Longtime Legal Insurrection readers may recall my love of the The Lord of the Rings, both the books and movies.
Both the books and the movie series based on them are blockbusters. The Lord of the Rings trilogy has sold over 150 million books. The movies grossed over $2.9 billion worldwide, winning 17 Academy Awards out of 30 total nominations, including Best Picture for The Return of the King.
Logically, given the public’s adoration for this uplifting saga of good triumphing over evil, filled with underdog heroes and beautiful elves, one might think that any politician would welcome being connected to this iconic work of Western Civilization.
Imagine my surprise upon reading that MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow tried to smear Republican Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance with such a link.
She endeavored to connect Vance to Hitler (via the term Aryan) by taking a very scary, completely revisionary, and utterly clueless journey through the world of Tolkien.
As MSNBC host Rachel Maddow fretted about Sen. JD Vance being former President Trump’s choice for vice president, she complained about how “Lord of the Rings” is loved by the far-right.On day three of the Republican National Convention, Maddow commented about Vance’s ties to former PayPal CEO and Republican donor Peter Thiel, who she noted “has named his companies after things in the Lord of the Rings series of J.R.R. Tolkien books.””Lord of the Rings is a sort of favorite cosmos for naming things and cultural references for a lot of far-right and alt-right figures, both in Europe and the United States. Peter Thiel names all these things after Tolkien figures in places like his company Palantir, for example,” Maddow said….While the MSNBC host appeared to try to draw a parallel between Narya, the venture capital firm, and “Aryan” an archaic term that has been associated with far-right racial ideology, Narya is named after one of the rings of power in the Lord of the Rings lore, specifically the ring of fire bestowed to elven kings.
There is so much to unpack here, I hardly know where to start.
To begin with, The Lord of the Rings is loved by people of all political stripes. One of my besties is a Democrat . . . and I borrowed her extended version movie DVDs one Christmas season.
Beyond that, I am still trying to puzzle out why there is this push to connect The Lord of the Rings to the alt-right. For example, an article was just published in Politico, linking the books to the right with one stroke of the pen, and pushing for continued aid to Ukraine with the next stroke.
Vance’s love of Lord of the Rings is of a piece with rightward nationalists abroad. Italy’s Giorgia Meloni used to cosplay as a hobbit. “I think that Tolkien could say better than us what conservatives believe in,” she has said, though unlike Vance she has supported aid to Ukraine.Jessica Hooten Wilson, the Fletcher Jones Chair of Great Books at Pepperdine University, has taught Tolkien in her courses and spent time with Vance in 2019 at a conference focused on the Catholic writer Walker Percy. She told me Vance may have internalized the message that America, unlike Frodo, is not called to intervene abroad.
I sense the image of Vance as a wizard that went with the “analysis” was intended to make Vance look geeky and weird.
It backfired. Bigly.
It is important to note that The Lord of the Rings movies began to be released in 2001, the year my son was born. This year, 2024, is his first election, in which he will be voting for President. I read the trilogy to him in his tweens, and the movie series extended version set is our “Christmas week” movie.
My son is just one of the millions of LOTR-babies. Let’s now pair this fact with how young voters are thinking about Biden:
For decades, younger voters were a reliable part of the Democratic coalition, including in the 2020 election. But recent polls suggest Biden’s wide advantage with Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 has diminished.
Politico has now opened the door to young voters for checking out Vance. Who knows, it may also inspire some young people to consider Catholicism, which has inspired much of Vance’s views.
Personally, if I were Vance, I would capitalize upon this connection. Perhaps make The Lord of the Rings theme his entrance music. And the ad/visual/meme possibilities are endless.
One last thing to note: J.R.R. Tolkien refused to work with Nazi-leaning publishers.
Maddow and the leftist rush to connect Vance to Hitler is simply delusional.
Perhaps the best quote from the series to wrap up my piece is this one:
It doesn’t take Galadriel’s Mirror to see the answer:
Meanwhile, the memes are flowing like the lava on Mt. Doom.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY