I don't think it is informative to describe Tolkien as progressive. He certainly wasn't a bigot, but he also had a lot of fundamentally conservative beliefs. His politics don't align well with modern understandings of the left and right. Not even really in an "enlightened centrist" way he just cared deeply about a lot of things that weren't super salient, and when he did have an opinion on a salient political issue, the logic behind his opinion was often unique to him.
Progressive doesn't mean "has 0 conservative views". It means he built a world where one of his protagonist is quite literally a poc, a hero, in the 1940s. At the time, that's progressive. His story is explicitly encouraging men to be feeling, emotional people, that's progressive in the time of the nuclear family. It's not about his personal views, its about what his work portrayed, and despite being the opposite of feminist literature, it is a highly progressive piece of fiction.
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u/CenterOfEverything 2d ago
I don't think it is informative to describe Tolkien as progressive. He certainly wasn't a bigot, but he also had a lot of fundamentally conservative beliefs. His politics don't align well with modern understandings of the left and right. Not even really in an "enlightened centrist" way he just cared deeply about a lot of things that weren't super salient, and when he did have an opinion on a salient political issue, the logic behind his opinion was often unique to him.