From the fourth page of the article:
Now ponder something that comes through even the party-line demonization of a crushed enemy -- this clear-cut and undeniable fact: Sauron's army was the one that included every species and race on Middle Earth, including all the despised colors of humanity, and all the lower classes.
From the third page (slightly edited):
[Brin's] view is intelligent and thought-provoking -- though at the surface also quite easy to disprove.
As I recall, it wasn't Sauron's army that included dwarves, elves, and hobbits. That was the good guy's army.
I suspect his article contains many distortions of Tolkien's work similar to this; this is just the one that leapt out at me, a casual Tolkien fan.
On the one hand, I do agree with him that it's dangerous to take too literally fantasy that ascribes evil to entire races. This type of thinking gets real deadly real fast when people do it in the real world.
On the other hand, I think he focuses on the perils of Romanticism (i.e., the Third Reich) disproportionately. While the Third Reich was the worst stain on the twentieth century, we shouldn't forget about such pro-progress, anti-romanticist innovators as Stalin and Chairman Mao. Nor should we forget that many progressive movements have used romantic metaphors to energize their constituency.
An interesting article, but I think he overstates his case and ultimately fails to balance it by looking at the equal perils of modernism.
Daniel
