c) voting Social Democrat. They typically present this behaviour as being due to corruption, which in the case of the US they blame on Roosevelt. Discussion of Britain requires that they excuse the decision of a people they consider highly superior to go to war against them, and they do this by various versions of the invocation to free will, which involves claims of greed, power, mistakes, etc.
Any theory of evil that posits one class or group as above another – whether fascist, religious or marxist – runs into this problem of free will. It never stops the theory from working. In LoTR, elves/humans etc. (the “whites”) have free will, which they exercise to do good or evil; typically their decisions to do evil are due to deception by greater powers (along the lines of the Jews and Roosevelt in the above-linked propaganda).
The real world prevents us from claiming any one race is purely good, so all racial essentialist theories allow the “pure” races to be morally superior to the “impure” ones without casting them as angels.
October 5, 2010 at 4:16 pm
So, having said that, I want to ask Paul, Noisms, Shilling (if he/she is still bearing up under this pressure) to answer these questions for me:
1. How do you think a work of fiction can represent scientific racism? I have presented a work which ascribes racially heritable, unchanging evil to one set of races, all resembling the real world’s black/Asian races; and moral superiority to another set of races resembling the real world’s “whites,” in a geographically similar context. I have shown how the theories in the books map to real theories on scientific racism, both by reference to the theory as it’s commonly understood and by reference to Nazi propaganda, both of the time and of the modern era. You seem to think this is insufficient. So what more do you need for a book to be read as representing a scientific racist worldview?
2. What political support is necessary for a book to be seen as giving succour to fascism? I have shown that Italian fascists were intimately involved in Tolkien appreciation and that they used it as a propaganda tool for their youth camps; I have shown that modern fascists want to use Tolkien as a propaganda tool; I have shown that it is very popular with modern fascists; and I have explained why, and on request presented further evidence to suggest that these aren’t isolated incidents. What more do you need in order to conclude that a book is used by fascists as a supportive tool?
October 5, 2010 at 11:28 pm
1. I’m afraid you simply haven’t presented or shown what you think you’ve presented or shown. You’ve instead issued a raft of assertions that are readily disputed. If you had managed to do come up with convincing and strong evidence that isn’t easily refuted, then that would have sufficed, of course.
2. The argument has never been that the Lord of the Rings hasn’t been used by fascists as a supportive tool. Rather, the argument is that you can say that about any number of books; the conclusion is totally banal and meaningless and says nothing about the work itself or the man who wrote it.
October 6, 2010 at 7:26 am
@Noisms
It doesn’t seem you’ve answered Faustus’s first question fairly. The first question is an abstract “What would it take?” question which doesn’t claim he’s proved anything. He’ asking what standard we would set for proving this. The second is similarly abstract, but your answer covers it anyway.
These are interesting questions, but the response from us also has to be “Given the standards we set LotR may or may not qualify. Given that, so what?” Should LotR be burnt? Banned? Required reading? Used to fuel a limitless rage that would be sufficient to power a spaceship on its way to Mars?
October 6, 2010 at 8:22 am
Noisms, I think only you could have the gumption to categorize my link to Shapiro’s essay on Italian fascism and Tolkien as an “assertion.” Maybe you didn’t read it? Perhaps you also think “Orcs are morally inferior to humans” is an assertion as well?
You also can’t say that “any number of books” are used by fascists as propaganda – I gave a direct quote showing that Harry Potter isn’t, for example, and if you follow the “Tolkien and High Fantasy” tag on stormfront you’ll find there is only a handful of fantasy books with their own threads, and none as sympathetically presented as Tolkien. There is no other book that is being suggested as a childhood reader (except maybe the Narnia chronicles).
If you think that the conclusion “this book supports fascism” is banal and meaningless when that book is being used to teach fascist racial theory to children you have a very strange idea of “banal” and “meaningless.” Try this: LoTR is a great book. It’s engaging and inspiring and it inspires spittle-flecked passion in intelligent people like you. People of any political persuasion will sell their grandmother for that sort of propaganda, and Tolkien delivers for the fascists. That is not a “banal and meaningless” conclusion about a book.
You also haven’t answered my question, but this doesn’t surprise me at all because if you did, you know you’d be conceding at least the “weak” case for scientific racism in Tolkien. Give it a go, I’m sure you can.
October 6, 2010 at 8:29 am
OK, to answer your first question of “How do you think a work of fiction can represent scientific racism?” I’ve had to do some digging on what racial essentialism means. The problem I’ve hit is it seems this idea has been discredited to the point where it doesn’t even have a Wikipedia entry. Which suggests to me that even Neo-Nazi’s aren’t using it as a school of thought given that the Spaceship Moon Theory has a Wikipedia page [1]. Because of that I’ve had to read the Essentialism and Ethnic Essentialism entries and google for the words “racial essentialism”.
Based on those I’d have to focus on the ideas that “In philosophy, essentialism is the view that, for any specific kind of entity, there is a set of characteristics or properties all of which any entity of that kind must possess.” (from Essentialism) and “The central political tenet of ethnic nationalism is that ethnic groups can be identified unambiguously” (from Ethnic Essentialism) as being the guiding points of establishing whether something is being Racially Essentialist. In addition to that, the article at http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-2490646/Racial-essentialism-a-mercurial-concept.html says a definition of racial essentialism is “that certain non-biological traits are biologically transferable across generations, and that such traits are permanent and unchanging.”
Based on those quotes and the associated articles, I’d expect any text that is racially essentialist to obey the principle that the central characteristics of every race must be absolutely fixed and unvarying. Furthermore these as we’re discussing this in relation to a story, these characteristics must be relevant to the story. An example of this being relevant is the behaviour of Orcs in LotR, who are universally evil and savage. An example of something that is essentialism and racially related but not being relevant is that the Elves are universally immortal, as this doesn’t provide a massive story impact.
Given this definition of racial essentialism, Tolkien’s books do demonstrate this idea for orcs, but not for other races. Additionally, as Noisms has pointed out, the nature of orcs is presented as one of the greatest evils in the book, which makes it hard to suggest that it’s being promoted.
Because of this I think we’ve arrived at different definitions of what racial essentialism is. You accept variations from the essential nature of the race as not invalidating that essential nature. So the Numoreans and descendants are occasionally evil, which means they aren’t essentially good in my definition, but in your definition it still allows for them to be essentially good.
Do you have a better definition of racial essentialism you’d like me to refer to? Does this answer your first question?
For your second question, “What political support is necessary for a book to be seen as giving succour to fascism?”, I’d say succour exists where you find it. As such, just the claim of a group to taking succour from a book is sufficient political support. Therefore a book can be a fascist, Marxist, conservative, liberal, feminist, misogynist text all at once. The Bible is a good example of such a book. The real answer to your question, especially given my answer, is of course “So what?” The totally subjective nature of the political support means that anyone can claim anything and be right as long as it reflects their feelings. This means that totally incorrect readings of books can also provide political support, such as reading Darwin and insisting it says that race X is inferior.
So, unless you can direct me to a different definition of racial essentialism that explains why it fails to obey the rules of essentialism I’d have to say that your argument doesn’t demonstrate essentialist treatment of races in Tolkien’s works. I’d also have to say that nutcases are allowed to claim support from wherever they want. [2]
[1] I’m not kidding. I’m tempted to start a school of thought called Wikism which would argue that if it’s not on Wikipedia or another Wiki then it doesn’t exist and can’t exist as a concept until someone creates an entry on it.
[2] I accept the people I’m describing as nutcases do have (largely) internally consistent rules for their decision making. But I don’t accept I need to regard their views as having any basis in reality. Given that I’m unsurprised when they claim things that have no basis in my view of reality.
October 6, 2010 at 8:31 am
Paul, your question “Given that, so what?” is easily answered.
This is a blog, on the internet. If I ever present any idea on this blog that is more valuable than “so what?” I would probably break the internet, and should have my modem taken away from me.
More seriously, people are interested in Tolkien’s influence on the genre and on literature for its own sake. I’m interested in the role of the canon of fantasy literature in defining the boundaries of fantasy, and I’m particularly interested in the imaginative limits of fantasy, which as I’ve said before (and you’ve disputed) is a quite imaginatively limited genre. This is isn’t all Tolkien’s fault but I think some parts of it are, and to the extent that modern fantasy maintains Tolkien’s fiction of scientific racism, those imaginative boundaries are both conservative (in the sense of retaining and “enforcing” the politics of Tolkien’s era, which is not ours) and racist; and I would guess that they’re exclusionary, in that people who find racism unpalatable in their light reading (e.g. people who have regularly found themselves the victims of scientific racist stereotypes) won’t show an interest in the genre. Clearly Tolkien is not a net negative for the genre – he is a big drawcard – but I still think these influences can be combated in modern fiction without reducing the literary importance of his legacy or enjoying his books less – and I don’t think that modern fantasy writers rejecting his racial models would have any effect on his popularity or his signficance. And although I don’t expect this blog to achieve anything[1], I do have an interest in widening the appeal of the genre.
—
fn1: except maybe a wider knowledge of a few Japanese rpgs
October 6, 2010 at 8:40 am
I’m about to put up a new post on the scientific racism vs. fascism thing, so I won’t answer in detail here. Suffice to say, racial essentialism doesn’t require that the property be fixed in the race – lots of theories work on the property being more common in the race. Think of IQ here – racial models of IQ don’t posit that all blacks have an IQ of 85 and all whites 95, just that whites are on average more intelligent. The same with morality. Also, presenting a racial essentialist view means presenting “race A is morally superior to race B,” which I think we can take for granted about Tolkien. So it’s not right to say that “Tolkien’s books do demonstrate this idea for orcs” – it demonstrates it for humans vs. Orcs.
But I’ll put this in a separate post in more detail.
re: your 2, I think there are degrees of “subjective nature of political support.” Everyone claims Orwell for their own purpose, but not everyone claims Tolkien for their racial purpose – only fascists do. The degree of claim is not minor either. It’s not just a case of “read this, it’s cool!” but “let’s name our youth camps after him” and “let’s use the book to teach racial theory to our kids.” Do you concede that this is a different and (to use a journalistic phrase) more disturbing level of support than just liking the book and thinking every right-thinking person should read it?
See my previous comment re: so what?
October 6, 2010 at 10:15 am
By the way, I should have added this in my first response, but if I take your definition of racial essentialism then I concede at least the “weak” case against Tolkien, which says he can be read that way and it does matter. The action resulting from this should be keeping it in mind so that fantasy writing can deliberately avoid those tropes and in doing so tell a wider variety of interesting stories. It doesn’t mean that Tolkien was racist, nor does it mean that LotR is a racist book, just that it can be read that way.
I’d also note that because the tropes exist they actually expand the range of potential stories because a story can benefit from explicitly contradicting the trope and in doing so benefit from subverting or averting the trope in an interesting way. Genres with fewer tropes (i.e. sci-fi) have the freedom from these tropes at the cost of not being able to explicitly question an existing assumption in people’s minds.
I think my answer here matches your answer to “So what?” I should not I wrote it before reading your comment.
Finally, given that concession, I have to condemn your blog to a similar level that I condemn Tolkien. You have given material assistance to a bunch of fruit loops and your blog should be read in the light of being a resource to Neo-Nazis. This doesn’t mean you’re a racist nor does it mean that your blog is racist, just that it can be read that way.
“to the extent that modern fantasy maintains Tolkien’s fiction of scientific racism, those imaginative boundaries are both conservative (in the sense of retaining and “enforcing” the politics of Tolkien’s era, which is not ours) and racist”
I would agree, except I don’t think those boundaries are used any more. I own the book Orcs, which is about how a bunch of Orcs save the world, and even R.A. Salvatore (who’s a one trick hack) has had a sympathetic goblin in one of his Drizzt Do’Urden stories.
“Suffice to say, racial essentialism doesn’t require that the property be fixed in the race – lots of theories work on the property being more common in the race.”
I’m still curious where you get this definition from. I can’t find support for you in it. Maybe it’s a fair reading of how the Neo-Nazis are using the term (assuming they both examining their own thinking at all) but it doesn’t seem to match the actual terms definition. And having a firm definition is actually a critical part of essentialism (according to Wikipedia).
“So it’s not right to say that “Tolkien’s books do demonstrate this idea for orcs” – it demonstrates it for humans vs. Orcs.”
It demonstrates it for Orcs versus everyone including the Spider race and Sauron himself. If a venomous arachnid and the devil are higher up the morality list then you are, you know you’ve got a problem.
“Do you concede that this is a different and (to use a journalistic phrase) more disturbing level of support than just liking the book and thinking every right-thinking person should read it?”
I do agree there are different levels of succour that can be taken/claimed from a text. On the other hand I think that reflects more on the claimant than the text. For example, everyone claims Orwell as a source of inspiration, but Marxists can also point at other authors and texts. Frankly Marxist texts are a lot more common than fascist texts. Given that I’d expect to see Marxists claim any particular text less frequently than if they only had one choice. Fascists, but your description, don’t claim many other texts as related to their thoughts. One interpretation is that the LotR is really racist and they don’t need a second source. The other interpretation (and the one I subscribe to) is that there are zero texts that aim to provide what they want and they really need to reach claim even this one as related.
So to directly answer your question: No I don’t think there are more disturbing levels of support to be claimed from a book. I think there are just schools of thought I find more disturbing and seeing any level of support claimed for them is more disturbing for me. If Hitler claimed he liked Spirited Away then it would be forever associated with him, even though the movie has nothing to do with any of his beliefs, and any time I watched it I’d be worrying that maybe there was something there that was evil and I was overlooking or, worse, accepting.
October 6, 2010 at 11:08 am
Regarding the conservatism, genre tropes, etc, I’ll address that in a separate blog post later this week. I might even do some research about what other people think of the relative creativity of the two genres in question. I do think that fantasy is lifting its restrictions (there was a single good goblin in Drizzt Do’Urden, after all) but I think its been held back, and not just by Tolkien (see my example in the post I just put up about le Guin’s unquestioning acceptance of genre tropes).
I would hope that subverting tropes would make for a useful and fun read and I have heard this about Orcs (which, btw, I’ve always wanted to read but never seem to be able to find the first volume of). Also, exploring the tropes sympathetically to show how nasty they really are could be interesting too (I think in a way Carcosa might do this with cthulhu and pulp fantasy, though I haven’t read it and don’t know).
I believe my blog deserves a great deal of condemnation, but provided it never actually does anything worthwhile, it’s fine.
I’ve explored the racial essentialism issue (with an example from modern theories) in a new post, so we can direct the debate there I think.
Finally, regarding the use of texts as propaganda, I think we’re just going to have to agree to disagree here. I think there is a very close nazi reading of Tolkien, very little dissension from it, and a lot of use of it for propaganda (mostly informal – but that’s a reflection of the fragmented and worthless nature of modern nazism). Anarchists use The Dispossessed in a similar way, and for good reason. Texts have relevance – that’s why we read them – and some texts are more relevant to some people than others. At the point where a text is being used by a group for propaganda, that text is being used to make a contribution to the interests of that group – and against the interests of the author, in this case (I think it’s uncontroversial to say that Tolkien hated Nazism and wouldn’t have been happy to be used by them as an educational tool). Lovers of the text can ignore that, try to reclaim their text, or attack the tendency, or accept that their text is flawed, but it’s a problem for the legacy of the text regardless of what they do. If the neo-Nazis swing to power tomorrow on the basis of the propaganda value of LoTR, and are then overthrown after a war where upwards of 30 million people die, I don’t think the LoTR will ever be popular again. This is why one verse of the German national anthem was removed, and the name Adolf Hitler is banned in Germany. Of course that’ll never happen to the LoTR; but you’ll note that leftist fans of Orwell have put in quite a bit of work to wrest interpretation of his work from the clutches of the liberal interventionists. I think by pointing out that Tolkien is used this way one can make a tiny step towards telling the Nazis to fuck off, and that’s always a good thing.
October 6, 2010 at 8:00 pm
Lovers of the text can ignore that, try to reclaim their text, or attack the tendency, or accept that their text is flawed, but it’s a problem for the legacy of the text regardless of what they do.
Which is exactly what I’m trying to do! (I can’t speak for Paul.) Any reading of racial essentialism (or fascism, or racism, or whatever) in Tolkien is just wrong, formally wrong, based on what is actually in the texts, and it can be easily demonstrated to be so.
If the neo-Nazis swing to power tomorrow on the basis of the propaganda value of LoTR, and are then overthrown after a war where upwards of 30 million people die, I don’t think the LoTR will ever be popular again.
Wagner and Nietzche managed it. I think everyone recognises now that Wagner was an anti-semite but no more so than many other people alive at the time (e.g. Marx), and although the Nazis liked him his music is actually rather good anyway (though not to my tastes).
October 6, 2010 at 8:19 pm
“there was a single good goblin in Drizzt Do’Urden, after all”
Yeah, there was a single good goblin in a book that’s all about how the evil elves who are always evil are in fact sometimes very good. Are you forgetting 1. This is Drizzt book, and 2. Hack
Or maybe you haven’t read any of them, in which that must be a nice place to be in mentally. I’ve got a copy of Orcs and always wanted to try to read it, but actually reading it makes me want to be back at a point in time where I’ve never picked it up and it’s just an interesting concept.
October 6, 2010 at 8:26 pm
Noisms, you keep saying I’m formally wrong but you haven’t presented any proof.
Paul: I’ve never read a drizzt book (I think) and I’m happy to take your word for it. Disappointed about orcs though!
October 7, 2010 at 7:48 pm
Faustus, you’ve just consistently ignored my proof.
October 7, 2010 at 10:56 pm
That’s because “NOOOO! You hate Tolkien!!!!1!” isn’t a proof, it’s a denial.
October 7, 2010 at 11:40 pm
What I really want to hear from Faustus is an example of a book where you can’t read some sort of racist/facist etc. message into it. I’ll bet he can’t provide an example.
The characterization of a book as racist simply because you CAN read it that way is meaningless, as his own Winnie the poo example shows–you can read racist subtexts into ANYTHING. The real question is authorial intent(either conscious or subconscious).
October 7, 2010 at 11:56 pm
Where did I ever even imply that I think you hate Tolkien? Yet another thing which you allege I’ve said (“Southrons aren’t brown”) but which has sprouted from your own brain, I daresay.
I’ve consistently provided textual evidence going against your argument, and all you’ve managed is the verbal equivalent of sticking your fingers in your eyes and saying “Nah nah nah” or words to that effect. I think you’re the only one reading this who thinks your argument is remotely satisfactory.
October 8, 2010 at 7:22 am
Oh Noisms, why are we still playing the troll-game? You said this in comment 6 of the C&C Fascist reader:
In this same comment you backed down on a previous claim (that I was calling Tolkien a fascist!) by pretending it was all a joke; and again about comment 50 or so I had to school you on basic literary criticism, because you were again drifting into play-the-man territory.
Regarding brown people, you said this back on one of the previous threads (Tolkien’s racial theories, I think it was):
I’m glad you’re drifting around to accepting a formalist reading of the book, but you should try to remember how your opinions have changed in recent time if you want to play the game of denying what you said.
You haven’t provided textual evidence against my argument. The first 10 comments on this thread were me correcting your understanding of the post and trying to stop you trolling; the rest of the thread has been you trolling. When you can find textual evidence that Tolkien made humans as evil as Orcs, then we’ll be getting somewhere. Have at it.
October 8, 2010 at 7:29 am
Billy, I’m pretty sure Orwell’s 1984 can’t be read for fascist messages; Homage To Catalonia can’t either (or even racist, despite the role of foreign powers in destroying his dream – though I think there’s a few minor elements of racism towards the Spanish, they’re pretty insignificant). In fact Orwell’s whole opus is pretty clear as far as I can remember. Solzhenitsyn too, for that matter, looking at the other side of the coin. Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon is another good example. I don’t think you could read a racist or fascist message into The Left Hand of Darkness and, probably, taken by itself I’d suggest that even the scientific racism in The Hobbit would be pretty weak (it’s been a long time). The entire Dragonlance series is scientific racist but not supportive of fascist theory as far as I can remember – it seems to be more of a libertarian-style “just leave us alone” message. Contrary to Paul’s cunning assertions I don’t think you can read racism into A Wizard of Earthsea but I don’t have time to rebut him in detail – I have guests and I’m writing this response quickly before I go to work. I’m pretty sure you can’t read scientific racism or fascism in Leiber’s Swords Against Lankhmar series or in Conan, though I haven’t looked closely so I could be wrong.
Reading a message into a book is a task that requires more than just imagination. If you doubt this, go to the Stormfront website and read their “favorite fantasy books” thread. These are people who desperately want to imagine that their favorite books support their worldview, and when those books do they declare it loud and clear, but even they can’t find strong supportive messages in a lot of books.
October 8, 2010 at 4:42 pm
You want to interpret 1984 in a fascist manner? No worries, my poor memory of the text and a little simulated fascist blindness to the actual meaning of the text will have this ready for you in the blink of an eye.
As always, this is intended purely as an exercise in proving Faustus wrong. I don’t believe anything that follows. Basically this is Doublethink at it’s best. Note that doesn’t disprove the following text.
Also Spoiler Warning.
1984 is a a clear anti-communist text that could have been written by any anti-bolshevik writer. In it the author demonstrates the dangers that communism poses to the Aryan race, represented by Winston Smith. In it the United Kingdom has fallen to a communist rule, brought about by Big Brother and his associate Emmanuel Goldstein (the first indication that the Jewish parties have been involved in the overthrow of the rightful rule). Through the course of the novel we find that Winston’s superior breeding (born to native English parents) and love for the lovely frau Julia allow him to rebel against the crushing oppression levied on him.
Eventually he is exposed to a rift in the Jewish conspiracy and in a misguided attempt to restore freedom to his people allows himself to become associated with Emmanuel Goldstein and the bolshevik resistance. From this point Winston is doomed. The alleged resistance is revealed to be another front through which the Jewish conspiracy is manipulating Winston and the English.
In the end Winston is broken and fails his duty to himself and his people. This demonstrates the arguement so cogently presented by Faustus that even a superior race can fail when a weakness of will is present.
Now I need to go have a bath.
October 8, 2010 at 7:28 pm
There’s no discussion of the relationship between Winston’s race and his politics, morality or personal traits. So that link fails. There’s no evidence that Goldstein is a Jew – his dad could have been Jewish but his mother non-Jewish. And anti-communist doesn’t mean fascist. There’s no evidence that the conspiracy to unmask him was Jewish and I seem to recall his interrogator was non-Jewish.
So nyah.
October 8, 2010 at 10:28 pm
There is no discussion of relationship between his race and politics, but he is explicitly English. The evidence that Goldstein is a Jew is pretty self evident. You can ask around on Stormfront for their thoughts, but I think I’m pretty safe on that one. Anti-communist doesn’t mean fascist, but Nazi does mean anti-communist. In most readings of the book the state is non-racial, but we know that Goldstein was a founder of the regime and it’s not hard to extrapolate that the other founders were therefore Jewish (sure you have to want that interpretation, but there’s nothing there to suggest it’s wrong). His interrogator was O’Brian or something like that, but as you’ve pointed out the Nazis were happy to believe that other races could be corrupted.
Therefore we’re got a story about how corruption leads to communism. It’s a racial tragedy.
Yeah, sure this is drawing a long bow but it’s not an invalid argument and it actually resets on exactly the points you made: a corruption story combined with another element that can be linked to race (like say explicitly setting it in England) allows for interpretation of a Nazi story.
By contrast LotR has corruption linked with a struggle against an evil force. Exactly the same description can be applied to 1984, except where LotR has the good guys winning 1984 doesn’t.
@Other readers – What do you think? I don’t think I’ve got a terribly strong argument, but I do think it’s met the standards Faustus called for.
October 9, 2010 at 1:40 am
Winston is English isn’t sufficient. It has to have an actual theory of morality being linked to race. Making Winston English doesn’t do that. In fact, English isn’t a race – white is a race. You need a slightly stronger definition of race and a stronger link between his morality and his race. Winston doesn’t even have a morality for most of the book – he’s just a confused guy who is sure something isn’t quite right. And assuming the rest of the leadership is Jewish ’cause Goldstein is requires a leap of faith – there’s nothing in the text to support it.
I don’t think this is a strong reading!
October 9, 2010 at 9:39 am
No. Scientific racism and racial essentialism don’t relate purely to morality, regardless of how often you raise morality in Lord of the Rings as an example.
Scientific racism is a theory that race X is “superior” to race Y due to “reason Z”. Thus “Aryans are superior” doesn’t have to mean that they’re kinder to puppies, it could be interpreted as smarter/stronger while simultaneously being as cruel to puppies. The reason you’re confusing them is because the racial essentialism charge the Nazis alleged against the Jews was “they are evil”.
So all your sentances about “morality” in post 87 are gibberish.
On the other hand an English man is clearly a member of the Aryan race, just as a German is. Or maybe you think that Orwell meant “black Londoner” when he wrote “English” in 1948? Frankly I think you’ll find the basises of the time shaped his view just as much as Tolkien was shaped by his. English and white are the same thing in 1948.
Therefore I only need to demonstrate a potential interpretation between his (easily identified) race and his actions. Which I can assume as I’m playing the part of a Nazi. I don’t need to form a Nazi theory out of the text. I need to interpret the text in light of Nazi theory.
“And assuming the rest of the leadership is Jewish ’cause Goldstein is requires a leap of faith”
Somewhat. But in contrast assuming that green skinned orcs are in fact black also requires a leap of faith with zero support[1]. And given that the Nazi’s “know” that there is an evil Jewish conspiracy I don’t need to provide any further evidence once the first member of the evil conspiracy is revealed to be Jewish. In a fascist reading the truth is self evident.
I know you can’t see the interpretation I’m providing, but I’ll give you a tip on how to see it: Imagine you’re Noisms and someone is saying Tolkien has a racist message in it.
[1] The comments on the Southrons are easier to link as the black skinned guys representing black people isn’t a leap of faith, but lots of your comments on LotR are about orcs. If you drop orcs from the equation then you lose all your points on Racial Essentialism.
October 11, 2010 at 11:14 am
You don’t demonstrate an interpretation of a link between his race and his actions by saying “he was white and he did this.” You need some evidence from the text that his actions were ascribed to his race. You need a theory that can be at least inferred from the text, not a coincidence. Every other white person in the text behaves contrary to Winston, in a wide variety of different ways, and no link is given between race and actions either for whites, for any of the three nations, or for the proles. Goldstein though clearly a Jewish name is not presented as such in the book and there is no evidence of anti-semitism in his presentation by the party he portrayed. This could easily be portrayed, in the “Two Minutes of Hate,” but it isn’t. At the moment your theory is built on a coincidence.
Furthermore, scientific racism ascribes properties to races, not merely actions. We don’t see Winston’s actions as being due to a superior (racial) morality or intelligence, we simply see his actions. What property does Winston have that he shares with his fellow whities that causes him and only him to rebel steadfastly until the end of the book? How come his neighbours, the chap who talks to him about the Newspeak dictionary, and O’Brien and everyone else in the book behaves differently to him and to each other, in a way that is nowhere presented as a single racial trait?
In addition, Goldstein’s betrayal is not presented as racially-driven perfidy. Although he is Jewish, no theory is presented to link this, and although the coincidence of the only Jew in the book being a traitor could be used as evidence of a race-based model, it flounders on the very real possibility that Goldstein is an allegory to the real-life characters of Trotsky and Goldman (rebels against communism who were both Jewish, and whose names are close to the combined names of Emmanuel Goldstein).
In short, there’s no racial theory presented anywhere in the book, no consistent behaviour, and no underlying property of Winston or Goldstein that drives their actions that might be ascribable to race. No evidence is given to support a claim that Winston is a race-traitor; in fact people disappearing from life due to mistakes is quite common in 1984 and no racial treachery or underlying genetic flaw is attributed to this. They’re quite openly portrayed as just making a mistake.
I think you’ll have better luck on a different book…
October 11, 2010 at 11:15 pm
Oh Noisms, why are we still playing the troll-game?
Trolling = disagreeing with you and proving you wrong?
You said this in comment 6 of the C&C Fascist reader:
I’m pointing out how absurd it is to make the argument that, since nasty person x finds inspiration in the work of nice person y, there must be something pernicious about nice person y, after all
In this same comment you backed down on a previous claim (that I was calling Tolkien a fascist!) by pretending it was all a joke; and again about comment 50 or so I had to school you on basic literary criticism, because you were again drifting into play-the-man territory.
I don’t know what you mean about “pretending” it was all a joke – you seem to miss my humour even when it’s hitting you over the head with a club.
Anyway, just because I thought you were saying there is something pernicious about Tolkien (which you do seem to be saying; how else are we to interpret the allegation that his books are co-opted and used as supportive texts by fascists?) that doesn’t mean I thought you hated Tolkien. Any adult knows that you can think of somebody as being pernicious in some respects while still liking them and their work. (Lovecraft was a horrific racist but I still love his books.) So no, I never said anywhere that you hated Tolkien, nor anything that you could validly infer that from.
Regarding brown people, you said this back on one of the previous threads (Tolkien’s racial theories, I think it was):
Okay, this is getting close to slander. There are no black people in LOTR – let’s get that absolutely clear – and there is no link between “monsters” and black people.
I’m glad you’re drifting around to accepting a formalist reading of the book, but you should try to remember how your opinions have changed in recent time if you want to play the game of denying what you said.
Since when does black = brown? Seriously, mate, this is just idiotic. Haradrim and the like are clearly, if anything, based on real-world Arabs, who are certainly not black. That prior statement is entirely correct, and moreover totally irrelevant to this debate.
You haven’t provided textual evidence against my argument. The first 10 comments on this thread were me correcting your understanding of the post and trying to stop you trolling; the rest of the thread has been you trolling. When you can find textual evidence that Tolkien made humans as evil as Orcs, then we’ll be getting somewhere. Have at it.
What the fuck? The argument is now that Tolkien didn’t make humans as evil as orcs, in your mind? Since when, exactly?
You don’t have any credibility left on this, I’m afraid.
October 12, 2010 at 7:10 pm
Noisms, trolling is this process of constantly raising distractions based on gotchas, refusing to address any central point, challenging particular words even (and deriding any response that corrects your misinterpretation of a word as “mere semantics”), accusing me of hating Tolkien or attacking the big T himself (as I note you’re doing again) to the point that I have to put stupid pointless disclaimers into every post just to cool off your aggro, and continually derailing arguments to avoid the central challenge. Here you’re at it again, trying to turn the thread into a debate about black and brown and whether or not Tolkien intended the Haradrim to represent Africans or Asians.
Until you can come up with something of substance, some textual evidence to counter the central claim that a) LoTR has a scientific racist model of racial interaction and b) its tale of racial corruption and evil is very close to a Nazi racial theory, you’re just going to continue these roundabout claims and games of silly buggers. It’s very boring.
And when (if) you reply, try not to do any of the following:
a) insult me
b) accuse me of being some form of leftist that you hate
c) claim I lack credibility/knowledge/honesty
d) accuse me of attacking Tolkien himself (or seeming to).
You’re presenting the world with a classic example of why Tolkien needs to be rescued from his fanboys.
October 12, 2010 at 8:03 pm
Aren’t you “attacking Tolkien himself” by claiming that he wrote a book about scientific racism and saying “his politics is not worth rehabilitating”?
I guess you would say that he was a ‘product of his times’, but is that really an excuse for such degenerate philosophies? Were Hitler and Stalin just ‘products of their times’?
Also how do you understand Tolkien’s unequivocal rejection of racism?
“The treatment of colour nearly always horrifies anyone going out from Britain.”(Letters, no. 61, to Christopher Tolkien, 18 April 1944)
Also his condemnation of Nazi “race-doctrine” and anti-Semitism as “wholly pernicious and unscientific”(Letters, no. 29, to Stanley Unwin, 25 July 1938)
Rather is seems that Tolkien was trying to accomplish something with the books that has nothing to do with race. In fact he repeatedly refuted those who tried to impose a political message on his writings.
So your claim that “his politics is not worth rehabilitating”? simply doesn’t make sense–the books’ message is not a political one.
October 12, 2010 at 9:13 pm
Thanks Billy. I think I addressed some of this before but I’ll answer your questions again.
The key point is that a book can have politics that the author doesn’t intend, as I’ve tried to illustrate through the example of Ursula le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea. In this case the politics can be not worth rehabilitating even if the book itself were not intended to say anything.
I have given some examples (in various posts) of how I think the politics of the book are consistent with the politics of his times. In the thread subsequent to this I have tried to show how a standard application of scientific racism such as was popular in his time, plus a tale of corruption, can lead to a very nasty politics quite by accident. In fact a lot of people do argue that Hitler and Stalin (and more importantly, the political movements that supported them) were indeed products of their times – the product, respectively, of 100 years of anti-semitism plus the Treaty of Versailles, and 20 years of revolution plus an impending war with its associated imperatives. George Bush is a man of his times, and managed to start a war that killed over a million people in a country of 25 million. I’m debating this issue of context elsewhere in connection with Robert E Howard.
Regarding his letters, there’s nothing in the quotes you provide to suggest that he disapproved or approved of the British attitude towards the way other nations treat “coloured” people; and I think I observed elsewhere that you can be a scientific racist and condemn Nazi “race-doctrine,” which at the time was seen by racists like Winston Churchill as extreme and dangerous. Indeed, it’s perfectly possible given Tolkien’s views on the superiority of Jews that he would oppose Nazi race-doctrine while supporting their view of Slavs and Russians. Nothing in the quote supports or disproves this theory. For the record, I’m completely certain that Tolkien opposed race-doctrine because he thought it was generally abhorrent and evil; but that didn’t preclude being a racist at that time. My Grandfather fought Franco and Hitler – he spent 9 years killing Nazis and Fascists, and had a pretty rough time of it (including never being able to return to his homeland) but the things he used to say about other races would curl your ears (and my Grandmother, who married him, was even worse). I think a lot of people reading and commenting on this issue don’t understand just how deep-rooted racism and scientific racism were in the interwar years.
But as I have said repeatedly, this isn’t about the big T himself, but about the content, meaning, interpretation and use of his books. A completely different issue.
October 18, 2010 at 3:42 am
I won’t bother responding to your latest comment to me, because, really, what’s the point? You’ve proven yourself to be blinkered to the point of absurdity, here. Perhaps in a few months or years you’ll re-read this comment thread and realise that you’ve made quite a fool of yourself in it.
May 2, 2015 at 7:04 am
[…] roles for women). Or instead of complaining about the lack of diversity in Game of Thrones or The Lord Of The Rings, creating a new multicultural fantasy world, with Wizard and dragons and non-White […]
January 4, 2021 at 3:28 pm
Don’t ask me how I wandered in here years after a dead debate, but it seems Paul and noisms soundly refuted the author, despite the latter’s rather shabby habit of resorting to calling one of his interlocutors a “troll”. Time after time, the central assertions were addressed and refuted – with a patience I probably couldn’t muster – only to be handwaved away by claiming clearly stated arguments were never offered. There really is no excuse for such a gambit in written communication.
It was so egregious that I felt compelled to remark on it, for what little it’s worth.
January 4, 2021 at 5:50 pm
Perhaps, Burn_the_Witch, instead of this vague cheerleading, you could point out a single argument that Noisms has actually made that rises beyond “you’re wrong to say that” and perhaps try to explain how I failed to answer it? It’s been a long time since I read the dross written here, but I don’t see anything except strident denialism. If you can do better, feel free to try.