this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2025
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A lot of old stuff is super racist and well made. The Birth of A Nation was revolutionary in film and influenced many future movies despite literally being a movie about how awesome the KKK are. Lovecraft was famously racist as fuck and a lot of his "Eldritch horror" was sort of a metaphor for his fears of "primitive" religions and miscegenation. Even Lord of the Rings has racist elements - JRR Tolkein said in multiple occasions that he based the dwarves on Jews, which is pretty rough to modern readers given that the dwarves are more obsessed with gold and treasure than anything else.
Tolkien's "inspiration" for Dwarves pulling from Jews is fascinating, as a Jew. I read that his thoughts were that Dwarves were a strong, resilient people who had been displaced from their homeland but maintained a strong attachment to their traditions and their craft. He saw this as a deferential depiction of Jews and was purposely trying to move away from European depictions of Jews as goblin-like monsters. What's fascinating is how it is still riddled with antisemitic tropes such as the obsession with gold, their "quarrelsome" nature, and also literally making them a different race of short-statured people who lived underground. It speaks to how deeply ingrained antisemitism was (and to an extent, still is) in the European mind while also lightly espousing Zionist ideas in how living in diaspora is somehow less than living in historical Judea.
I don't doubt this, given the era the man was born, but have you got a source? I tried digging something up, and the only things I can find are that Khuzdul is based on Hebrew, and a lot of letters during and post WWII speaking highly of Jews and poorly of Hitler and the Nazis.
I think you replied to the wrong response
o shit