Fascists and Hobbits

Giorgia Meloni says that as a (fascist) teen she was inspired by Lord of the Rings, the trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien that became an icon of the ultra-right. As premier she used state funds to sponsor an exhibition to promote Tolkien at the National Gallery in Rome that opened in November 2023. (Photo: Filippo Attili - Palazzo Chigi

This article is translated from L'internazionalista No. 8, May 2025.

At the end of the 1970s, members of the MSI youth group Fronte della Gioventù, influenced by the rise of the French Nouvelle Droite (New Right), sought to confront the New Left of 1968 on a cultural level, rejecting modernity and yearning for an imagined traditional society. They were also steeped in the works of Julius Evola, the fascist philosopher of traditionalism and comrade of Pino Rauti, the guru of the MSI youth. They latched onto the fantasy novels of J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. So starting in 1977, the fascist youth organized annual “Hobbit Camps.”

In the U.S. and elsewhere, Tolkien’s works were associated with hippie counterculture, but in Italy they took on a very different meaning. The Hobbit Camps combined the MSI’s militarist summer camps with elements from of a spreading “Euroright,” including adopting the Celtic cross as a symbol. They also featured fascist music groups, including the Compagnia dell’Anello (Company of the Ring), which launched the song Il domani appartiene a noi (Tomorrow belongs to us), based on the song Tomorrow Belongs to Me sung by a Hitler Youth in the stage musical and movie Cabaret. This became the anthem of the successive organizations of the Italian fascist youth.

While to some international media, the reference to the Lord of the Rings fantasy may seem quaint and cute, the reality is very different. The allegory of small white human-like beings (hobbits) fighting off hordes of brutish swarthy-skinned invaders (orcs), and Tolkien’s aversion to race-mixing fit right in with the anti-immigrant politics of a party founded by the racist, antisemitic editor of the Mussolini fascist journal Difesa della razza (Giorgio Almirante). And the construct of an evil colossus to the east (Mordor) threatening the hobbits’ idyllic Shire to the north and the virtuous kingdom to the west (Gondor) serves as a fantasy version of the anti-Soviet Cold War.

The first of the MSI youth group's “Hobbit Camps” in 1977 where youth give the fascist salute and display the Celtic cross, taken from the French New Right.

Italian fascists are not the only ones who use Tolkien as a device to fuel reactionary politics. This is also the case in Ukraine, going back to the 2014 fascist/nationalist Maidan coup. A viral video of the U.S./EU-sponsored mobilization, titled the “The Hobbit Uprising,” blended footage of the fighting with scenes from Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films. As the Nazis of Svoboda and Pravy Sektor rushed to the Donbass to crush an uprising by the Russian-speaking population, the Azov Battalion and other fascist military units took to calling rebel militia soldiers “orcs.” In 2016, Google Translate rendered “Russian Federation” as “Mordor.”

After the Ukraine war broke out in February 2022, this language was widely adopted. The first post by the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported, “Orcs from Mordor suffer terrible losses!” Again, this is no joking reference. Azov leader Andriy Biletsky is a virulent racist, who portrays the Ukrainian nationalism as defense of the white race against Untermenschen (subhumans). Today, recruitment posters for Third Separate Assault Brigade show Ukrainian soldiers facing an enemy with the features of orcs in the Lord of the Rings films.¹ The commander of that brigade is Biletsky, and the posters feature the Azov Wolfsangel symbol taken over from the Nazis.

Ukrainian fascists of the Azov Battalion have also embraced  Tolkien, portraying Russian soldiers as swarthy orcs of Mordor.
Azov leader Biletsky defines Ukrainian
nationalism as a defense of the white
race against “subhumans.” This recruitment
poster of the Third Separate Assault
Brigade features the Azov symbol taken
from the Wolfsangel of Nazi Germany. (Photo: Andriy Andriyenko / SOPA Images)

So from Italy to Ukraine, fascists have appropriated the symbolism of Tolkien’s fantasies, for very non-fantasy purposes. And while many have cited Meloni’s support for Ukraine against Russia as proof that Fratelli d’Italia is just mainstream conservative, Fd’I leaders’ affinity for Ukraine is fueled by their embrace of the Ukrainian fascists. Meloni’s right-hand man and the author of the Fd’I program, Senator Giovanbattista Fazzolari, sings the praises of Azov, tweeting his “admiration” for these Ukrainian Nazis’ “courage” and “heroism” in the siege of Mariupol (where in 2014 the Azov Battalion carried out a brutal massacre), saying “honor to them.”²

In the United States, Lord of the Rings is a cultural icon of the libertarian and “technofascist” power brokers of Silicon Valley. U.S. vice-president JD Vance declared that “my conservative worldview was influenced by Tolkien,” and named his venture capital firm (Narya) after one of the rings in the trilogy. He has also invested in the defense startup Anduril, named after the sword of the hero in the battle against Mordor. Vance’s mentor Peter Thiel, however, named his company Palantir, after the crystal ball used by the ruler of the army of orcs who live in the dark.³ Whether posing as good or evil, these fantasies are all in the service of rightist reaction.

In illustrations of the novel The Fellowship of the Ring, the entrance to the realm of the declining West is guarded by huge statues with outstretched arms, recalling the fascist salute.

And not incidentally, in the The Fellowship of the Ring the historical boundary of the kingdom of Gondor, representing the declining West that is saved by the Hobbits, is guarded by enormous statues with arms extended in warning that in illustrations resemble the fascist (“Roman”) straight-arm salute, while other illustrations show the statues holding axes that in illustrations look like the fasces that were the chosen symbol of Mussolini’s paramilitary black-shirt squads. The image of fascism as the guardian of the corrupt West against invading hordes.

In November 2023, now with control of state financing, Giorgia Meloni opened an exposition of Tolkien’s works at the Galleria Nazionale in Rome, together with her minister of culture, Gennaro Sangiuliano, who described his goal as combatting “the cultural hegemony of the left.” In an interview with the New York Times on the eve of the 2022 election, Meloni declared, “I don’t consider ‘The Lord of the Rings’ fantasy.”⁴ Self-evidently not. It has guided the forging of a new generation of hardline counterrevolutionaries.  ■

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