How the West is helping Putin’s propagandists

One might not think that J. R. R. Tolkien has much to do with the bitter war in Ukraine, but one would be wrong. A particular epithet, once used by Ukrainians specifically for the Russian soldiers who have shelled, looted and raped their way into their country has begun to be applied also to the Russians who support the war and, increasingly, all Russians.

That epithet is orc, the brutal and brutish foot soldiers of the dark lord Sauron, who spill in their countless numbers from the land of Mordor to kill and to despoil.

Tolkien’s works are very popular in both Russia and Ukraine, and there as elsewhere have been subjected to scholarly deconstruction, naked plagiarism and appropriation into memes. Indeed, even before the Ukrainians were calling Russia Mordor, the term was used by Russians embittered by the failure of the so-called Bolotnaya protests against Vladimir Putin’s return to power in 2011-12.