Counter-Currents
Remembering J. R. R. Tolkien:
January 3, 1892–September 2, 1973
Greg Johnson
594 words
“I am in fact a Hobbit.” — J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien is a favorite author of New Left “hippies” and New Right nationalists, and for pretty much the same reasons. Tolkien deeply distrusted modernization and industrialization, which replace organic reciprocity between man and nature with technological dominion of man over nature, a relationship that deforms and devalues both poles.
But philosophically and politically, Tolkien was much closer to the New Right than the New Left. Tolkien was a conservative and a race realist. His preferences ran toward non-constitutional monarchy in the capital and de facto anarchy in the provinces, but he recognized that state control can be minimized only in a society with a deep reverence for tradition and a high regard for individual honor and self-restraint.
You can buy Kerry Bolton’s Artists of the Right here.
Many of Tolkien’s most fervent New Right admirers are neo-pagans. But Tolkien himself was a devout Roman Catholic traditionalist, albeit one with a deep love of pre-Christian myth, epic, and tradition. And although The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, with their many themes from Norse and Celtic mythology, resonate especially with pagans, the ultimate mythological framework of Middle Earth, particularly as expressed in the posthumous work The Silmarillion, is biblical in inspiration, with a creator God (Eru Ilúvatar), a devil (Melkor), a fall, and even a hint of the necessity of a divine incarnation to save creation.
In honor of Tolkien’s birthday, I wish first to draw your attention to several works on this website:
- Aquilonius, “Why the Left Hates The Lord of the Rings“
- Britannicus, “J. R. R. Tolkien: Master of Middle Earth” (German translation here, French translation here)
- William de Vere, “The Rangers of the North“
- Alex Graham, “J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Fall of Númenor“
- Alex Graham, “Tolkien and the Kalevala“
- Alex Graham, “Tolkien’s Last Book: The Fall of Gondolin“
- Robert Hampton, “Who’s Ready for Black Elves in Middle Earth?“
- Greg Johnson, “The Scouring of the Shire” (Translations: Danish, Portuguese)
- Greg Johnson, Hyperborean Home (French translation here)
- Tobias Langdon, “The Way of Weeds: Better Living through Botany“
- Trevor Lynch, The Fellowship of the Ring, movie review
- Trevor Lynch, The Two Towers, movie review
- Trevor Lynch, The Return of the King, movie review
- Trevor Lynch, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, movie review
- Trevor Lynch, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, movie review
- Trevor Lynch, The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies, movie review
- Spencer J. Quinn, “Tolkien: A Review“
- Kathryn S., “‘For the Dead, They Travel Fast’: Sightings of the Phantom Horseman“
- Kathryn S., “Mortal Instruments: Mapping the Geomythologies of Western Fantasy,” Part 1, Part 2
- Fenek Solère, “The Unknown Soldier: Geoffrey Bache Smith, Tolkien’s Inspiration“
- Fenek Solère, “John M. Bowers’Tolkien’s Lost Chaucer”
- Fenek Solère, “Owen Barfield’s History in English Words“
- Fenek Solère, “Remembering Christopher Tolkien, 1924–2020“
- Will Windsor, “The Lord of the Rings: Return of the Meme“
See also posts tagged J. R. R. Tolkien for those that reference him in passing.
For more background on Tolkien’s life and work, I recommend two introductory books, which are accessible even to teenagers: Leslie Ellen Jones’ Myth and Middle-Earth: Exploring the Medieval Legends Behind J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and Bradley Birzer’s J. R. R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle-Earth. The most thorough and serious biography and overall interpretation of Tolkien is Joseph Pearce’s Tolkien: Man and Myth.
For those who need no introduction, there is no better commemoration than to spend a winter evening snug in one’s own Hobbit hole reading the works of the man himself (or watching Peter Jackson’s masterly and inspiring movies of The Lord of the Rings).
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22 comments
I pray every day for a Scouring of the Shire.
While I think rehabilitating Hitler is ridiculous. And I know I’ll never convince most folks in these circles of that.
I think it would be amusing to asking Jordan Peterson how he would psychoanaylze Tolkien for using the word “Scouring.”
After all it does mean “cleansing.” Very very….scary.
ZOGlander Orcs Don’t Know that they’s ZOGlander Orcs serving Satan
John Michael Greer in today’s Ecosophia blog brings up how the ZOGland has taken to heart JRR Tolkien’s books to its own decaying decrement.
https://www.ecosophia.net/the-three-stigmata-of-j-r-r-tolkien/
”
Understand the thoughts that a person or a nation won’t allow itself to think and you grasp something crucial about that person or nation. Find the source of the barrier that keeps either one from entertaining those forbidden thoughts and you know something even more important. As America stumbles blindly forward into an unwelcome future, the self-imposed cognitive deficits that keep so many of its inmates from doing anything constructive about their current trajectory have become a massive political fact. Anything that allows even a little additional clarity about those deficits is thus a gift worth having.
With this in mind, I’d like to suggest that some of the most crucial of the self-inflicted blind spots that burden Americans just now have a very straightforward source. They follow on the gargantuan cultural impact of a work of fiction, The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien.”
“In politics, Tolkien was a stalwart conservative; in religion, he was a devout and traditionally minded Roman Catholic. His fiction was powerfully shaped by both those commitments. He never expected his trilogy to find a large audience, much less one on the other side of the political spectrum, and for the first fifteen years or so after its publication The Lord of the Rings duly found a place on the literary fringe, despised by liberal critics but treasured by a small if passionate fandom. Then—well, then the Sixties happened, and all of a sudden Tolkien’s work found a huge and enthusiastic audience among people whose values, habits, and beliefs summed up nearly everything he loathed.”
So why did Tolkien write as he did and why do modern ZOGlings love Tolkien’s work so much?
“if this happens to you, dear reader, you need to reflect seriously on the possibility that the Shadow in question is one that you yourself are casting, and your own actions are making it rise anew. That’s certainly what happens when, as Tolkien did, you live in an empire in decline that’s propping up its faltering prosperity by stripping wealth from the rest of the planet, and trying to fight off jealous rivals who want to do the same thing for their own benefit rather than yours. Blame it on the Kaiser—or, if you prefer, Putin.”
Tolkien was born before the Boer War brought about a war that England was losing and ended with “his” mighty Evil Empire collapsing. Same thing with ZOGlings.
Reading Greer brought me to substack authors talking about like Greer did about the end of ZOG for the New Year. Also this post a month ago by Greer
https://www.ecosophia.net/the-return-of-religion/
brings up Jason Kessler commenting about Christian Nationalism and ZOGtarded Bi-Polar Bradifer Griffin busily “cycling towards his ‘CuntHair Walrus’ ZOGbot persona today’s post
https://occidentaldissent.com/2024/01/02/a-defense-of-christian-nationalism/
Cunthair Walrus gets back to his Baal Finck roots in which Finkelsheenie ZOGbots like the Ozbot Obie-gender-bender shows that he didn’t get ate up by the One-Eared-Dingo who ate his pickle stored in a glass jar in the Alice Springs lorry lot or Fraudster jewn who is now with the ex-Finckbots Christiansfortruth.com of See-Eye Dentists kicked out for telling on other jews in See-Eye Dentistry.
What Greer does is talk about a Dying ZOG who like other dead mighty evil empires loses the ability to force its subjects on the perephery to keep the center of the empire fed. The circumstances in the jewkraine to build up a second Khazaristan-on-the-Dnieper and in Gaza/Red Sea to maintain Khazaristan-on-the-Jordan means that even amongst ZOG’s subjects like “White Nationalists” think more about maintaining “jewnity” than they do in pursuing the decentralization of everyone which will starve and then destroy this Mighty Evil Empire.
Now Greer talks mainly about magic and not as much about the End of Peak ZOG, but when he does talk about the present he confirms my anti-ZOG prejudices. I support killing ZOG off through civil war and [redacted] in favor of Ten Thousand Warlords ruling over a remnant population of 10-50 million Pure Strain feral ex-whiggers ruled by theocratic military dictatorships no larger than walking distance of 30 miles in diameter.
The best thing which cn happen to white people is the destruction of ZOG/Babylon in a mighty Evil Satanic Empire.
Hail Victory!!!
Church of Jesus Christ christian/Aryan Nations of Missouri/Aryan Nations of Missouri
http://whitenationalist.org/forum/
Sorry, the orcs were modelled by Tolkien on the ancient and medieval Türks, or more precisely, on the ancient and medieval European perceptions and stereotypes about Türkic people who came into Europe, i.e. Huns, Avars, Bulgars, Qipchaks, Tatars, etc. Even the word Uruk-hai is related to Uryankhay, i.e. to ancestors of Tuvans and Sakhalar (Yakutians). The Jews have nothing common with it.
By the way, the name Tolkien can be of Türkic origin. Tolqyn means a wave.
Kök Böri:
JRR Tolkien was an Oxford Don studying Old English history and the pre-literate legends or the Heroic Age
Looking at your previous replies, it seems that you might be a Russian from Central Asia, and thus with a different view of history than us of the West. Therefore you might be right. JRR Tolkien was an Oxford Don studying Old English history. From 1880 until the First World War the study of Beowulf was a major obsession from Hector Monro Chadwick to RW Chambers to Tolkien. They called the Migration of Germanic Peoples starting with the Goths to the Lombards during the decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire in which these leaders descended from Woden either saved or doomed their Peoples “The Heroic Age”.
I was studying for a historic novel about the Saxon brothers Hengist and Horsa and Hengist is mentioned in Beowulf as the Finnsburg Fragment in which Hengist is working as a subchief for Hneaf Half-Dane who is killed in the capital village of Finn, leader of the Frisians, who spoke as did the Anglish before they migrated to post-Roman Brittain and Hengist makes a temporary peace for the winter and later kills Finn and burns down the village come spring. JRR Tolkien writes a book, Hengist and Finn,w hich I checked out and read. Beowulf was actually about the West Geats who lived in Scania and fought with the more numerous Swedes until they were largely killed by the Franks in 525 AD. The Geats were mostly related to the Danes, who in Beowulf had a monster problem on the island of Zealand plugging the Baltic sea. The only Angle mentioned was King Offa the Silent who fought an honor duel with the Saxons and like the entire bunch claimed Woden as an ancestor. Offa II built a big ditch to keep out the Welas in the 600s AD and was a decendant of Offa the Silent. When the Angles and Saxons were converted to Christianity the monks gave then literacy and so they wrote down their oral histories down such as Beowulf which took tales such as Widsith and other stories and blended them into Beowulf.
The West Geats stayed put but the eastern Geats migrated in three boats down the rivers of Germany where the settled on the steppes of the Dniester, Don, Danube, and Caspian and Black Seas. Supposedly an overall king known as Eomenric ruled over all the migratory Geats who became known as the Goths until 376 AD when conquered and scattered by the Huns who brought in Peoples from Asia known as the Avars, Alans, Burgundians, Sarmatians and Scythians, Khazars, and Magyars. Then the Goths became known as the Ostogoths and the Visigoths and Jordanes wrote their history. around the time of Theodoric the Ostrogoth. JRR Tolkien of course knew about this history. Dual-Seedline holds that Japheth was the oldest son of Noah and father of the Slavic peoples whose portion of the Earth was east of the Shemite/Aryans portion from the British Isles to India and whose destiny was as a buffer against the Leviathan Peoples of Asia. The Scythians were related to the Israelites deported to NE Assyria who along with the Medes allied with the Persians destroyed the Neo-Assyrian Empire in 612 BC and who later fought with and killed Cyrus the Great in Bactra and fought with Alexander.
Dual-Seedline also holds that Noah’s Flood was confined to the Tarim basin of SW China after Cain the Spawn of Satan and First jew and Eve’s seduction by Satan lead to the expulsion from Eden. As a result, as with the Tokarians, whites would migrate to China since before the invention of writing circa 3000 BC in Egypt, Sumeria and the Indus vally. As is always the case, whiggers simply can’t stop Peter Duncan.
Tolkien as a devout Catholic and Ancient Anglo studies scholar doubtless borrowed quite a bit not only from Beowulf but the literary works from when these oral histories were first written down much like the Illiad was written in 800 BC from The Trojan-Mycean war around 1250 a couple of decades before the migration of the Hellenes, Dorians and Ionians just before the Late Bronze Age Collapse of 1178 BC.
Hail Victory!!!
Pastor Martin Lindstedt
Church of Jesus Christ Christian/Aryan Nations of Missouri
I am a Northern Caucasian Türk, but assimiliated, so I use for reading and writing more Russian language than Nogay tili.
***
The West Geats stayed put but the eastern Geats migrated in three boats down the rivers of Germany where the settled on the steppes of the Dniester, Don, Danube, and Caspian and Black Seas.
Anyway Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla located “ancient Scandinavians” on the River Tanais, i.e. the Don in Russian language, or Ten in Nogay tili. Also, there is a version that Asgard was on the Tanais, and moreover, the today’s city of Azov/Azak still is on the place of ancient Asgard. Anyway there is Nogay tribal union of Ases, and also the Elbrus mountain is called in Nogay Askartaw, the Mountain of Winter Ases.
I have a challenge question. Small contribution to counter currents if it can be answered well:
Who are the semi divine characters in Tolkien, and support that answer, slightly. Semi divine, half magic=at least one divine parent and one not of the first beings.
Hail Manwe!
Luthien is Semi-Divine. Her mother was a lower goddess-angel of sorts.
Yes, that’s the easy one. I want ALL of them. Jews know this stuff cold.
I’m really not a Jew. I’m just not as fucking insane as the sort of folks around here who would rather blame Jews or the Young, than blame themselves for their lot.
But ok. I’ll bite. I was forced to read Tolkien in Grade 2. I know it like the back of my hand. So I also know this isn’t a really good test of someone not being a Jew as the answer to that question is available with a quick Google search anyway.
I’ll make it simple for people who don’t know. Anyone in the bloodline of Melian is a semi-divine figure. And that bloodline more or less ended with Eärendil, who’s kind of like a Viking Jesus.
I mean 50%.
Luthien is the only true 50% divine character I can think of.
Technically the last person with a spark or the divine would be the Son Of Aragorn himself: Eldarion
As Eldarion would get that spark of Melian from his Elven ancestors Elrond and Galadriel who also both related.
But it would be like 0.0000000001% Divinity by that point.
Shelob is the daughter of ungoliant. She has the mind control power that the evil maiar use.
Wow…..I had not even thought of Ungoliant. Of course. She is a divinity as well. Tolkien was truly the first Emo Sado Goth Kid when he invented her.
Greg, you or someone with similar chops ought to review Armand Berger’s slender new book (or long article) Tolkien, Europe and Tradition.
We boycott Arktos here.
Dear Greg Johnson,
I have a question for you. Why do you boycott Arktos books? Do you not agree with their mission statement? Are you not interested in their authors?
You can find the answer with the search function on this website.
I was unaware of that. I just bought it because it sounded good.
I have one problem with Greers article. Helas, he is wrong about both Trump and (probably) Poutine. When they are gone, there is no guarantee they will be replaced by similarly determined characters. Whilest elites have an almost endless supply of utterly interchangeable liberal clones to their service, the opposition has only few capable people. That is why cancelling really works and the elites know it..
Its the End of the ZOG as we know it.
And I feel fine, having worked for that day
The reason I read Greer even though he certainly is not a white supremacist is that Greer as someone who disagrees with most of my religion and polyticks agrees that ZOG is dying. He believes is “stair-step” collapse and not apocalyptic collapse. but he understands that Russia and China and Iran and North Korea are aligned against ZOG as are the muslims and the rest of the Global south. In his article two successors to Putin, one of whom already took Putins’ place were named. The Russians understand, as do the Muslims and Chinese, that there is no peace with a jew-run Empire which is destroying its White founding stock. They say that they are not at war with them-asses of ZOGling whigger ass-clowns imprisoned under a form of democracy which is destroying White People
One CONstitution to rule them all,
One CONstitution to find them all,
One CONstitution to bring them all,
And under Satan’s Administration (USA! USA!) guide them,
Here in the ZOGland where jews rule and niggers & faggots run wild.
My political goals since coming into the Movement just after the Ft. Smith Sedition Trial of 1987-88 took out a number of the Resistance Old Guard is to bring about a ZOGland of only 10-30 million feral ex-whiggers ruled by local theocratic warlords which I call The Ten Thousand Warlords Program. Just like Lenin used Iron Felix Dzerzhinsky to found the political police CHEKA to safeguard Bolshevik Rule over 100 million Russians by judicially murdering the 1% and enslaving the rest after a civil war Joseph Stalin was able to fight off the nazis and establish a Communist Empire that lasted nearly 50 years, while making the People stronger for having to live under a police state which put them to work to defending the whole People ruled by criminals. Wherass living in freedumb to have perverted sex under regime-criminals in a jewdized regime out to destroy Adamic Aryan whites as the Children of Adam as a race is the goal of Satan’s spawn the jews/prosletytes running the current System/Form of Government.
Now my area of Missouri was a hotbed of Christian Identity and I explained to them that the warpath by the Order would end in death or prison but far better to act politically so I formed two militia organizations and have run for public office as governor, US Senator, sheriff, mayor, council-critter, skrule-bored, etc. As a result I expect censorship from not only the government but from “our side” of crypto-jews and ZOGbots so I maintain my own blogs, forums, and web pages to post my writings. I was quickly banned from militia yahoogroups for pointing out that there was no such thang as a CONstitutional militia because the Founding Felons made sure that they wouldn’t have local militias pull a “Concord & Lexington” on George I & IV by putting it firmly under the control of the states and proposed federal government. Thus they were nothing more than a private paramilitary with as much standing as a klan or ORDER and not a “Constitutional militia.” I’ve been arrested dozens of times and beaten twice by piglice and had my teeth knocked out and my grandchildren bought and sold and so I advocate [redacted] police, lawyers, and judges and giving them the Iron Felix treatment in destroying the current form of government. “Make regime-criminals eat theys spawns’ nuts!” is my current promise running for Prez-o-dint.
But the worst of the censors cum from so-called ZOGbots running a $PLC style Foundation for the MarketPlace of Ideas acting as a civil-lawfare NGO against myself and my Aryan Nations Church:
http://bryanreo-lawsuits.xyz/Reo_19CV001304_Fed/2020/Oct20/26Oct20_ML/2103_Doc47-1_2017%20501c3.pdf
Note that the Board of Directards include Dickie Spencer, Mike ‘the kike’ Isaac Enoch Peinovich, James Edwards, Thom Robb’s lawyer sprogg (thus leading back to David Duck and $permfart and of course they brought about Charlottesville did the ZOGbot Poverty Flaw Center. Mattoid Chaimbach had Kyle Bristow and Bryan Reo as lawyers, as did Dickie Spencer for Charlottesville and the holdup of these universities in Michigan, ohio and Pennsylvania. The Michigan university settled for $27,000 and Bryan Reo got rich and a week layer the cuckbox incident took place and Kyle Bristow shut down the ZOGbot Poverty Flaw Center in early March 2018.
Mattoid Parrot used his substack to create a post-mortem of the National Jewstice Party which was mainly the same old jews and mamzers playing at Rabbleution. It was trying to create a political party without organizing at the grass-roots level.
https://matthewparrott.substack.com/p/njp
In it Eric Striker points out that Internet activism won’t destroy ZOG/Babylon.
But [redacted] can and probably will.
Now John Michael Greer certainly does not advocate domestic terrorism to bring down ZOG. But one in three articles cover how ZOG simply is doomed, regardless. Greer also pointed out that Oswald Spengler predicted that when an empire is failing it tries to re-establish the relationships between the rulers and ruled by going back to its founding religious roots. Thus I thought it timely to post Greer’s latest article, this one involving Tolkien to this post about Tolkien on this dissident blog.
Hail Victory!!!
Pastor Martin Lindstedt
Church of Jesus Christ Christian/Aryan Nations of Missouri
Missed this yearly celebration of Tolkien’s birthday by quite a few weeks, but decided to write something here anyway, rather than wait for next year. I have come around to my once-in-a-decade viewing of the film trilogy, and there are few things that heal the soul better than just that. It is true high art. The heroic masculinity of Theoden is my absolute favorite, and he is the ideal future I see for the white man. Once decrepit, but reawakened, renewed. Fearless and compassionate, chanting for death and achieving it meaningfully, giving his life for his people. The most noble representation of a king I can recall in modern media.
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