Tolkien's Politics

New blog on the kid: Tolkien's Politics · I Thought That Decree Was by Franco · Why I am Not Capitalist or for Unrestricted Free Market · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Tolkien Supported Franco's Side in the 36—39 War · Prince Caspian · Lord of the Rings: Motivations for Fandom · Tolkienophobes, Buzz Off! · Tolkienophobe Identified? · J D Vance-Phobes? · Crooks' (or Yearick's?) Body Gone · Sharing On The Shooting

Why Tolkien Hated Democracy
Ink and Fantasy | 30 March 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TT2TLKjX8s

PS, I think I am being harrassed by Tolkien non-fans. After this was published, I got this notification on quora:

Why would I care? Rationally, I mean? I know I have been better off since my teens for reading Tolkien, intellectually, emotionally and morally, than I would otherwise have been. Why would I care about some crook or nincompoop pretending Tolkien was racist or promoted extreme violence or had some other bad influence? But some people who are following me apparently do care.

I'm 55, and they apparently think I could go back to my teens and the insecurities I had back then, and read Isaac Asimov and become a better and more harmonic and intellectually consistent man. No. Isaac Asimov is very inferior to Tolkien. I have held "Foundation" in my hands, and it's partly a hatchet job on Catholicism, partly divinisation of the divination called psychology. Foreknowledge can be had by God. Nearly but not quite accurate foreknowledge can be had by the devil. It cannot be had by calculations like "it was statistically a 95 % chance that we would be arrested right now" as Hari Seldon tries to tell another character.

deretour: Notes on Asimov, Isaac
https://hglundahlsblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/notes-on-asimov-isaac.html

PPS, to give a comparison. It is certain that Benjamin Franklin and Voltaire, unlike Tolkien, approved of keeping Black people from Africa as slaves. Would it be OK to target anyone who showed an equal admiration for Voltaire or for Franklin, and suppose this meant they really want to see every black man in chains? No. Neither does it so having an author who describes some of his baddies as "swarthy" ... in a conflict on that large a scale, as described in the Lord of the Rings, the bad side has to have an origin. This doesn't mean every swarthy person is bad. Should be very obvious. This also doesn't mean that a given reader makes that kind of idiotic supposal. Should be equally obvious. Not to my long term harassers, though!/HGL