A Means to Freedom

The two-volume set of the letters between Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft are discussed. Panelists include Rusty Burke, Howard Scholar and one of the editors of A Means to Freedom,
German Howard scholar Dierk Guenther, current co-editor of a collection of academic essays on Robert E. Howard that will be published in Japan, and Jonas Prida, the editor of Conan Meets the Academy: Multidisciplinary Essays on the Enduring Barbarian, which won the 2013 REH Foundation Award for Best Anthology.

[@theleninistplaysgames1682]

Derleth also wrote "regional-fiction" about his own area. I wonder if it was because of Lovecraft's influence or not.

[@theleninistplaysgames1682]

Lovecraft was interesting politically because he originally support monarchy because of his Anglophile tendencies. Then he became a fascist but also became convinced of the superiority of the Socialist or Communist economic system.
To me it seems like he was always on the side of the poor and working people BUT he never got over his racism and elitism which in my opinion led him to support a technocratic or elitist version of Socialism.
This is heavily explored in his depictions of superior alien cultures like the Elder Thing civilization in "At The Mountains of Madness", the civilization of the Great Race of Yith in "Shadow Out of Time" and in the portrayal of the underground city of Soth in "The Mound". He literally calls the Yith system "fascistic communism". Of course the people of Soth also enslaved other races which is far from communism. I think the Elder Things were the closest thing to communism or socialism although they also had slaves (shoggoths) which were a semi-conscious race more like animals then people created by the Elder Things themselves to serve as beasts of burden.
In general I think Lovecraft seemed to be pretty open to new political ideas. I just wish he would have gotten over his racist prejudices because it really seemed to hinder his intellectual development.

[@nathansteinfromarkham7109]

He was getting there, I think had he lived longer he may have completely discarded his opinions that were by today's standards racist.

[@TheNineteenthCentury]

It is socialism that would hinder intellectual development. Lovecraft was a genius (so to talk of "intellectual development" on his part is patronising and ridiculous) and one of my favourite writers but his growing sympathy to fascism and socialism in later years shows that even the greatest of minds is vulnerable to evil. However, had he lived to see the atrocities committed by both ideologies, he would certainly have renounced them; and it is possible that he was already abandoning any fascist tendencies he had after he heard from a neighbour, Harry K. Brobst, who had been there, of the treatment of Jews in Germany. Lovecraft and his aunt were angered by what they heard.