Commentator David French, in his New York Times newsletter, warns against misreading Tolkien to justify seizing power, even ostensibly in the service of goodness and right causes. Here is his piece, below.
‘The Lord of the Rings’ Is Not the Far Right’s Playground
by David French
You can’t say you weren’t warned. Right there in the middle of my Times bio, it says, “If there were a Nerd Olympics, I might take the gold medal.” It means I’m ready to bend your ear over “Star Wars.” We can talk for hours about “Dune.” But if you really want to get me wound up, say something about J.R.R. Tolkien and “The Lord of the Rings.”
These days, however, Tolkien isn’t just relevant to nerd world. It feels strange to say this, but the proper interpretation of his work has geopolitical implications. Critical factions of the new right at home and the far right in Europe have latched on to Tolkien’s work. By “new right” I mean the post-Reagan right, a movement that embraces state power as a means of fighting and winning the culture war. But they’re getting Tolkien wrong, and the way in which they are getting Tolkien wrong matters for all of us.
Last month, Politico’s Adam Wren wrote an extended analysis of the way that the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy shaped JD Vance. On a 2021 podcast, Vance said, “I’m a big ‘Lord of the Rings’ guy, and I think, not realizing it at the time, but a lot of my conservative worldview was influenced by Tolkien growing up.” Vance named his venture capital firm, Narya, after a magical elven ring. His political ally and benefactor Peter Thiel named one of his companies Palantir, another magical object in “Lord of the Rings.” Vance also invested in Anduril Industries, a defense firm named after Aragorn’s sword.
(Full disclosure: One of my most prized possessions is a replica of Anduril. My wife, Nancy, commissioned a swordsmith to make it for me almost 20 years ago. She gets me.)
But Tolkien’s influence isn’t just domestic. In 2022, The Times published a fascinating analysis by Jason Horowitz of how “The Lord of the Rings” shaped the Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni and much of the Italian far right.
The connections are deep. When they were young activists, Meloni and her peers gave themselves nicknames based on Tolkien characters. In addition, Horowitz writes, “they gathered at the ‘sounding of the horn of Boromir’ for cultural chats. She attended ‘Hobbit Camp’ and sang along with the extremist folk band Compagnia dell’Anello, or Fellowship of the Ring.”
As Horowitz puts it, “‘The Lord of the Rings’ has for a half-century been a central pillar upon which descendants of post-Fascism reconstructed a hard-right identity, looking to a traditionalist mythic age for symbols, heroes and creation myths free of Fascist taboos.”
I understand why elements of the right have adopted Tolkien. In many ways, it’s for the same reasons that many other people and factions (I’ve known many leftist environmentalists who love “The Lord of the Rings”) have turned to his work, especially when they consider themselves to be outsiders confronting great odds.
Tolkien’s work has layers, and it’s only when you dive in deep that you realize how completely his work rebukes some of the movements that claim to love it the most.
To understand Tolkien’s enduring appeal, it’s important to note that it’s much, much more than a classic underdog story, in which a small band of heroes triumphs against overwhelming odds. It’s a spiritual story, as well. As a former member of the Italian Social Movement told The Times, “The Lord of the Rings” presents a “vision of spirituality against materialism, a metaphysical vision of life against the forms of the modern world.”
The story of “The Lord of the Rings” isn’t just a story of good versus evil, but also of beauty versus corruption and of spiritual realities that can transcend reason. And since “The Lord of the Rings” is set in a fantasy world with no true parallels to our time despite a vaguely medieval setting, virtually any movement that sees itself as an ideological or spiritual underdog can connect with his work.
Much of the new right sees itself in exactly that way. Its partisans use words like “uniparty” or “regime” to describe what they believe to be an overwhelmingly powerful establishment. In secular environments, reasonable people of faith (not just religious radicals) can often feel isolated and alone, a small band — like the fellowship of the ring — who are preserving truth, beauty and goodness from the soullessness of secular ideologies and rampant consumerism.
But this is only the beginning of understanding Tolkien. Read “The Lord of the Rings” when you’re young, and the adventure takes you. You’re inspired by the courage of the heroes. You’re captivated by the light shining in the darkness. And when Tolkien writes, say, of the rescue of the fictional nation of Gondor from a vast, evil army, it’s exhilarating. I’ve reread that passage countless times.
For many readers, that’s it. That’s what reading Tolkien gives you: a story of adventure and triumph that uniquely appeals to spiritually minded people or to people who love natural beauty. And Tolkien has his critics, as well. They argue that he’s too simplistic. That his books really are nothing more than elaborate young adult fiction. His world of good versus evil is too black-and-white. It’s too Manichaean to be worthwhile reading.
But the books aren’t a simple story of good versus evil; they acknowledge the existence of true evil. After all, Tolkien had seen and experienced the worst of human evil. He fought against Imperial Germany at the Battle of the Somme in World War I, one of the bloodiest battles in human history. More than 600,000 Allied soldiers were killed or injured. The Germans suffered roughly 450,000 casualties repelling allied attacks. Tolkien later lived through the rise of Hitler and the horror of World War II.
“The Hobbit” was written before World War II, but “The Lord of the Rings” was released after, and one can see his growing awareness of the immense power of industrialized evil.
Tolkien, in fact, was concerned with the way that good can become evil. He understood that even the best of people are vulnerable to the temptations of evil, and that that temptation is perhaps most powerful when we believe we are engaged in a fight against darkness.
That’s the brilliance of the conceit of the One Ring, the ring of ultimate power, in Tolkien’s trilogy. Throughout the story the ring calls out to the heroes, speaking to their hearts, telling them that only by claiming power can they defeat power. In a very real way, the will to power is the true enemy in Tolkien’s work. The identity of the villain, whether it’s Morgoth and Sauron in “The Silmarillion” or Sauron and Saruman in “The Lord of the Rings,” is less relevant than grasping after power.
And what is virtue? Tolkien draws a contrast in two brothers, Faramir and Boromir, both utterly dedicated to the defeat of Sauron. Boromir grasps for the ring as a weapon, and it fractures the Fellowship of the Ring and costs him his life. Later in the story, Faramir stumbles across Frodo, the ring bearer, and his companion, Sam. Faramir realizes that he can take the ring and claim it as his own.
His response is key to grasping Tolkien’s ethos: “I would not take this thing if it lay by the highway. Not were Minas Tirith falling in ruin and I alone could save her, so, using the weapon of the Dark Lord for her good and my glory. No, I do not wish for such triumphs, Frodo son of Drogo.”
As Michael Drout, a professor of English at Wheaton College in Massachusetts, wrote in The Times, “Rather than reveling in the acquisition and exercise of power, ‘The Lord of the Rings’ celebrates its renunciation, insisting that the domination of others is always morally wrong.”
Here’s where Tolkien’s Christian faith is most evident. We are to reject the will to power because our triumph does not depend on our strength. While Tolkien rejected the idea that “The Lord of the Rings” was an allegory (he said it was “neither allegorical nor topical”), he also said it “is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision.”
This shines through in one of the most famous passages in the trilogy. At a dark moment, when Frodo and Sam are struggling through Mordor in their quest to destroy the ring, Sam looks up and perceives a great truth:
There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: There was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.
To become the shadow to defeat the shadow only extends the shadow’s reach and its reign. In one of the great ironies of our international moment, it appears that many of the people who’ve read “The Lord of the Rings” the most understand it the least. They perceive an emergency — a world in crisis — and grasp for the ring.
But Tolkien’s message is profoundly different. You must demonstrate courage to defend against evil, but to defeat it, you cannot rely on your own strength. It is to the “light and high beauty” that we must turn, even when we cannot see a way through.
Leave a Reply