this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2025
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Also, Shire just means Farm.
And all of the evil characters/places have Arabic or Germanic sounding names.
I love his work, but he was racist. Same thing with Lovecraft, though Lovecraft was more xenophobic because he rarely left the house, and foreigners were scary.
Which evil characters? Azog, Radbug, Morgoth, Sauron, Saruman. Not even remotely Germanic or Arab-sounding. Linguists have drawn comparison between Black Speech and ancient Mesopotamian languages, specifically Hurro-Urartian languages, which originated in what is now the Armenian Highlands. Again, not remotely Arabic, which is Semitic language. The only comparisons to Germanic languages I can think of in the Tolkien universe are dwarves and men.
If you're gonna accuse a dead person of something awful, have your facts straight.
Harad/Haradrim/ Swirters were basically Arabic/African dark skinned swarthy people that served as heroless bad guys, unless I missed out on something. https://share.google/GGo7jZXCys45ZC8W7
The Haradrim swore allegiance to Sauron after long years of oppression by the Númenóreans and conflict with Gondor, during which Sauron worked to seduce them to his side. However, not all of them joined Sauron. Many sided with the blue wizards. You could draw parallels to modern times; not all Russians support Putin, and not all Iranians support Khomeini.
It's worth mentioning Dunlendings also went the same way after excessive Númenórean exploitation of their natural resources and resulting wars. They fought for Saruman (Sauron by proxy) alongside Uruk-hai in Helm's Deep.
Of course the Haradrim were dark-skinned - they were from the southern hemisphere of Arda, the huge landmass south of Gondor and Mordor. Most of it is on or below the equator.
I knew someone that actually read the Silmarillion would be able to correct me. Thank you for the correction.
They were the scary evil guys that brought Oliphants into the battle.
I had a professor that compared Black Speech to proto Germanic, so if that is completely incorrect I apologize for repeating it.
nah it's cool. We're all trying to chase that leftist capital.