Tolkien: Neither Woke Nor "Based Conservative" ... More Like "Gentle Traditionalist"

I Have Seen Worse Things from the Late Bergoglio, Than Some of his Economic Advice ... · What an Occasion to Make Clarifications on Fascism · Tolkien: Neither Woke Nor "Based Conservative" ... More Like "Gentle Traditionalist"

The "Gentle Traditionalist" is obviously a reference to a character in Roger Buck's novel.

APSt

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HGL

I'm sorry, but this gets Tolkien equally wrong, if not more.

1) Tolkien would not have called someone crazy bc of an intellectual error, and would not have exposed a relatively peaceful person, let alone an admirer, to the horrors of psychiatry for such a thing,

2) Tolkien certainly thought that European colonialism was tainted. His point about Numenor being blessed was basically a point about European Christendom being blessed for resisting brutal enemies of the faith ... but the point about Black Numenoreans setting up things in certain parts of Middle-Earth is a point about colonialism gone deeply wrong.

It would be a horrible thing to be for Sauron just to be against Numenor, but it is perhaps even more horrible and certainly possible to be for Sauron as a Numenorean.

I am presuming you know more than just the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, perhaps Unfinished Tales, and at least Silmarillion.

AC

HGL The fall of the Numenoreans (and I mean that spiritually and physically) is a clear reference to how our society decays as turn away from God in favor of selfish pursuits. It had nothing to do with colonialism and everything to do with selfishness and materialistic idolatry. Though it is far worse today, the 1920's was a disgusting and perverse era and, for Tolkein who was a traditionalist Catholic, it was probably downright maddening.

HGL

"It had nothing to do with colonialism"

Sorry, but you are very explicitly contradicting a letter by Tolkien.

The Black Numenoreans are marked out for preferring to dominate the more primitive folks in Middle Earth over brotherly teaching them.

That very clearly has sth to do with colonialism.

Here is Tolkiengateway:

The Black Númenóreans emerged from the King's Men party;[2] they were cruel oppressors and overlords over the primitive Men of Middle-earth. Since they were colonising the continent, they survived the Downfall of Númenor but swiftly diminished.

Tolkien Gateway: Black Númenóreans
https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Black_N%C3%BAmen%C3%B3reans

HGL, added

Here is Girl Next Gondor giving three videos about the fall of Númenor, here are two of them, partly about the colonialism in Middle-Earth:

Before the Shadow: The Downfall of Númenor [Part One]
GirlNextGondor | 19 July 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDPL-NDvrqg

Glory and Decay: The Downfall of Númenor [Part Two]
GirlNextGondor | 24 Aug 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQuPWhZuYkw

II

HGL

I missed the last part of Miss Woke's second line, it's actually rather gross, but even then I think Tolkien would have refrained from the measure you portray.

What an Occasion to Make Clarifications on Fascism

I Have Seen Worse Things from the Late Bergoglio, Than Some of his Economic Advice ... · What an Occasion to Make Clarifications on Fascism · Tolkien: Neither Woke Nor "Based Conservative" ... More Like "Gentle Traditionalist"

Hans-Georg Lundahl

It is known I self describe as Fascist. Note, Fascist, not National Socialist.

Someone beside me in the cyber played a speech by you know who at a speech climax.

It's possibly unfair to a good painter.

It's also irrelevant for Fascism.

Here is a speech by Mussolini who thought they were safeguarding international peace:

Mussolini Close Ups And Speech In German (1927)
British Pathé | 13 April 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jgZijUobnY

The notice "1927" is obviously a typo, possibly for 1937. Not sure what year Mussolini visited Germany.

And here is one by Engelbert Dollfuss:

EXCLUSIVE ANNOUNCEMENT BY DOLLFUSS OF AUSTRIA - SOUND
British Movietone | 21 July 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yEXGxWcLnM

Hans-Georg Lundahl

[update]

Just in case some guys PERSIST to confuse Nazi and Fascist, here is a video on acceptance of versus discriminations against people with Downs:

How Were People With Down Syndrome Treated In History?
Disturban History | 25 April 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szQw2T8avRc

The Reich after Hitler's Machtübernahme is mentioned, so were states in the US, first of which Indiana, and every time I reflect on this, I'm so sad a certain guy didn't remain a painter and so happy for one change that Patton brought about.

In the Soviet Union, the project was studied under Lenin, but very fortunately cancelled by Stalin, however the mentality is widespread. In Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark, there was no Patton. Eugenics ended in the 1970's there.

In Mussolini's Italy, there was no such thing, at least before 1938. I have not read the leggi raciali, I don't know if that changed.

In Dollfuss' Austria, there was no such thing.

In Franco's Spain, I think Valleja Najera tried to push for it, but didn't quite succeed, so he had to claim some version of Child Protective Services as "eugenics" ... (in a different context, namely considering revolutionary spirit as a hereditary disease), but even that was pushed back through the Catholic Church.

I am not sure how much of this got introduced by Alexis Carrell, a Protestant, when he became a minister in the Vichy régime. I used to say the régime of Pétain Darlan was OK, that of Pétain Laval wasn't ... but Alexis Carrell got hired before Laval, so, I am not positive about the entire time of Darlan as PM either.

This article explores a new dimension in fascist studies, eugenic studies, and the more mainstream history of Italy, Europe, and modernity. It asks scholars to reconsider the centrality of race and biology to the political programme of Italian fascism in power. Fascism’s ‘binomial theorem’ of optimum population change was characterized as a commitment both to increase the ‘quantity’ (number) and improve the ‘quality’ (biology) of the Italian ‘race’. These twin objectives came to fruition in the new scientific and political paradigm known to contemporaries as ‘biological politics’ and to scholars today as ‘biopolitics’. Fascism, this article contends, attempted to utilize the full force of the new ‘biopower’ of reproductive and biogenetic medicine and science in order to realize the aims of its biopolitical agenda for racial betterment through fertility increase. In Italy, fascism encouraged science to tamper with the processes of human reproduction and to extend genetic understanding of diseases which were seen as ‘conquerable’ without sterilization and euthanasia. It began a biotechnological ‘revolution’ that historians often attribute to twenty-first-century science. By exploring the technical innovations in assisted conception which Italian fascism promoted, this article challenges the assumption in much of the scholarship that there was a huge divide between the ‘old’ eugenics of the interwar period and the ‘new’ genetics of recent decades.

Racial ‘Sterility’ and ‘Hyperfecundity’ in Fascist Italy. Biological Politics of Sex and Reproduction
https://brill.com/view/journals/fasc/1/2/article-p92_3.xml