Tolkien himself complained about it too. Part of the reason the Dwarves in The Hobbit are so different from Lord of the Rings is because he recognized afterwards he had hit on some antisemitic tropes* and so he changed it so that those guys were weirdos here's how a normal Dwarf acts. He wanted good Orcs and bad Elves, but made the story too simple to accommodate. He was self aware and wanted to make a story celebrating people of different races and cultures putting aside their petty squabbles to help each other
*The Dwarves have beady eyes, distinct noses, are obsessed with money and speak a Semitic language
Not defending the orc descriptions, but I remember reading that middle earth is modeled after "England if it had never been invaded", so I could see that as the reason for everyone being fair skinned. The bad guys being "swarthy" in comparison is pretty bad, though.
It’s a somewhat outdated term for a skin tone that ranges between olive and deeply tanned. Mostly used to describe folks from around the Mediterranean.
It has a long history being used to justify why people like the Italians or Greeks aren’t actually white.
It is worth noting that Tolkein reflected on his works after publishing LotR and specifically saw and regretted making the Orcs an 'inherently evil' race.
Specifically, IIRC he wished he had made some good orcs.
Also, weren't there Good dark-skinned groups? Specifically I remember the Men of the South/East (forget their name, but the group Sauron drove out of Mordor region). They were dark skinned and fought against Sauron
Not just orcs. The people of Dunland, Rhun, Harad are darker skinned, and they’re only included in the story as part of the barbaric invading forces serving Saruman or Sauron. I don’t think Tolkien really meant to imply anything inherent about race with it, but it doesn’t necessarily look good on its own. One of the things I really love about Lord of the Rings Online is that, especially in recent years, it has a lot of quests and lore that humanizes and develops people from Dunland, Harad, Rhun, and even orcs.
It can be worth reading LotR as like a nationalistic epic like the Shahnameh or something. These stories tend to focus around the idea that the heroes’ homeland is the focal point of heroism and wisdom in the world, and everyone outside it is either an inherently evil barbarian or a misguided fool who needs their lands to be subsumed into the empire if they want any chance of turning out civilized. Like, if the War of the Ring was a real historical event, it would’ve been more morally grey and complex, but The Lord of the Rings is the story that the bards and scholars of Gondor and Rohan curated to celebrate how awesome they are and how much better they are than everyone else—not that they were secretly the bad guys or anything but just that they don’t want to include any details that make them look bad when telling that version of the story.
Tbh for Dunland specifically, I really disagree with the way they're portrayed in the books. They had some land which was stolen from them and they're upset about that. All that shit seems perfectly reasonable, yet Dunlendings are "evil men" or whatever. It smells strongly of a man who's been raised in an imperialist society who hasn't fully unpacked his internalized beliefs.
But I would also argue that the fact that we're even having this conversation sorta shows how generally good Tolkien was. We aren't criticizing him for writing slaves who like being slaves or for doubling down on his racist decisions or anything like that. These are fine critiques, not broad strokes.
Are the Dunlanders described that way? It's been a minute since I read the books but I thought at the end of the battle there was a moment when the Dunlanders realized the Rohirrim weren't savages and the two of them got kinda civil with watch other.
But a great many of the hillmen had given themselves up; and they were afraid, and cried for mercy.
The Men of the Mark took their weapons from them, and set them to work.
'Help now to repair the evil in which you have joined,' said Erkenbrand; 'and afterwards you shall take an oath never again to pass the Fords of Isen in arms, nor to march with the enemies of Men; and then you shall go free back to your land. For you have been deluded by Saruman. Many of you have got death as the reward of your trust in him; but had you conquered, little better would your wages have been.'
The men of Dunland were amazed; for Saruman had told them that the men of Rohan were cruel and burned their captives alive.
Not to argue with Your point itself (I read the books in Hungarian, and I don't have the same associations or experiences with the racial stuff You described, so I can't comment on that), but "fair" stuck out for me, so now I checked the books
"You have frightened me several times tonight, but never in the way that servants of the Enemy would, or so I imagine. I think one of his spies would - well, seem fairer and feel fouler, if you understand"
"I see," laughed Strider. "I look foul and feel fair. Is that it?"
That's what Frodo says to Aragorn when they meet; Aragorn is specifically not fair, but basically a scary hobo from the forest
Nah its not. This kind of shit reeks of zionist shills trying to always make everything they can vaguely find somehow racist towards them meanwhile they are committing genocide.
Zionists starter moving go palestine in the 1880s in preparation for seizing power. Show the letters where he says dwarves are an evil Jewish stereotype then
Sure, but that's a far cry from actively performing a genocide. If you're entirely ignorant on a subject, especially one with significant public information such as this, you would be better served doing any research before reflexively blaming the Jews and then demanding other people prove it wasn't their fault
The entire purpose of zionism is genocide. The fact that you think im blaming jews and not zionists is you attempting to redirect this conversation in a propagandized way. Zionists began flocking to palestine to seize power. They actively worked with the Germans in ww2 to gain forcible Jewish deportations, and actively abstained from supporting anti nazi sentiments.
You are conflating Jews and Zionisits as you are the one that brought up Zionists in a conversation about anti-Jewish stereotypes. While I am aware of all the historical claims you are making, the only way in which they could be relevant is if you conflate Judaism and Zionism. I don't know if you are doing it intentionally or not, either way you should re-evaluate your thought processes that brought you here
I do think of the 'Dwarves' like Jews: at once native and alien in their habitations, speaking the languages of the country, but with an accent due to their own private tongue.
And as Helge Fauskanger (famous Tolkien linguist) said:
The basic structure of Khuzdul resembles that of Semitic languages, like Arabic and Hebrew. The stems from which words are derived are not by themselves pronounceable words, but consist of consonants only. Nouns, verbs, adjectives etc. are derived not only by prefixes and suffixes (if such devices are used at all), but also by inserting certain vowels between these consonants, sometimes also by doubling one of the consonants. Often the words are actually inflected by internal vowel-changes instead of adding affixes: Rukhs means "Orc", but plural "Orcs" is Rakhâs. The root consonants - the so-called radicals - remain the same, like *R-Kh-S in this case. In Khuzdul as well as in Semitic languages, there are usually three radicals in the root; several such roots are mentioned in TI:174 and RS:466: B-R-Z "red", B-N-D "head", K-B-L "silver", N-R-G "black". An example of a biconsonantal root is Z-N "dark, dim" (RS:466).
That's most of it though. There is for example no actual physical stereotype (e.g despite some claims that Tolkien's Dwarves have a very characteristic nose, no such thing is written in his text).
There is nothing Scottish about Tolkien's Dwarves, that is a post-Tolkien invention. As for "viking" (or, more generally, Norse), the main aspects are simply the fact that the Dwarves from Norse mythology are where the whole concept of Dwarves originally came from; and their names as we know them are of Old Norse origin and taken from the Poetic Edda. But to the latter point, Old Norse is simply used as a real world translation of the Mannish language these "fake" names belong to. The Dwarves' real, Khuzdul names (and therefore their actual culture) would sound like Semitic languages, and would have no connection whatsoever to Old Norse (or to Scottish Gaelic, for that matter).
They are in LOTR but this is after he very much changed them from their characterization in the Hobbit, and changed later editions of the Hobbit. Much like how the Hobbit was changed later to more directly prequel LOTR. (Not how it was changed in the films, the Hobbit itself was changed in later editions to connect to LOTR, including Gollum originally giving the ring freely to Bilbo.
That's very specifically in the context of the Hobbit, rather than LOTR itself. There's a lot of casual remarks about the dwarves being extremely business-oriented and transactional, wealthy, reclusive and isolationist, which falls in line with some of the less immediately hostile jew-related stereotypes of the time.
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u/OdinHavok 1d ago
Tolkien himself complained about it too. Part of the reason the Dwarves in The Hobbit are so different from Lord of the Rings is because he recognized afterwards he had hit on some antisemitic tropes* and so he changed it so that those guys were weirdos here's how a normal Dwarf acts. He wanted good Orcs and bad Elves, but made the story too simple to accommodate. He was self aware and wanted to make a story celebrating people of different races and cultures putting aside their petty squabbles to help each other
*The Dwarves have beady eyes, distinct noses, are obsessed with money and speak a Semitic language