this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2026
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Chapotraphouse
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No anti-nautilism posts. See: Eco-fascism Primer
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All good vs evil stories of the absolute can and will be coopted by fascists. They simplify all conflict in a way that numbs critical thought and people's ability to analyse. Everything is reduced to biological essentialism, that the enemy is ontologically evil and that's that.
Even liberal bullshit like Harry Potter can be coopted by fascism simply by framing the enemy as whatever out-group you want them to be. Clearly to liberals they are fascists, but to fascists Voldemort can be anyone. You want him to be Netanyahu? Done. You want him to be Xi? Putin? Done. You want the Death Eaters to be the PSL central committee? Easy. Doesn't matter.
Good vs evil stories all work with fascism. Conflict must be represented in a more complex way to avoid it.
LotR isnt absolute tho, and explicitly rejects the morals the fash take from it lol. The reality is the fash will take what they like and coopt it (if they even read the book—my impression is most right wing engagement is with the whitewashed jackson movies)
Tolkien actually has a letter talking about this absolutist interpretation and how untrue it is:
That second last sentence in particular is key: we do not see the civilians of the East or South, their regular people. We see their soldiers who are allied with Sauron to wage a war for global domination. We see, repeatedly, that some of these soldiers (orcs included) have mixed feelings—but not so much as to lead them to desert or question bad or evil orders; much like the western soldiers theyre based on.
When enemy soldiers flee, as after the battle at the black gate, they arent chased down and exterminated and, unlike the movies, they dont just dissolve into dust bc, in the books, they are people (albeit extremely warped people, like the British of today). With time for their society to not be a slave-military of sauron, they will likely change.
The closest thing to a pure good LotR has is the Ents (and even they can go rotten!). The closest to a pure evil is Sauron who, again, explicitly, did not start evil and is not "ontologically" evil; he is a powerful being who has chosen to amass power to himself and destroy nature, becoming evil, and constantly choosing to do evil.
Yeah, there's the evil tree (or an ent who became a tree, or a tree becoming an ent) in the Old Forest. There's evil even in the greatest strong hold of good like Bombadil's realm.
In Harry Potter's case, their cooption worked so well they even convinced the author to be a fascist!
Two exceptions come to mind, Wolfenstein and Avatar.
Chuds like the corporate colonizers from Avatar and think they're cool.
I don't think that would be alleviated by making them more sympathetic.
This is not a counter to Beanis Brain's point. It would be if chuds identified with the Na'vi, and in that sense coopted the simple good vs evil story for their own narratives. Instead Avatar so clearly lays out the nature (
) of the players in the conflict that chuds can only look at it and say
"RDA did nothing wrong!
"
they also do this with class struggle