Wow I can't imagine why reactionaries keep latching onto this fantasy series about the Men of the West uniting under a rightful monarch to wage justified war against a corrupt and evil race, written by a man who supported Francisco Franco

[–] GalaxyBrain@hexbear.net 22 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Peter Jackson did a lot of the damage here. That and the extended mythology being spread across the silmarillion and like 12 other super long books of drafts and notes and letters etc. However, the first and second age both show that these Men Of the West kinda fucking suck. Even prior to Sauron getting involved the Numenoreans were brutal colonists, displacing people and then absolutely devastating the area via resource extraction, mostly to build more ships to do more colonizing. The people they fucked over were even technically on the same level as them in their own invented race hierarchy. A decent amount of the elves also fucking suck and based on the very sparse physical descriptions they dont look nearly as aryan as the movies and generally dont view themselves as our superiors with a few notable exceptions. Orcs are corrupted but not inherently evil, they're basically slaves to whatever dark lord is going on at the time and are killed on site by most other people, Tolkien struggled with this himself but for the first age youre more or less under the literal control of an evil god and then for the next 30 000 years or so every non orc has been out to kill you, it makes prettt good sense to me the feeling would be mutual by now. My dude Ghan-Bury-Ghan in Return of the King talks about how the people of Rohan hunt his people. The dwarves generally come off okay, but the elves were mostly assholes until the 2nd age where there bullshit had almost destroyed the earth and they decided to chill a little, the Numenoreans were pricks and the Dunedain inherited their colonies. Supporting Franco is still fucking bad but like any other comment Tolkien ever made on contemporary issues, he's an incoherent dumbass. Dude was an anarcho monarchist.

[–] Chana@hexbear.net 12 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I do want to add that Tolkien supported Franco and his depiction of the "eastern" people was basically just orientalist racism.

[–] GalaxyBrain@hexbear.net 16 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

The regions of the east that helped out Sauron were Numenorean colonies. The ruler of one of em became a Nazgul. The writing itself, due to not doing much physical descriptions, also avoids a lot of orientalist tropes that the movies go head on into, which could be influencing your view.

"It was Sam's first view of a battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much. He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man's name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace - all in a flash of thought which was quickly driven from his mind" - Two Towes, Book 2, Chapter 4

[–] PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 3 weeks ago

The regions of the east that helped out Sauron were Numenorean colonies.

Umbar was, Khand was not but it was iirc ruled by nazgul, Easterlings and Haradrims actually had a very good reasons to ally with Sauron because every time Gondor had a good period, it invaded them. Also depictions of Haradrim iconography suggest it was just one faction out of that huge land.

[–] ComradeRat@hexbear.net 4 points 3 weeks ago

No I really cant imagine how the series about short brown farmers (read the description of hobbits in ch1 of the hobbit!) help create a multispecies coalition to destroy the armies of industrial europe before they do more ecocide and genocide gets latched onto by reactionaries

Like ffs in the hobbit its suggested that modern society is goblin society! This is right before the down to goblin town song everyone knows!!!! In lotr, orcs do the whole modern european army thing with numbers, reports, orders, etc, and everyone just latches onto the whip song from the movie and the (reactionary) descriptions and depictions of their appearance.

Also afaik the support for franco thing ammounts to one letter where he is upset about anticlericalism. Reactionary yes, but if we're basing his views on his letters he spends far more time complaining about the british and american empires than any other (and suggests the soviets to be better than either),