[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

This piece, though in my opinion mainly written as a lure for clicks, is symptomatic of a disturbing and all-engulfing trend towards tribalistic identity politics that seems to have infected everything. Tolkien and Beowulf have drawn the basilisk's gaze because they are well-known and therefore provide a good soapbox from which to screech this hate-filled nonsense to the world. This is why comics, Hollywood, computer games and other mainstream cultural outlets are targeted for infiltration by these harpies. Their interest in literature and art is not cultural, it is political; and its primary motive is self-aggrandisement.

Hence you will see in this sort of article a lot of unsubstantiated assertions and no small number of half-truths, which when followed to their ultimate sources prove to be based on more of the same. The house is founded not on sand, but on its own roof. The worm eats its tail, or disappears into its own fundament. An endless wheel of circular argumentation. It is like arguing with a Puritan: every disagreement is heresy; all dissent is sin.

What, I would like to ask Miss Kim, is wrong with being English or white? Or a man? Would she, I wonder, be surprised to know that recently a group of pranksters took passages from Mein Kampf, substituted 'men' for 'jews' and got it accepted for publication by a supposedly peer-reviewed feminist journal? Well, a peer is only an equal; and some things are equal to zero.

So what if Tolkien wouldn't let one of his students engage in lit crit where he was supposed to be translating? Keeping people on topic was part of his job, and if they wouldn't keep to the discipline of learning the sources and their languages they didn't belong in medieval studies in the first place. Perhaps this is what Kim and her ilk are truly enraged about: entry into medieval studies still requires a modicum of learning and a little sanity. The cards won't play. It is not enough to be resentful, hectoring and iconoclastic: one must actually know something that is difficult and laborious to learn. Perhaps they should confine themselves to friendlier, less factually demanding places, like the Flat Earth society or a crystal healing clinic. There is still a big market for Bermuda Triangle literature, which has much the same degree of academic merit.