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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   26598 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 15, 2025

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The thing about all this is even the Jews themselves don't believe it. They watch It's a Wonderful Life or Harry Potter or Star Wars, and see characters like Potter and the goblins and Watto and say "That's me! Yes, they're not technically Jewish, but it's an antisemitic stereotype!" You literally cannot put a greedy, sleazy character in a story without the Jews saying you must be talking about them. Why do the Jews never look at George Bailey or Harry Potter or Luke Skywalker and say "That's me! Yes, he may not be canonically Jewish, but he's obviously just a stand-in for a Jew in this fictional setting."

For what it's worth, they're hardly alone in this. The Russians watch LotR and see the orcs and say "That's me!" They even play horde in WoW.

Not everyone wants to be a hero. Heck, I myself play Diablo, see Zoltun Kulle, and say "That's me!"

For what it's worth, they're hardly alone in this. The Russians watch LotR and see the orcs and say "That's me!" They even play horde in WoW.

Everyone who's anyone plays horde in WoW. Come on now.

It's kinda amusing--my innate distaste for Orcs was so strong that when I played Warcraft 3 as a youngster, I was annoyed that I couldn't skip the Orc campaign, so I just stopped playing the campaign entirely. (Which was ridiculous, since as it turns out, the Orc campaign is really good!).

What was always especially odd to me is that as I've grown up and encountered people who identify as orcs (nobody in my circles growing up did), they're not people I'd have identified as orc-ish at all. Like Russians do not look anything like orcs to me, and I found it astonishing they would interpret Lord of the Rings as such. Maybe the very lower class, prison sort kinda look like orcs, but one could say that just as well of the British lower class, or probably any lower class. And Grubby was (and still is) one of my favorite pro gamers, and he's the Warcraft 3 Orc God. Grubby looks about as opposite of an orc as a human could possibly look.

As an adult, the whole theme has become even more amusing: Warcraft 3 obviously got the term "orc" from Tolkien, but Tolkien wasn't the first to use the term, either! The first, to my knowledge, to use it was William Blake, who used it in a similar but slightly different sense: Orc is not what we'd call the orcs themselves, but is rather a spirit of destructive rebellion that possesses humans. He uses it to refer to the Americans in America, A Prophecy, where he gives um... a very unflattering description of Americans, basically burning down everything beautiful in the world and infesting it with fire and plagues in their war against the angel Albion.

To get back to Tolkien, here is his explanation of where the word came from and early thoughts on The Problem of Orcs:

(1) Various letters of 1954

Orcs (the word is as far as I am concerned actually derived from Old English orc ‘demon’, but only because of its phonetic suitability) are nowhere clearly stated to be of any particular origin. But since they are servants of the Dark Power, and later of Sauron, neither of whom could, or would, produce living things, they must be ‘corruptions’. They are not based on direct experience of mine; but owe, I suppose, a good deal to the goblin tradition (goblin is used as a translation in The Hobbit, where orc only occurs once, I think), especially as it appears in George MacDonald, except for the soft feet which I never believed in. The name has the form orch (pl. yrch) in Sindarin and uruk in the Black Speech.

(2)

Your preference of goblins to orcs involves a large question and a matter of taste, and perhaps historical pedantry on my part. Personally I prefer Orcs (since these creatures are not ‘goblins’, not even the goblins of George MacDonald, which they do to some extent resemble). Also I now deeply regret having used Elves, though this is a word in ancestry and original meaning suitable enough. But the disastrous debasement of this word, in which Shakespeare played an unforgiveable part, has really overloaded it with regrettable tones, which are too much to overcome. I hope in the Appendices to Vol. III to be able to include a note ‘On translation’ in which the matter of equivalences and my uses may be made clearly. My difficulty has been that, since I have tried to present a kind of legendary and history of a ‘forgotten epoch’, all the specific terms were in a foreign language, and no precise equivalents exist in English

(3) Draft of unsent letter

Treebeard does not say that the Dark Lord ‘created’ Trolls and Orcs. He says he ‘made’ them in counterfeit of certain creatures pre-existing. There is, to me, a wide gulf between the two statements, so wide that Treebeard’s statement could (in my world) have possibly been true. It is not true actually of the Orcs – who are fundamentally a race of ‘rational incarnate’ creatures, though horribly corrupted, if no more so than many Men to be met today. ...But if they ‘fell’, as the Diabolus Morgoth did, and started making things ‘for himself, to be their Lord’, these would then ‘be’, even if Morgoth broke the supreme ban against making other ‘rational’ creatures like Elves or Men. They would at least ‘be’ real physical realities in the physical world, however evil they might prove, even ‘mocking’ the Children of God. They would be Morgoth’s greatest Sins, abuses of his highest privilege, and would be creatures begotten of Sin, and naturally bad. (I nearly wrote ‘irredeemably bad’; but that would be going too far. Because by accepting or tolerating their making – necessary to their actual existence – even Orcs would become part of the World, which is God’s and ultimately good.) But whether they could have ‘souls’ or ‘spirits’ seems a different question; and since in my myth at any rate I do not conceive of the making of souls or spirits, things of an equal order if not an equal power to the Valar, as a possible ‘delegation’, I have represented at least the Orcs as pre-existing real beings on whom the Dark Lord has exerted the fullness of his power in remodelling and corrupting them, not making them. That God would ‘tolerate’ that, seems no worse theology than the toleration of the calculated dehumanizing of Men by tyrants that goes on today.

(4)

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. ...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.

(5) Notes on 1956 review by Auden of LOTR

Denethor despised lesser men, and one may be sure did not distinguish between orcs and the allies of Mordor. If he had survived as victor, even without use of the Ring, he would have taken a long stride towards becoming himself a tyrant, and the terms and treatment he accorded to the deluded peoples of east and south would have been cruel and vengeful.

(6) Letter of 1957

There is no ‘symbolism’ or conscious allegory in my story. Allegory of the sort ‘five wizards = five senses’ is wholly foreign to my way of thinking. There were five wizards and that is just a unique part of history. To ask if the Orcs ‘are’ Communists is to me as sensible as asking if Communists are Orcs.

And this is where we get the "racist Tolkien!" stuff from:

(7) 1958 letter to Forrest Ackerman about his proposed film treatment of LOTR (I will never not be tickled by the idea that Forry and his entourage turned up on Tolkien's doorstep full of misguided enthusiasm to do an animated version)

Why does Z put beaks and feathers on Orcs!? (Orcs is not a form of Auks.) 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.

(Z is screenwriter Morton Grady Zimmerman. And Tolkien's criticisms of him seem even more applicable to McKay and Payne)

(8) Draft of unsent letter, 1958

The Fall or corruption, therefore, of all things in it and all inhabitants of it, was a possibility if not inevitable. Trees may ‘go bad’ as in the Old Forest; Elves may turn into Orcs, and if this required the special perversive malice of Morgoth, still Elves themselves could do evil deeds.

(9) Letter of 1965

[Auden had asked Tolkien if the notion of the Orcs, an entire race that was irredeemably wicked, was not heretical.] With regard to The Lord of the Rings, I cannot claim to be a sufficient theologian to say whether my notion of orcs is heretical or not. I don’t feel under any obligation to make my story fit with formalized Christian theology, though I actually intended it to be consonant with Christian thought and belief, which is asserted somewhere, Book Five, page 190, where Frodo asserts that the orcs are not evil in origin. We believe that, I suppose, of all human kinds and sorts and breeds, though some appear, both as individuals and groups to be, by us at any rate, unredeemable

Bonus note on origin of "warg": (10) Letter to Gene Wolfe (yes, that Gene Wolfe) 1966

Orc I derived from Anglo-Saxon, a word meaning a demon, usually supposed to be derived from the Latin Orcus – Hell. But I doubt this, though the matter is too involved to set out here. Warg is simple. It is an old word for wolf, which also had the sense of an outlaw or hunted criminal. This is its usual sense in surviving texts. I adopted the word had a good sound for the meaning, as a name for this particular brand of demonic wolf in the story.

I have to give his description of Forry turning up, it's too good to leave out:

(11) Letter of 1957:

It may amuse you to hear that (unsolicited) I suddenly found myself the winner of the International Fantasy Award, presented (as it says) ‘as a fitting climax to the Fifteenth World Science Fiction Convention’. What it boiled down to was a lunch at the Criterion yesterday with speeches, and the handing over of an absurd ‘trophy’. A massive metal ‘model’ of an upended Space-rocket (combined with a Ronson lighter). But the speeches were far more intelligent, especially that of the introducer: Clemence Dane, a massive woman of almost Sitwellian presence. Sir Stanley himself was present. Not having any immediate use for the trophy (save publicity=sales=cash) I deposited it in the window of 40 Museum Street. A back-wash from the Convention was a visit from an American film-agent (one of the adjudicating panel) who drove out all the way in a taxi from London to see me last week, filling 76 S[andfield] with strange men and stranger women – I thought the taxi would never stop disgorging. But this Mr Ackerman brought some really astonishingly good pictures (Rackham rather than Disney) and some remarkable colour photographs. They have apparently toured America shooting mountain and desert scenes that seem to fit the story. The Story Line or Scenario was, however, on a lower level. In fact bad. But it looks as if business might be done. Stanley U. & I have agreed on our policy: Art or Cash. Either very profitable terms indeed; or absolute author’s veto on objectionable features or alterations.

(12) Letter of 1957

I have today been visited by a Mr (Forrest J.) Ackerman, acting as an agent for three persons interested in filming The Lord of the Rings. In this work they have apparently been engaged for some six months … I have seen the specimen drawings of the artist (a Mr Cobb) and consider them admirable … I have with me the Story Line, which I will send you (on Friday I hope), when I have properly considered it. At a glance it shows a great deal more feeling for the story (in the terms of this sort of thing) than anything the BBC contrived.

("Cobb" was Roy Cobb, 19 year old cartoonist who was a junior artist at Walt Disney Studios)

It's always amusing to me to hear Tolkien talk of his own work. He does not seem entirely self-aware of what he's doing, in contrast to Blake, who, despite being less intelligent, is in some sense much more clearheaded. I know that sounds rich given Blake's galaxy-brain prophecies, but he at least is under no delusion that he is discussing archetypes which do have some degree of correspondence with real-world thoughts and behaviors, and is not ashamed to make those connections explicit, rather than try to waffle around with "Oh no, I never do symbolism or allegory! I think that's so crass" like Tolkien does.

Like there's this interview I watched recently where Tolkien is disavowing symbolism and the interviewer is like "Come on, man, the Tree of Gondor is so obviously symbolic of the state of Gondor" and Tolkien's like "oh, well, yeah, obviously, but I didn't mean symbolism like that." Ok, well what do you think symbolism is, man? If I had to read between the lines, I think he had unpleasant interactions with not-particularly-intelligent fans trying to read his work like Pilgrim's Progress or something ("by Orcs, did you mean the Russian communists?!"), which he found so off-putting that he overcorrected in disavowing the notion entirely.

There's a difference between "the bald-headed eagle is a symbol of the American nation" and "the Ferengi symbolise Yankee traders". I'm with Tolkien in that interview: no duh the White Tree symbolises Gondor, the way the Union Jack symbolises Great Britain or Uncle Sam symbolises America. That's straightforward representation.

Symbolism of the type he meant is different, it is that "The five wizards are the five senses" and then everyone argues over is Gandalf sight or hearing. That's not what he meant, and if the interviewer thought he was being ever so clever, I have to say no he wasn't.

People were going "well obviously the One Ring is the atomic bomb" and he had to explain "I invented this before ever anyone even heard of atomic bombs". That's the facile, surface reading of "symbolism" that he hated. Lewis meant Aslan to symbolise Jesus in a direct parallel, but Tolkien (despite earnest commentators) did not mean "Gandalf is Jesus, they both died and were resurrected".

no duh the White Tree symbolises Gondor, the way the Union Jack symbolises Great Britain or Uncle Sam symbolises America.

Oh, come on, it's much more than that. It's not merely a crest. In the books, the White Tree is dead, and no sapling of it was found. When Aragorn returns and ascends to the throne, he is led by Gandalf to find a lost sapling of the dead tree, which he returns to the courtyard and plants, where it grows and blooms. This clearly symbolic of the loss and restoration of the line of kings.

It's not just the football logo for Team Gondor.

It is more than just a dead tree, but it's not some kind of "and by putting in a tree, it really means that the British Empire will continue to survive into the future" symbolism, either. Tolkien liked trees so he put in trees. What are the seven stars a symbol of, then? What are the seven stones? Remember the rhyme:

Tall ships and tall kings
Three times three.
What brought they from the foundered land
Over the flowing sea?
Seven stars and seven stones
And one white tree.

Tolkien explains in notes what they were, and it's not this kind of facile but dumb explanation here:

The seven stars and seven stones are symbols of the Valar, the gods of Tolkien's universe, who guided the Numenoreans to their new home.

Tolkien doesn't put symbolism of that type in, he puts prophecy in: "the hands of the king are the hands of a healer", and so forth. This is how Aragorn establishes that he is the rightful heir and king (and that is what the split between Gondor and Arnor started with, the denial by Gondor that descendants of the Arnorian line had any inheritance rights on the throne).

There isn't any symbolism of "by X you meant the Tories/the Communists/the Joos, just say it, we all know you really mean it, it's Da Joos isn't it???" kind.

Seeing as I'm off on a Tolkien tangent, and with the third season of Rings of Power lurking out there in post-production, here are some of his comments about the proposed film version of LOTR:

1957 letters to Rayner Unwin

(1)

You will receive on Monday the copy of the ‘Story Line’ or synopsis of the proposed film version of The Lord of the Rings. I could not get it off yesterday …

The ‘Story Line’ is (as might be expected) on a much lower level of art and perceptiveness than the pictorial material. It is in some points bad, and unacceptable, but is not irremediable, if the author of it (a certain Morton Grady Zimmerman) is open to criticism and direction. The ending is badly muffed. Though a lot of time is said to have gone into it, it reads like a production of haste, after a single reading, & without further reference to text. (My criticisms are not directed to the orc-idiom in which it is written, but to the effect which, it appears to me, the directions would have in a visual presentation – not to mention dialogue.) Mr Ackerman’s line of talk was that a big object to the group was ‘pleasing the author’. I have indicated to him that will not be easy.

Quite crudely: displeasing the author requires a cash equivalent! Only the prospect of a very large financial profit would make me swallow some of the things in this script! But I had the impression that there is not much ‘money’ in this proposition. In that case they had better be a bit more artistic!

An abridgement by selection with some good picture-work would be pleasant, & perhaps worth a good deal in publicity; but the present script is rather a compression with resultant over-crowding and confusion, blurring of climaxes, and general degradation: a pull-back towards more conventional ‘fairy-stories’. People gallop about on Eagles at the least provocation; Lórien becomes a fairycastle with ‘delicate minarets’, and all that sort of thing.

But I am quite prepared to play ball, if they are open to advice – and if you decide that the thing is genuine, and worthwhile.

(2)

Ackerman. What a letter! Just like the man, when I met him. But I came to the conclusion then that he was, in spite of his style, a genuine enthusiast … Cobb and Lackey obviously have real talent … and the comparison of Cobb with Rackham is just. Also Cobb’s taste and style seems on the whole to fit the L. R. better than I should have thought possible. I should say that he can be sinister without great distortions. He is certain to prove less good on anything noble or admirable (we all are, and Americans specially). But in any case, the visual art is not of such a superlative order that it could carry the stupidities and vulgarities of the script. And I am afraid we must take a stand there, as you have very clearly indicated: either the script-writer must be humble and co-operative, or his ‘visual’ colleagues must go unpublished.

...My chief criticism of the project, so far, is this. There is an internal dislocation. The chief and special talent of the group obviously lies, and will lie, in the scenic, & pictorial. The script-writer should consider this. On the contrary, he wants feverish action, and simply cuts out parts in which climate and scenery are the chief interest, such as ‘The Ring goes South’ or ‘The Great River’. Whereas the distant view and approach of the 3 sinister mountains, or the unrolling of the Anduin, would be just the things this group would do admirably.

However, we shall see. Grateful as I am, & should be, for the abundance of people who profess enjoyment of The Lord of the Rings, I wish that the commonest reaction of admirers was not the desire to tinker with it! However, a good deal of alteration is inevitable in a change of medium. But the Zimmerman alterations are the wrong way round. In a visual form marvels, like flying on eagles, want reducing not increasing.

(3) 1958 letter

Of course, I will get busy on this at once, now that Easter is over, and the Dutch incense is dissipated. Thank you for the copy of the Story-line, which I will go through again.

I am entirely ignorant of the process of producing an ‘animated picture’ from a book, and of the jargon connected with it. Could you let me know exactly what is a ‘story-line’, and its function in the process?

It is not necessary (or advisable) for me to waste time on mere expressions if these are simply directions to picture-producers. But this document, as it stands, is sufficient to give me grave anxiety about the actual dialogue that (I suppose) will be used. I should say Zimmerman, the constructor of this s-l, is quite incapable of excerpting or adapting the ‘spoken words’ of the book. He is hasty, insensitive, and impertinent.

He does not read books. It seems to me evident that he has skimmed through the L.R. at a great pace, and then constructed his s.l. from partly confused memories, and with the minimum of references back to the original. Thus he gets most of the names wrong in form – not occasionally by casual error but fixedly (always Borimor for Boromir); or he misapplies them: Radagast becomes an Eagle. The introduction of characters and the indications of what they are to say have little or no reference to the book. Bombadil comes in with ‘a gentle laugh’! …

I feel very unhappy about the extreme silliness and incompetence of Z and his complete lack of respect for the original (it seems wilfully wrong without discernible technical reasons at nearly every point). But I need, and shall soon need very much indeed, money, and I am conscious of your rights and interests; so that I shall endeavour to restrain myself, and avoid all avoidable offence. I will send you my remarks, particular and general, as soon as I can; and of course nothing will go to Ackerman except through you and with at least your assent.

(4) 1958 letter to Forrest Ackerman with commentary on the film treatment

If Z and/or others do so, they may be irritated or aggrieved by the tone of many of my criticisms. If so, I am sorry (though not surprised). But I would ask them to make an effort of imagination sufficient to understand the irritation (and on occasion the resentment) of an author, who finds, increasingly as he proceeds, his work treated as it would seem carelessly in general, in places recklessly, and with no evident signs of any appreciation of what it is all about …

The canons of narrative art in any medium cannot be wholly different; and the failure of poor films is often precisely in exaggeration, and in the intrusion of unwarranted matter owing to not perceiving where the core of the original lies.

Z … has intruded a ‘fairy castle’ and a great many Eagles, not to mention incantations, blue lights, and some irrelevant magic (such as the floating body of Faramir). He has cut the parts of the story upon which its characteristic and peculiar tone principally depends, showing a preference for fights; and he has made no serious attempt to represent the heart of the tale adequately: the journey of the Ringbearers. The last and most important part of this has, and it is not too strong a word, simply been murdered.

Bonus "why didn't the Eagles just fly the company to Mordor?" answer

Here we meet the first intrusion of the Eagles. I think they are a major mistake of Z, and without warrant.

The Eagles are a dangerous ‘machine’. I have used them sparingly, and that is the absolute limit of their credibility or usefulness. The alighting of a Great Eagle of the Misty Mountains in the Shire is absurd; it also makes the later capture of G. by Saruman incredible, and spoils the account of his escape. (One of Z’s chief faults is his tendency to anticipate scenes or devices used later, thereby flattening the tale out.) Radagast is not an Eaglename, but a wizard’s name; several eagle-names are supplied in the book. These points are to me important.

...At the bottom of the page, the Eagles are again introduced. I feel this to be a wholly unacceptable tampering with the tale. ‘Nine Walkers’ and they immediately go up in the air! The intrusion achieves nothing but incredibility, and the staling of the device of the Eagles when at last they are really needed. It is well within the powers of pictures to suggest, relatively briefly, a long and arduous journey, in secrecy, on foot, with the three ominous mountains getting nearer.

Just imagine what he would have thought of McKay and Payne's shrunken distances so Khazad-dum is only a stroll away from Eregion! Or the magic teleporting so people cover vast distances in hours not days! Or, of course, the layout of the Numenorean ships where they can stow all the horses, troops, supplies, etc. below in the vast, TARDIS like holds.

Why do the Jews never look at George Bailey or Harry Potter or Luke Skywalker and say "That's me! Yes, he may not be canonically Jewish, but he's obviously just a stand-in for a Jew in this fictional setting."

They do, however, say that about Superman, who's the furthest thing from those stereotypes.

I don't think the fictional characters you identify with really say that much about you. At most it says how you'd like to be perceived, or how you fear others do perceive you. Wasn't there a thread a week or two ago about how real identity comes from what you do, not how you feel?

They do, however, say that about Superman

Well, they say a lot of things about that movie, especially in response to what everyone else thinks the movie was about

They've said that about the comics for the better part of a century. It's not exclusively about the movie.

Jews are the ones correctly interpreting these things in both cases. The Harry Potter goblins were a representation of Jews written by a Gentile. Superman is a representation and self-conception of a Jew written by Jews.

The Grinch and Scrooge are metaphors for Jews written by Christians telling a story of their Conversion to Christianity through Christmas.

Fictional characters you identify with say a lot about you, and they also say a lot about how you perceive your outgroup. The "Dumb Blonde" stereotype has no basis in reality, it's a Hollywood trope written from an adversarial perspective. The "Jock vs Nerd" trope, in which the socially maladjusted Nerd always wins, is telling a similar story.

Jews have a fine-tuned sensitivity, and mastery, over writing and interpreting these characters. They are very good at using them to criticize their outgroup, and they are very good at detecting when fictional characters are being used to criticize them (and most of the time they are not being paranoid they are correct). Whites are not very good at detecting when a fictional character was written in order to criticize themselves from an adversarial perspective. Jews are very good at detecting that.

Jews are the ones correctly interpreting these things in both cases. The Harry Potter goblins were a representation of Jews written by a Gentile.

There's a certain strain of leftist that strains to attach antisemitism to Rowling, but her depiction of goblins was straight out of folklore, not Rowling expressing her covert Jew-hatred. Or are you going to adopt the leftist frame that akshually, goblins were metaphors for Jews even in the Dark Ages?

(No, they were not. Metaphors for many other things, but not Jews.)

The Grinch and Scrooge are metaphors for Jews written by Christians telling a story of their Conversion to Christianity through Christmas.

... have you even read Dickens or Doctor Seuss?

Is your theory that every gentile who writes about an ugly, greedy monster is actually writing about Jews, even if subconsciously? That says more about you than some hypothetical ur-Jew floating in the collective gentile consciousness.

Or are you going to adopt the leftist frame that akshually, goblins were metaphors for Jews even in the Dark Ages?

I've seen someone unironically assert this on Tumblr, in the context of calling the anime Goblin Slayer antisemitic. Because goblins are always and everywhere an antisemitic caricature, a deliberate stand-in for Jews, and always have been, thus anyone who uses goblins as an antagonist element is a deliberate antisemite.

I've seen this claim too, but I don't remember ever seeing it before Rowling became a bete noire and people were trying to pin antisemitism and racism et al on her.

I once got lectured by a Jewish person that "lizard people" (i.e., the myth about secret aliens controlling the world) is an antisemitic meme. And I'm like... do you really want to insist on that association?

I once got lectured by a Jewish person that "lizard people" (i.e., the myth about secret aliens controlling the world) is an antisemitic meme. And I'm like... do you really want to insist on that association?

Yeah, the tendency to reflexively react to criticism of "elites" — open, secret, or alien — controlling the world with "You mean the Jews, right? You're totally talking about us Jews!" isn't a good look. When you can watch someone put a standard lefty "eat the rich" rant on Tumblr, and immediately get piled on as a "Nazi" who wants to genocide all Jews because, between ranting about Musk, Bezos, and Klaus Schwab, they dared bring up George Soros; because the only reason anyone would ever mention Soros in a negative context is entirely because Soros is Jewish and they hate him because he's Jewish, because they must be an antisemite who hates all Jews — well, it's hard not to think this probably fuels at least a little antisemitism.

And back on the earlier point, it's not just goblins and reptilian aliens, either. How about the claim that the tengu of Japanese folklore are an antisemitic caricature? I mean, just look at those noses. I, mean, sure, the conventional explanation is as a more humanized form of their older depiction as bird-men:

The tengu in art appears in a variety of shapes. It usually falls somewhere in between a large, monstrous bird and a wholly anthropomorphized being, often with a red face or an unusually large or long nose. Early depictions of tengu show them as kite-like beings who can take a human-like form, often retaining avian wings, heads, or beaks. The tengu's long nose seems to have been conceived in the 14th century, likely as a humanization of the original bird's bill.

But, no, that doesn't stop people from claiming, like on Twitter here: https://nitter.poast.org/nerdtechgasm/status/1931926279106036079 that "it's not a theory" at all that the tengu are antisemitic depictions of a group of Jews who arrived in Japan in the 3rd Century and became the Hata clan.

I think Jews see all conspiracy theories as latently antisemitic because of bitter experience - most conspiracy theorists and conspiracy-focused political movements will eventually graduate to Jewish conspiracies and old-fashioned anti-semitism. This process appears to be happening to Zoomer MAGA as we speak.

It's possible to see the Grinch as a Jewish-to-Christian conversion story, I suppose. But A Christmas Carol is certainly a story of a Christian redemption, no Jews involved.

The Harry Potter goblins were a representation of Jews written by a Gentile.

The Harry Potter goblins are the gnomes of Zurich. I'm equally fed-up with people pointing and yelling about anti-Semitism because they so desperately want to be offended and wrap themselves in the mantle of persecuted martyrdom, or they so desperately need caricatures to feed the conspiracy theory about Jewish World Domination Plot.

The Grinch and Scrooge are metaphors for Jews written by Christians telling a story of their Conversion to Christianity through Christmas.

Scrooge is a metaphor for Christianity. This is so wildly off the bat that you must never have read the book. Dickens popularised the secular Christmas. The three Ghosts are not Christian saints or representative figures, Scrooge never darkens the door of a church, and secular charity is about as religious as this new festive feasting and partying Christmastide gets. Tell me Mr. Fezziwig's ball is in fact midnight Mass, I dare you.

Dickens wrote Jewish characters who were offensive to Jewish readers. Scrooge is not Jewish.

Central to Scrooge's hatred of Christmas is being stuck in school with his books while his peers are out celebrating Christmas. This was a common-enough Jewish experience that Hannukah was elevated to its current status to precisely solve this problem for Jewish children. Mr. Fezziwig's ball represents Scrooge being pulled into the tradition as a "Christmas convert" just like the Grinch. They are both isolated figures, outsiders, resentful of the Holiday, but then they are won over. Ebeneezer is a Hebrew name, while it wasn't that uncommon for Christians, his business partner Jacob Marley had a fully Jewish name. Fagin is Jewish in Dicken's Oliver Twist although Dickens edited out direct reference to Fagin as a Jew.

The point isn't "Scrooge was Jewish" it's that these stories were created to represent cultural "victory of the Christmas Spirit" over the "anti-Christmas spirit." It's a mode of propagating culture, to craft fictional characters that resist it (and are inspired by prevailing stereotypes of non-Christians) but then they end up converting in the end. It moralizes Christmas and demoralizes outsiders who would oppose it, because if they do they are a Scrooge or a Grinch- someone who has not accepted a conversion necessary for their very soul.

Superman is not literally a Jew, he's a Kryptonian, but what the character represents is a different question entirely.

I never knew Marley was a Jewish name. So what nationality or ethnic stereotype does the Dickensian name "M'Choakumchild" represent? If you need to point out to the audience for anti-Semitic stereotypes "No, look, this guy is meant to be Jewish, here's how and why", I think the stereotyping is not working - or maybe you might be wrong.

I never knew Marley was a Jewish name.

One of Bob Marley's kids married a Jewish-descended woman; do she and their kids count?

"Marley" usually comes from Old English, occasionally as an Anglicization of Irish.

"Jacob" is Biblical, so it is a common Jewish name, but it's also the middle name of one of the most famous Protestant Christians of Dickens' time, John Jacob Astor, possibly the wealthiest businessmen in the world when A Christmas Carol was written.

or maybe you might be wrong.

Yup. The most relevant etymology here is that of "Secure Signals". A Holocaust denier who named himself after the SS might not be the best source for objective discussion of antisemitism.

M'Choakumchild

Sounds Bantu to me.

There is an alternative reading where Scrooge represents Puritan austerity (which was specifically opposed to the secular aspects of Christmas celebrations, with Cromwell's major-generals sending their most pious soldiers out to confiscate overly-rich Christmas dinners) and the Weberian "Protestant work ethic". The arguments Scrooge uses on the pleasant portly gentlemen were real political positions used by real right-liberals as the basis for important legislation at the time Dickens was writing, and the real people saying these things saw themselves as pious Protestants and justified their positions in Weberian terms.

Given the social context Dickens was writing in, the anti-Weberian reading seems more plausible than the antisemitic reading, although the nature of great fiction is that both are present in the text, and it is almost certain that both were present in Dickens' brain.

I'm looking up the novel right now, and the very ending does have some religious references (Scrooge invokes Heaven, goes to church, etc.) but it's very non-denominational, if I may put it that way. "Heaven" but not God and certainly not Jesus. Church, but it's more the ringing of the church bells, and going to church is part of his entire procedure of reformed behaviour, not a particularly conversion experience:

He went to church, and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and fro, and patted children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of houses, and up to the windows, and found that everything could yield him pleasure. He had never dreamed that any walk—that anything—could give him so much happiness. In the afternoon he turned his steps towards his nephew’s house.

Dickens invented modern Christmas, more or less, and it was a majorly secular one right from the start. Yes, generosity, charity, reconciliation with your family, becoming involved with your fellows - but nothing there that couldn't have the very light coat of religious reference sanded off and still be relevant to the 'spiritual but not religious' or modern lay person who observes Christmas as a time for getting drunk, partying, having the big family gathering, and spending a ton of money.

The Superman/Moses thing is pretty obvious right off the bat, and Superman's creators were Jewish.

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