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  1. #161
    Quote Originally Posted by eschatological View Post
    Depends on the quality of work and how important it was to me, and to some extent how personally connected I was to the person.

    I still listen to and appreciate Michael Jackson's music. It is legendary, and to me, discounting it for the rest of time because the man himself was (could possibly have been?) a piece of shit seems like a disservice to the actual songs. They've taken on importance of their own. He is the one exception to the rule where I wholly separate the music from the man, because that's how important the music is.

    A random YouTuber grooms underage girls whose videos I've seen before, like what happened this weekend with Cryaotic? I don't care, I'll toss him and his content into the trash bin for the rest of eternity.

    The inbetween cases are the hard ones. I stopped watching Louis C.K.'s stuff, but I don't rule out the idea that he may be able to redeem himself. Chris D'Elia, on the other hand? Nope. In these two cases, it seems to make a difference to me that at least Louis C.K.'s stuff wasn't with underage women, and he truly seems to be repentant.
    Also, as Bills fans, we get people calling for the removal of OJ Simpson's name from the stadium. I personally don't care, even if he was actually convicted of murder (which he wasn't). It's not like that would magically erase what he did as a player.
    Bandwagon sports fans can eat a bag of http://www.ddir.com/ .

  2. #162
    Quote Originally Posted by Fencers View Post
    You can't. It is not possible for you to feel one way or another about anything in reality without context.
    No.
    You can't.
    I'll continue to read Walt Whitman without worrying about his socio-political beliefs, thank you very much.

  3. #163
    Pit Lord smityx's Avatar
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    Just think of all the past mistakes or video or text posts on the internet that you've done recently or in the past that will come back to haunt you in the future if you even become some what successful whether it's financial or social. People who are not as successful as you will use that against you in the future to try and tear you back down due to jealousy or virtue signaling to score points/likes among their group/clique peers . Welcome to cancel culture. Sad thing is it will probably get worse.

  4. #164
    Quote Originally Posted by Shadowferal View Post
    No.
    You can't.
    I'll continue to read Walt Whitman without worrying about his socio-political beliefs, thank you very much.
    You really cannot. To even have a concept of a thing requires a context as you are reading Whittman.

    What you are actually admitting here is that you do not care about Walt Whittman's socio-political beliefs. But it is simply not possible to even read, Whitman or not, without context.

    To even know, for example, what preambulate means or what is Baseball or what is Brooklyn requires context or you could not understand when Whitman says, "In our sun-down perambulations, of late, through the outer parts of Brooklyn, we have observed several parties of youngsters playing "base", a certain game of ball."

    There is no such possible thing as 'no context'. Whether you care enough or at all, is another matter entirely.

  5. #165
    And I'm binge watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer now.

    So easy...

  6. #166
    Quote Originally Posted by smityx View Post
    Just think of all the past mistakes or video or text posts on the internet that you've done recently or in the past that will come back to haunt you in the future if you even become some what successful whether it's financial or social. People who are not as successful as you will use that against you in the future to try and tear you back down due to jealousy or virtue signalling to score points/likes among their group/clique peers . Welcome to cancel culture. Sad thing is it will probably get worse.
    Why do you think it is virtue signalling? I mean for instance in the case of Lovecraft we know his beliefs and know he made monsters based on his racist beliefs. Is it virtue signalling to point this out and not read his work due to the inspiration and context?

    It seems the only people concerned with "virtue signalling" are often those who end up finding themselves in the company of bigots.

    Cancel culture? you may want to go back four hundred years to read some competition treatises on various issues.

    "Cancel culture" is a stupid buzzword as of late that frankly doesn't exist and isn't some "new epidemic"

    Saying "Xyz hold views that are rather radical and out of step i will not patron them" is not fucking "cancel culture" or "new"

    It seems to me the right wing just hates anything that leads to progress and gives it some stupid buzzword name.

    PC culture - basic decorum and etiquette in existence since humans

    SJWs - you mean people that since the 1700s in the west have been instrumental to progress in society? For women's rights, civil rights, gay rights? Oh my what an evil thing

    Cancel Culture - You mean saying something is too out of step with norms and saying you won't patron it anymore? Literally in existence since we have had recorded history.

    Exactly where are right-wing people trying to go where these things are "problems"????
    Last edited by Themius; 2020-06-27 at 03:38 AM.

  7. #167
    Quote Originally Posted by Themius View Post

    It seems the only people concerned with "virtue signalling" are often those who end up finding themselves in the company of bigots.


    I am not, nor am I in, the company of bigots, for finding this a massive, cringy act of virtue signalling. I can meet you somewhat and concede that the term gets overused in a big way from what I can see, I have recently argued on FB (I know, I know) with friends defending people from that accusation, however I feel there are instances where it is just brazen, people trying too hard to say "look at me and how no bigoted I am!". It is a valid term, describing a valid phenomenon, just that it can be misapplied.

    Quote Originally Posted by Themius View Post
    Cancel culture? you may want to go back four hundred years to read some competition treatises on various issues.

    "Cancel culture" is a stupid buzzword as of late that frankly doesn't exist and isn't some "new epidemic"

    Saying "Xyz hold views that are rather radical and out of step i will not patron them" is not fucking "cancel culture" or "new"
    Stop with the gaslighting, I know you enjoy it, but please stop it. It does exist. The amount of hashtags to cancel things is clear evidence. It isn't simply "I will not patron them" but "lets pressure companies into firing people for having views we don't like" or "lets pressure (sometimes by threat of a violent mob) institutions to prevent people we don't like from speaking for having views we don't like/being critical of our views", or having done things in the past that were questionable, regardless of whether or not they have apologised for it. The hypocrisy of this when the James Gunn situation came to light (and to be fair, some people were consistent with this, even if I disagree with them, I can at least respect it when people are consistent and not acting out of partisan mob mentality). Mob pressure to cancel people we don't like, understanding when it comes to people we do like. The standard for what is deemed unacceptable is insanely partisan and at times low.

    Is it as bad as some people make it out to be? I don't think so, I think there is a slight moral panic, especially on the right over it, that doesn't mean that the behaviour they are worried about isn't there. It is a clear pass time for too many people on social media who like a good pile on. Nothing to do with making the world a better place, everything to do with a demonstration of power to destroy people. And as I said, the clear partisan nature of what is deemed unacceptable should be worrying for people. I am not suggesting that no one who is cancelled didn't have it coming, or that no one should be, when you take a set of political beliefs and treat them as axiomatic, and therefore any transgressors must be destroyed, it starts looking culty.

    Quote Originally Posted by Themius View Post
    It seems to me the right wing just hates anything that leads to progress and gives it some stupid buzzword name.
    This is just a false premise, stop acting like just because people on the left call themselves progressive doesn't mean everything they do leads to progress for society.

    Quote Originally Posted by Themius View Post
    PC culture - basic decorum and etiquette in existence since humans
    What was considered PC a few decades ago has nothing to do with PC now. You are right that the basic idea of PC is just trying to not be a cunt to people. If you honestly think that this is what it is now, which I expect you do, I am not sure what to say to you since you are beyond reason, other than to appeal to step back from it for a moment. Now it is many things, not all of them good, not all of them well intentioned. That I can promote PC culture now by tweeting "#killallmen", I saw a video of some fat fucks on mobility scooters with Trump flags, and a girl is filming it saying something like "that is hate! Go fuck yourselves!", completely unironically, come on, in this day and age, this thing that PC has morphed into in some areas has nothing to do with common decency and decorum.

    Quote Originally Posted by Themius View Post
    SJWs - you mean people that since the 1700s in the west have been instrumental to progress in society? For women's rights, civil rights, gay rights? Oh my what an evil thing
    Just because "SJW's" activate on these issues doesn't mean that people who activate on these issues are "SJW's", many people fight for these causes who aren't on the far left/insane/revolutionary marxists/hate filled bigots/fully indoctrinated cultists. Early feminists were not SJW's, they just wanted the right to vote, and the same rights as men, it wasn't an anti male movement, it wasn't fueled by a hatred of men. Martin Luther King didn't hate white people, he wanted to live in peace with white people as equals. Don't equate all of these important movements with the lunatics we have in the twitter age. There is a world of difference between #killallwhitepeople and #killallmen and what past movements achieved and were trying to achieve. Just because someone can tweet #BLM doesn't mean they can no longer be a cunt.

    I will grant you that this term is annoying though, I don't like it. I don't like when it is used as an out of hand dismissal, I do genuinely try to avoid using it, I also don't like the trojan horse quality of it, as if these maniacs have a monopoly on social justice, that it makes them beyond reproach because it is for "social justice". I think that is the genius of many of these groups, attaching themselves to genuine rights claims and real grievances, they catch people in a sort of Kafka trap, if you criticise them, see any wrong or flaws in their thinking/ideology/actions then you must be against said rights claim, therefore you must be a bigot, and attempt to defend yourself is just further evidence against you. I do find it funny that, despite the claims of how bigoted our society is (this will no doubt be read as me saying there is none) this trap hinges on the knowledge that most people aren't (I will grant you that there are still to many, but there has been clear progress, if you can go back 30 years and say things were just as bad, I'd call you a liar) and don't want to be seen as one, and that if society was as bigoted as it is made out to be (usually led by people who need it to be seen to be, otherwise they wouldn't be able to make a living) the accusations would be dismissed and ignored and the trap would fail. It literally hinges on one of the key dogmas being false.

    Quote Originally Posted by Themius View Post
    Cancel Culture - You mean saying something is too out of step with norms and saying you won't patron it anymore? Literally in existence since we have had recorded history.
    It isn't simply people refusing their own patronage, but using pressure to get people fired, or have appearances cancelled, deciding for others what they can and cannot see/read/listen to instead of simply stepping back themselves. You keep ignoring that part, it is very telling, I can't tell if it is intentional or not. And it isn't simply "out of step with norms", for most people the norms of the far left aren't their norms. When we have people being cancelled for suggesting that biological sex is real (I might even get infracted for suggesting that it is real, despite is being a fact), this will shock you but the idea of biological sex being real is the norm for most people, and if you want to gaslight on this, go on twitter and tweet that biological sex is real, see what happens to you. Companies are often jumping the gun and self censoring in anticipation and appeasement of the mob (it doesn't matter if I agree with the fundamentals of what the mob started fighting for, I don't like mob "justice"), thankfully a lot of people see how stupid that is (including ones on the left), take the recent wave of film and tv shows being purged from online streaming services.

    And the "too out of step", it is partisan, and depends on who does it, even if we can't agree on anything else, if you can't cede ground on this point then I don't know what to say. Brett Kavanaugh, bin him, believe all women. Joe Biden.....well, due process is important...(to be fair not everyone did this, but enough did for it to be noticable). Look at how the left treated Sarah Jeong. Julie Blindel spews bile about men for decades (if you substituted the words man/men/male for any other group it would have been an outrage), perfectly fine, as soon as those same men identify as a woman, the mob cometh, she is now out of step. There is a clear ideological slant with this, it has little to do with people violating the norms, and as I said, some people do act in cunty ways, but this is more to do with ideological enforcement and a display of ideological might, the who is more important than the what.

    If you actually want this to be a vehicle for positive social change, you need to recognise when it is being done out of partisan warfare and resist it.
    Quote Originally Posted by Gelannerai View Post


    Remember, legally no one sane takes Tucker Carlson seriously.

  8. #168
    Merely a Setback Adam Jensen's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by YUPPIE View Post
    there's a difference between "idiot" and "slightly assholish" as illustrated in the post to EVIL, posters.

    Like if a Nazi had interesting philosophies and text, you wouldn't dare think "he has a point" would you?
    Just because someone is a Nazi doesn't mean their wrong. If Hitler had put out a series of PSA's in 1930s Germany advocating that little children brush their teeth at night, then I'd support that.

    Or take Fritz Haber (who isn't a Nazi of course.) He's a chemist responsible for the chemical warfare of WWII but his method of producing nitrogen fertilization is incredibly vital to the world's food supply and put a serious dent in global starvation. So on one hand, thousands of people died to his terrible creations, and millions were saved by his wondrous creations.

    I'm not going to say the Haber-Bosch process is bad just because one of the chemists involved in developing it also created weapons of mass destruction.
    Putin khuliyo

  9. #169
    Quote Originally Posted by tehealadin View Post
    I am not, nor am I in, the company of bigots, for finding this a massive, cringy act of virtue signalling. I can meet you somewhat and concede that the term gets overused in a big way from what I can see, I have recently argued on FB (I know, I know) with friends defending people from that accusation, however I feel there are instances where it is just brazen, people trying too hard to say "look at me and how no bigoted I am!". It is a valid term, describing a valid phenomenon, just that it can be misapplied.
    You are however on the side that tends to find issues with these...which often just ends up being with bigots.


    Stop with the gaslighting, I know you enjoy it, but please stop it. It does exist. The amount of hashtags to cancel things is clear evidence. It isn't simply "I will not patron them" but "lets pressure companies into firing people for having views we don't like" or "lets pressure (sometimes by threat of a violent mob) institutions to prevent people we don't like from speaking for having views we don't like/being critical of our views", or having done things in the past that were questionable, regardless of whether or not they have apologised for it. The hypocrisy of this when the James Gunn situation came to light (and to be fair, some people were consistent with this, even if I disagree with them, I can at least respect it when people are consistent and not acting out of partisan mob mentality). Mob pressure to cancel people we don't like, understanding when it comes to people we do like. The standard for what is deemed unacceptable is insanely partisan and at times low.
    Pressuring others? My my it seems you have no clue about history then, it seems you have ignored competeing treatises, and historic writers and thinkers trying to tear down other people encourage and rally people against others for their views. Do you know who Wollstonecraft is?

    Is it as bad as some people make it out to be? I don't think so, I think there is a slight moral panic, especially on the right over it, that doesn't mean that the behaviour they are worried about isn't there. It is a clear pass time for too many people on social media who like a good pile on. Nothing to do with making the world a better place, everything to do with a demonstration of power to destroy people. And as I said, the clear partisan nature of what is deemed unacceptable should be worrying for people. I am not suggesting that no one who is cancelled didn't have it coming, or that no one should be, when you take a set of political beliefs and treat them as axiomatic, and therefore any transgressors must be destroyed, it starts looking culty.
    Lots of "assumptions" it seems the only people "canceling" things are the left... why does the right often find itself in bed with people being canceled is a question I would want answers instea

    This is just a false premise, stop acting like just because people on the left call themselves progressive doesn't mean everything they do leads to progress for society.

    Much more so than the right which would have ceased progress hundreds of years ago.

    What was considered PC a few decades ago has nothing to do with PC now. You are right that the basic idea of PC is just trying to not be a cunt to people. If you honestly think that this is what it is now, which I expect you do, I am not sure what to say to you since you are beyond reason, other than to appeal to step back from it for a moment. Now it is many things, not all of them good, not all of them well intentioned. That I can promote PC culture now by tweeting "#killallmen", I saw a video of some fat fucks on mobility scooters with Trump flags, and a girl is filming it saying something like "that is hate! Go fuck yourselves!", completely unironically, come on, in this day and age, this thing that PC has morphed into in some areas has nothing to do with common decency and decorum.
    What is PC now then to you? You think a small minority of people saying "killallmen" means the ENTIRETY of people who want progress and remind people to be PC MUST AGREE?? And people with trump flags being called out for supporting a man trying to roll back gay rights, roll back investigations into civil rights issues, calling Neo nazi and white nationalist fine people, describes himself as an nationalist and says what's wrong with that, claims blm are terrorist and enemies of the people, and the press is evil and just out to get him. You think saying that because they support that person they support hate and therefore the flags they carry show their support for that hate, is somehow a step too far? come now.

    Just because "SJW's" activate on these issues doesn't mean that people who activate on these issues are "SJW's", many people fight for these causes who aren't on the far left/insane/revolutionary marxists/hate filled bigots/fully indoctrinated cultists. Early feminists were not SJW's, they just wanted the right to vote, and the same rights as men, it wasn't an anti male movement, it wasn't fueled by a hatred of men. Martin Luther King didn't hate white people, he wanted to live in peace with white people as equals. Don't equate all of these important movements with the lunatics we have in the twitter age. There is a world of difference between #killallwhitepeople and #killallmen and what past movements achieved and were trying to achieve. Just because someone can tweet #BLM doesn't mean they can no longer be a cunt.
    Everyone is far left to right wingers. Mail vote? far left wing insane, medicare for all? Fall left wing insane, small police forces with focus on social workers for the calls police usually handle with no care, car left wing insane. liveable wage? far left wing insane. Tell me what the fuck isn't insane? Early feminists? Again have you read Wollstonecraft. I don't get why right wingers invoke MLK as thought to prove a point yet bare their ignorance to the world every time they do, completely unaware of the mistake they've made. Why conflate the minority saying kill with the entire movement? only one side are actively killing people in abhorrent terror attacks, and it isn't the left

    I will grant you that this term is annoying though, I don't like it. I don't like when it is used as an out of hand dismissal, I do genuinely try to avoid using it, I also don't like the trojan horse quality of it, as if these maniacs have a monopoly on social justice, that it makes them beyond reproach because it is for "social justice". I think that is the genius of many of these groups, attaching themselves to genuine rights claims and real grievances, they catch people in a sort of Kafka trap, if you criticise them, see any wrong or flaws in their thinking/ideology/actions then you must be against said rights claim, therefore you must be a bigot, and attempt to defend yourself is just further evidence against you. I do find it funny that, despite the claims of how bigoted our society is (this will no doubt be read as me saying there is none) this trap hinges on the knowledge that most people aren't (I will grant you that there are still to many, but there has been clear progress, if you can go back 30 years and say things were just as bad, I'd call you a liar) and don't want to be seen as one, and that if society was as bigoted as it is made out to be (usually led by people who need it to be seen to be, otherwise they wouldn't be able to make a living) the accusations would be dismissed and ignored and the trap would fail. It literally hinges on one of the key dogmas being false.
    There is less bigotry, overtly, instead we have structural problems which have not been solved. The problem then becomes passive white Americans who don't see the problem as it is less in your face despite the fact it is horribly common just no longer as violent. So then it becomes easy for white Americans to ignore the problem, since they may not even know their is a problem. Consider many white Americans live in mostly white neighbourhoods, then consider that the areas they live in are policed differently even when their crime rates are the same. This leads to white Americans often having an entirely different view of police and upbringing about them, while black and latinos who are targeted face racism and somehow making up the majority of those in prison for crimes white people commit at virtually the same rates.

    It isn't simply people refusing their own patronage, but using pressure to get people fired, or have appearances cancelled, deciding for others what they can and cannot see/read/listen to instead of simply stepping back themselves. You keep ignoring that part, it is very telling, I can't tell if it is intentional or not. And it isn't simply "out of step with norms", for most people the norms of the far left aren't their norms. When we have people being cancelled for suggesting that biological sex is real (I might even get infracted for suggesting that it is real, despite is being a fact), this will shock you but the idea of biological sex being real is the norm for most people, and if you want to gaslight on this, go on twitter and tweet that biological sex is real, see what happens to you. Companies are often jumping the gun and self censoring in anticipation and appeasement of the mob (it doesn't matter if I agree with the fundamentals of what the mob started fighting for, I don't like mob "justice"), thankfully a lot of people see how stupid that is (including ones on the left), take the recent wave of film and tv shows being purged from online streaming services.
    read Wollstonecraft and all their criticsOn biological sex it is because it isn't so cut and dry and pretending it is and ignoring that is an issue for the trans community as it leads to easily dismissing trans people and their concerns Which is how the concept of biological sex has been used. The same way "natural partners" and the "biological nature of mean and women" is used against gay people.

    The truth is, your biological sex isn’t carved in stone, but a living system with the potential for change.
    Why? Because biological sex is far more complicated than XX or XY (or XXY, or just X). XX individuals could present with male gonads. XY individuals can have ovaries. How? Through a set of complex genetic signals that, in the course of a human’s development, begins with a small group of cells called the bipotential primordium and a gene called SRY.
    A newly fertilized embryo initially develops without any indication of its sex. At around five weeks, a group of cells clump together to form the bipotential primordium. These cells are neither male nor female but have the potential to turn into testes, ovaries or neither. After the primordium forms, SRY—a gene on the Y chromosome discovered in 1990, thanks to the participation of intersex XX males and XY females—might be activated.*
    Though it is still not fully understood, we know SRY plays a role in pushing the primordium toward male gonads. But SRY is not a simple on/off switch, it’s a precisely timed start signal, the first chord of the “male gonad” symphony. A group of cells (instrument sections) must all express SRY (notes of the chord), at the right time (conductor?). Without that first chord, the embryo will play a different symphony: female gonads, or something in between.

    And the "too out of step", it is partisan, and depends on who does it, even if we can't agree on anything else, if you can't cede ground on this point then I don't know what to say. Brett Kavanaugh, bin him, believe all women. Joe Biden.....well, due process is important...(to be fair not everyone did this, but enough did for it to be noticable). Look at how the left treated Sarah Jeong. Julie Blindel spews bile about men for decades (if you substituted the words man/men/male for any other group it would have been an outrage), perfectly fine, as soon as those same men identify as a woman, the mob cometh, she is now out of step. There is a clear ideological slant with this, it has little to do with people violating the norms, and as I said, some people do act in cunty ways, but this is more to do with ideological enforcement and a display of ideological might, the who is more important than the what.
    There are glaring issues with Tara.. which actually as time went on has just become more and more glaring and worse and worse for her case. Brett had pictures... a calendar that showed the timing actually did match up. There was another accuser who had 3 people with her that day to confirm her story.

    If you actually want this to be a vehicle for positive social change, you need to recognise when it is being done out of partisan warfare and resist it.
    Everything is partisan to the right.

    Giving statehood to DC is evil partisanship to the right because apparently people shouldn't be allowed to vote or have representation when they're bigger than other states even, because "can't let the democrats have 2 senators!"
    Last edited by Themius; 2020-06-27 at 02:36 PM.

  10. #170
    Quote Originally Posted by Fencers View Post
    You really cannot. To even have a concept of a thing requires a context as you are reading Whittman.
    *snip*
    To even know, for example, what preambulate means or what is Baseball or what is Brooklyn requires context or you could not understand when Whitman says, "In our sun-down perambulations, of late, through the outer parts of Brooklyn, we have observed several parties of youngsters playing "base", a certain game of ball."
    You are alternatively engaging in bad faith pedantry to perpetuate an argument for no discernible reason benefit or gain.

    Or you are making an argument entirely based around academic humanities navel-gazing of a magnitude so divorced from practical reality that it is ill-suited for consideration in this context.

  11. #171
    If there is a good substitute then I will stop using whatever work comes from a morally shitty author. There is so much great art out there I see no point in supporting assholes.

    Like, I'm never gonna buy any Witcher book, because the author is a complete douche and I don't care how good they are. Still plenty of great books I haven't read yet.
    Last edited by melzas; 2020-06-27 at 02:18 PM.

  12. #172
    I reread Watership Down every August, a ritual of a sort that began decades ago.

    But oh! I don't know the socio-political beliefs of the author! I mean it does seem he hates totalitarian regimes, but there might be more than meets the eye...its possible I may hate reading the book after I dig in the author's life.

  13. #173
    Quote Originally Posted by melzas View Post
    If there is a good substitute then I will stop using whatever work comes from a morally shitty author. There is so much great art out there I see no point in supporting assholes.

    Like, I'm never gonna buy any Witcher book, because the author is a complete douche and I don't care how good they are. Still plenty of great books I haven't read yet.
    Don't forget Terry Goodkind, he's just an arsehole then again... his writing isn't even good.

  14. #174
    Quote Originally Posted by eschatological View Post
    Tolkein's representation of the greedy dwarves were an obvious stand-in for the Jews, and how "willing" they were to do anything for their treasure hoard of the dragon Smaug. Then, of course, the Easterlings with their Oliphants, all dark-skinned people, joined Sauron, while Rohan was clearly based on Spain and Gondor on France, two Western countries, while Bree/the Shire represented England and especially the English countryside.
    Dwarves are not particularly greedy in Tolkien's works, neither compared to the mythologies he based them on nor compared to others in the Arda, e.g. there are also greedy elfs. And I don't know why you think they are inspired by Jews.

    And the most important thing Tolkien did for the dwarves was giving them their plural.

    And your description glances over the fact that Gondor wasn't a true bastion of "good" - and was what remained of Numenor's humans after their noblest had become obsessed with their own nobility and joined forces with Sauron. To see that as some form of racial superiority misses the point.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Saltysquidoon View Post
    You are alternatively engaging in bad faith pedantry to perpetuate an argument for no discernible reason benefit or gain.

    Or you are making an argument entirely based around academic humanities navel-gazing of a magnitude so divorced from practical reality that it is ill-suited for consideration in this context.
    Seems likely, but I thought the current reality-divorced navel-gazing idea in academic humanities was to analyse works solely based on the experience of the reader, and completely ignore the writer's intention.

  15. #175
    Quote Originally Posted by Forogil View Post
    Dwarves are not particularly greedy in Tolkien's works, neither compared to the mythologies he based them on nor compared to others in the Arda, e.g. there are also greedy elfs. And I don't know why you think they are inspired by Jews.

    And the most important thing Tolkien did for the dwarves was giving them their plural.

    And your description glances over the fact that Gondor wasn't a true bastion of "good" - and was what remained of Numenor's humans after their noblest had become obsessed with their own nobility and joined forces with Sauron. To see that as some form of racial superiority misses the point.
    Literally from an interview with Tolkein:

    “I didn’t intend it, but when you’ve got these people on your hands, you’ve got to make them different, haven’t you?” said Tolkien during the 1971 interview. “The dwarves of course are quite obviously, wouldn’t you say that in many ways they remind you of the Jews? Their words are Semitic, obviously, constructed to be Semitic. The hobbits are just rustic English people,” he said.
    He may have not done it consciously in 1937, but his subconscious bias made it in there.

    Also, Gondor "being a stand-in" for France doesn't make Gondor great beyond great. There's obvious tensions between the Western nations in Tolkein, with Gondor suffering from arrogance and this heroic story of "being the frontline against evil," which is very French.

    As for accusing me of glossing over that - you didn't even mention Tolkein's depiction of the Easterlings, which was undoubtedly racialist.

  16. #176
    Quote Originally Posted by eschatological View Post
    Literally from an interview with Tolkein:
    You are both missing the context and the name of the author.

    His name is Tolkien, here is how he explains it:
    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.
    Obviously the dwarves in his work were inspired by European folklore - Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs[sic!] was made by Disney the same year as the Hobbit was published, and they stem from a deep folklore of bearded dwarves in Europe, sometimes working deep in the mountains.

    However, to Tolkien the important part was, of course, language and obviously Khuzdul and Hebrew are similar, and since Tolkien was religious and read the bible he viewed Jews as strong warriors - so it isn't strange that the dwarves are as well, and both are searching for their lost homeland - the Jews wishing to return to Israel from the diaspora and the dwarves to return to Moria.

    To simplify this to Tolkien being racist and seeing dwarves as greedy Jews is missing almost everything - including the fact that greed isn't a unique dwarvish trait.
    And Saruman the White isn't the good character in the LoTR.

  17. #177
    I'm flabbergasted that someone has refused to see the LotR from the mythology that inspired it.

    I guess this is a perfect example of seeing what a person wants...but wallowing on such..only desiring to see crappy negativity, permanently skews the perspective.

  18. #178
    Quote Originally Posted by Forogil View Post

    To simplify this to Tolkien being racist and seeing dwarves as greedy Jews is missing almost everything - including the fact that greed isn't a unique dwarvish trait.
    And Saruman the White isn't the good character in the LoTR.
    I think you're missing the context of Tolkein's early works:

    Quote Originally Posted by Tolkein's The Book of Lost Titles 2
    In fact, the whole race of Dwarves in this text "love[s] gold and silver more dearly than aught else on Earth" and, spurred to ambush and murder by their greed, "have been severed in feud for ever since those days with the Elves, and drawn more nigh in friendship to the kin of Melko" .
    Obviously, Melko is another name for Melkor/Morgoth, the main antagonist of The Silmarillion, which the Book of Lost Tales was the foundation of. The Silmarillion takes out some of the stuff from the Book about the dwarves being definitively evil (they group up with orcs in Lost Tales), but in The Sil, he creates them as a literal inferior race. Iluvatar creates humans/elves, but Iluvatar's servant, Aule, creates dwarves without permission. It was also in The Sil that Dwarven language starts sounding Hebrew in nature.

    Meanwhile, in The Hobbit, written in 1937, also displayed those stereotypes:

    Quote Originally Posted by "Dwarves are Not Heroes": Antisemitism and the Dwarves in Tolkein
    [T]he Dwarves' psychological attributes also draw on antisemitic stereotypes, especially the common depiction in early twentieth-century writing (and that of previous centuries) of Jews as whiny, cowardly, and greedy. No one who has read Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice can be unfamiliar with this, and the notion did not die out after the Renaissance....

    ...they complain constantly. They complain about Bilbo as their final party member. They complain about Gandalf's choice of Beorn's house as a refuge after they escape from the goblins. They complain at Bilbo about being shut in barrels in their escape from the elven king. They grumble about not being able to get into the mountain. Early in the book, Bilbo also complains about the hardships of the journey, but by the time the party arrives at the Lonely Mountain Bilbo has become braver, tougher, and more resourceful. Indeed, even though he is by far the least experienced member of the party, he has become its leader. Although he gets in one last lament about missing breakfast when the party has been trapped inside the mountain by Smaug (but only after he has gone over forty-eight hours without eating), Bilbo develops past his initial stage of constant grumbling, a transformation that the Dwarves do not make (Hobbit 13.241).

    By far, though, the Dwarves' dominant psychological attribute in The Hobbit is their love of gold, which echoes the wide spread antisemitic belief that Jews are greedy, a notion that we have also seen The Scarlet Pimpernel draw on. This remains a consistent thread of the book, starting from the song the Dwarves sing in Chapter 1:

    Far over the misty mountains cold
    To dungeons deep and caverns old
    We must away, ere break of day,
    To find our long-forgotten gold. (1.27)


    The last line is ironic, since the Dwarves have clearly not forgotten their gold. The entire point of their quest is to regain their treasure, despite having no real need for it, as Thorin tells Bilbo: "But we have never forgotten our stolen treasure. And even now, when I will allow we have a good bit laid by and are not so badly off'—here Thorin stroked the gold chain round his neck — "we still mean to get it back, and to bring our curses home to Sm aug—if we can." (1.24) Although the Dwarves have a secondary motive of revenge against Smaug, Thorin leads with recovery of the treasure and a rather smug statement that they are "not so badly off," combined with fingering the gold that he is already wearing. Although the Dwarves are master smiths, artistic value or pride in their former skills does not seem to be their primary motive for recovering the Lonely Mountain's treasure. Rather, the relationship of the recovery of their treasure to how "badly off" they are (or aren't) ties their desire for the treasure to its monetary value.

    The Dwarves' avarice in this universe is, apparently, so legendary tha t it even shapes how other races interact with them. When Elrond of Rivendell examines Thorin's map of the Lonely Mountain, "[h]e took it and gazed long at it, and he shook his head; for if he did not altogether approve of dwarves and their love of gold, he hated dragons and their cruel wickedness" (3.52-53). Elrond's enthusiasm for the removal of Smaug is mitigated by his knowledge of Dwarvish nature. Even if the Dwarves are undertaking an endeavor that is worth while, the destruction of Smaug, their prime motive in The Hobbit is to recover their gold and Elrond knows this.

    Indeed, The Hobbit's chief crisis comes when the Dwarves refuse any of the treasure to Bard, the slayer of Smaug, not even for the relief of the destroyed Laketown. When the request is made, the Dwarves have spent two days under the mountain enjoying their treasure: "They spoke aloud, and cried out to one another, as they lifted old treasures from the mound or from the wall and held them in the light, caressing and fingering them," savoring the physical interaction between them and the treasure as Thorin had done in the book's first chapter (13.237). The gold has had an immediate effect on their characters: "[W]hen the heart of a dwarf, even the most respectable, is wakened by gold and by jewels, he grows suddenly bold, and he may become fierce" (13.237). Their love of gold causes them to break with what Bilbo (and the reader) recognizes as justice-giving some of the gold to the humans of the devastated Laketown. Bilbo expects that "Thorin would at once admit what justice was in [Bard's request]"; Thorin 's response, not only denying the claim of Girion's descendants to their portion of the treasure but refusing compassionate aid to the people who helped him when he was in need, shows the limitations of his character (15.263).

    Although some of Thorin's irrational behavior could perhaps stem from a curse put on the gold by the dragon - as a similar curse is in Beowulf, one of Tolkien's unconscious inspirations for The Hobbit - the hobbit Bilbo is not affected by this infusion of draconitas, and cannot understand Thorin's injustice: "But also [Bilbo] did not reckon with the power that gold has upon which a dragon has long brooded, nor with dwarvish hearts. Long hours in the past days Thorin had spent in the treasury, and the lust of it was heavy on him. Though he had hunted chiefly for the Arkenstone, yet he had an eye for many another wonderful thing that was lying there, about which were wound old memories of the labours and the sorrows of his race." (15.263)

    The race of Dwarves intertwines their very identity with their artifacts - in gold, gems, and the treasures they construct out of them. Certainly the Dwarves are not the only characters to be influenced by the dragon's gold - the Master of Laketown also succumbs - but they are the only ones for whom doing so seems to be a matter of their racial identity, their "Dwarvish hearts." Even as linked traits understood to be essentially "Jewish" provided justification for the Jews' marginal status in Western culture, the Dwarves are also denied participation in the heroic ethos of Tolkien's world: "There is it: 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."
    (Hobbit 12.211) The narrator here makes the Dwarves' primary cultural trait the "idea of the value of money" and acknowledges that even the best of them are only "decent[...] if you don't expect too much ." This damning statement explicitly casts the Dwarves out from the heroic value system of the book as a whole, based on the attribute that most clearly echoes real-world antisemitic stereotypes.
    Bolded mine.

    And yes, of course, after WW2, Tolkein radically changed his view, which is where your quote is from. That's why the LOTR trilogy, written in the 50s, has only the one dwarf, Gimli, who is nothing like the dwarves of The Hobbit.

  19. #179
    Quote Originally Posted by Forogil View Post
    To simplify this to Tolkien being racist and seeing dwarves as greedy Jews is missing almost everything - including the fact that greed isn't a unique dwarvish trait.
    I think its safe to say like most thinks with Tolkien it's much more complex and multifaceted then you would expect from modern media.
    But let's be fair here you're kinda minimising how important avarice is to the overall thrum of the dwarves' story. I mean Sauron's rings served to make them greedy instead of completely corrupting them like the men and they suffer from gold-lust.

  20. #180
    Bloodsail Admiral Ooid's Avatar
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    If we’re talking about fantasy how about we confront how Orcs are just black people. Because when I see a violent, cruel race my mind immediately goes “yep those are some black people right there”.
    https://www.google.com/amp/s/globaln...ereotypes/amp/
    Fucking smooth-brains I swear.

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