H.P. Lovecraft and Racism

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H.P. Lovecraft is considered a controversial figure because of his far-right views, especially his racism that was extreme even for his time. He famously praised Hitler[1], referred to Jewish people with horrifyingly anti-Semitic language, and called Black people "semi-human."

Aside from his racism and anti-Semitism, Lovecraft was a white supremacist and elitist who supported fascism and aristocracy.[2][3] He also was homophobic and (at least during his youth) sexist.

Fandom Reactions

Discussions of Lovecraft’s racism I’ve run across online have been predictable in their awfulness, dominated as they are by two groups of people more interested in opining than mature thought and dialogue. One consists of critics who have never read Lovecraft’s work but are unrestrained in their condemnation of him, his work and his readers. The other is comprised of defenders who are familiar with Lovecraft’s work but refuse to take his racism seriously. Better to engage with each other on the basis of knowledge and in a spirit of good will. [4]

Racism is a difficult topic for Lovecraft fandom. While fans have always been aware of it to a certain extent, it was less discussed in the early decades of the fandom, and when discussed it was often downplayed. One of the persistent myths about Lovecraft from that time (that was popularized by L. Sprague de Camp in his biography of Lovecraft) was that he disavowed racism when he got older; in reality, while some of his far-right views became less extreme later in life,[5] his racism never truly did. The awareness of Lovecraft's bigotry has been increasing since the 1960s and 1970s, when Arkham House started publishing his letters and published de Camp's biography, but has become especially significant in the 2000s and 2010s, when Lovecraft became much more popular than before and his fandom started becoming more diverse. Some creators, such as Welcome to Night Vale creator Joseph Fink, disavowed his influence.[6]

Lovecraft and his legacy have recently become yet another skirmish in our interminable culture wars. Is it OK to admire the work of a man who held such vile opinions? How central was his bigotry to his visions of cosmic alienation and hereditary decay? Within HPL fandom, there’s a growing fatigue with these questions, in part because we’ve been debating them for decades. Lovecraft fans have their apologia for all this: It was a common attitude at the time, he never advocated violence, he softened as he got older, etc. None of these attempts to logic away HPL’s bigotry mitigate the raw fact of his prejudice. I couldn’t blame a black reader for hating Lovecraft, and I’m disturbed by the sprinkling of neo-Nazis who openly admire him for his racism. [7]

Not everyone was accepting of this increased attention on Lovecraft's bigotry. Some fans continue downplaying it and claiming that such discussions were of no importance; some even try to frame them as "SJWs attempting to cancel Lovecraft." Many fans make excuses for Lovecraft's views in practically every discussion of them that takes place in Lovecraft fandom spaces; perhaps the most often used - and also often debated - defence is that he was "the man of his time". Others feel that the fandom became so focused on Lovecraft's politics that it started overshadowing everything else about Lovecraft and Mythos. For example, Robert M. Price, the editor of Crypt of Cthulhu, cited the desire to "set aside our politics for the nonce and just get back to the glory days of Lovecraft fandom and scholarship" as the reason why he revived the zine. Meanwhile, the fans who support the increased focus on Lovecraft's views argue that such discussions are important for making the fandom more comfortable and diverse place, that they enrich Lovecraft's scholarship and fandom by bringing the new points and even that they are crucial for keeping Lovecraft in the public memory.

Lovecraft, like J.K. Rowling, is often brought up in fandom discussions about separating the art from the artist, dealing with creators' unsavory views, "death of the author" and such.

While few fans support Lovecraft's right-wing politics, there are some who do. One of them is a famous conservative writer Vox Day, who wrote several essays agreeing with his political worldview (many of them following WFA scandal) and seemingly even had some stories influenced by Lovecraft's writings. [8] A far-right website Counter-Currents also published many articles exploring Lovecraft from this particular point of view, and even set up the H. P. Lovecraft Prize for Literature (also as an answer to WFA removing his face from the award). [9] In some Lovecraftian communities there has also been an increase of fans expressing right-wing views, and some fans expressed concerns that unwillingness to be critical of Lovecraft's racism may make fans open to alt-right radicalization:

Always told I'm falling for "groupthink" or whatever in these discussions on FB or boards when I'm generally a minority of one against a group of people all repeating the exact same right-wing talking points you could probably pin down to the exact YouTubers they heard them from. <...> Rather than healthily enjoying his fiction, much of Lovecraft's fanbase see him as some magic grandfather figure and his racist perspective deeply tied to his unassailable rational logical fact man intellectual prowess, which they inexplicably share pride in. [10]

It's been noted that, despite his bigotry, Lovecraft has a lot of fans among marginalized people,[11] some of whom consider his writings relatable for experiences of an oppressed person, or even for those of specific marginalized groups like LGBT people and neurodivergent people. Because of this, some even go as far as suggesting that he himself might have been an LGBT (most common suggestions are asexual or gay[12]) or neurodivergent person.

Controversies

World Fantasy Awards

One of the most famous controversies around Lovecraft's racism is related to the World Fantasy Award, which used to be a statuette of Lovecraft but ended up changed after more and more fans started objecting to using his bust for this award. The fandom discussions began in 2011, when Nnedi Okorafor expressed her discomfort over getting the statuette of a famously racist author as an award, but became especially intense in 2014, when Daniel José Older created the petition to remove Lovecraft's bust from World Fantasy Award and replace it with the bust of Octavia Butler, and in 2015, when WFA decided to remove Lovecraft's likeness from the award trophy. It was changed to the current moon tree statuette in 2017. Many Lovecraft's fans were unhappy with the decision, and some went as far as sending threats and other angry emails to Older and Okorafor.[13] S.T. Joshi, Lovecraft's biographer and editor of some Lovecraftian fanzines, returned his WFA awards in disagreement with the removal of Lovecrafts' bust. [14]

Robert Price's Speech at NecronomiCon 2015

One of the most famous examples of racist attitudes expressed by Lovecraft's fans is Robert M. Price's racist and islamophobic speech at the opening ceremony of NecronomiCon Providence 2015.[15] This speech caused a great deal of shock and alarm to fans and NecronomiCon organizers, who issued the statement condemning all forms of bigotry. The popularity of Price, who before that was very well-respected in the fandom, since then has started to decline. [16]

Cthulhu Mythos Retro Hugo Award

Another award-related controversy tied to Lovecraft happened in 2020, when 1945 Retro Hugo for Best Series was given to the Cthulhu Mythos. While it was specified that the award was for all the Mythos writers ("H. P. Lovecraft, August Derleth, and others"), not everyone was happy with the choice, feeling that the award unnecessarily honored the racist Lovecraft, and/or that doing so at the peak of BLM protests was bad timing. This event led to a new wave of discussions about Lovecraft and race, and also about whether the Retro Hugo category was necessary or not.

Lovecraft's Racism in Fanworks

Racism and Lovecraft RPF

Lovecraft's bigotry often is shown in the stories that use him as a character. It has been used many times as either one of his many personality traits or as a central point of the story.

A lot of the works that show Lovecraft's racism more prominently do it in humorous manner, usually to make fun of it.

Progressive Reimaginings of Mythos

The problem of Lovecraft's bigotry has lead to the creation of a new subgenre of Lovecraftian fiction that explicitly deals with the issues of racism, misogyny and other types of oppression. Some of the works in this subgenre go as far as recasting characters shown in a negative light in Lovecraft stories as heroes; others subvert the themes common in his works in different ways. They quite often reject the pessimism typical for Lovecraft as well as for his many followers. The examples of such works include The Litany of Earth by Ruthanna Emrys, Shoggoths in Bloom by Elizabeth Bear and The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle; Providence by Alan Moore also has elements of this subgenre. Perhaps the most famous work associated with this type of stories is Lovecraft Country, HBO adaptation of Matt Ruff's novel. The show has led to many discussions of Lovecraft and race; however, it has been praised higher outside Lovecraft's fandom than inside of it, because many Lovecraft's fans were dissatisfied with how few Lovecraftian and cosmic horror elements it had, despite the name, while others, mistakenly thinking that it engaged with Mythos more than it actually did, reacted negatively to the very idea of the show that criticized Lovecraft's racism.

Commonly Used Examples of Lovecraft's Racism

Lovecraft's Cat

Screenshot of the viral Tumblr post about Lovecraft's cat. This photo of Lovecraft holding his friend's cat Felis is often used in discussions that mention Lovecraft's cat

One of the ocurrences most often used as examples of Lovecraft's extreme racism is the name of the cat that he had in the childhood. That name was a racial slur. Because it's seen as so over-the-top racist now, in the recent years (late 2010s) the knowledge of this cat has become common even outside Lovecraft's fandom, and eventually has been turned into a meme after a Tumblr post with the photo of him holding a cat went viral in 2018.[17] The name of Lovecraft's cat has became one of the most well-known biographical facts about him and is very often mentioned in all kinds of discussions about him (even if they are not related to his racism), often in jokey or sarcastic manner. All this has led to Lovecraft fandom developing quite complicated relationship with this cat and his name. Some get annoyed that it's so often mentioned as a prime example of Lovecraft's racism, others find his name or his meme status amusing. [18] The constant jokes about it in Lovecraft subreddit eventually forced the subreddit moderator to ban mentioning the cat in a humorous context. Even before becoming the meme, the cat used to be mentioned so often in that sub that mods made the submission guideline that said "yes we all know about Lovecraft's cat".

There also have been discussions among the fans about whether the cat's name, unlike many other examples of Lovecraft's bigotry, was actually closer to being a case of more "period-typical" racism, and whether it was Lovecraft himself who named the cat. The commonly held opinion among the fans is that the cat was actually named by some relative of Lovecraft, though there is actually no information confirming this. This reddit post with information about the cat touches on those topics. [19]

Racism in Lovecraft's Writings

One of the most famous examples of Lovecraft's racism is the poem he wrote in 1912. This poem is often brought up in fan discussions (for example, it was mentioned by Nnedi Okorafor in her post about World Fantasy Awards) and even was used in Lovecraft Country TV show.

It is often debated to what extent Lovecraft's bigotry influenced his stories. Some fans are convinced that racism permeates his writing; while some of his stories are considered more explicitly racist than the others - among them The Horror at Red Hook, Medusa's Coil, The Shadow over Innsmouth, Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family - it has been argued that almost all of them include some bigoted elements, even if just in a few comments or epithets.[20] Even in The Call of Cthulhu, his most famous story, the narrator suspects that his uncle is dead because he crossed a Black person.[3] Another opinion, that is also very widespread in the fandom, is that racism doesn't play an important part in Lovecraft's horror fiction. There is also an interpretation that bigotry is actually the main theme of all Lovecraft's writings (or, in some cases, of cosmic horror in general), though it's more typical for non-fans.

Meta

Essays

Other Sources

  • The Lovecraft Reread by Ruthanna Emrys and Anne M. Pillsworth ("Welcome to the H. P. Lovecraft reread, in which two modern Mythos writers—Ruthanna Emrys and Anne M Pillsworth—get girl cooties all over old Howard’s original stories. Together they hope to explore both the awesome and the problematic, both the deliberately and accidentally horrific.")
  • Let's Read: everything Howard Phillips Lovecraft ever wrote by Leila Hann (another reread with a close eye for the problematic aspects)
  • Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein by Bobby Derie (Reviews of lesser known Cthulhu Mythos stories. "Stories I particularly want to focus on will involve writers and protagonists that are female or POC, LGBTQ issues, and related themes of sex, gender, race, and all the other bits and pieces that people don’t normally like to talk about.")

References

  1. ^ "[Hitler’s] vision is of course romantic & immature, & coloured with a fact-ignoring emotionalism … There surely is an actual Hitler peril—yet that cannot blind us to the honest rightness of the man’s basic urge … I repeat that there is a great & pressing need behind every one of the major planks of Hitlerism—racial-cultural continuity, conservative cultural ideals, & an escape from the absurdities of Versailles. The crazy thing is not what Adolf wants, but the way he sees it & starts out to get it. I know he’s a clown, but by God, I like the boy!" See also the quotes from his other letters from 1933 and 1934
  2. ^ Lovecraft and Government,
  3. ^ a b Lovecraft is Racist
  4. ^ Lovecraft Was Racist. Now What? by J.P. Williams
  5. ^ The Political Transition of Howard Philips Lovecraft
  6. ^ Fink on Lovecraft,
  7. ^ My Favorite Anti-Semite: H.P. Lovecraft by Hunter C. Eden, March 15, 2018
  8. ^ for example, in his story collection The Altar of Hate
  9. ^ "A much creepier response came from the “white nationalist” site counter-currents.com, which reminded readers of its recently-launched “H. P. Lovecraft Prize for Literature, to be awarded to literary artists of the highest caliber who transgress the boundaries of political correctness…[a]s the Left continues to hollow out and destroy institutions, corrupt minds and culture, and denigrate white greatness.” The ghost that haunts American literature: The genius & the repugnance of H.P. Lovecraft by Philip Eil, November 22, 2015
  10. ^ From Twitter thread by Sad Marsh Ghost
  11. ^ For example, in the tumblr post Hi! Would you ever consider doing that spirited TED talk about why Lovecraft now appeals specifically to the marginalized people he hated?
  12. ^ See, for example, Stanley C. Sargent's interpretation of The Outsider and The Dunwich Horror
  13. ^ From an interview with Older: "Older made it clear that while he’d received plenty of angry emails, it was Okorafor who got most of the hate mail (a fact that he puts down to his own standing as a cis man)”. January 15, 2016
  14. ^ HP Lovecraft biographer rages against ditching of author as fantasy prize emblem, November 11, 2015
  15. ^ "Lovecraft envisioned not only the threat that science posed to our anthropomorphic smugness, but also the ineluctable advance of the hordes on non-western anti-rationalism to consume a decadent, Euro-centric West. <...> Lovecraft was wrong about many things, but not, I think, this one. It’s the real life horror of Red Hook." Quoted from Lovecraft’s racism a tough issue at NecronomiCon Providence by Steve Ahlquist, August 26, 2015. According to Nick Mamatas, earlier Price expressed the same views in a similar manner on a panel in 2014, which was one of the reasons for a panel on Lovecraft and racism at NecronomiCon 2015
  16. ^ The Eldritch Horror of Shattered Ignorance: A #Cancellation of Robert M. Price
  17. ^ The cat on the photo, however, is not that cat. That cat got lost in 1904; the photo clearly was taken during Lovecraft's adult years, and Felis, the cat on the photo, belonged to his friend Frank Long.
  18. ^ For example, reddit post where a redditor was showing art of his own black cat drawn as Lovecraft is full of deleted comments that all were jokes about Lovecraft cat
  19. ^ However, Lovecraft had a habit of giving other black cats names related to racial slurs or to Black people; for example, he once named a black kitten after William Stanley Braithwaite, his only Black correspondent. (See Bobby Derie's blog post on Braithwaite for the information about this)
  20. ^ Those elements are noted in The Lovecraft Reread by Ruthanna Emrys and Anne M. Pillsworth, under the section titled "The Degenerate Dutch"
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