It's a reference to Lord of the Rings. Ukrainian Fascists; Read another book.
And in Tolkien's defense the best map for Orcs isn't any particular race, or even race relations. Sauron and his Orcs stand in for urbanization, industrialization, and mechanization of the world that Tolkien apparently believed was overwhelming an idyllic British countryside of small stead independent farmers and shit. So reactionary, but not explicitly racist or even particularly classist. Like Tolkien wasn't woke or some great social commentator, but he does avoid a lot of the worst trends in fantasy fiction from throughout the 20th century. You can actually read LotR without having to make too many apologies, and some of those are "Women have undeveloped characters and little agency". Which sucks, but like, compared to Lovecraft? I'll take it.
Honestly someone should to a woke re-write of Tolkien. Dude was on the record somewhere that he wanted people to add to his legendarium, not leave it some static, fixed thing.
Don't think there's any historic/cultural behind it but it means sub human so yeah
It's a reference to Lord of the Rings. Ukrainian Fascists; Read another book.
And in Tolkien's defense the best map for Orcs isn't any particular race, or even race relations. Sauron and his Orcs stand in for urbanization, industrialization, and mechanization of the world that Tolkien apparently believed was overwhelming an idyllic British countryside of small stead independent farmers and shit. So reactionary, but not explicitly racist or even particularly classist. Like Tolkien wasn't woke or some great social commentator, but he does avoid a lot of the worst trends in fantasy fiction from throughout the 20th century. You can actually read LotR without having to make too many apologies, and some of those are "Women have undeveloped characters and little agency". Which sucks, but like, compared to Lovecraft? I'll take it.
Honestly someone should to a woke re-write of Tolkien. Dude was on the record somewhere that he wanted people to add to his legendarium, not leave it some static, fixed thing.