In the interview linked to below, China Mieville claims that high fantasy is conservative, and that due to its prominence the fantasy genre in general is judged as conservative by critics. This seems pretty uncontroversial to me, but over at Monsters and Manuals this claim was disputed as a shallow interpretation of Tolkien and of high fantasy generally. It’s not just the 3 people I’ve been arguing with over there, either (hi guys!). Many people try to rescue Tolkien (or their other favourite high fantasy writers) from this claim, because they think that somehow being conservative means they shouldn’t be reading it (or that people think they shouldn’t be). But it doesn’t work. Tolkien’s books are fun but they are politically pretty obnoxious, and the same goes for high fantasy generally. I’m going to expand on Mieville’s throwaway points in that interview, and add in a few of my own, with examples. Then we’ll discuss the core issue of choices. It’s been a while since I read much high fantasy, so I hope my examples aren’t too off beam – and of course when i say “High Fantasy novels say that…” I don’t mean every novel shares every point. Just add a silent “in general” to my phrases. Let’s first look at the characteristics common to most high fantasy novels:
- Racial Essentialism: This is the main criticism of Tolkien, and it’s definitely a strong one. High Fantasy tends to divide the world into races with really clear essential characteristics, both physically and psychologically. The physical characteristics are exaggerated, and the psychological characteristics are really restrictive. Dwarves are stubborn and proud, elves are more intelligent and creative than anyone else, etc. This extends to the evil races too, which are clearly intellectually and socially inferior. The stereotypes of the evil races clearly relate to stereotypes of black people that were extant in the 30s, and in general the evil races also happen to be swarthy and kind of, well, blackish. If the humans ever have any racial diversity, this also follows strict characteristics – the “cruel haradrim”, for example. It doesn’t necessarily matter whether the races follow black/white colour lines, because the key conservative point is the essentialism. Races are different, and they shouldn’t mix, and when they do society degenerates. The model for Gondor and the mingling of High and Common Men is a clear reference to racial theory of the 30s. Wriggle as much as you like, but Tolkien is an established eugenicist and his writing doesn’t shy away from that. This trope is repeated in an awful lot of subsequent high fantasy – it’s a struggle to find any that doesn’t contain this idea, and this idea is a cornerstone of 20th century conservatism.
- Racial exclusion: almost all heroes in high fantasy are white. For more information about this – and for some example of what it means and has meant historically for non-white readers – I recommend this article, which I came to from Ursula le Guin’s website. This problem has been discussed extensively as well in the world of literary criticism, and as far as I can tell it’s not up for debate anymore. High Fantasy is white. Now, it may be that the authors only want to write about their own colour, but if that’s the only reason, it’s kind of an unfortunate coincidence that racial exclusionism also happens to be an essential element of much conservative politics.
- The male saviour: Most fantasy stories involve a male saviour rescuing a crumbling nation state from an external threat. The saviour is always male, and of course white. Harry Potter, Belgarath, Frodo (not to mention everyone else in that story), Eragon, the kid in the Robert Jordan series, Druss, Tanis Half-elven, Conan, whatever… they’re all male. When women enter high fantasy they do so as teachers or wise women, or occasionally in support roles.
- External threats and nation states: In LoTR, the world of men was crumbling through racial intermixing, and awaited a racially pure king to resurrect the nation state. In most High Fantasy there is an external threat which only a strong nation state can protect against, and the role of the hero is to uncover their puissance and take power over the nation state, guiding it again to greatness. Although the nation state was not a strong concept in Dragonlance, the external threat was (it was an evil god); but the presence of both together is prevalent throughout the genre. The enemy within is usually a nerdy, anti-war figure who accomodates the enemy out of fear and is used as a spy or traitor. Consider the Wheel of Time, that awful Terry Goodkind stuff, Stephen Donaldson, the Worm Ourouboros, Eragon, the Belgariad, Magician, etc. It’s a very common idea.
- Gender roles: sure, in modern High Fantasy there are sometimes female characters, but the world itself is continually recreated as a world in which women serve and men rule. It’s fantasy, anything goes, but for some reason women always are “goodwives” (shudder) or feisty aunts at best. And the female characters are not acually quite the feminist achievements one might expect – read this review of the Wheel of Time for a good description of how female characters often serve to reiterate classic stereotypes of feminine weakness, intransigence or triviality. Often as well the powerful ones get knocked down a peg or two before the end, and although women in general can’t rule in these worlds, they are often over-represented amongst the bad guys (e.g., there are two female characters in Dragonlance and one is evil). Harry Potter is a good example of this – Hermione is ostensibly a strong female character, but at every climax in the first novels she is knocked unconscious or otherwise unable to be an active participant in the plan she helped formulate, ultimately being rescued by the boys.
- Nuclear family: we know that in the middle ages Nuclear families were not the norm, and that this is a modern invention, as is childhood as a concept. Yet High Fantasy worlds – which are sticklers for the truth when it comes to the role of women in peasant societies – seem to be very good at ignoring the real family structures of their carefully reconstructed societies, and instead populating them with perfect nuclear families. The nuclear family is a touchstone conservative issue, and is reproduced out of time and place in almost all fantasy novels.
- Inherited Wealth: Not necessarily in the form of money, because in fantasy worlds money plays second fiddle to magic, which is usually inherited either as a talent or through attendance at a special school which it is only possible to enter through selection. Even though magic breaks the rules of conservation of matter, and therefore in principle enables High Fantasy worlds to be utopias like The Culture, magic is always hoarded by a powerful class who dispense it amongst their favourites. Harry Potter is a really good example of this – there is an elite world which he is allowed into by dint of his having inherited this form of wealth, and throughout the novels he is given for free things which only the very rich can afford. Free to those who can afford it, very expensive to those who can’t - a conservative trope, and well reproduced through the medium of magic.
- Heteronormative: do we know of any gay characters anywhere in High Fantasy? How coincidental, in a world of nuclear families…
- Glorification of war: having read the Silmarillion, I find it impossible to comprehend the claim that Tolkien doesn’t glorify war. That’s all his stories are about. I suppose you could excuse it because he’s british, but still… it’s also not the case that “glorifying war” means saying “yay! more people dying”. Literature which glorifies war always talks about the tragedy, the loss of youth, the hardship. It’s part of the admiration of muscular masculinity and discipline which is going on beneath this glorification. It’s a hard life to be a soldiering bloke, but how noble it is, etc. This is prevalent throughout fantasy too – in The Worm Ouroubouros, at the end of the novel the battles are over and they all go back to their homes to plan the next war because life without war is boring. The Sturm side story in Dragonlance is a classic example of this mixed glorification/tragedy complex. High Fantasy stories without war at their centre are rare.
- Genocide is cool: because of the glorification of war and the racial essentialism, it’s inevitable that the bad guys are going to be wiped out to a man. This has been discussed extensively as a criticism of D&D and it’s true – there is an unquestioning acceptance throughout High Fantasy that mass murder is acceptable. It’s worth noting that when the genre began, eugenics had taken over in anti-semitic literature, and extermination as the “final solution” was beginning to become an acceptable notion, because racial essentialism based on biology (rather than culture) demands it. You can read about this link in Hitler’s Willing Executioners (which is otherwise a pretty dodgy book). I don’t think anyone believes Tolkien supported genocide in reality, but the logic of High Fantasy demands it and that is essentially what was planned throughout the novels, by both sides. It has continued to be an acceptable act in subsequent iterations of the genre.
- Libertarian or authoritarian communities: High Fantasy tends to allow the good guys only two types of community. On the one hand we see small rural idylls run on generally libertarian or communitarian grounds, because life is so simple that they can be self-managed, and there is no racial mixing to cause crime; and on the other we see large kingdoms run by strong men, usually inheriting their position but sometimes voted in. The concept of a strong man appointed by popular election was popular in the interwar period, when liberalism and democracy were beginning to look a bit shonky, and it was supported by a much larger segment of the world than just Germany and Italy. In fact most of Europe was under this leadership, and many in England and America beyond Oswald Mosley were looking for the same thing. This is reflected in modern High Fantasy, whose origins lie in that turbulent time. In contrast, the bad guys often have a classless or semi-classless society, run by a strong man or sometimes anarchist, often with strong inter-racial mixing. Sounds a bit like a well-described conflict from that time…
We can’t help that the original stories were written in the interwar period when racial essentialism, nuclear families, eugenics and dictatorship were popular. But we can help the choices we make as modern authors. Why, for example, do modern authors decide to be meticulously careful in their reproduction of mediaeval gender roles for their fantasy society, but completely ignore the family structures of the time? In both cases, the result fits perfectly with a conservative project. Why do they go to great lengths to reproduce the poverty of that time, while sprinkling the world with a series of perpetual motion machines (i.e. magic) which could solve all economic problems overnight? Because they want to reproduce and intensify structures of inherited wealth, and present them as inevitable, objective facts even where the solution is freely available. This is why those early fantasy novels provided the means to ensure free health care to everyone (healing magic) but you never saw it in action – except when the king goes to war, and his soldiers go to the healing tent.
Many authors are no doubt reproducing these tropes without thought, but when you reproduce a conservative worldview without consideration, you are by definition being conservative. That’s what conservatives do. Some authors (such as Goodkind and Tolkien) are more actively using their work as a political screed in favour of conservatism. The beauty of the High Fantasy world is that it is fun, so you can reproduce these things without boring your readers’ socks off. But let’s not pretend that the world couldn’t be just as interesting without a few changes – women and men being equal, for example, or racial intermixing being positive instead of negative. And if you don’t want to do these things, you have to accept the conservative label which this kind of thoughtless reproduction of conservative politics will earn you.
June 1, 2009 at 2:13 pm
[...] race, racialism, racism, rpg — jatori @ 3:13 pm There’s an excellent post on Conservatism and High Fantasy at Compromise and Conceit. I recommend that you go read [...]
June 1, 2009 at 2:23 pm
I’ll write a response to this in my blog but I just want to point out that in no respect is Tolkien a eugenicist and (I think) you’re not clear about what eugenics actually is. Eugenics is the belief that a given population or the human species as a whole can be improved by selective breeding. Tolkien never advocated this, as far as I’m aware, and his anti-government libertarian views would most certainly set him dead against it. (It should be noted that many if not most proponents of eugenics were not political conservatives but “progressives”, liberals and Marxists.)
I think the charge that you’re levelling at him is that he was opposed to miscegenation, i.e. the mixing of races. In fact Tolkien never espoused such views. Indeed he famously wrote in a letter to a German correspondent during the 1930s that it was to his regret that he didn’t have any Jewish blood. Also, don’t forget that breeding between races is fairly common in his work and is often portrayed in a positive light (e.g. Elrond).
More generally, you seem to treat “conservative” like it’s a dirty word. Stop doing that. “Conservatism” is as respectable (or unrespectable) a position as is liberalism, and the number of conservatives who “reproduce a conservative worldview without consideration” is the same as the number of liberals who reproduce a liberal worldview without consideration; neither group is more respectable than the other. I could count on one hand the number of political liberals I’ve met who have a modicum of relexivity over their beliefs – and the number of idiotic blinkered liberals I’ve met could fill a bus station.
June 1, 2009 at 2:50 pm
I’m aware of what eugenics is, and it needs to be borne in mind when reading anything from the interwar period that eugenics was the backdrop against which enlightened scientists and political thinkers operated in that time. It was assumed, the way democracy is assumed now. He was definitely opposed to racial mixing, and his novels show a very strong and clear belief in racial determinism, an essential component of eugenics. It’s worth noting that a lot of people at the time who were pro-eugenic and anti racial mixing were also not anti-semitic, considering Jews to be a superior rather than an inferior race. This is why Tolkien wishe dhe had a bit of Jewish in him, because he wanted to be smarter, and this is why elrond is a good mix – because the elves civilise anyone they procreate with[1].
I don’t treat conservative as a dirty word, but conservatism is by definition the process of reproducing social relations as they stand now. The ingredients of conservatism which I describe in this post aren’t even necessarily all relevant to British or Australian conservatism as it stands now, since conservatism in our two countries has a strong liberal tradition. But in the interwar period, when the groundwork for High Fantasy was laid, these were the traits of conservatism, and to the extent that some of them are still held to be relevant now they remain strong aspects of conservatism[2], not liberalism. And please, don’t confuse liberalism and radicalism. The Australian conservative party is actually called “The Liberal Party”. Liberalism is neither reflexively radical nor blinkered – by definition. Mieville, for example, is not a liberal.
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fn1: incidentally, this aspect of eugenics – the belief that a superior race could civilise a lower race – was exactly the philosophy behind the 100 year genocide programme of “breeding out the colour” in Australian Aborigines, who were considered so ancient and genetically fragile that all the biologically determined negative traits of aboriginality could be bred away in just 2 generations. This is why in the interwar period the Australian government was stealing Aboriginal children from their parents and sending them to orphanages, and this is why I have included “genocide is cool” in my list of conservative traits, even though we know that the modern British and Australian conservative parties don’t support genocide (though they were happy to kill a million Iraqis).
fn2: because conservatism in the non-American English speaking world has moved forward in the last 20 years, the kind of conservatism you see enacted in High Fantasy now is beginning to look like a caricature of itself, the sort of thing that even a Tory Grandee would consider a bit backward and embarrassing. In that sense High Fantasy remains kind of entertaining, because the genre is drifting further away from reality even as it doesn’t change. But this doesn’t free it – or Tolkien, its progenitor – from the accusation of being conservative, at least until the last Tory Grandee is hanging from a lamp post[3]
fn3: which, just to be clear, is a joke, but depending on the results of the European elections maybe won’t be so funny next week
June 1, 2009 at 4:04 pm
It was assumed, the way democracy is assumed now.
Not by Tolkien. You’re going to have to provide evidence that the man ever espoused such views, because I’m not aware of any. It isn’t remotely fair or satisfactory to saying that eugenics was accepted between the wars by conservatives, Tolkien was a conservative, QED Tolkien supported it.
He was definitely opposed to racial mixing…
And yet not in the case of Jews or elves? This is very contradictory. Let’s not forget that it’s not only elves; there’s mixing between the Rohirrim (barbarians) and Gondorians (of high blood) portrayed in a positive light in the books.
Let’s also not forget that many of pure Numenorean blood are servants of Sauron in LOTR (the Corsairs and Black Numenoreans). That is, people who are purer Numenoreans than Dunedain (like Aragorn) end up supporting the Dark Lord.
And please, don’t confuse liberalism and radicalism. The Australian conservative party is actually called “The Liberal Party”. Liberalism is neither reflexively radical nor blinkered – by definition. Mieville, for example, is not a liberal.
I’m not confusing the terms, I’m point out that prominent liberals (Keynes, Wilson), Marxists (Stalin) and “progressives” (H. G. Wells) all supported eugenics. It wasn’t a conservative idea, but a baby of the centre and the whole political spectrum of the left. (In this and many other things, Nazism was a hard left ideology.)
I’m amused that you think liberalism is not radical or blinkered, by the way. Liberals can be as radical and blinkered as anybody, and often are. Just because liberalism is “milder” as an ideology than, say, fascism, and thus less noticeable when it is espoused in a radical and blinkered way, doesn’t mean it can’t be either of those things.
June 2, 2009 at 9:59 pm
I’m assuming that Tolkien supported eugenics because at the time most people of his age and status did. But it’s true I don’t have any support for that assumption. Note that being libertarian doesn’t preclude supporting eugenics – David Watson (of Watson and Crick fame) has a libertarian position on eugenics[1], for example. Also, I don’t think Tolkien was libertarian, because libertarianism didn’t really exist at the time he wrote LoTR. But I don’t know for sure about that…
The racial mixing between Rohirrim and Gondorians is portrayed in a bad light in the books, and particularly the Numenoreans are said to have weakened by inter-breeding. This is a direct reiteration of the Aryan model of history, popular in the interwar period[2]. Inter-breeding is good in this model for the lesser species and bad for the higher ones (on Earth: whites; in Middle Earth, Numenoreans).
While it’s true that there are black Numenoreans and evil Dunedain, they are a minority because these races are assumed to be inherently good. In LoTR, only black people (and their extension, monsters) are so simplistic as to have only one racially fixed morality. But the “higher” races have natural inclinations. This is determinism.
In this and many other things, Nazism was a hard left ideology – can we not even go into this little trope? Nazism went to war and destroyed itself in order to destroy the only hard left country on the globe. It was anti-union, anti-gay, anti-woman, it glorified war, its first victims were always the hard left, it was best mates with big business, and it had a complex about throwing society back to an 18th century Utopia. It was not in any sense hard left. This is a zombified cliche whose head needs to be cut off.
Also, eugenics was not just a baby of the centre and the left. It was commonly believed by people of all political flavours. There were some on the right and the soft left who opposed it practically, but they all bought into its basic premises. You might like to consider Churchill as an example. Eugenics was supported by pretty much all of “educated” or “civilised” society in every developed nation in the interwar period.
Finally, I think you’re confusing liberalism I’m talking of (as defined by Hume et al) with “liberalism”, the slur used by American “conservatives” to describe anyone who opposes war and killing abortion doctors[3]. All major political parties on both sides of politics in every commonwealth nation are liberal. It is not, therefore, a particularly blinkered politics.
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fn1: I can’t support this claim either except to say I saw him on an interview on the 7:30 Report in Australia about 5 years ago, giving some very nasty views about aborting gay children.
fn2: particularly with eugenicists, which is why I think Tolkien was and why even if he wasn’t his work is broadly supportive of this worldview
fn3: which doesn’t seem a particularly blinkered view either – most American “liberals” would be conservative by our lights.
June 2, 2009 at 10:49 pm
Well I’m glad that you admit that you simply assumed Tolkien was in favour of eugenics. I’d really recommend that you read the collection of his letters that was published a few years ago. I think you’d be surprised at the kind of man he was and the kind of beliefs he had. Libertarianism per se might not have existed in the 1930s but Tolkien was about as opposed to government as it’s possible to be – and since eugenics more or less requires an all pervasive leftist type of government in order to be implemented it’s pretty much impossible to imagine Tolkien supporting it.
While it’s true that there are black Numenoreans and evil Dunedain, they are a minority because these races are assumed to be inherently good. In LoTR, only black people (and their extension, monsters) are so simplistic as to have only one racially fixed morality. But the “higher” races have natural inclinations. This is determinism.
Okay, this is getting close to slander. There are no black people in LOTR – let’s get that absolutely clear – and there is no link between “monsters” and black people. Orcs in Middle Earth mythology are corrupted elves. Trolls are corrupted Ents. Other monsters (Dragons, vampires, werewolves) are probably corrupted Maiar (i.e. angels) and the Black Riders are Northerners (i.e. white men).
Tolkien doesn’t give exact figures, but there is good reason to believe that Black Numenoreans (black here doesn’t refer to skin colour) and Corsairs are the majority population who trace their ancestry to Numenor. Numenor, don’t forget, started out good but was turned to worship of Sauron by hubris – and in the Silmarillion it’s made clear that the “good” Numenoreans (from whom the Dunedain trace their ancestry) are a tiny minority of the survivors of that line.
The very fact that most of the Numenoreans turned to worship of Sauron also contradicts your assertion that the race is assumed to be “inherently good”.
can we not even go into this little trope? Nazism went to war and destroyed itself in order to destroy the only hard left country on the globe. It was anti-union, anti-gay, anti-woman, it glorified war, its first victims were always the hard left, it was best mates with big business, and it had a complex about throwing society back to an 18th century Utopia. It was not in any sense hard left.
You don’t think the Soviet Union was anti-gay and glorified war?
What were the domestic policies of the Nazis? A cornerstone of Nazism was that it was opposed to Capitalism, which was portrayed as a Jewish ideology. State control of all aspects of the economy was instituted under Nazi rule, including e.g. central planning of agriculture and industry. In many respects Nazism and Communism were identical when it came to domestic policy.
The main difference between Communism and Nazism was that the former was predicated on notions of race-war where the former was not. Even this distinction disappeared under Stalin when Jews, along with Central Asians, Don Cossacks and Ukrainians were portrayed as enemies of the revolution.
Finally, I think you’re confusing liberalism I’m talking of (as defined by Hume et al) with “liberalism”, the slur used by American “conservatives” to describe anyone who opposes war and killing abortion doctors[3]. All major political parties on both sides of politics in every commonwealth nation are liberal. It is not, therefore, a particularly blinkered politics.
You misunderstand. No form of politics is more blinkered than another, but the people who believe in a form of politics can be. This includes liberals as it does any person of any political stripe.
June 2, 2009 at 11:06 pm
Noisms! The haradrim are black. The easterlings are Asian. This isn’t slander, he wrote it. All the non-white people are evil – I think this counts as a link between colour and being a monster. There is also an obvious rhetoric of “white=good” and “black=bad”. We can all join the dots…
As for the Nazi thing, their economic policies were not “left”. They destroyed small businesses if they were unproductive but sold them onto medium-sized businesses as part of an economic productivity plan[1] in preparation for the war. It’s true that they planned a State controlled economy, but this is because they were planning a war, and at every stage in the process they stuck by a free-market ideology for as long as they were able. The Nazis were distinctly not opposed to capitalism. In fact, whenever any of the Nazi leadership showed any signs of moving towards hard left economic policies they were destroyed, with Ernst Rohm being the first and most obvious casualty of this (his homosexuality didn’t play a large part in his destruction)[2]. The Nazi Party, like Mussolini’s fascists, supported a model of capitalism based on large companies controlling production, because they believed it was productive and easily geared to war – a kind of zaibatsu for total war. Outside of economics, the Nazi’s first serious act of international aggression was against the anarchists and socialists of Spain, who were abandoned by the Soviets for being too “hard left”. In their rise to power the Nazis courted exclusively the conservatives, and their propaganda glorified the Kaiser and Frederick the Great. These are not the ideologies of a hard left party, and were most definitely not the beliefs of the communists in Germany at the time that they were exterminated by the Nazis. In fact, the supposedly “hard left” politics of the Nazis were so incomprehensible to the actual hard left that almost none of them joined up. How does that work?
Incidentally, I discovered in writing all this that the inventor of the term eugenics (Francis Galton) was Jewish. The past is indeed an alien country…
Also, I think the entry of nazism into this discussion means we’ve lost our way…
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fn1: see Architects of Annihilation for an interesting description of Nazi economic plans before the war – they were remarkably mixed.
fn2: this is well described in The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard J Evans.
June 3, 2009 at 11:41 am
For some reason I can’t reply to the latest comment.
The Haradrim aren’t black, they’re semitic, and they aren’t inherently evil – and nor are the Easterlings. (The ethnicity of the Easterlings is never described, by the way.) Groups of those races have been corrupted by Sauron, in the same way that most (white) Numenoreans were. The Dunlendings, a white race, are similarly corrupted (by Saruman) and fight with his forces at Helm’s Deep. Your portrayal of Tolkien just doesn’t stand up to a formalist reading of the text.
We can debate Nazism until the cows come home, but I feel it’s important to point out that we seem to have different signifiers of what “left” and “right” stand for. For me the political left is chiefly defined by state control and centralisation of the economy, and by ideas that human nature is malleable and can be shaped by political philosophies, culture and government. Nazism, like Bolshevism, ticks all of those boxes. It might be the case that Nazis believed that human nature could be improved by weeding out “weaker” races where Bolsheviks took a non-racial view (at least initially). But the principle idea – that human nature can be shaped and improved – is the same. As is the centralisation of the economy; the destruction of small businesses in Germany and/or their forced sales is state control of the economy – it is certainly not Capitalism! Small businesses are the cornerstone of what Capitalism is all about.
I’d argue that your other evidence – opposition to socialists and anarchists in Spain, destruction of German communists – was simply designed to prevent the spread of Bolshevism, which was functionally equivalent to the spread of Soviet power. Germany was gearing itself for a race-war against the Soviet Union, and in order to be successful it couldn’t have a fifth-column of communists at home, or a pro-Soviet Spain ready to attack it in the back.
The glorification of the Kaiser and Frederick the Great are indications of the (abhorrent) philosophy of improving the human race by making Aryans the masters of Europe, not of conservatism. You couldn’t get a less conservative world-view than that of the Nazis, as it involved the destruction of entire races and a reshaping of the world’s very racial, cultural and political structures.
June 3, 2009 at 6:06 pm
Oh well, if they’re semitic it must be fine – no hint of racial difference there. As for the Easterlings, my meticulously researched MERP manuals disagree with you and I think that might require some investigation. The Dunlendings are an aboriginal race, distinct from the Numenoreans and pushed out of their hereditary lands by the Rohirrim and Dunedain, in a nasty historical incident presented in a completely neutral tone in the appendices of the book. I think I will investigate this in more detail before I comment further, though.
The political left is a much broader definition than you present – modern liberalism is not necessarily particualrly in favour of state control of the economy, for example. The Hard Left of the interwar period was, but it was distinct from Nazism. The Nazis were pro free-market, which as I said in my previous comment led to the destruction of Ernst Rohm and the exclusion or subjugation of his SA cohorts. Nazi land reform plans were explicitly free market, involving the seizure of liebensraum and its division amongst white small-holders to farm as they saw fit. Nazi industrial policy was to maintain a mixed market, but when they came to power they realised that they had a large number of small businesses that were “intensive” not “extensive” – they only supported their owners, and didn’t add anything to the productive capacity of the economy. So they siezed these businesses, merged them and redistributed them to medium-sized businesses. Most of the small businesses were Jewish and the medium-sized ones were white. They required the businesses to submit a business plan indicating how they would be profitable, and had an office for doing this, but the result remained private. There are interesting parallels between the development of this policy – ultimately aimed at making the economy productive for war against the hard left, i.e. Russia – and the development of their exterminationist programme. Later, as war loomed, they started taking over the economy directly for centralised control – as did Great Britain, Canada, Australia and the USA. Centralised control at that time was not a marker of left vs. right, but a marker of planning for and/or involvement in the largest war the world has ever seen.
Interestingly, Margaret Thatcher believed in using economic levers to shape the human mind – she said herself that the goal of economic liberalisation was not just to change society but to reshape attitudes. It’s not just a marker of the political left that they believe the state can control individuals – look at the rabid “conservatives” in America who see the state as an instrument of social control to maintain a christian society, but reject any form of state intervention in the economy. I should point out too that until the 70s, most western societies were happy with the destruction of entire races and the reshaping of their racial and cultural structures – they did it to Aborigines in Australia and to Palestine, Pakistan and India, for example, over that time period.
In short, conservatism is a lot more into racial control than you think it is, and Nazism had much more in common with conservatism than with leftism. Which, as I said, is why the communists in Germany, in the early 30s, in areas where the Nazis were gaining significant popularity, didn’t switch sides.
June 6, 2009 at 3:06 pm
[...] politics, stupid stupid things, Tolkien | No Comments In response to the recent stoush over Tolkien, race and conservatism, I did a little more research on Tolkien’s racial theories and their similarities to other [...]
June 17, 2009 at 9:16 pm
I don’t think Tolkien would have supported any extreme as liberalism and conservatism at the far ends both have their versions of political terror. But it is true that conservative ideals sometimes assert themselves — such as the belief that the old way was the better, more powerful, way.
All that said, I’ve found some excellent examples of liberalism in fantasy books as well. Ursula LeGuin, Marion Zimmer Bradley and Mercedes Lackey wrote some wonderful stories that seemed to have liberal values running through them.
Another, more recent find, is Luthiel’s Song which brings gender, religious and nature of good and evil conflicts directly into mythic fantasy in a beautiful manner. Even issues such as animal rights are addressed in small ways. The author, Robert Fanney, makes some beautiful allusions to history as well. For example, in the middle ages, foul weather and crop failures associated with the little ice age were blamed on witches. This is an underlying theme of his fantasy tale.
June 18, 2009 at 8:52 pm
Thanks for the comment Shelly. I agree about Tolkien’s political views, though my purpose in writing about his racial theories and conservatism is more to describe the political impact of his books than to interpret his own ideas. I certainly think he must have been conservative, though.
I’m a big fan of leGuin, though I haven’t read much Mercedes Lackey. I definitely think that there is a stream of high fantasy which is attempting to diversify the genre, but I think it’s in the minority and even some of the most liberal writers – such as leGuin – can sometimes be forced to adopt conservative elements by the genre (for example, Ursula le Guin is on record as regretting the implication in the first 3 books of Earthsea give a strong implication that only men can do magic, and she explicitly confronted this idea in the fourth book with a kind of late feminist reinterpretation of her own considerable contribution to the genre).
I shall give this Luthiel’s song a go… thanks for the recommendation.
July 8, 2009 at 3:31 pm
This argument has become confused by unclear use of the term RACE.
For one thing, racism is real. To not include it in something with such an epic scope would have been a mistake. The concept of races may be fanciful but it has existed throughout the history of human imagination (much like religion). The multitude of different types of people is part of the diversity of fantasy. Racial disharmony is NOT cast in a favorable light, which indeed would have been a HUGE mistake that Tolkien did not make regardless of how ethnocentric he may or may not have actually been.
However, the argument is over 2 things specifically: Elves, being light skinned in general, versus Orcs, being dark skinned in general; and the issue of one or more of the ethnicities of the opposing humans.
Elves are mythical creatures, in this case Nordic ones. Not all Tolkien’s elves were good. They have done nasty things to each other in the past. Many of them have bitterness towards humans. They are distinctly NOT HUMAN except in general appearance. If they represent any human group at all, it would be indigenous and/or druidic-type people of Europe’s ancient past, who would be considered “savage” by “conservative” standards.
Orcs are to Elves what demons are to angels, but even more tragic. Their corruption was INFLICTED on them. They are distinctly INHUMAN, or corruptions of elves, not “black” (brown) humans. Their “black” skin is distinctly inhuman, not that of “african” humans. The similarity is in the mind of the critic.
One or more of the human armies opposing the protagonists were dark skinned. However, they were ultimately pitied for having been on the wrong side politically, not racially. Other peoples mentioned throughout the history of Middle Earth have had various skin tones. I seem to recall more than one protagonist having “ruddy” or “swarthy” skin.
There was some clear use of symbolism to indicate that “light” does not always equal “good” and “dark” or “black” does not always equal “bad.” Several of the most corruptible individuals were also some of the most European of the bunch, including a few kings and Saruman the White Wizard.
If this were American literature, one could reasonably argue that some races were underrepresented in these works, and might incorrectly believe Orcs were meant to represent some race. If this is to be compared with works before and since, it is also fair to say that they are also underrepresented in the Sherlock Holmes and Brothers Grimm works, and that Northern Europeans are underrepresented in the Vedas or the Bible or various African or other legends, and so on.
Tolkien was not a racist, nor was he right-wing. I even hesitate to call him socially conservative or ethnocentric simply because he did try to cast many, many races in a positive light and even lamented the fall of everything that Melkor/Morgoth, Sauron, and Saruman corrupted.
July 8, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Thanks for commenting on my blog Grey. I think you should review your comments in view of my other post, though, on Tolkien’s racial theories, because some of your facts are not correct. Tolkien stated his intent to make the Orcs look mongoloid, for example, and the humans were on the wrong side racially – the racial theory is better explained in my other post.
Several people who have spoken/commented about this have made the mistake of thinking that the main criticism here is that orcs are “black” and elves “white”. This is not, as you suggest, the specific argument. The specific argument is that Tolkien’s work shows the conservative trait of racial essentialism. That is, regardless of the colour of the people, their moral differences are racially determined. It doesn’t matter if the elves are green and the orcs blue. This essentialism is given further relevance to real-life political theories of race by the racial correspondences of the world he created (see my other post about this).
Regarding the claim that elves also did evil, the issue here is not that the elves were able to choose to be evil but that the Orcs couldn’t choose to be good. No christian racialist[1] would claim that whites are better than blacks because they can’t do evil; rather they would argue it is easier for white people to do good and for black people to do evil (some argue this on the basis of biology, others have a religious theory behind this). Tolkien writes this very starkly – dark skinned people are biologically evil, while white-skinned people are biologically capable of free-will. Like “real” people are. Again, the argument here is 1) by racial essentialism, races shouldn’t mix because they’re morally different and 2) it just so happens that in this book the morally inferior races (the ones who can only do evil) are black or swarthy.
Finally, the issue is not primarily about whether Tolkien was conservative or not, it is whether or not the books he wrote (and others followed up on) have established a conservative and restrictive genre.
—
fn1: I don’t argue Tolkien is, this is just an example of one of many ways of thinking about race.
March 18, 2010 at 12:37 pm
[...] it would appear he had been working on a research theme similar to that which I’ve gathered here and here, about whether Tolkien is racist, racialist, or vulnerable to interpretation as such. The [...]
September 24, 2010 at 11:34 am
[...] two comments also give support to some of my claims about the conservative appeal of high fantasy.Note as well that this stuff transcends any individual national interpretation of Tolkien – [...]
October 24, 2010 at 12:22 am
[...] hope to escape the constrictions of the real world in such an environment. Is this because of the conservatism of high fantasy, is it inevitable when a large number of ordinary men do a hobby, or is the attitude in the gaming [...]
December 20, 2010 at 11:29 am
[...] between censorship and being asked not to say bad things (or, as I have found in my theme on racism in fantasy, criticizing the things you love). I wonder how much this suspicion is to do with the origins of a [...]
January 25, 2011 at 10:27 am
One question I have to ponder is this:
What would the impact be if Tolkien had made the Elves black? Would the story be drastically different?
For me, if the Elves were black that would simply indicate that they came from a hotter climate, and therefore were not from Middle Earth which appears to have a cool European climate.
Maybe I’m just nieve in the way I view race within stories.
Afterall isn’t LOTR telling us about the invasion of Middle Earth, not the Southern or Eastern provinces of the world. I’ve never read the Silmarilion but I would have thought should Tolkien write about Sauron’s invasion of the other provinces then we would see hero’s of different races and ethnicity rise up. Just as we see tales of the great hero’s of asian origin in Chinese and Japanese lore.
Personally it makes sense to me that the Last Alliance are primerily white due to the climate they come from. This isnt a time period where travelling to other parts of the world would be easy.
Just as those men Sauron calls to fight for him from the south and east represent darker skin tones. I imagine the equator is below Middle Earth.
Does that make sense?
January 25, 2011 at 11:02 am
Thanks for the comment, Nate. I think I said elsewhere that the skin colour of the protagonists and antagonists doesn’t fundamentally change the problem, which is one of racial determinism. Whether the elves are black or white, the issue still remains that the fundamental premise of the book is that peoples’ race determines their character and huge elements of their physical and intellectual abilities. The obvious similarities between the races in the book and in real life reinforce the image of the book as a set of racially deterministic stereotypes, and explain its appeal to fascists and others, but the problematic treatment of race as determining human characteristics – along with the corollary that the only solution for some races is their complete extermination – is independent of the allegorical nature of the particular races as written.
January 27, 2011 at 10:36 am
Ah ok, thanks for clearing that up faustusnotes =)
I see where you are coming from now and as you say there is allegorical logic to back up your argument. Though I’m not sure I personally get that from a reading of LOTR.
Actually I’ve just been reading an interesting article and discussion about race on another blog. It might be of interest to you:
http://thezoe-trope.blogspot.com/2011/01/wake-up-and-smell-real-world-diversity.html
Sorry the link is a little ugly =( Should really bit.ly it.
Hope you’re keeping well and having fun,
Nate
August 22, 2011 at 10:34 pm
Sorry for the thread necromancy, but this was linked from a CT thread: Tolkien would not remotely have supported eugenics. He was a conservative catholic, and catholics opposed the “progressive” policy of eugenics in the same breath as they opposed abortion and contraception. If Tolkien disagreed with the church on such a core political issue, I think we would have known it.
August 22, 2011 at 11:53 pm
Hi Harald, welcome… I think we’ve crossed swords over religion at deltoid before, maybe… and here at Compromise and Conceit we welcome necromancy in all its despicable forms, so no apologies necessary.
It does appear I accused Tolkien of being a eugenicist, doesn’t it? I clarified this line of thought later, to refer to him (and in these threads, “him” means “his work”) as a “scientific racist” which is what the racial essentialism is all about. You can be a scientific racist without being a eugenicist; in fact I don’t think it’s impossible to support eugenicist notions but oppose eugenics for religious reasons. Catholics can be opposed to eugenics for reasons of theology but support the underlying racist ideals (and of course, eugenics doesn’t necessarily have to be racist, but Catholics can still oppose it).
So using “eugenicist” here was sloppy. See the later threads on Tolkien (if you dare cludge through them) for a more carefully thought-out approach to his particular position in this conservative spectrum.
October 11, 2012 at 11:05 am
[...] according to many theorists, or at least Tolkien-derived fantasy [...]