It has been a while since I read the books and enjoyed the movies, but I do have a soft spot for the Lord of the Rings. All the important themes are there: a quest where the stakes are high and the dangers multiplY. While populated by elves, dwarfs and hobbits, and all sorts of magic, you have a rollicking good tale with important messages about humans, not just the inhabitants of Middle Earth.
Therefore, it is quite a head scratcher to see right wing politicians and fascists take possession of this series. Even more troubling is the deliberate misreading of Tolkien’s classic. Italian far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has opened an exhibit on the Lord of the Rings in Rome, and all manner of far-right groups see themselves in these novels. New to me was the fact that since the 1980s, the far right has sponsored Hobbit-themed youth camps. Clearly, they see the cultural appropriation of Tolkien’s novels as a means to narrate their battles against the left and what they consider elitist culture.
While an initial reaction would dismiss all of this as just some Italian right-wing nonsense, the fact remains that high ranking political donors, such as the libertarian Peter Thiel also view the current moment through a Lord of the Rings lens. The alt-right are not hobbits fighting for a just cause. It’s time the rest of us took the Lord of the Rings back for everyone.
