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On a related note; George Orwell (1984, Animal Farm) actually traveled to Spain to fight in the Civil War on the side of the Anarchists, where he got shot in the neck and then had to flee the country after the Stalinists betrayed the Anarchists and Marxists and began rounding them up to imprison or execute them as 'secret fascists'.
He wrote about the experience in his book Homage to Catalonia. There was also a movie mostly based on the book called Land and Freedom.
Stalinists betrayed the... Marxists
Oh, to hear a tankie try to explain that one.
They would likely repeat the USSR's propaganda that the POUM (marxists) were Trotskyists engaging in counter-revolutionary behavior along with the Anarchists, and that they had to be put down/imprisoned since the 'only' way to to win the war was if everyone simply allowed themselves to be totally under the command of the Stalinist faction.
They have a pasteable excuse why mls always purged communists
George Orwell was a real one for that!
Homage to Catalonia might be my favourite Orwell book. You can kind of see all the seeds being planted for his later more famous books in his experiences there.
First paragraph:
"When historical events are analysed from a distance and evaluated according to contemporary parameters and not according to the circumstances when they developed, it is easy to attain wrong conclusions, or at least, get a distorted view of the different attitudes of the participants and witnesses of those events"
"Tolkein loves fascism" is a WILDLY dishonest summation of the article. You, to use the academic term; fucking suck, OP.
Improve the Fediverse: post less, please.
That's like saying practically any significant figure from over 300 years ago is certainly evil because their country likely had slavery. Keep zooming out, don't think critically, and hate everyone you used to look up to.
He was a devout Catholic and Franco's Spain was very close with the church.
The idea that only pure people are allowed to make things, and that you are allowed to only enjoy things made by pure people, lest you become impure by enjoying them, is a childish view held by the extremists on the right and the left, and such an ignorant idea should be left to fools.
Honestly if the person written a story is dead and the none is getting money or it I do not care.
I feel you. It would sound silly if I said I can’t read the Prince because Machiavelli was a bad guy
Also, The Prince is highly sarcastic but is a good notice to anyone living in what might become a horrible place about what to avoid in leaders.
Funny how the Republican party match up with his qualifications.
I agree. My issue is that Tolkien's views are rarely talked about or they are excused. He is often put forth as a straight progressive.
In some ways he was quite progressive. He wrote strong female characters before it was cool, made a case for diversity (the way different races all have some unique characteristics that help them achieve victory as a team) and championed protecting the environment from villains who would exploit and destroy it (I know, it used to be a republican position, not anymore though). With his popularity, do we really want him to be claimed by fascists? What stands to be gained from bringing him to the court of public opinion, now that he's long dead?
Tolkien had a lot of eugenicist nonsense in his writing. Lots of commentary over how pure Aragorn's "blood of the West" was, and how lesser, less-pure men are just more easily swayed by Sauron. It's pretty vile.
The day comes for all of us when we find out our literary heroes were actually tremendous pieces of fucking shit
Naaah, Terry Pratchett and Stephen King are solidly good guys. All the way.
Well… They’re not all terrible
And Stephen King is a personal hero simply because he survived so much cocaine. But I’m still pretty pissed that I had to read the entirety of both It and Pet Cemetery. What the absolute fuck… there is 1000 pages between both of those books that just did not need to be.
Don’t even fucking get me started on Misery.
Debated replying to this because its speculation but Stephen King has exactly two tweets that I'm aware of telling people the Epstein client list is fake like the tooth fairy, Santa and UFOs...
The one I saw it seemed like he meant he didn't think the government bothered to create one and was trying to bury evidence. Could be wrong, though.
and when I'm drunk and jacked, I also say olympic-level dumb shit.
I don't, however, also publish an epic series of trend-setting horror novels.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
take it with grain of Misty salt that all floats down here
11/22/63
don't even ~~start/end~~ timeloop with me, motherfucker. im a Star Trek nerd. I know more about temporal paradoxes than most anyone here! (Lemmy is a boiling stew of Star Trek nerdery, so at least I’m a good company)
I'm reading The Stand (OG version). The animal abuse and the way he writes about women really pisses me off.
His later books are much better in that respect.
The only somewhat potentially sus thing I know about Terry Pratchett is having written Good Omens with Neil Gaiman, combined with the idea that the stuff the latter got up to was an open secret to insiders. Have not actually seriously looked into this though.
Terry was autistic as fuck and I can forgive him a failure to spot a monster (who had already snowed, apparently, the entire British intelligentsia). It was one book and he never defended Gaiman again, so I'm willing to look past this one.
I know a murderer. Nobody in our friend group clocked him, and most of us aren't autistic. This guy was smart and funny, we really liked him. We only found out what he was like when his wife told us about his odd behaviour.
Anyway, I won't go into detail, it's quite a distinct case and he's dead now.
And the author of this article is tying himself into a pretzel trying to absolve Tolkien of this great shame.
We must remain morally pure! Anyone trying to understand evil becomes stained with it! Only the most reduced and simple argument can save us from the evils of intellectualism. It is not enough to simply reject evil, we must repeat the rejection again and again until it becomes part of our mental fortress.
We shall repost this rebuke of JRR Tolkien again and again, and every time it must become simpler, purer, easier to accept and less dangerous to the uncritical mind.
Reject moral Pretzelism!
They guy is dead, and no one praise him or remember him for his political ideas.
This is why we say such things as "We must separate the art from the artist." Some of us pay to see Tom Cruise movies, some of us can't stand to see his face. There are still plenty of fans of Harry Potter, but they can't so much as mention it without being shouted down, these days.
They're all human, unless they're AI. So, we're going to disagree with them on some, or many, or all things, aside from their art. There are extremely few Dolly Partons and Fred Rogers in the world. You can accept this, or you can cancel everyone but the pure, and then decide amongst them who is the most pure, and only ever listen to Dolly Parton songs.
Go ahead and keep screaming about this, but I'm done with it. I like the art I like, that doesn't mean I like the artist. Deal with it.
I think we can pretty easily separate the idea of continuing to give money to someone who is one of the most active breeders of hate against transgender individuals as bad from the enjoyment of the work of a long dead author who supported horrible causes.
It depends on your tolerance for how bad that person is and how much you want to contribute to their financial well being. For JK Rowling, my opinion is that if JK just said she doesn't like trans people, I'd disagree, but that by itself may not be a reason to not enjoy the work produced by her. However, she actively fights to put down trans people and spreads transphobia. That is reason enough for me to never do anything that will finance her and therefore support her actions.
In this case, Tolkein is long dead. Nothing I do now will contribute to him further pushing and supporting fascism.
Everyone gets to make this choice on their own. Nobody said you're not allowed to enjoy that art. If you decide that you're fine supporting artists through thick or thin and there's no line they can cross that will turn you away, then you can't be surprised or upset when other people change their opinion of you as a person. If you're okay with that, then that's fine, it's your life, live it.
The only way to not be disappointed is to not.