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OwlFancier posted:If you're looking for it it's easily read but as I say I never really got the impression that Tolkien was racist, just that his books can be read somewhat that way if you want them to. It's been an awful long time since I reread LOTR, but IIRC there's plenty of "swarthier Men = more evil/fallen" stuff. And then there's orcs. They're subhuman creatures, crude degraded versions of Men (or was it Elves? I forget) created by a Devil-like figure. The very worst of the Orcs possess the darkest skin. Despite being foul and corrupted, Orcs are threateningly superior in many ways: fiendishly strong, animalistic, avaricious, fast-breeding menaces to all that is good. They lust after and resent the status of higher races. The only solution to the Orc problem which any good guy contemplates is indiscriminate slaughter. Peace talks, negotiations? Impossible.. Our Heroes cheerily wade in Orc blood, competing to rack up the highest possible body count without ever expressing any guilt or remorse, because why would they??? Orcs are vermin and deserve their fate. If you don't notice the congruences with an awful lot of racist tropes, I don't know what to say. I don't think Tolkien was consciously going for racism here, but once you notice it you can't help but be disquieted by the fact that these fairly racist ideas are objective truths in his fantasy world. By the way you guys who are trying to rehabilitate Lovecraft by talking about his Jewish wife? Yeah, about that... HP Lovecraft, in 1928 posted:Smith, to my mind, is a direct exponent of the newer-immigration element—the decadent & unassimilable hordes from Southern Europe & the East whose presence in large numbers is a direct & profound menace to the continued growth of the Nordic-American nation we know. Some people may like the idea of a mongrel America like the late Roman Empire, but I for one prefer to die in the same America that I was born in. Therefore, I’m against any candidate who talks of letting down the bars to stunted brachycephalic South-Italians & rat-faced half-Mongoloid Russian & Polish Jews, & all that cursed scum! You in the Middle West can’t conceive of the extent of the menace. You ought to see a typical Eastern city crowd—swart, aberrant physiognomies, & gestures & jabbering born of alien instincts. He'd been married to her for several years at that point. There have always been racists who befriended, married, and/or hosed individual members of the classes they hated -- and, from the other end, people who put up with bigoted lovers because attraction is weird. Not to mention the many cases where a power imbalance keeps someone in a relationship that has ceased to be good. This is why "I have $MINORITY friends/spouse, I can't be racist!" is always bullshit. The marriage didn't even last more than a few years, by the way, and I can't imagine that this kind of attitude had nothing to do with it. I mentioned power imbalances, but in this case, despite the time and place, she didn't need him, he needed her. Lovecraft was a lazy failure of a man who wouldn't go outside of the house during the day and could not find or hold decent jobs, so she had to support him. From afar, because he wouldn't move to the city where she found work. Another amusing detail is that although she moved on and remarried, technically they were never divorced. Lovecraft promised to file the papers, but never did so, and she didn't find out until much later.
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Jan 8, 2016 12:45
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Maoist Pussy posted:What are some good resources if i am into alt-rightness but without the racism? / 
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May 1, 2016 19:55
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