The question of
racist or
racialist elements in Tolkien's views and works has been the matter of some scholarly discussion.
[49] Christine Chism
[50] distinguishes accusations as falling into three categories: intentional racism,
[51] unconscious Eurocentric bias, and an evolution from latent racism in Tolkien's early work to a conscious rejection of racist tendencies in his late work.
Tolkien is known to have condemned
Nazi "race-doctrine" and
anti-Semitism as "wholly pernicious and unscientific".
[52] He also said of
apartheid in his birthplace
South Africa,
"the treatment of colour nearly always horrifies anyone going out from Britain."
[53]
He also spoke out against it in his valedictory address to the University of Oxford in 1959,
"I have the hatred of
apartheid in my bones; and most of all I detest the segregation or separation of Language and Literature. I do not care which of them you think White."
[54]
Tolkien had nothing but contempt for
Adolf Hitler, whom he accused of "perverting ... and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit" which was so dear to him.
[55] However, he could get more agitated over "lesser evils" that struck nearer home; he denounced
Anti-German fanaticism in the British war effort during World War II. In 1944, he wrote in a letter to his son Christopher:
"But it is distressing to see the press grovelling in the gutter as low as
Goebbels in his prime, shrieking that any
German commander who holds out in a desperate situation (when, too, the military needs of his side clearly benefit) is a drunkard, and a besotted
fanatic ... There was a solemn article in the local paper seriously advocating systematic exterminating of the entire German nation as the only proper course after military victory: because, if you please, they are
rattlesnakes, and don't know the difference between good and evil! (What of the writer?) The Germans have just as much right to declare the
Poles and
Jews exterminable vermin,
subhuman, as we have to select the Germans: in other words, no right, whatever they have done."
[56]
He also voiced support for
Francisco Franco's
Falangist regime during the
Spanish Civil War upon learning that
Republican death squads were destroying churches and
killing large numbers of priests and nuns[57][58]. He expressed admiration for the South African poet, Fascist and fellow Catholic
Roy Campbell in a 1944 letter. Since Campbell had served with Franco's armies in Spain, Tolkien regarded him as a defender of the Catholic faith, while C. S. Lewis was "violently" critical of Campbell's
fascist sympathies.
[59]