Analysis by Keith Rankin
Keith Rankin – One of our least-discussed discriminatory ‘isms’ is what I call ‘lookism’. Discrimination on the basis of a person’s or a group’s appearance, noting in particular features of ancestry, age, and culture. Discrimination based on how individuals and peoples look to other people.
Discrimination on the basis of the presence or absence of ‘beauty’
This form of discrimination falls most particularly on females. Commonly we too easily see the death of a ‘beautiful’ woman as the greatest of all human tragedies, while regarding the death of an ‘ugly’ woman as the least of all such tragedies. The perfect victim is a beautiful woman.
Early yesterday (10 Sep 2025) I watched Al Jazeera Live, to get information about the Israeli attack on Qatar which had taken place about four hours earlier. (Refer Maps: Israel has attacked six countries in the past 72 hours, Al Jazeera, 10 Sep 2015.) At about 5:35am NZ time, the news network crossed to a White House press briefing, expecting to hear for the first time the official US take on the event.
Karoline Leavitt: “Today I would like to address the tragedy that had not received nearly enough media attention; the brutal murder of Iryna Zarutska. Here are the facts that many outlets have shamefully and intentionally failed to report until the President drew attention to it. On August 22nd Iryna Zarutska was stabbed to death on the rail system in Charlotte North Carolina by a savage career criminal. This is a public transportation system that many in the area use every single day to go to school and work. Iryna was on the train that night, travelling home from her job at a pizzeria, still in uniform from her shift. This beautiful innocent 23-year-old young woman was a Ukrainian refugee who had recently fled her country for a chance at a safer life and a promising new beginning here in the United States of America. But tragically, the public transportation system in a major American city was more dangerous than the active war zone that she left. … “
Eventual break-back: Cyril Vanier [Al Jazeera anchor] “We are listening in intently because we are expecting that there may be comments from the White House on Israel’s attack on Doha just a few hours ago.” After more than 10 minutes Karoline Leavitt, a beautiful blond woman, made her short White House response to the Israeli attack.
After a couple of questions, she said; “As I told you, the President was notified by the United States’ military that Israel was attacking Hamas …”. The language indicated that the President was notified by the United States’ military rather than by the Israeli authorities; and that the attack on Qatar was already underway when the President first heard of it. (Maybe the United States is a proxy of Israel, and not the other way around?)
Note that Leavitt’s tale of Iryna Zarutska suggests, if taken at face value, that the “active war zone” in Ukraine is relatively safe?!
Back to my story
I had heard about the Iryna Zarutska case earlier this week (refer BBC: Suspect in fatal stabbing of Ukrainian refugee charged with federal crime), so this tragic story was not as underplayed as the White House intimated. Violent crime is ubiquitous throughout the western world; much of it is senseless, committed by underclass perpetrators, many with mental illness. For many African and Native American communities, terrifying violence, including femicide, is an all too frequent fact of their lives and deaths. Pretty blond immigrant victims are the exception, not the rule.
Terror is also perpetrated by the western world’s ruling classes, and much of it is aimed at immigrants with black or brown skin.
Especially on Al Jazeera, because Palestine is on their patch and because they do not downplay the violence perpetrated by the Israeli Einsatzgruppen, we see many victims – especially mothers wearing culturally-traditional black clothing and head coverings. To western viewers, these victims look quite unattractive; they are all-to-easily dismissed as mothers-of-terrorists, mothers of future terrorists, and future mothers of future terrorists. These women look less like westerners than the Palestinian men do, making it particularly hard for some of us to identify with them as humans like us.
Lookism regards as the most tragic of victims the young, the blond, the blue-eyed, the fair-skinned, the slim (but not emaciated). Lookism favours long or plaited hair; uncovered heads. Lookism is racism, ageism, culturism, and individualism.
Stereotypes of bad people (and non-people) are ugly, and dark. A problematic piece of twentieth-century literature which perpetuates these stereotypes is Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. These books became very popular with the ‘hippie’ generation, as well as with other generations which were into deeply problematic books such as Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand galvanised coteries of young men (and some young women, such as Liz Truss); her fans vary in age from 99 (eg Alan Greenspan) to 57 (eg Peter Thiel) to 19. Atlas Shrugged, published in 1957, became the launching-pad for the 0.001 percenters and for people who aspire to the success-cocktail of concentrated-wealth, power-sex, and techno-utopia.
(Note How Bad Writing Destroyed the World: Ayn Rand and the Literary Origins of the Financial Crisis, 2016, by Adam Weiner; Weiner observes that 500,000 copies sold in the crisis year of 2009. And note the tech-focussed New Zealand school curriculum changes, New push for AI as Education Minister Erica Stanford announces curriculum changes RNZ 11 September 2025.)
The techno-supremacist 0.001 percenters seem to like three types of literature. Ultra-individualist rationalisations of ‘rationalism’ such as Atlas Shrugged and books recommended by the Mises Society, certain types of science fiction (see Do billionaires even understand the sci-fi they’re inspired by? The Listening Post Al Jazeera 7 September 2025), and mythic fantasies, such as Lord of the Rings.
Back to Lord of the Rings (noting that this was mentioned in the Listening Post story, and that Peter Thiel has read it “over ten times” as an adult). On reflection, it is drawn-out racist fantasia in which Middle Earth is a thinly veiled map of Europe. Mordor is the former caliphate, the Ottoman Empire. And Mordor’s maritime allies were from the coasts of North Africa, the Barbary Coast. The ugly (thereby evil!) Orcs were seemingly without women (though Peter Jackson made a joke about this in the second movie) and children; certainly, if present in the story, we would have wished for the death of them as the ugly mothers and future-mothers of ugly terrorists. There was however a big and ugly female spider Shelob; an embodiment of all tropes of wicked ugly women.
The beautiful people – which very much include blond and other fair-skinned women – draw on Celtic, Scandinavian and possibly Ukrainian identities (noting The Counteroffensive: How Ukraine uses ‘The Lord of the Rings’ to frame its battle for survival Mariana Lastovyria Kyiv Independent 29 August 2014, and Ukraine and the Orcs: Leaders slip into ‘Tolkien mindset’ Gwynne Dyer Manawatu Standard6 May 2022). The Kievan Rus’ were a people of Varangian – ie Scandinavian – origin. Aryan, for sure. By this view, if you want to know if someone is good – or, on the other hand, ‘deserves to die’ – just find out what their race is!
Conclusion – Lookism
Mythology, especially ethnic and pseudo-ethnic mythology, is dangerous at the best of times. Ugly myths about individualism and the virtue of beauty – and their flipsides (collectivism, and the vice of ugliness) – create a recipe for conflict without any point of resolution. Ugly won’t concede because (by conflation) it’s evil; and ‘beauty’ won’t concede because either it’s evil too, or because its adversary is too evil.
*******
Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
