…because of their golden hearts and tender consciences. That said, I do not always agree with the conclusions they reach.
Case in point, a reader asks me to “refrain from reciprocating MAGA’s dehumanizing rhetoric by continually referring to ICE agents as ‘orcs.'”
I replied: “I think my readers are smart enough to know they are not actual orcs.”
And my reader responded: “Are you suggesting by this that anyone took literally the antisemitic metaphors of ‘a dangerous bacillus’ and ‘tapeworm’?”
Me: Here’s the thing: Jews bore no likeness whatsoever to bacteria or tapeworms. The characterization was a lie designed to target the innocent. The guilty thugs who ziptie children, beat women, brutalize old men, rape, kidnap, teargas infants, terrorize autistic kids, and murder women in cold blood bear a profound likeness to orcs.
So no, I will not stop drawing the parallel. There is a sharp distinction between dehumanizing innocents and pointing out that ICE orcs have dehumanized themselves. For the same reason, I don’t care that Gestapo were characterized as swine, monsters, and animals by their victims.
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7 Responses
Great explanation, and the analogy to orcs made complete sense to me. Given ICE’s staggering level of barbaric depravity, it could honestly be considered a smear on orcs. :}
Orc lives matter!
Ian Mckellen was on Colbert couple of days ago, and gave a performance of “The Strangers’ Case” from the play “Sir Thomas More”. Shakespeare wrote the speech. Thomas More addresses a mob attacking immigrants. Watch it if you can, it is all over the intertubes. It will move you, because of what is going on today, of what the Church used to be, and how far it has fallen.
The last line of the speech sums up this government and its supporters well. “And this your mountainish inhumanity”
“Orc” also means “killer whale”.
A separate concern about calling ICE agents orcs is that it may cause some confusion, since the term is already in widespread use to refer to members of the Russian armed forces. Likewise, Russia is pretty commonly referred to as Mordor. As far as I can tell, the terms started to be used that way across eastern Europe sometime in between when Russia attacked Georgia in 2008, and their invasion of Crimea and shootdown of Malaysian Airlines flight 17 in 2014.
To be honest, I tend to view Isengard as a more apt comparison, but Mordor does fit in many ways, as well.
Regardless of whether they paint white hands or red eyes on their shields, the Uruks I’m talking about are different from the mountain orcs you refer to. Mountain orcs usually hide their faces, periodically sneaking out of caves to grab unsuspecting passers by and carry them off to foul dungeons, unlikely to be seen again. The orcs I refer to are much more brutal, and very openly trying to expand the reach of their pasty white lord’s power, if not across the Anduin or the Entwash, at least across the Dnipro.
They even have their own Wormtongue, although instead of Grima, his name is Steve. He seems like a bit of a dimwit (-koff), but he’s skilled at his job, which is to whisper subversive messages in the ear of the king of Rohan any time he starts to think that maybe the pasty white lord’s refusal to stop killing his neighbors might mean he isn’t actually interested in peace. The last thing the pasty white lord wants is Rohan answering anyone’s call for aid.
And yes, I know the figure in Theoden’s place in this analogy is a terrible match. The analogy definitely limps there.
Another way the analogy limps is that neither Sauron nor Saruman ever complained about what happened to their orcs. It was hard not laugh when the news today quoted a Kremlin official as complaining that an attack that wounded a general yesterday counted as terrorism, and endangered negotiations for peace. Somehow Russia bombing the powerplants this week that are vital for winter heat in all the major cities in Ukraine during fatally cold weather and a energy infrastructure ceasefire, and blowing up a bus and killing a dozen civilians on their way home from work doesn’t endanger peace.
Coincidentally (or perhaps it wasn’t coincidence), the general they’re upset about has been in the news before…something about stabbing a hobbit in the Shire, or perhaps it was a nerve gas attack in Salisbury. Either way, not only are they complaining about the fact that one of their soldiers got hurt in a war they started, but it turns out he’s as innocent as a ringwraith.
Sorry, I know that’s getting rather far afield from the point you were making. I guess the mention of orcs just got my mind stuck on even worse things that are also in the news every day, and I needed to rant for a bit.
Anyways, having considered all of the above, perhaps the reader who objected to you using the term “orcs” would have found it more acceptable if you called them “goblins.”
As long as I’m at it, someone made a relatively amusing map of this here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/lordoftherings/comments/t55knh/true_map_gondor_calls_for_aid/
The idea of Belarus being Isengard makes sense, because Lukashenko lives in denial of the fact that his pursuit of power turned him into a puppet for the pasty white lord.
Kharkiv was a good candidate for Osgiliath back when the map was drawn, although it turns out that Kupyansk is the city divided by a river that has been fought over back and forth. Not to mention, the river’s name is Oskil, which has convenient phonetic similarity to Osgiliath.
ICE orcs *are* serving Russia because they work for Putin’s #1 asset: Donald Trump.