Why does the far-right like so much the 300 of Sparta?

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

The answer to OP's question is contingent on whether or not one means 300 the graphic novel and film, or the overall legend. As I began to write this response I realized the question was framed "300 of Sparta", rather than just "300". Responses to the OP thus far have probably pretty accurately summed up why portions of the far right enjoy the legend/myth/historical occurrence overall. Below is why they would enjoy the movie.

The movie 300 I will say has extremely racist undertones. And most of the time it isn't even undertones.

Indeed. 300 makes very explicit that it pits free, rational, masculine, and moral Europeans against despotic, mystic, effeminate, and degenerate Asians. Moreover, the movie (I cannot vouch for the graphic novel) takes no prisoners in granting the Persians access to weaponry and beasts we would expect out of India, Japan, and Africa--thereby at once creating a potentially interesting fantasy/mythical scenario while also bald-facedly making it "Europe versus the entire rest of the eastern hemisphere". While Lord of the Rings has been accused of a similar dynamic (oliphants, scimitars, dark-skinned men from the south and east), Tolkien scholars can rebuff these claims in a way that I do not believe the makers of 300 are able to, even were we to grant that the movie may take place through the lens of "myth" (and I think the key distinctions here are that Tolkien was deeply respectful of Middle Eastern cultures and myth and incorporated them into his work, and that LotR at its essence did not revolve around cultural geopolitics; 300, on the other hand, has as its central point that confrontation of Europe and Asia). In addition to all this over-thinking, 300 is at its base a glorification of masculinity, force, and self-sacrifice.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

While Lord of the Rings has been accused of a similar dynamic (oliphants, scimitars, dark-skinned men from the south and east), Tolkien scholars can rebuff these claims in a way that I do not believe the makers of 300 are able to, even were we to grant that the movie may take place through the lens of "myth" (and I think the key distinctions here are that Tolkien was deeply respectful of Middle Eastern cultures and myth and incorporated them into his work, and that LotR at its essence did not revolve around cultural geopolitics; 300, on the other hand, has as its central point that confrontation of Europe and Asia).

You know, I've never seen 300 the film nor read the comic, but from everything that I have heard, I'm going to guess that there is in neither something equivalent to this passage:

_{'It was Sam's first view of a battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much. He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man's name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace - all in a flash of thought that was quickly driven from his mind.'}

Of course in The Lord of the Rings, the Southrons and Easterlings only ever function as auxiliaries. To the extent that there is anything 'Eastern' about Mordor and its aesthetic (and there isn't a great deal; mostly it is a combination of Mediaeval English aesthetics of evil and the worst of industrial England), it echoes a... er... well... different historical sense of 'Eastern' to the various Classical and Mediaeval Empires: the Huns and the Mongols.

I really do love that passage and it says so much more about the nature of what we're reading than a million critiques of villains carrying scimitars. That said--and I'm no Tolkien scholar--I am curious as to what we should make of an essentially in- (or sub-) human enemy in the form of the orcs and goblins. What few glimpses we get of their society are fairly interesting, but I note that they're not the type of folks for which the usual prescription of mercy might be recommended.

In that same vein, I've also been reading Chronicles of Narnia of late, and I had actually been hoping to ask you what you thought of Lewis' treatment of Calormen.