this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2025
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[–] RNAi@hexbear.net 61 points 5 months ago (1 children)

What else could you expect from posh britbongs, especially a university proffesor one

[–] uSSRI@hexbear.net 40 points 5 months ago (4 children)

Also from South Africa pre-20th century even

[–] Carl@hexbear.net 48 points 5 months ago

We can say at the very least that Tolkien wasn't a Nazi, but unfortunately that still leaves him as an early 20th century lib, which is not a flattering thing to be.

[–] GalaxyBrain@hexbear.net 17 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

He was 4 when they moved to England

[–] lil_tank@hexbear.net 24 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] MaoTheLawn@hexbear.net 10 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

hey now

the Brits hated the boers too

we put them in concentration camps

[–] RNAi@hexbear.net 16 points 5 months ago
[–] BeanisBrain@hexbear.net 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

It's frankly a miracle he ended up anti-Apartheid before it was cool (1950s).

[–] Awoo@hexbear.net 49 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

When you're so anti-authoritarian that you support fascism because you think it's less bad than those authoritarian communists.

This is the essence of anti-authoritarianism being such a mess of an ideology to hold. Tolkien was anti-authoritarian to the point that he opposed anarchists "whiskered men with bombs" as he called them. Claiming himself to be philosophically anarchist yet opposing anyone and everyone making any attempt to actually change the status quo.

He is the very essence of the same crowd that became tankiejerk. Anti-authoritarianism generally just leans towards supporting the status quo against everything because everything else is authoritarian and not utopian enough, entirely ignoring that the status quo is significantly more authoritarian.

[–] huf@hexbear.net 35 points 5 months ago (1 children)

he hated the faceless machine of government oppressing people, but was absolutely fine with being personally oppressed by the local lord whose name and face he knew well.

incoherent nonsense.

[–] context@hexbear.net 16 points 5 months ago (1 children)

he hated the faceless machine of government oppressing people, but was absolutely fine with being personally oppressed by the local lord whose name and face he knew well.

hegelian master-slave dialectic but it's a pleasant conversation over afternoon tea

[–] huf@hexbear.net 13 points 5 months ago (1 children)

no no, you dont have tea with the lord. you take off your hat and bow when he passes through the village.

[–] BeanisBrain@hexbear.net 16 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You turn over most of your grain to him and your family starves because there was less rainfall than usual this year.

[–] context@hexbear.net 10 points 5 months ago

or too much rainfall. the great famine of the early 1300's was caused by a few years of nearly incessant rainfall. nothing could dry out properly and so the wheat crops failed and everything else turned to rot.

[–] pinkapple@lemmy.ml 15 points 5 months ago

"Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs) or to unconstitutional monarchy."

He was an anti-modernity reactionary Christian who basically believed the feudal system was some kind of natural order, simple, beautiful, as god intended and that all this government, state and parliament nonsense ruined the simplicity of a simple peasant and his absolute despot. A guy who was afraid to use tape recorders and only started using one after recording the lord's prayer first to cast out the demons. I don't know why people think he would have any coherent or sane politics.

Not even a fully developed feudal system but Saxon era Britain with small kingdoms ruled by warrior chieftains with just "pure" illiterate hobbit peasants and a bunch of monks and priests. You basically get LOTR but in reality it was more like ASOIAF-GoT and reactionaries are generally delusional.

[–] combat_brandonism@hexbear.net 2 points 5 months ago

wasn't he dead by the time the antisemite Holocaust revisionist Hannah Arendt invented the term authoritarianism?

not that it changes the core of your message, just a funny thought I had given how much you used the term to describe his feudal brand of reactionary brainworms

[–] sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml 26 points 5 months ago

Damn, didn't know this one

[–] HamManBad@hexbear.net 23 points 5 months ago

Well that's a bummer

[–] Meltyheartlove@hexbear.net 14 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Shame he missed out on his biggest fan

[–] comrade_pibb@hexbear.net 12 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] Meltyheartlove@hexbear.net 7 points 5 months ago

alpha testing mystery immortality research chemicals and young blood

[–] Pisha@hexbear.net 7 points 5 months ago

Tolkien stopped Stuart Hall from doing his graduate thesis as he planned, either because of racism or because of anti-Marxism. He was a reactionary through and through