Black Aragorn?

Let's talk about this using insights from Jacques Ellul's "Autopsy of Revolution." Everything is not as it seems and you should not let yourself get trapped in the regime's propaganda discourse.

Social media is buzzing with news about the new “Magic the Gathering - Tales of Middle Earth” card set which features a black Aragorn. What is the big deal? Why would you object to this kind of “race-switching” in a familiar and beloved story like The Lord of the Rings. Are you racist? Every right thinking individual knows that blacks are under-represented in the media and entertainment industry. This should be celebrated as something good, correct? Your objection to this merely proves that you harbor racist attitudes of which you may or may not be aware. You need to “check your privilege.” But when you see a tweet like the one below, its a sign that more is going here that might be apparent at first glance:

In terms of discourse, these types of accusations are meant to bully you into silence. They are not meant to spur debate about the subject on its merits. What these bully tactics mask, though, in this instance, and most others where you see this technique used, is that the whole “civil rights revolution” has been completely subverted.

Why should we care about a bunch of men playing children’s card games and the movies they like? One of the reasons that this touches a nerve with so many is that the fantasy fiction and board gaming demographic is filled with smart, hyper-credentialed, abstract thinking theorycell and wordcell types of all political affiliations. It is one of the reasons that gaming and fantasy fiction have become such a fertile ground for cultural battle. The problem for both camps is that Tolkien draws from deep cultural archetypes in the telling of his stories. He was intentionally mining the living tradition of his cultural heritage to tell stories in new ways.

The problem with archetypes is that they are almost never in the foreground. You can identify them and name them. But getting at their specific content is challenging. They are not easily made legible and rational to the scientifically minded. They are better expressed through poetry, stories, music and art. They evoke powerful energies within a culture that are rooted in its deeper metaphysical structure. A significant part of the culture war is the battle over these archetypes. A big part of this cultural battle includes the civil rights revolution.

We begin by recognizing that the very idea of a “black Aragorn” is not in itself “generative.” In other words, this is not an idea that arises naturally out of a living set of archetypes. It does not arise naturally out of African culture, nor does it arise naturally out of African American culture. It is not even an image that arises naturally, on its own, out of the civil rights revolution itself. It is purely subversive. The actual archetypes which Tolkien employed are ignored. The character is emptied of the content which the story was meant to possess: the exploration of the idea of “nobility” as it emerges out of Norse and Germanic mythopoetic storytelling. Tolkien was self-consciously trying to mine the cultural foundation stories of the English people, giving them a new, fresh, retelling in the emerging genre of fantasy fiction, a genre which he more or less defined singlehandedly.

Discussing the merits of these archetypes on their face is not the point. The point is not to discuss their value or lack of value, their operative and generative power within our culture and the implications and effects of the role they play. That is a worthwhile discussion. But that is not the discussion we are allowed to have. We are not permitted to discuss Aragorn as Aragorn. Rather, Aragorn must be put into service for cause of “the revolution.” It is a clear political message: you are not allowed to claim Aragorn as your own, as a character inspired by your past, your ancient stories, your own living cultural archetypes. You are not allowed to be inspired by, or to learn lessons from, Aragorn as Aragorn. Aragorn must first be given his proper revolutionary content.

We are ready now to let Jacques Ellul take us deeper, to see more fully the dynamics at play. This whole dust up over black Aragorn is merely the surface epiphenomenon. There is more going on here. What we must see in this is that the civil rights revolution and all of its discourse has been subverted and co-opted. It no longer even serves the idea of civil rights. What we are seeing is the effect more broadly within the very working of the idea of a revolution itself. Ellul argues that idea of revolution has been so subordinated and domesticated that it is now being put into service to maintain the regime rather than undermine it. The idea has been so taken up into popular consciousness that it is not enough to merely be a reformist. All political action must be seen as “revolutionary.” He argues that:

“Revolution is the daily fare of our affluent consumer society.”

In a sense, “revolution,” including the civil rights revolution, has been made a permanent part of our society.

“All the talk of revolution acts as a vaccine and immunizer: revolution adopts a fictitious cosmos, a pictorial universe created by mass media and, in the end, becomes fiction.”

What seems revolutionary, this act of “race switching,” which is proffered as a way to raise people’s consciousness about “black voices,” or the perception of “black bodies” in movies and games, is little more than revolution as a consumer product:

“The so-called consumer society has assimilated revolution so thoroughly the it, too, just becomes another item of consumption.”

What is happening when we hear people talk about the representation of blacks in movies and other media, when the media engages in this kind of race-switching in stories is that the bourgeoisie—that is, the white liberal progressives who make up the bulk of the managerial class—are demonstrating their power to assimilate real threats to their position. That real threat is not actually coming from black Americans. That threat is actually coming from the people offended by the race switching.

When middle and upper middle class white liberals embrace this kind of race switching in stories like The Lord of the Rings, or when they try to claim that the Bible really supports the trans agenda, what they are doing is putting themselves at the service of the regime and its interests by embracing revolutionary concepts.

“Young middle-class supporters of a revolutionary movement should realize that, far from becoming revolutionists by their inflammatory idiom, press, and behavior, they are in fact the logistic vanguard of the bourgeois to establish bridgeheads in the wholly alien territory of revolution. They have not deserted their ‘class’; they are its unconscious representatives.”

Ellul argues that the generative period of any revolution is actually from the time before the revolution happens. Only then can the stories be told authentically as stories. Once you enter into the revolutionary phase, all stories must now be put into service to aid the cause of the revolution. In other words, all stories must become propaganda for the revolution. An argument could be made that the civil rights revolution effectively destroyed the possibility of an authentically generative black culture in the west. Anything that may emerge is immediately put into service to aid the cause of equity and equality for blacks. At this point, having destroyed the possibility of a generative culture free from revolutionary purpose, the only option is for revolutionary propaganda to react against older forms of art and culture existing prior to the revolutionary moment. Thus all cultural artifacts must be made to the serve the revolutionary purpose, which now, rather than threatening the regime, the revolution, having been absorbed into the structures of the administrative, now serves its interests.

Those that produce this material see themselves as revolutionaries working to overturn an unjust and racist system, when in fact they are the foot soldiers of that same system. They represent bourgeoisie power in the form of the domesticated, absorbed and neutered racial revolution. “Black Aragorn” is not working to overthrow an unjust system. It is working to support and enhance the power of the system. Who then is the object of this propaganda? The real enemies of the regime. Those who do not participate in the power of the administrative state, especially those who love Tolkien and who also desire to embrace the cultural archetypes unfolded in and through those stories. These stories must be stolen from them as an act of aggression.

There is a very clear message here: you are not allowed to have stories, especially if those stories present powerful archetypes which might inspire resistance to the regime. Because you oppose “the revolution” (as conceived of in the minds of its supporters for in fact there is no actual revolution taking place) any story that might stir you to opposition must be taken from you. It is furthermore an act of humiliation, designed to break your spirit. It tells you that you are not allowed to have any stories of your own. When these stories are operative in the people, they represent a threat to the regime. But when the regime propagandists take these stories and give them pseudo-revolutionary content, what they are doing is reversing that process. Even when these propaganda manipulated stories generate political action and protest, they do so not because it is arising naturally from within; rather, they are actions directed and controlled by the propagandist. The people who glue themselves to, or splash paint on museum art are in this same category. These are not self-generating actions. They are manipulated and produced by the propagandist.

Furthermore, all of the fervor produced by these acts, from both those for and against, also serves the purposes of the regime. If you are directing your energies against “black Aragorn” you are not directing those same energies against the regime:

“Radicalism on the stage or on the screen serves to absorb the tensions and maintain stability, which also stabilizes society.”

The more outrageous the better. The more it offends, the better:

“The extreme, outlandish and offensive, the more demobilizing are its effects on the real problems of society.”

This places opponents of the regime in a real catch-22. Do you react? If you do, this drains your energy and makes you less of a threat to the regime. If you don’t react, you let the regime continue to humiliate and dehumanize you. The regime, its propagandists and its legion of loyal foot soldiers are trying to choose the ground upon which we will fight. The only real option is to not play the game. This is where door number three comes into play: build something parallel that is not beholden to the rewards of the regime or afraid of its punishments.