Tag: anti-semitism

returnofthejudai:

exposingantisemitism:

If you think antisemitism doesn’t matter because of how small the total world population of Jews is, consider that antisemitism is the reason that the modern Jewish population is so small in the first place.

I read a statistic once that suggested that if you got rid of the Roman and Babylonian diasporas, the pogroms, the ghettoization, the expulsions, the executions and the genocides, there would be 350 million Jews in the world today. Instead there are about 14 million. Think about that. 

I reread the Hobbit and I need to rant because the antisemitic undertones are so obvious to me and the story is falls apart if you don’t agree with it. I can’t deal with posts saying Tolkien hated the rich just because he made his Dwarves a representation of greed when the end has Bilbo going home richer than before. How is this anti-rich? I wish ppl would challenge this more because ppl use Jews to make some anti-greed message all the time and everyone praises it while rich gentiles are fine.

You know, you’re not the first person who’s said this. Like them, you are not wrong.

Agree, I think RA did want Thorin to be a character people could empathize with, but the entire narrative would have to be changed. I’m confused by your stance, is the character good, or because most of the fandom still sees him defined by gold, there’s no salvaging it?

Here’s the thing.

I have a hard time believing that Thorin himself, of his own volition, actually did anything wrong. He was cursed – by hereditary severe mental illness, a dragon, or both (I lean towards both). Smaug was the causative agent of the war and Smaug fucked with Thorin’s head, much more explicitly in the movie. I see Thorin as an inherently good person who was thrust into horrific circumstances, not a raging, gold-sick Dwarf who split his time between greedily counting his money and playing the berserker.

Ia with your points about the Hobbit movies but I think they were too inconsistent with the gold sickness. i read it that Th orin acts differently under it than the established moments in AUJ, but since most of the fandom sees him as discourse character status instead of good and most jokes about greed, I think that’s the common reading so the movies didn’t do a good enough job with the antisemitic undertones. It’s too ingrained and not enough folks want to think about it. So, conflicted :/

“Discourse character status” is a really good way to put it. Those who hate him see themselves as rightfully excoriating a horrible, greedy, abusive character (he is none of these things) who only got what he deserved (wrong). On the other hand, those who like him see themselves as infallible saints who treat a canonically mentally-ill character as a combination of their pet and a way of saying that they’re not ableist, even if they’re mentally ill themselves. On either side, the only way of “redeeming” Thorin is to have him essentially debase himself on his knees, begging forgiveness from anyone that he directly or indirectly affected through the dragon sickness and curse. Usually this is done through years of brooding and grief. Come on, now.

I completely agree with everything you said.

In the book I don’t you’re supposed to relate to anyone other than Bilbo. I know this will get read the wrong way but I don’t hate Bilbo at all, but from a different perspective I can’t ignore the real world antisemitic tropes loaded on the Dwarves. The movie hasThorin more well rounded and talks about the dragon spell but the character is still more remembered for the gold obsession so when I think of the associations people make with Jewish influenced characters I feel uncomfortable.

Yeah. This, all of this. Which is why I flesh out Thorin as much as I can in fic. 😀

Unpopular opinion but I can’t buy the Hobbit as a good metaphor of the evils of capitalism or that it says anything about how bad rich people are when the end has Bilbo going home rich. I just don’t get why I’m supposed to agree that the Dwarves are a metaphor for rich greedy people and the Jewish connection makes me dislike it. I know the canon hints they deserve their misfortune but I don’t agree with how it’s written.

I don’t agree with it, either.

I like Bilbo, but as I’ve said before, he’s the audience surrogate – that is, if the audience is a clueless white man. Bagginshield (unfortunately) isn’t canon, so we can’t say he spends the rest of his life grieving for Thorin as Thorin was meant to be grieved. It’s arguable that his time with the Ring affected him very deeply and negatively, but I don’t like that he never faced any clear consequences for what he did to Thorin. Thorin DIED. Bilbo…well, as you said, he went home rich, and in the books, there was never a single apology.

Fleshing out Thorin was definitely a good thing, but it makes the ending even harder to swallow. Why out of every character is he the one so bad he has to die, or have to spend the rest of his life always seen as bad compared to everyone else? I see other characters made mistakes too so why does he only have to pay with his life? I did notice people who got angry that Thranduil was more flawed in the movies and Bilbo didn’t chose to fight by the Elves /1

/2 are the same who said Thorin had it coming for the moral and in this
current time I don’t agree with that moral. I don’t agree with saying
it’s greedy to want a home back. It’s sad watching a character go
through all that and have to agree they have to die. It’s like excessive
punishment imho. (please don’t tag this with the fandom)
       
   

(Wasn’t planning on it.)

I agree that it’s kind of a rock-and-hard-place situation, but given the choice of seeing Thorin humanized and having his death hit harder or seeing him portrayed 100% as a greedy villain and having people cheer his death, I’ll take the first option. They were never going to address the anti-Semitism in a sensitive manner and let him have any semblance of a happy ending (possible even if he died – *cough*secret marriage*cough*), let’s be real.

I still absolutely agree with you about all of this.

Hey, the anon who sent the message about Tolkien fandom here. Clarifying that I got called an SJW for bringing up implications like the anti-semitism, so it was calling someone an SJW for bringing up social issues. Even mentioning it in a nice way has caused trouble if one doesn’t agree with Tolkien. I’ve seen people criticize the movies because they wanted Thorin to be just greedy like the book intended, but criticizing the intent was called SJW. Hope that clears it up a bit.

Yes, thank you for clarifying! I’m sorry people flew off the handle at you for calling out something legitimate. The anti-Semitism is really fucking gross, and Peter Jackson got a lot of things wrong, but humanizing (Dwarfenizing?) Thorin was not one of them.

How do you feel about Tolkien fandom? I never really felt welcome in it. I remember talking on livejournal about the Hobbit movies and people were mad because the elves were supposed to be above going to war over gold, but when I said I hated the reading of dwarves just being greedy and the portrayal of Thorin’s goldsickness I got called an SJW. It feels you’re not allowed to disagree with the text, you can complain about the movies but not the books.

(Sorry so late!)

OK, so. I’m not the best person to sympathize with over being called an SJW, because I disagree with a lot of so-called SJW ideology and methods (still very liberal, though!). However, you are 100% right. Both the movies and the books should be open to criticism, including the gross anti-Semitism. I mean, everything except for “MY HEADCANON SHOULD BE CANON AND YOU SUCK IF YOU DON’T THINK SO!” is fair game.