In Tolkien stories, all the good guys are liberals. Saruman and his uruk-hai are perhaps the most leftist things there are in those stories. Elves are moderate conservatives with some questionable histories.
No, Sauron is the same character I meant to talk about. The master of Saruman. Sauron is a theocratic dictator, and Saruman is, politically speaking, a Bishop-Duke. His ideology must be the same as Sauron’s because he serves Sauron. And Sauron implements theocratic dictatorship in Isengard and Mordor. Theocratic dictatorship, as you must be aware, is a far right ideology. And nazis are also far right, but I’m not sure why they’re the topic of discussion.
Nazism (/ˈnɑːtsɪzəm, ˈnæt-/ NA(H)T-siz-əm; also Naziism /-si.ɪzəm/),[1] the common name in English for National Socialism (German: Nationalsozialismus, German: [natsi̯oˈnaːlzotsi̯aˌlɪsmʊs] ⓘ), is the far-right totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany.
But really…
Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
“The Shire at this time had hardly any ‘government.’ Families for the most part managed their own affairs. … The Thain was the master of the Shire-moot, and captain of the Shire-muster and the Hobbitry-in-arms, but as a muster and moot were only held in times of emergency, which no longer occurred, the Thainship had ceased to be more than a nominal dignity.”
Sounds like night-watch libertarianism that had declined to something even more minimal. Which ironically was easily run over by a smooth-talking old man with a broken staff and a pretty small bunch of ruffians. You had one job.
I think at that point all he had was smooth talking.
Like if we could imagine a president who tried to regain his power by usurping, failed and lost all his power, and then somehow is allowed to try again. Aren’t we glad LOTR is just fantasy, that’d be horrible.
I would argue Gandalf uses not smooth talking, but fast talking. He does whatever he wants before the hobbits have even mustered up the indignation to say no. That’s what happens at the beginning of the Hobbit. The book says most of the respectable hobbits hated Gandalf and only the children and the adventurous liked him, and nobody respected the adventurous hobbits all too much, Bagginses and their wealth not withstanding.
Hobbiton is definitely capitalist or feudalist in some idealised fantasy manner. Samwise is employed as Frodo’s gardener because Bilbo’s dragon treasure made the Bagginses rich.
Tolkien was a wonderful man personally, but he struggled at thinking outside of the paradigms he knew, which were based on catholicism. Lord of the Rings is a fundamentally christian story in a lot of subtle ways that have had negative ramifications on the entire genre of fantasy in the decades since. I will say that Tolkien believed in the selfless, loving christianity that Jesus was talking about, and that’s pretty good, but it’s not perfect. It leads to blindnesses like the fact that the only governments present in Middle Earth are feudalism (hobbits, men, elves), theocracy (orcs), and just literally being one with nature (ents). Jesus may have said to give a poor man the cloak off your back, but by the 20th century those ideas had been filtered through Rome’s horrible point of view and England’s worse one. The possibility space for what a devout christian can conceptualise had been reduced, even when reading the words directly from the bible.
Anyway if you’re curious about the more significant problems with Tolkien’s worldbuilding, the big one is the racial controversy surrounding orcs that arose when people started moving an explicitly christian myth into realist settings, and to a lesser extent there’s the “fallen empire” trope that I just find really annoying in everything except Halo and Warframe (this is because both of those games state that the fallen empire sucked and were destroyed by their own hubris, which is just so juicy. Those games are antifascist as fuck).
I don’t know that I’d call Halo anti-fascist lol, but otherwise this a great breakdown of Tolkien’s mindset while creating Middle Earth that hits the important elements without getting lost in the weeds, like trying to figure out whatever the fuck Tolkien thinks “anarcho monarchism” actually is and how, exactly, it’s different, much less better, than an absolute monarchy.
The core thesis of Halo is “if soldiers were allowed to do whatever they want, they’d destroy the world”. Halo 1, Chief wants to fire the ring and Cortana stops him. Halo 2, Arby wants to genocide the humans and everyone says that’s a bad idea and then he gets genocided. Halo 3, Hood wants to do a heroic last stand on earth and everyone says that’s a bad idea. Halo ODST, stop killing huragok they’re slaves. Halo Reach, stop going down in a blaze of glory and carry cortana. Halo 4, stop putting your giant phallic ship before earth. Also the whole reason for the human covenant war is that Truth lied and started a genocide to avoid admitting that humans are gods.
Every single game is about soldiers and politicians making bad decisions based on violence, hate, and pride until a scientist or a smart person stops them and explains what’s actually going on.
And then a literal Ubermensch saves the galaxy, again, mostly with violence.
I get what you mean, but I think that message might be getting lost if that was the intention. Plus all those smart people still work for space fascists in the first place.
Heck, reminding myself of the details of the UEG/UNSC I’m looking at a Reddit thread right now were some poor kid asked if they had a shadow fascist government and all the comments are assuring him no, a military junta is in fact very cool and based, so even if the writers intended that poor kid’s questioning to be the goal of the Halo narrative, um, mission failed.
The Master Chief has massive psychological trauma from being a child soldier. That trauma has always been a central part of his arc, and whether the covenant’s invasion justifies Halsey’s actions in retrospect has always been a central question of the universe. The reason Halsey is kind of a Nazi is that she’s implanted with a Geas by the librarian to follow in the footsteps of the Forerunners, and the forerunners sucked. Halo is concerned with big philosophical questions, and I like those questions, and none of the answers to those questions say fascism is okay.
Lol, saruman was more or less a theocratic monarchist with highly authoritarian practices like killing any who opposed his will. He literally used magic to dominate the wills of others. If anyone was leftist in that series it was the Hobbits. They were outright Communist with no government. Though there was certainly still a class structure of sorts there. It’s just tough to get a better look at Hobbit social politics. The books tend to just say “then they talked about their family history for 3 more hours” whenever it comes up.
Regardless, the stated intent of the story was to relay his experiences with war. Not with any political system. The forces of sauron and saruman just represented war itself. The feeling of its inevitable March towards you no matter how much you don’t want it and dread it. It’s very much how I’ve been feeling lately.
Hobbits had a government and a class system. In Tolkien it’s divine monarchies all the way down, some are just God willed and others are… Technically also God willed, because the good guys need bad guys to stab, I guess.
In Tolkien stories, all the good guys are liberals. Saruman and his uruk-hai are perhaps the most leftist things there are in those stories. Elves are moderate conservatives with some questionable histories.
I hope everyone here appreciates what a special moment this is. This has potential to be the most downvoted comment on Lemmy.
That comment somehow manages to be more divisive than the Palestinian conflict. A truly remarkable sequence of specious assertions that is guaranteed to piss off vast swathes of the population. Almost brings a tear to my eye
Did people forget what divisive means? I would say it’s exactly the opposite of divisive, it’s a comment that is produced as much singular unified reaction as you could possibly get.
I meant what I said. Most people disagree with the comment, but probably for a wide variety of reasons. It’s not a singular reaction, it’s multiple reactions to multiple insinuations that all happen to be questionable.
It’s a bit sad for Lemmy if 76 downvotes gets you to such a status. But mixing an interpretation of Tolkien with an anti-left message might indeed be one of the best ways to get there.
Nobody but tankies understand that.
In Tolkien stories, all the good guys are liberals. Saruman and his uruk-hai are perhaps the most leftist things there are in those stories. Elves are moderate conservatives with some questionable histories.
Welp, that’s simultaneously the most “Enlightened Centrist” thing and the most batshit crazy dumb as a rock thing I’ve read in 2024 so far!
Donald Trump himself has less stupid takes than that!
Aww, don’t sell yourself short.
I’m not. If anything, I’m going too easy on your absolutely brain dead take.
What? How so?
Well obviously because when Pippin was sick, the orcs gave him free medicine
/s
Because I don’t like leftists, probably :)
No but seriously, I was thinking of the tankie type there, not all leftists. And wrote lazily. Sorry.
Tankies aren’t leftists and Sauron isn’t a tankie.
Well yeah, and nazis are technically authoritarian centrists, not the far right. These labels are bad and they should feel bad.
Different fella. No idea what his politics are, but probably not very liberal.
No, Sauron is the same character I meant to talk about. The master of Saruman. Sauron is a theocratic dictator, and Saruman is, politically speaking, a Bishop-Duke. His ideology must be the same as Sauron’s because he serves Sauron. And Sauron implements theocratic dictatorship in Isengard and Mordor. Theocratic dictatorship, as you must be aware, is a far right ideology. And nazis are also far right, but I’m not sure why they’re the topic of discussion.
But really…
— Jean-Paul Sartre
Does Hobbiton have any sort of government that I’m forgetting about or otherwise unaware of? I’ve always thought of it as an anarchists paradise
Sounds like night-watch libertarianism that had declined to something even more minimal. Which ironically was easily run over by a smooth-talking old man with a broken staff and a pretty small bunch of ruffians. You had one job.
Smooth talking old man that is secretly a god.
Angel, not God.
Yeah but he had fireworks though
I think at that point all he had was smooth talking.
Like if we could imagine a president who tried to regain his power by usurping, failed and lost all his power, and then somehow is allowed to try again. Aren’t we glad LOTR is just fantasy, that’d be horrible.
I would argue Gandalf uses not smooth talking, but fast talking. He does whatever he wants before the hobbits have even mustered up the indignation to say no. That’s what happens at the beginning of the Hobbit. The book says most of the respectable hobbits hated Gandalf and only the children and the adventurous liked him, and nobody respected the adventurous hobbits all too much, Bagginses and their wealth not withstanding.
Pretty sure the person you’re responding to is referring to Saruman infiltrating the Shire at the end of the series, not Gandalf.
Hobbiton is definitely capitalist or feudalist in some idealised fantasy manner. Samwise is employed as Frodo’s gardener because Bilbo’s dragon treasure made the Bagginses rich.
Tolkien was a wonderful man personally, but he struggled at thinking outside of the paradigms he knew, which were based on catholicism. Lord of the Rings is a fundamentally christian story in a lot of subtle ways that have had negative ramifications on the entire genre of fantasy in the decades since. I will say that Tolkien believed in the selfless, loving christianity that Jesus was talking about, and that’s pretty good, but it’s not perfect. It leads to blindnesses like the fact that the only governments present in Middle Earth are feudalism (hobbits, men, elves), theocracy (orcs), and just literally being one with nature (ents). Jesus may have said to give a poor man the cloak off your back, but by the 20th century those ideas had been filtered through Rome’s horrible point of view and England’s worse one. The possibility space for what a devout christian can conceptualise had been reduced, even when reading the words directly from the bible.
Anyway if you’re curious about the more significant problems with Tolkien’s worldbuilding, the big one is the racial controversy surrounding orcs that arose when people started moving an explicitly christian myth into realist settings, and to a lesser extent there’s the “fallen empire” trope that I just find really annoying in everything except Halo and Warframe (this is because both of those games state that the fallen empire sucked and were destroyed by their own hubris, which is just so juicy. Those games are antifascist as fuck).
I don’t know that I’d call Halo anti-fascist lol, but otherwise this a great breakdown of Tolkien’s mindset while creating Middle Earth that hits the important elements without getting lost in the weeds, like trying to figure out whatever the fuck Tolkien thinks “anarcho monarchism” actually is and how, exactly, it’s different, much less better, than an absolute monarchy.
The core thesis of Halo is “if soldiers were allowed to do whatever they want, they’d destroy the world”. Halo 1, Chief wants to fire the ring and Cortana stops him. Halo 2, Arby wants to genocide the humans and everyone says that’s a bad idea and then he gets genocided. Halo 3, Hood wants to do a heroic last stand on earth and everyone says that’s a bad idea. Halo ODST, stop killing huragok they’re slaves. Halo Reach, stop going down in a blaze of glory and carry cortana. Halo 4, stop putting your giant phallic ship before earth. Also the whole reason for the human covenant war is that Truth lied and started a genocide to avoid admitting that humans are gods.
Every single game is about soldiers and politicians making bad decisions based on violence, hate, and pride until a scientist or a smart person stops them and explains what’s actually going on.
And then a literal Ubermensch saves the galaxy, again, mostly with violence.
I get what you mean, but I think that message might be getting lost if that was the intention. Plus all those smart people still work for space fascists in the first place.
Heck, reminding myself of the details of the UEG/UNSC I’m looking at a Reddit thread right now were some poor kid asked if they had a shadow fascist government and all the comments are assuring him no, a military junta is in fact very cool and based, so even if the writers intended that poor kid’s questioning to be the goal of the Halo narrative, um, mission failed.
The Master Chief has massive psychological trauma from being a child soldier. That trauma has always been a central part of his arc, and whether the covenant’s invasion justifies Halsey’s actions in retrospect has always been a central question of the universe. The reason Halsey is kind of a Nazi is that she’s implanted with a Geas by the librarian to follow in the footsteps of the Forerunners, and the forerunners sucked. Halo is concerned with big philosophical questions, and I like those questions, and none of the answers to those questions say fascism is okay.
Lol, saruman was more or less a theocratic monarchist with highly authoritarian practices like killing any who opposed his will. He literally used magic to dominate the wills of others. If anyone was leftist in that series it was the Hobbits. They were outright Communist with no government. Though there was certainly still a class structure of sorts there. It’s just tough to get a better look at Hobbit social politics. The books tend to just say “then they talked about their family history for 3 more hours” whenever it comes up.
Regardless, the stated intent of the story was to relay his experiences with war. Not with any political system. The forces of sauron and saruman just represented war itself. The feeling of its inevitable March towards you no matter how much you don’t want it and dread it. It’s very much how I’ve been feeling lately.
Hobbits had a government and a class system. In Tolkien it’s divine monarchies all the way down, some are just God willed and others are… Technically also God willed, because the good guys need bad guys to stab, I guess.
I hope everyone here appreciates what a special moment this is. This has potential to be the most downvoted comment on Lemmy.
That comment somehow manages to be more divisive than the Palestinian conflict. A truly remarkable sequence of specious assertions that is guaranteed to piss off vast swathes of the population. Almost brings a tear to my eye
As a far left anarchist that loves Lord of the Rings I was very specifically offended
Did people forget what divisive means? I would say it’s exactly the opposite of divisive, it’s a comment that is produced as much singular unified reaction as you could possibly get.
I meant what I said. Most people disagree with the comment, but probably for a wide variety of reasons. It’s not a singular reaction, it’s multiple reactions to multiple insinuations that all happen to be questionable.
Yeah and I meant what I said that you don’t get what divisive actually means.
And you were incorrect.
It’s a bit sad for Lemmy if 76 downvotes gets you to such a status. But mixing an interpretation of Tolkien with an anti-left message might indeed be one of the best ways to get there.
You might enjoy my other greatest hit: https://suppo.fi/comment/3202858
Don’t worry, it’s 76 and counting.