[davem]

Originally Posted by SpM

For is there not a kernel of truth in what Hari, for example, is saying? I do not believe for one moment that Tolkien was a racist and have put forward my own arguments against the intepretation of his writings in this way. But it is undoubtedly the case that his works are unfortunately used by some to justify their own racist agendas.

But Tolkien can't be held responsible for the way his writings are misused by fanatics - yet that seems to be exactly what Hari is doing. He is so wrong about Tolkien's beliefs, about what LotR is actually about. He says:

Tolkien presents his readers with an absolute enemy who must simply be destroyed: purely evil and incapable of human feeling. Of course, no such war can ever happen; it is a pernicious Tolkienian myth.

Tolkien states the same thing clearly in Letter 78, when he tells CT 'There are no genuine Uruks, creatures made evil by their creator.'

Again:

Ideals of ‘blood’ and its purity are always sloshing around his narrative. For example, the Men of Gondor - "the high men" - are descendants of the Numenorians, the greatest of all warriors. Over the centuries, they have become ‘degraded’ because of breeding with inferior races. When their bloodline is pure, as in Aragorn’s descendants, the strength and power of the original Lords of the West is retained. Alarm bells ringing yet?

misses the point entirely. Tolkien repeatedly shows how the Numenorean's obsession with bloodlines brings them to disaster (cf the Kinstrife). The only significance of Aragorn's blood is that it is the same as that which flowed in the veins of Luthien & Melian - it is divine.

Also:

As the academic Dr Stephen Shapiro explains, "Tolkien was not a Nazi but he was a Nordicist in that his works hark back to England’s original culture before the Norman invasion. The Lord of the Rings makes a claim for a pan-Nordic identity or a paradigm for Great Britain and a lament for the disappearance of these races. This speaks to a long-standing European anxitiety about being swamped by non-Europeans. Tolkein was a real traditionalist in this way."

There was hardly a 'pan-Nordic identity' in the pre-Conquest period. In fact the single event that most contributed to the victory of the Normans over the Anglo-Saxons was the battle King Harold had to fight against the Norsemen at Stamford Bridge. Come to that, the Normans were descendants of Vikings & therefore a 'Nordic' people.

And Tolkien is hardly unique in his regret over the Conquest. English culture was devastated, centuries of suffering for the English, Welsh, Scots & Irish followed.

Finally:

"Sauron’s army was the one that included every species and race on Middle Earth, including all the despised colours of humanity, and all the lower classes," he explains. "Might they have imagined they were the good guys, with a justifiable greivance worth fighting for, rebelling against an ancient, rigid, pyramid-shaped, feudal hierarchy toppled by invader-alien elves and their Numenorian-colonialist human lackeys? Sauron, champion of the Middle Earthling!"

Is simply wrong. Sauron's army did not include every species & race on Middle Earth (sic). It included Men, Orcs & Trolls. It did not include Elves, Dwarves or Hobbits. Also, it hardly matters what his armies believed - they might well have believed they were 'the good guys with a justifiable greivance worth fighting for, rebelling against an ancient, rigid, pyramid-shaped, feudal hierarchy toppled by invader-alien elves and their Numenorian-colonialist human lackey'. I'm sure members of the SS believed they were the good guys as well. Believing a thing doesn't make it true - a cliche, but also a simple fact beyond Brin's, or Hari's wit.

I don't know if Hari is genuinely outraged by Tolkien, or if he is just trying to be provocative. If its the former he's displaying his ignorance, if its the latter he's just being childish.

What's also bloody annoying is that he probably gets paid 10 times my salary to write this junk