[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Hmm, I really think Alatar has a point here. Despite certain impressions, I think it is really dependant largely upon the collective you appeared in. I think you might've fallen into the trap of "everyone here is a Tolkien fan" - when it's only a certain specific demographic group.

Similarly, on the internet, that is also already a certain selection of people (e.g. you don't have the chance to count into the "statistics" the people who don't use internet in the first place), and once again, depending on which websites you visit, that limits it once again, etc... it is possible that you might have visited a forum which is more "left-wing" by itself, but perhaps had you visited a different one... you see the point.

And last of all, yes, the definition of "left-wing".

So however much the thread idea is interesting, if we wanted to be scientifically precise (I hate statistics, personally, but for once), what you can say is not "Tolkien fans seem to be usually left-wing, both in RL and on the internet", but all you can say is "there are many people whose opinions can be considered left-wing by local standards in the local part of Tolkien society and on some selected websites". It only proves that there are some Tolkien fans who are left-wing, or that there are some communities where there are more of them.

Funnily enough, I just realised that of the RL fans I know, majority of them are actually right-wing - at least by local standards, or, say, given by whom they support in elections: but that's exactly already containing many predetermined facts, because here, in a post-communist country, "left wing" is, among certain groups of people (the sort of "young educated middle-class", and in general more in people who e.g. live in big cities), implying something negative; and especially in the last elections, if you voted for left-wing parties, you were suspected of trying to "bring the trouble of Greece" to our country. And so if e.g. around that time you'd have met some people on the internet, you'd get the impression that they are "right-wing" by how they'd be dissing the left, even if some of them in fact might not be as much.