Is it? I dunno, honestly. Obviously it's dehumanizing, but is it actually racist? I don't think this counts as a racial slur, it doesn't have the history, but I also don't know enough orc lore to argue. Seems more like a nerdy version of calling people barbarians...
Either way as a Russian I've waited long enough for us to get our own n-word analogue that only we get to say.
The tweet .
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That's fair. The modern use.of orc for Russians is definitely racist, and Tolkien was racist(he was British in the 1940s, of course he was.). I just hate people going after him for this line in particular.