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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   44946 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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A neologism (or a new meaning for the word?) that I have begun to see everywhere and has really started to annoy me is 'anti-racism'.

The annoyance began when I noticed the term being used in places where it was anachronistic. Two instances that I remember were the Wikipedia pages of "Pepsi" and "J.R.R Tolkien". Pepsi's article describes Pepsi's early attempts to advertise to black people as an untapped market as an "anti-racism stance". Tolkien's article states that "scholars have noted... he was anti-racist." After some digging around in the edit history of Pepsi's article, I found that the term 'anti-racist' was only added to the Pepsi article in mid-2018, and to Tolkien's article in early 2021.

"Anti-racism" is a term popular within Critical Race Theory. It was particularly popularised and entered the public consciousness in large part due to Ibram X. Kendi's 2019 book How to be an Anti-Racist. Kendi defines "anti-racism" in that book as follows:

The opposite of “racist” isn’t “not racist.” It is “anti-racist.” What’s the difference? One endorses either the idea of a racial hierarchy as a racist, or racial equality as an antiracist. One either believes problems are rooted in groups of people, as a racist, or locates the roots of problems in power and policies, as an anti-racist. One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an antiracist. There is no in-between safe space of “not racist.” The claim of “not racist” neutrality is a mask for racism.

According to Kendi, any racial inequity, or anything that results in a racial inequity is by definition racist, and in order to be an "anti-racist" you must support racial equity (i.e. forcing equal outcomes) for everything. A similar quote is from Angela Davis: "In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist.”

"Anti-racism" is a classic example of linguistic laundering/doubling, or linguistic motte-and-bailey, that is rife within woke/Critical Social Justice circles. The pattern is to take a word that has a plain meaning to the layman (anti-racist simply means against racism), and create a second specific, academic and ideological meaning for it. This second meaning is then smuggled into conversations and policy when the public naturally just assume the first, plain meaning. Ultimately, this is done for political and ideological ends. Manipulate people to get on board through the plain meaning (you're not a racist are you? You want to be an anti-racist!), then implement the ideological agenda, while maintain it is nothing usual because the word is the same. Other common words doubled in this way are the trio of diversity, equity, inclusion.

Critical Social Justice is the amalgamation of Neo-Marxism/Critical Theory, and Post-modernism/Post-Structuralism. Michel Foucault is the most cited scholar in history, and many other post-modernists, and Neo-Marxists top the list of most cited humanities scholars. It's hard to overstate how influential these ideas are currently in the humanities. Both Neo-Marxism but particularly post-modernism have an extreme focus on language. Language is the medium of power, and therefore, of oppression. It should not be surprising then that Critical Social Justice deliberately engages in such language manipulation as part of their political project, including engaging in historical revisionism to legitimise themselves.

With regards to Tolkien, the anti-racism thing has become a necessary defence because of people accusing him of anti-Semitism (the Dwarves are coded Jewish, you see, and only care about gold) and racism (the Orcs are black-coded, a thing I only read the other day). These people claim flat-out he was a racist (because old, white, Catholic, English guy who didn't write in trans queer BIPOC differently-abled characters in polyamorous gender-queer relationships, and I wish I was exaggerating greatly instead of only a little about that, See what Amazon thought would sell "The Rings of Power" to an audience with their English version of the superfans video. Would be a decent interview if all the references to 'representation' and 'queerness' were stripped out).

That's not even taking the quotes that we do see in the Selected Letters, which slightly better critics have used (the critics above just took a general statement that 'of course Tolkien is racist' and ran with it):

(1) From a letter of 1955:

I do think of the 'Dwarves' like Jews: at once native and alien in their habitations, speaking the languages of the country, but with an accent due to their own private tongue

See? He said the Dwarves were Jews (no, he didn't, but that doesn't stop the critics) and look what he says about Dwarves in "The Hobbit":

There it is: dwarves are not heroes, but calculating folk with a great idea of the value of money; some are tricky and treacherous and pretty bad lots; some are not, but are decent enough people like Thorin and Company, if you don't expect too much.

There you go: the stereotype of the Jews being money-grubbers! Anti-Semitism!

(2) From a 1958 letter about a proposed film of "The Lord of the Rings":

The Orcs are definitely stated to be corruptions of the 'human' form seen in Elves and Men. They are (or were) squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types.

That one will get you, whoever you are, into trouble. Is he saying that Orcs are Central/East Asians? No, but if someone reading that doesn't make allowances for "least lovely types", "to Europeans", and "degraded versions" of "corrupted human form", then they will get "Tolkien says Orcs are East Asians because East Asians are ugly slant-eyes". I honestly don't know where the "Orcs are black" thing came from, unless it's from the movie versions which are dark-skinned (some of them).

Racism simpliciter is also attributed to him because of the Haradrim and Easterlings: all the good guys are white, all the bad guys are black (or at least brown and yellow). We don't get any black or brown people on the side of the heroes. Never mind that he wrote a sharp letter to his publishers about a Swedish translator who was putting in his own interpretation of events everywhere:

From a letter of 1961

Here [in Mordor] rules the personification of satanic might Sauron (read perhaps in the same partial fashion [as other identifications Ohlmarks has made] Stalin).

There is no 'perhaps' about it. I utterly repudiate any such 'reading', which angers me. The situation was conceived long before the Russian revolution. Such allegory is entirely foreign to my thought. The placing of Mordor in the east was due to simple narrative and geographical necessity, within my 'mythology'. The original stronghold of Evil was (as traditionally) in the North; but as that had been destroyed, and was indeed under the sea, there had to be a new stronghold, far removed from the Valar, the Elves, and the sea-power of Númenor.

And from a letter of 1954

Some reviewers have called the whole thing simple-minded, just a plain fight between Good and Evil, with all the good just good, and the bad just bad. Pardonable, perhaps (though at least Boromir has been overlooked) in people in a hurry, and with only a fragment to read, and, of course, without the earlier written but unpublished Elvish histories. But the Elves are not wholly good or in the right. Not so much because they had flirted with Sauron; as because with or without his assistance they were 'embalmers'. They wanted to have their cake and eat it: to live in the mortal historical Middle-earth because they had become fond of it (and perhaps because they there had the advantages of a superior caste), and so tried to stop its change and history, stop its growth, keep it as a pleasaunce, even largely a desert, where they could be 'artists' – and they were overburdened with sadness and nostalgic regret. In their way the Men of Gondor were similar: a withering people whose only 'hallows' were their tombs. But in any case this is a tale about a war, and if war is allowed (at least as a topic and a setting) it is not much good complaining that all the people on one side are against those on the other. Not that I have made even this issue quite so simple: there are Saruman, and Denethor, and Boromir; and there are treacheries and strife even among the Orcs.

So was he a racist? By current 21st century progressive standards, yes (and sexist and homophobic, no doubt). Was he a racist by the standards of his day? I don't think so, but of course Bad Things Are Always Bad and there is no context, so he has been tried in the court of public opinion and found guilty. Hence the necessity to use the shibboleth of "anti-racist" when trying to defend, or at least be neutral about, him.

That one will get you, whoever you are, into trouble. Is he saying that Orcs are Central/East Asians? No, but if someone reading that doesn't make allowances for "least lovely types", "to Europeans", and "degraded versions" of "corrupted human form", then they will get "Tolkien says Orcs are East Asians because East Asians are ugly slant-eyes".

Well, there's a bit more to it when you remember that, for instance, the battle of the Pelennor Fields is at least to some degree modelled on the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains, a battle fought by the last remnants of the Western Roman Empire (Gondor) aided by Visigoths led by king Theodoric who dies on the battlefield (Rohan, led by Théoden, who does the same) against Attila's Huns, the prototypical Asian invader of Europe. It's not a complete match, but it's enough to say that there's some harkening to the idea of saving the Western civilization ("Men of the West!") from the threat of the invading Asians.

Sure, he definitely has references in other work to Wainriders who are reminiscent of the Huns. But there's a difference between using a model of an historical battle in your own fictional battle scene, and being full-on Yellow Peril.

But that's a difference that makes no difference, for the knuckleheads, so this is probably why whoever is editing the Tolkien Wikipedia article is forced back on "anti-racism".

Here's a piece of "I read it but I didn't understand it" from an academic:

Why do racists like Tolkien and Middle-Earth?

Tolkien made statements against Nazis and also apartheid, but this is not the same as being anti-racist or pro-equality. His condemnation of Hitler, he wrote in the same letter, was for

ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making forever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to preserve in its true light.

The comment shows that he believed that some people were essentially different to and better than others. This notion is foundational to racism.

See? Tolkien is a racist, or close to it. Because "Northern Spirit". Which our 'lecturer at Deakin University', a public university in Geelong, Australia which boasts "We're a progressive, innovative and open-minded university, with the highest student satisfaction in Victoria" can't seem to understand does not mean he was going "Yay Nordic supremacy, Asatru foreva!" while spinning his Viking Metal platters.

If you're not an anti-racist (like, say, a lady professor who wrote a whole book about Race and Popular Fantasy Literature: Habits of Whiteness ), then you a racist. No such thing as 'not a racist'. After all, her book uses as reference one Paul Firchow, who seems to have written quite a bit about how Tolkien is fascist.

Did you know Hobbits are Fascists? Oh yes.

…Not surprisingly, given the apparently pacific nature of hobbits, there have been practically no discussions of Tolkien's fiction that link it in any way, either positively or negatively, with fascism. …Yet I will in the course of this essay argue that certain social traits and/or ideas can and even should be looked at as fascist in tendency, specifically the idea that the group or community takes precedence over the individual or that certain groups or communities are innately or by nature superior to others, especially when headed by strong leaders, and that, further and most disturbing, the superior groups are justified in seeking to exterminate the inferior ones. …These ideas are also, as I hope to show, implicit in some of Tolkien's most popular work. Part of my argument in fact is that the very popularity of Tolkien's work suggests that his anti-democratic, elitist, and even genocidal stance reflects a similar outlook among his British readers and even in Western society in general, an outlook, however, which could only become popular when it was cloaked, as it were, by means of a ring of invisibility.

Now, for our lady lecturer who read it (or most likely, an extract) but didn't understand it, what did Tolkien say about Nordic Spirit?

Quotes below from various letters of the Selected Letters. Let's kick off with the one she mentioned:

I have spent most of my life, since I was your age, studying Germanic matters (in the general sense that includes England and Scandinavia). There is a great deal more force (and truth) than ignorant people imagine in the 'Germanic' ideal. I was much attracted by it as an undergraduate (when Hitler was, I suppose, dabbling in paint, and had not heard of it), in reaction against the 'Classics'. You have to understand the good in things, to detect the real evil. But no one ever calls on me to 'broadcast', or do a postscript! Yet I suppose I know better than most what is the truth about this 'Nordic' nonsense. Anyway, I have in this War a burning private grudge – which would probably make me a better soldier at 49 than I was at 22: against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler (for the odd thing about demonic inspiration and impetus is that it in no way enhances the purely intellectual stature: it chiefly affects the mere will). Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light. Nowhere, incidentally, was it nobler than in England, nor more early sanctified and Christianized

Jawohl, Ich thinken zer Nordics are zer superior race! NOT.

Middle-earth .... corresponds spiritually to Nordic Europe.

Not Nordic, please! A word I personally dislike; it is associated, though of French origin, with racialist theories. Geographically Northern is usually better. But examination will show that even this is inapplicable (geographically or spiritually) to 'Middle-earth'. This is an old word, not invented by me, as reference to a dictionary such as the Shorter Oxford will show. It meant the habitable lands of our world, set amid the surrounding Ocean. The action of the story takes place in the North-west of 'Middle-earth', equivalent in latitude to the coastlands of Europe and the north shores of the Mediterranean. But this is not a purely 'Nordic' area in any sense. If Hobbiton and Rivendell are taken (as intended) to be at about the latitude of Oxford, then Minas Tirith, 600 miles south, is at about the latitude of Florence. >The Mouths of Anduin and the ancient city of Pelargir are at about the latitude of ancient Troy.

Auden has asserted that for me 'the North is a sacred direction'. That is not true. The North-west of Europe, where I (and most of my ancestors) have lived, has my affection, as a man's home should. I love its atmosphere, and know more of its histories and languages than I do of other parts; but it is not 'sacred', nor does it exhaust my affections. I have, for instance, a particular love for the Latin language, and among its descendants for Spanish. That it is untrue for my story, a mere reading of the synopses should show. The North was the seat of the fortresses of the Devil. The progress of the tale ends in what is far more like the re-establishment of an effective Holy Roman Empire with its seat in Rome than anything that would be devised by a 'Nordic'.

Ja, Ich bin ein Fascist who loves zer racialist theories! NOT.

But the mythology (and associated languages) first began to take shape during the 1914-18 war. The Fall of Gondolin (and the birth of Eärendil) was written in hospital and on leave after surviving the Battle of the Somme in 1916. The kernel of the mythology, the matter of Lúthien Tinúviel and Beren, arose from a small woodland glade filled with 'hemlocks' (or other white umbellifers) near Roos on the Holderness peninsula – to which I occasionally went when free from regimental duties while in the Humber Garrison in 1918.

Achtung, when fighting zer German armies (which Ich should have been loving not fighting since Ich bin zer Nordic racialist, nich wahr?), Ich invented zer core of mein mythology out of which all mein books were written which was about - lovers dancing in a glade of hemlocks. Hm. Maybe Ich should have included some talk about how Ich loved zer Kaiser und zer Nordic spirit?

Having set myself a task, the arrogance of which I fully recognized and trembled at: being precisely to restore to the English an epic tradition and present them with a mythology of their own: it is a wonderful thing to be told that I have succeeded, at least with those who have still the undarkened heart and mind.

It has been a considerable labour, beginning really as soon as I was able to begin anything, but effectively beginning when I was an undergraduate and began to explore my own linguistic aesthetic in language-composition. It was just as the 1914 War burst on me that I made the discovery that 'legends' depend on the language to which they belong; but a living language depends equally on the 'legends' which it conveys by tradition. (For example, that the Greek mythology depends far more on the marvellous aesthetic of its language and so of its nomenclature of persons and places and less on its content than people realize, though of course it depends on both. And vice versa. Volapük, Esperanto, Ido, Novial, &c &c are dead, far deader than ancient unused languages, because their authors never invented any Esperanto legends.) So though being a philologist by nature and trade (yet one always primarily interested in the aesthetic rather than the functional aspects of language) I began with language, I found myself involved in inventing 'legends' of the same 'taste'. The early work was mostly done in camps and hospitals between 1915 and 1918 – when time allowed.

Blast, this is not sounding properly Nordic Supremacism, is it? Where is the denial of the individual or extermination of inferior groups by superior? Languages??? What have they got to do with being a Fascist Genocider?

Also – and here I hope I shall not sound absurd – I was from early days grieved by the poverty of my own beloved country: it had no stories of its own (bound up with its tongue and soil), not of the quality that I sought, and found (as an ingredient) in legends of other lands. There was Greek, and Celtic, and Romance, Germanic, Scandinavian, and Finnish (which greatly affected me); but nothing English, save impoverished chap-book stuff. Of course there was and is all the Arthurian world, but powerful as it is, it is imperfectly naturalized, associated with the soil of Britain but not with English; and does not replace what I felt to be missing.

Oh, come off it, where is the blood-thirst of the Anglo-Saxon colonialist? This is very weak tea for the propagator of an "anti-democratic, elitist, and even genocidal stance".

Parents, don't let your children grow up to be Fascists. Here's the easy way to prevent that: stamp out all interest in linguistics! Read below the sorry tale of the development of a not-racist-means-racist with underlying, if unconscious, fascist tendencies about racial superiority and hierarchy:

It has been always with me: the sensibility to linguistic pattern which affects me emotionally like colour or music; and the passionate love of growing things; and the deep response to legends (for lack of a better word) that have what I would call the North-western temper and temperature. In any case if you want to write a tale of this sort you must consult your roots, and a man of the North-west of the Old World will set his heart and the action of his tale in an imaginary world of that air, and that situation : with the Shoreless Sea of his innumerable ancestors to the West, and the endless lands (out of which enemies mostly come) to the East. Though, in addition, his heart may remember, even if he has been cut off from all oral tradition, the rumour all along the coasts of the Men out of the Sea.

I say this about the 'heart', for I have what some might call an Atlantis complex. Possibly inherited, though my parents died too young for me to know such things about them, and too young to transfer such things by words. Inherited from me (I suppose) by one only of my children, though I did not know that about my son until recently, and he did not know it about me. I mean the terrible recurrent dream (beginning with memory) of the Great Wave, towering up, and coming in ineluctably over the trees and green fields. (I bequeathed it to Faramir.) I don't think I have had it since I wrote the 'Downfall of Númenor' as the last of the legends of the First and Second Age.

I am a West-Midlander by blood (and took to early west-midland Middle English as a known tongue as soon as I set eyes on it), but perhaps a fact of my personal history may partly explain why the 'North-western air' appeals to me both as 'home' and as something discovered. I was actually born in Bloemfontein, and so those deeply implanted impressions, underlying memories that are still pictorially available for inspection, of first childhood are for me those of a hot parched country. My first Christmas memory is of blazing sun, drawn curtains and a drooping eucalyptus.

I am afraid this is becoming a dreadful bore, and going on too long, at any rate longer than 'this contemptible person before you' merits. But it is difficult to stop once roused on such an absorbing topic to oneself as oneself. As for the conditioning: I am chiefly aware of the linguistic conditioning. I went to King Edward's School and spent most of my time learning Latin and Greek; but I also learned English. Not English Literature! Except Shakespeare (which I disliked cordially), the chief contacts with poetry were when one was made to try and translate it into Latin. Not a bad mode of introduction, if a bit casual. I mean something of the English language and its history. I learned Anglo-Saxon at school (also Gothic, but that was an accident quite unconnected with the curriculum though decisive — I discovered in it not only modern historical philology, which appealed to the historical and scientific side, but for the first time the study of a language out of mere love: I mean for the acute aesthetic pleasure derived from a language for its own sake, not only free from being useful but free even from being the 'vehicle of a literature').

There are two strands, or three. A fascination that Welsh names had for me, even if only seen on coal-trucks, from childhood is another; though people only gave me books that were incomprehensible to a child when I asked for information. I did not learn any Welsh till I was an undergraduate, and found in it an abiding linguistic-aesthetic satisfaction. Spanish was another: my guardian was half Spanish, and in my early teens I used to pinch his books and try to learn it : the only Romance language that gives me the particular pleasure of which I am speaking - it is not quite the same as the mere perception of beauty: I feel the beauty of say Italian or for that matter of modern English (which is very remote from my personal taste): it is more like the appetite for a needed food. Most important, perhaps, after Gothic was the discovery in Exeter College library, when I was supposed to be reading for Honour Mods, of a Finnish Grammar. It was like discovering a complete wine-cellar filled with bottles of an amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before. It quite intoxicated me; and I gave up the attempt to invent an 'unrecorded' Germanic language, and my 'own language' – or series of invented languages – became heavily Finnicized in phonetic pattern and structure.

That is of course long past now. Linguistic taste changes like everything else, as time goes on; or oscillates between poles. Latin and the British type of Celtic have it now, with the beautifully co-ordinated and patterned (if simply patterned) Anglo-Saxon near at hand and further off the Old Norse with the neighbouring but alien Finnish. Roman-British might not one say? With a strong but more recent infusion from Scandinavia and the Baltic. Well, I daresay such linguistic tastes, with due allowance for school-overlay, are as good or better a test of ancestry as blood-groups.

All this only as background to the stories, though languages and names are for me inextricable from the stories. They are and were so to speak an attempt to give a background or a world in which my expressions of linguistic taste could have a function. The stories were comparatively late in coming.

The issue I had was the specific word choice of "anti-racist" and its ideological association. There are plenty of ways to word it without having to use the term "anti-racism", e.g. "he opposed racism," "condemned racist attitudes".

Prior to the changes to the page in 2021, that section on Tolkien just had examples of things he contemned, including his anger at the Nazis and his condemnation of the treatments of blacks in South Africa.

But I guess it might be some coded language. Maybe like another commenter suggested it was done by Amazon, maybe in an attempt to get activists of their back and signal to them "hey, we're on your side! Please don't attack us!"

Uh, what term are they supposed to use instead? Specifically serving a disfavored group, or writing letters about how dumb racists are, seems pretty anti-racist to me.

Your proposed "political and ideological ends" don't make a lot of sense, either.

1.Use "anti-racist" in the Tolkien article

2.Poor shmucks think that he's just neutral on racism

3.But those In The Know can tell he was actually supporting racial equity!

4.???

5.New era of racial equity

Not really seeing the payoff for them. Likewise for DEI--cui bono? What are those nasty CRT partisans getting from promoting a second meaning?

  • -10

Specifically serving a disfavored group, or writing letters about how dumb racists are, seems pretty anti-racist to me.

This whole idea only works when accepted as part of a bundle, together with their definition of racism (power+prejudice) and their definition of power – that involves some identity gerrymandering and jumping through hoops, but ends up pointing at white people as those wielding systemic power at the expense of non-whites, men at the expense of women, cis at the expense of trans and queer.

Alone, it's not clear how you can be like Kendi, i.e. consistently clamor for preferential treatment, and label yourself an antiracist.

Was Tolkien an anti-racist in the Kendi sense? Of course not, since those concepts didn't exist at the time. So was he a racist? In the same sense that we are all (supposedly) racists, because of Original Sin Systemic Racism, then yes. There are those who go further and claim he was a racist in the racist sense (see the quotes I used above).

The "anti-racist" language can be taken to be objectionable, because it yields the ground on "it's not enough not to be racist, you have to be actively anti-racist", especially since there is an implication that "not-racist" is functionally the same as "racist" if you're not out there being an anti-racist.

Tolkien was not a racist. Neither was he an anti-racist, and Ibram X. Kendi would not recognise him as such.

What do we know of his views? Very little, from the bits and pieces in the Selected Letters:

(1) From a letter of 1941:

Then I had to go and sleep (???) at C. HeadQ. I did not – not much. I was in the small C33 room: very cold and damp. But an incident occurred which moved me and made the occasion memorable. My companion in misfortune was Cecil Roth (the learned Jew historian). I found him charming, full of gentleness (in every sense); and we sat up till after 12 talking. He lent me his watch as there were no going clocks in the place: – and nonetheless himself came and called me at 10 to 7: so that I could go to Communion! It seemed like a fleeting glimpse of an unfallen world. Actually I was awake, and just (as one does) discovering a number of reasons (other than tiredness and having no chance to shave or even wash), such as the desirability of getting home in good time to open up and un-black and all that, why I should not go. But the incursion of this gentle Jew, and his sombre glance at my rosary by my bed, settled it. I was down at St Aloysius at 7.15 just in time to go to Confession before Mass; and I came home just before the end of Mass.

By the bye, using the term "Jew" instead of "Jewish" would get you in trouble today.

(2) From a letter of 1971:

Your reference to Samson Gamgee is thus very interesting. Since he is mentioned in a book on Birmingham Jewry, I wonder if this family was also Jewish. In which case the origin of the name might be quite different. Not that a name of French or Francized form is impossible for a Jewish surname, especially if it is one long established in England. We now associate Jewish names largely with German, and with a colloquial Yiddish that is predominantly German in origin. ‡ But the lingua franca of mediæval Jewry was (I was told by Cecil Roth, a friend of mine) of French or mixed French-Provencal character.

‡ Possibly the reason why my surname is now usually misspelt TOLKEIN in spite of all my efforts to correct this – even by my college-, bank-, and lawyer's clerks! My name is Tolkien, anglicized from To(l)kiehn = tollkühn, and came from Saxony in the 18th century. It is not Jewish in origin, though I should consider it an honour if it were.

(3) The best-known and most-quoted one, from a letter of 1938:

[Allen & Unwin had negotiated the publication of a German translation of The Hobbit with Rütten & Loening of Potsdam. This firm wrote to Tolkien asking if he was of 'arisch' (aryan) origin.]

I must say the enclosed letter from Rütten and Loening is a bit stiff. Do I suffer this impertinence because of the possession of a German name, or do their lunatic laws require a certificate of 'arisch' origin from all persons of all countries?

Personally I should be inclined to refuse to give any Bestätigung (although it happens that I can), and let a German translation go hang. In any case I should object strongly to any such declaration appearing in print. I do not regard the (probable) absence of all Jewish blood as necessarily honourable; and I have many Jewish friends, and should regret giving any colour to the notion that I subscribed to the wholly pernicious and unscientific race-doctrine.

You are primarily concerned, and I cannot jeopardize the chance of a German publication without your approval. So I submit two drafts of possible answers.

(4) One of the drafts mentioned:

30 To Rütten & Loening Verlag

[One of the 'two drafts' mentioned by Tolkien in the previous letter. This is the only one preserved in the Allen & Unwin files, and it seems therefore very probable that the English publishers sent the other one to Germany. It is clear that in that letter Tolkien refused to make any declaration of 'arisch' origin.]

25 July 1938 20 Northmoor Road, Oxford

Dear Sirs,

Thank you for your letter. .... I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject – which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.

Your enquiry is doubtless made in order to comply with the laws of your own country, but that this should be held to apply to the subjects of another state would be improper, even if it had (as it has not) any bearing whatsoever on the merits of my work or its suitability for publication, of which you appear to have satisfied yourselves without reference to my Abstammung.

I trust you will find this reply satisfactory, and

remain yours faithfully

J. R. R. Tolkien.

"Tolkien was heavily critical of people who discriminated based on race", there, no weirdly ambiguous and political word needed.

But that's not the path that they're trying, this is:

0.Define "anti-racist" ambiguously so that people not in the know think it's reasonable

1.Use "anti-racist" in Tolkien article

2.People not in the know associate Tolkien (a respected figure) with anti-racism

3.The prestige of specific anti-racist groups is increased

4.Specific anti-racist groups get more money

It isn't Tolkien that gains in prestige from being anti-racist, but the anti-racist orgs. It's like elevating yourself by claiming that all the greats of history agreed with you.

This is a plausible mechanism of action.

It’s just one that I find underwhelming. I suppose that would be the point.

The point is to normalize the term 'anti-racist', and obfuscate their ideology by hiding behind the plain language meaning of words. As I tried to point out, this term was pretty rare to use prior to the craziness of post-2016. It's part of why I found it so jarring, because I start seeing a word appearing everywhere all of a sudden, with strong association with a certain ideology that is grown in popularity, and very few people seem to notice. If they have those words used everywhere then they can smuggle their ideology into everywhere without anyone noticing.

Same with DEI, if they can get everyone to accept Diversity, Equity and Inclusion by only using the plain, agreeable meanings of the word to get everyone on board with their agenda, then it's harder for people to even realise when they actually are implementing their agenda. DIE sounds just like good old liberal colorblindness, welcome everyone! Who could disagree with that?

Control of language is extremely important to this movement. Hell, part of the problem is that that they don't have a clearly identifiable label, and being able to name your enemy is half the battle. I use the term 'Critical Social Justice' but really there's not any standardized term. 'Woke' and 'CRT' are only just starting to catch on, but they're quite limited in scope.

Don’t be so cute. You know what anti-racism is, and it’s not aww gee shucks I just think racism sure is bad. It’s classic motte & bailey feminism is just equality stuff.

Not being cute.

I know what anti-racism is, and Tolkien saying “I have the hatred of Apartheid in my bones” fits. Do you have an alternative?

I know what anti-racism is, and Tolkien saying “I have the hatred of Apartheid in my bones” fits.

No, that's being "not racist." Totally different than anti-racist. A "not racist" person believes in color blindness and treating people equally and putting the responsibility for differential outcomes on the individual. An anti-racist person believes in structural racism and fighting it by treating people differently in order to compensate. Where is the evidence that Tolkien acknowledged the existence of structural racism? Where is the evidence that he ever advocated or personally gave special dispensation to URM in order to counteract the effects of structural racism?

I think it's reasonably plausible that Tolkien was not racist, but I don't see much evidence that he was anti-racist.

Then I guess I’ve fallen for the CRT strategy. I don’t believe you have to subscribe to a particular structural theory to be anti-racist. Maybe Kendi wants to redefine it so that’s true; we aren’t obligated to go along.

Kendi and the rest of the CRT do want to redefine it that way, the same way that saying "I am not a fascist" is not at all the same thing as saying "I am anti-fascist", since "anti-fascist" has been given a specific definition. If you said "I am anti-fascist", it is plausible that someone would interpret that as meaning you are antifa, a completely different thing.

For Kendi, in his books and this TED talk, there are only two states; racist or anti-racist. "Not a racist" does not exist, it is merely "racist in denial of their racism". So if Tolkien is described as "not a racist", that merely means "he was in denial of his own racism", and the people accusing him of racism are correct.

From the book:

A racist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial inequity between racial groups. An antiracist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial equity between racial groups. By policy, I mean written and unwritten laws, rules, procedures, processes, regulations, and guidelines that govern people. There is no such thing as a nonracist or race-neutral policy. Every policy in every institution in every community in every nation is producing or sustaining either racial inequity or equity between racial groups.

From the talk:

In the most simplest way, a not racist is a racist who is in denial, and an anti-racist is someone who is willing to admit the times in which they are being racist, and how is willing to recognize the inequities and the racial problems of our society, and who is willing to challenge those racial inequities by challenging policy. And so I’m saying this because literally slaveholders, slave traders, imagined that their ideas in our terms were not racist. They would say things like, “Black people are the cursed descendants of Ham, and they’re cursed forever into enslavement.” This isn’t, “I’m not racist.” This is, “God’s law.” They would say things, like, you know, “Based on science, based on ethnology, based on natural history, black people by nature are predisposed to slavery and servility. This is nature’s law. I’m not racist. I’m actually doing what nature said I’m supposed to be doing.” And so this construct of being not racist and denying one’s racism goes all the way back to the origins of this country.

And no, simply saying "it's just this one bunch of activists" is no longer enough. You can't say "I don't care what this lot claim, I'm happy to use terms like 'not a racist', and ordinary people will know what I mean". Ordinary people are getting hit over the head with this stuff every day until they accept "not a racist is just as bad; you must be anti-racist".

If you believe Kendi is wrong, and there are more than two states, what would you call them?

I’m using “anti-racist” for direct opposition to racism, even if it doesn’t subscribe to postmodern structural theory. Getting upset when people use the reasonable version of the term instead of the academic one seems counterproductive.

I do believe Kendi is wrong,

I do not believe there are more than two states, or even two states as such; there is racism/being a racist and there is not being a racist. In a sane world, we would not need any term for "not a racist", since it would be sufficient that if we can say correctly "Peter is a racist" then it can be assumed "Paul is not, because nobody has said he is", but right now we are living in insanity rules.

You are going along when you use the term anti-racist. I am sure someone used the term anti-racist before Kendi's book, but it is almost inextricably linked with him now. Calling Tolkien anti-racist is an attempt to legitimise the term, as someone else mentioned - he was simply not racist.

And when you use the term anti-racist when you mean not racist you are also legitimising Kendi's world view, because you are presenting a dichotomy of racist vs anti-racist, when the real dichotomy is racist vs not racist, with the vast majority of anti-racist advocates falling into the first category.

Can you elaborate then on what you see as the difference between not-racist and anti-racist?

If Kendi's definition is more prevalent in academic, scientific and governmental discourse, would you at least acknowledge that your usage is nonstandard?

There are at least four categories: Racist, not racist, opposed to racism, and Kendi-approved.

Tolkien was in the third. Lots of Americans are. Telling your drunk uncle not to use the n-word is in this category, as is arguing with racists on the Internet. It would make sense, in a vacuum, to call this “anti-racist.”

Kendi is attempting to apply that legitimacy to his own category. As pointed out across this thread, Tolkien would likely not meet his seal of approval. It is rhetorically useful to call his category “anti-racist” precisely because many people would like to be in it.

Getting upset at the normal, sensible meaning of the word is ceding the battle.

Getting upset at the normal, sensible meaning of the word is ceding the battle.

At the same time, though, you don't get to write the dictionary, or at least, what goes into the dictionary.

Prior to the last several years, I would have interpreted "not racist" to mean "not discriminating or holding prejudice against persons or peoples on account of race" and "anti-racist" as meaning "making efforts to counter or thwart racism, or at the very least, opposed to the toleration of racism and racists". I haven't read Kendi's book, but I interpreted the title How to be an Antiracist as gesturing straightforwardly at the latter: "Yes, and here is how racism can be thwarted, and these are the efforts you need to make".

I'd agree though that edits to Tolkien's wikipedia page are made with the new sense in mind. I doubt the person meant it in ideological sense, though. They were just aware that in the new world Critical Social Justice has made, racism is a black and white struggle and you are either with the racists or you are "Anti-Racist". This bugs me about as much as it seems to bug you, ie, a lot.

They were just aware that in the new world Critical Social Justice has made, racism is a black and white struggle and you are either with the racists or you are "Anti-Racist".

Yeah, exactly. The ideologues have triumphed to that extent, that if you don't make Wiki edits in line with the New Orthodoxy, you get crushed or even the page gets deleted because it's full of wrongthink. The loud online minority of activists may only be a minority, but they are very loud and will go around claiming "So-and-so is bad because we say so!" and they get their way by being screeching nuisances.

Specifically serving a disfavored group

For this one it would be Racists, as they are discriminating on the basis of race.

writing letters about how dumb racists are

For this one it would be Activists or Political activists, but it would depend on to whom the letters are send and with what purpose.

If there is a need to encapsulate both terms in one umbrella, Progressive would suffice I think, that term has been poisoned enough that I don't think it is salvageable.

Defining anti-racism as being an activist against racism doesn't strike me as linguistic terrorism.

I suppose the worst thing Kendi is doing in that quote is the you're-either-with-us-or-against-us trick, but all sorts of ideologues do that.

This feels a little like the "feminism is the radical belief that women are people too."

Kendi isn't defining anti-racism as "being an activist against racism". Being an anti-racist according to Kendi (and CRT in general) essentially means you have to support their CRT ideology and enforce racial equity. If you don't believe in forcing equal racial outcomes in all aspects of society (through necessarily authoritarian if not totalitarian means), you're a racist. It is anti-liberal by nature.

Yup. Very literal "you are either with us or against us" absolutist false dichotomy at its core.

And then it folds in the "racism is power + prejudice" rhetoric to, handily, allow certain groups to be actively discriminatory and show race-based preferences and yet still retain the 'anti-racist' label.

So guess what? Even if you claim to be against racism and thus actively oppose all forms of race-based prejudice, whether it is aimed at Whites, Jews, Asians, Hispanics, Indians, etc. etc., the mere fact that you believe in the "incorrect" definition of racism and thus oppose prejudice on the part of PoC you are not actually antiracist and are, thus, racist.

Really neat trick for instantly grabbing the moral high ground.

The pattern is to take a word that has a plain meaning to the layman (anti-racist simply means against racism)

The usage makes sense in comparison to various other "anti-" ideology terms. Ie. if you claim to be an antifascist, people generally assume you aren't just someone going "Well, fascism sucks and I generally am not a fascist!" (a default societal attitude), but someone who dedicates a considerable part of their activities in militant opposition to fascism, with a considerable chance this means personally going around the street finding suspected fascists to beat up or throw Molotov's cocktails at. Likewise, "anticommunism" doesn't/didn't mean just going "Communism is bad! I'm not a communist!", but meant dedicating a considerable part of their activities in militant opposition to fascism, and was mostly associated with the kind of movements that ranged from supporting Joseph McCarthy to throwing people off helicopters.

The thing is, being generally opposed to something and yet not actively fighting said thing at all opportunities is usually considered a valid position to hold... but this is not allowed when it comes to racism or fascism, for some reason.

You can say "I don't support fascism, and I am not a fascist" even if you aren't out there trying to track down fascists and beat them or otherwise exterminate their ideology. Okay, maybe it is fair to say that you are not "anti-fascist" by the definitions in play. But the antifascists themselves would say you're a fascist due to your failure to be sufficiently anti-fascist. Same with racism. Failure to be fully anti-racist makes you, by default, racist.

That's the core of the trick which basically imports the assumption that one can only be completely supportive of or aggressively antagonistic to something, rather than holding any nuanced belief on the topic.

I myself severely dislike mosquitoes. I consider myself anti-mosquito, I kill mosquitoes at any opportunity and I take some measures to remove mosquitoes from my immediate environment. I don't spend every waking hour trying to eradicate them or donate all my spare resources to anti-mosquito efforts.

Yet, to use the logic on display by the left, my stated and demonstrable opposition to mosquitoes is insufficient to be anti-mosquito. And if I am not anti-mosquito, I must be pro-mosquito.

Anti-fascist is worse than that, because it's not just militant opposition to fascism, but a specific ideological militant opposition to "fascism". Antifa claims lineage from the Marxist, communist anti-fascist movements prior and during WW2. The Antifa today are similarly (anarcho)Marxist in orientation, though they take more inspiration from the neo-Marxists. Antifa's hatred of liberals/centrists for being 'proto-fascists' is basically identical to that of the neo-Marxists. Being 'anti-fascist' according to Antifa means to dismantle liberal society and institute communism to stop fascism. The irony is that all of this is pretty plainly stated in books like Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, written by Antifa sympathiser Mark Bray.

I wonder if Tolkien's wikipedia page edit is due to the Amazon show. In the past there have been spats over if Tolkien was racist for using Light/Fair to signify good, Dark to signify evil, and have orcs/Southrons, Easterlings described as swarthy. In his letters Tolkien does not come across as racist, much the opposite, but the debate went on.

Amazon probably did not want that level of scrutiny on their new fantasy flagship show. Maybe editing the wikipedia article ahead of time was a way to stem criticism before it happened.

Same thing that happened during the 2020 election to Kamala Harris wiki page, it too got sanitized.

The Tolkien and Race page cites this article which in turn is responding to a Wired podcast. The guy was talking about his 2002 book, so no, Amazon doesn't seem to be responsible.

Though the term "anti-racist" doesn't come from either of those sources. I guess it's possible that the article was revisited in prep for Rings of Power.

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