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> “I think he’s a crypto-fascist,” says Moorcock, laughing. “In Tolkien, everyone’s in their place and happy to be there. We go there and back, to where we star

by ajuc 11y ago

> “I think he’s a crypto-fascist,” says Moorcock, laughing. “In Tolkien, everyone’s in their place and happy to be there. We go there and back, to where we started. There’s no escape, nothing will ever change and nobody will ever break out of this well-ordered world.” I don't see how that's fascist. Tolkien books are basicaly Catholic mythology in different clothes. It's very conservative, "reactionary", and old-fashioned, true. But fascist philosophy was all about superhumans making their own laws and morality. Doesn't exactly go well with conservatism. Also - after reading Moorcock books (runestaff cycle mostly) I don't think they were qualitatively different from other fantasy. I remember it as just regular pulp fantasy to be honest. Maybe I should reread it, last time I've read it I was a teenager.

_0ffh 11y ago
Aye, but that is not the heart of Moorcocks oeuvre! He also wrote lots of progressive and experimental stuff. He also edited the SF quarterly New Worlds. It published works in that vein, but was not very successful financially. I read that when the need for money would grow too great, Moorcock would lock himself in with a bottle of spirit and a typewriter, and hack out a pulp novel to get back into the black. He could be much wealthier now if he was in it just for the money, so it seems there is some real artistic claim here.
simonh 11y ago
I think it's just that Moorcock is a bit politically colour blind. He can't tell the difference between conservatism and fascism. Either that or he's perfectly well aware that Toklien was no kind of fascist and is using the term as a goad. If he said he thought that Tokien was a conservative, nobody would pay any attention and we wouldn't be having this debate. But now we are and I think that was probably his aim, to provoke people into thinking about the differences between their work.
- Tloewald 11y ago
  Fascism has no perfect definition but the conflation of race, nation, and morality that is implicit throughout Tolkien is pretty much at the core of fascism (it's also responsible for many of the worst fantasy tropes). Calling Tolkien a crypto fascist is a bit much — I doubt Tolkien had a fascist agenda — but Tolkien's tacitly assumed worldview is pretty disturbing upon examination.
  - simonh 11y ago
    By those criteria Winston Churchill would be deemed a fascist.
mhd 11y ago
Nazi "philosophy" (mostly misinterpreted Nietzsche) isn't the sine qua non of fascism. And while I agree that the term might be a bit ill-used here, there's definitely a tie between reactionary conservatism (and fantastic romanticism) and some fascist regimes. So maybe one could call it "proto-fascism", although I'd generally try to avoid this particular f-word, as it does tend to Godwin discussions. And, yes, Moorcock was definitely writing in the pulp tradition. He might be quite political, but his worked isn't fully steeped in it. Quite often it's traditional "sword & sorcery" (a term Moorcock helped to coin), maybe with a single trait that differentiates it from other fantasy or that he wants to delve in. Elric was a counter-Conan, and the runestaff saga presented Great Britain as the evil empire. The "Nomad of the Time Streams" trilogy is probably one of the more obviously political of his works, but still, it's mostly about adventure.
- conatus 11y ago
  Yup. Fascism, like all ideologies isn't completely neat. It contains those reactionary conservative elements (organic community, national tradition, criticism of modernity as shallow - i.e. very Tolkein but found in many fascist and even Nazi authors - i.e. Junger, Schmitt) alongside hyper modernist ones (eugenics, mass industry). Fascism contains criticisms of capitalism alongside praise for the most aggressive market competition. See Ishay Landa's work on this. Proto-fascism is probably the best term.
  - ajuc 11y ago
    I should know better than argue about definitions, but can't help myself :) How is proto-fascism different from conservatism?
    - mhd 11y ago
      Define "conservatism" first ;) That's usually a "I know it when I see it" thing, and there's a whole load of different strains when you look at the politicians espousing it as their primary value. Even within a single country, and once you cross borders it gets seriously confusing. We can go the lazy route and say that if you're "conservative" and your current system isn't fascist, than you can't really promote or encourage fascism, because that would by definition be a change and change is bad. But I thin we can agree that this would be a type of conservatism that could only exist in a Moorcock novel about other planes, the Lords of Order or such things... Also, one might not want to go too far back in the "inheritance" chain of fascism. I mean, to stay within the core topic, the Italian and German fascists certainly were quite "romantic" in the literary sense (a main point of Epic Poo), but I don't think we'd call Schiller or Byron proto-fascists... So it probably comes down to having views who would touch fascist views in a big blurry Venn diagram, whereas crypto-fascists actually overlap in a more significant way. But, again, this might be a fun topic for abstract discussion, but when it's tied to something more concrete it'll just prove to be needlessly divisive and incisive. I mean, just look up who popularized the term "crypto-fascist"... This seems a very common British trait, by the way. Plenty of movies, books etc. about how nationalist and authoritarian you can get before you cross over into straight-forward 20th century fascism. Starting with the post-WW2 era and achieving a new high during the reign of the Wicked Witch.
duaneb 11y ago
> But fascist philosophy was all about superhumans making their own laws and morality. This is kind of a weird comparison. Tolkien may not have been arguing for fascism in his world, but his world had a definite morality and order. A subset of the themes in this order—namely, hierarchical races—is uncomfortably close to the order espoused by Nazi-flavored fascist rhetoric. So long as it's not prescriptive (as it is CLEARLY not—it is an extremely violent world, and not one better than our own), Tolkien should not be labeled a fascist. However, I wouldn't blame anyone who avoided reading the series because it is uncomfortably close to romantic ideals that are similar to romantic ideals held by racist fascists. I might also point out that british and german culture weren't so terribly different than you might think, especially preceeding World War I. I would also argue that it's not Catholic mythology, it's British mythology, including subtle Christian flavors (divine hierarchies, christ patterns, prophets, rebel patterns) including racial mythology. There are deep, deep common roots of race in german culture. And let's not forget, one of the main characteristics of fascism is systematic oppression, something that Tolkien is careful to avoid with humans in everything I've read.

by ajuc 11y ago

_0ffh 11y ago

Aye, but that is not the heart of Moorcocks oeuvre! He also wrote lots of progressive and experimental stuff. He also edited the SF quarterly New Worlds. It published works in that vein, but was not very successful financially. I read that when the need for money would grow too great, Moorcock would lock himself in with a bottle of spirit and a typewriter, and hack out a pulp novel to get back into the black. He could be much wealthier now if he was in it just for the money, so it seems there is some real artistic claim here.

simonh 11y ago

I think it's just that Moorcock is a bit politically colour blind. He can't tell the difference between conservatism and fascism. Either that or he's perfectly well aware that Toklien was no kind of fascist and is using the term as a goad. If he said he thought that Tokien was a conservative, nobody would pay any attention and we wouldn't be having this debate. But now we are and I think that was probably his aim, to provoke people into thinking about the differences between their work.

Tloewald 11y ago
Fascism has no perfect definition but the conflation of race, nation, and morality that is implicit throughout Tolkien is pretty much at the core of fascism (it's also responsible for many of the worst fantasy tropes). Calling Tolkien a crypto fascist is a bit much — I doubt Tolkien had a fascist agenda — but Tolkien's tacitly assumed worldview is pretty disturbing upon examination.
- simonh 11y ago
  By those criteria Winston Churchill would be deemed a fascist.

mhd 11y ago

Nazi "philosophy" (mostly misinterpreted Nietzsche) isn't the sine qua non of fascism. And while I agree that the term might be a bit ill-used here, there's definitely a tie between reactionary conservatism (and fantastic romanticism) and some fascist regimes. So maybe one could call it "proto-fascism", although I'd generally try to avoid this particular f-word, as it does tend to Godwin discussions. And, yes, Moorcock was definitely writing in the pulp tradition. He might be quite political, but his worked isn't fully steeped in it. Quite often it's traditional "sword & sorcery" (a term Moorcock helped to coin), maybe with a single trait that differentiates it from other fantasy or that he wants to delve in. Elric was a counter-Conan, and the runestaff saga presented Great Britain as the evil empire. The "Nomad of the Time Streams" trilogy is probably one of the more obviously political of his works, but still, it's mostly about adventure.

conatus 11y ago
Yup. Fascism, like all ideologies isn't completely neat. It contains those reactionary conservative elements (organic community, national tradition, criticism of modernity as shallow - i.e. very Tolkein but found in many fascist and even Nazi authors - i.e. Junger, Schmitt) alongside hyper modernist ones (eugenics, mass industry). Fascism contains criticisms of capitalism alongside praise for the most aggressive market competition. See Ishay Landa's work on this. Proto-fascism is probably the best term.
- ajuc 11y ago
  I should know better than argue about definitions, but can't help myself :) How is proto-fascism different from conservatism?
  - mhd 11y ago
    Define "conservatism" first ;) That's usually a "I know it when I see it" thing, and there's a whole load of different strains when you look at the politicians espousing it as their primary value. Even within a single country, and once you cross borders it gets seriously confusing. We can go the lazy route and say that if you're "conservative" and your current system isn't fascist, than you can't really promote or encourage fascism, because that would by definition be a change and change is bad. But I thin we can agree that this would be a type of conservatism that could only exist in a Moorcock novel about other planes, the Lords of Order or such things... Also, one might not want to go too far back in the "inheritance" chain of fascism. I mean, to stay within the core topic, the Italian and German fascists certainly were quite "romantic" in the literary sense (a main point of Epic Poo), but I don't think we'd call Schiller or Byron proto-fascists... So it probably comes down to having views who would touch fascist views in a big blurry Venn diagram, whereas crypto-fascists actually overlap in a more significant way. But, again, this might be a fun topic for abstract discussion, but when it's tied to something more concrete it'll just prove to be needlessly divisive and incisive. I mean, just look up who popularized the term "crypto-fascist"... This seems a very common British trait, by the way. Plenty of movies, books etc. about how nationalist and authoritarian you can get before you cross over into straight-forward 20th century fascism. Starting with the post-WW2 era and achieving a new high during the reign of the Wicked Witch.

duaneb 11y ago

> But fascist philosophy was all about superhumans making their own laws and morality. This is kind of a weird comparison. Tolkien may not have been arguing for fascism in his world, but his world had a definite morality and order. A subset of the themes in this order—namely, hierarchical races—is uncomfortably close to the order espoused by Nazi-flavored fascist rhetoric. So long as it's not prescriptive (as it is CLEARLY not—it is an extremely violent world, and not one better than our own), Tolkien should not be labeled a fascist. However, I wouldn't blame anyone who avoided reading the series because it is uncomfortably close to romantic ideals that are similar to romantic ideals held by racist fascists. I might also point out that british and german culture weren't so terribly different than you might think, especially preceeding World War I. I would also argue that it's not Catholic mythology, it's British mythology, including subtle Christian flavors (divine hierarchies, christ patterns, prophets, rebel patterns) including racial mythology. There are deep, deep common roots of race in german culture. And let's not forget, one of the main characteristics of fascism is systematic oppression, something that Tolkien is careful to avoid with humans in everything I've read.