Why Italy's far-right is fascinated with the Lord of the Rings trilogy

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni paid a visit to the exhibition last year, describing The Lord of the Rings as a "sacred text." Reports suggest Italy's culture ministry provided almost $275,000 in funding for the display, titled 'Tolkien: Man, Professor, Author.'

‌"The prime minister came on a private visit. She came mainly because she's a passionate reader. We chatted for an hour and a half," says Oronzo Cilli, the exhibition's curator. "She knows his works very well. We talked about Tolkien and the world of Tolkien and nothing else." 

Meloni first came across Tolkien's writing as a young activist in a far-right group called Fronte della Gioventù, or Youth Front. She explains in her autobiography how she used to dress up as a hobbit with other members.

"They could play the role of the marginal minority, fighting against a leading power," says Paolo Pecere, author of a book about the far-right and its understanding of Tolkien. "They were projecting their hope of a return to their ideals, as if the king that returns in the book reflects a coming back, a return - if not the return of Mussolini, then the ideas of post-fascism."

Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings more than a decade after the fall of Italy's fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini. The author always pushed back at attempts to interpret his stories as political commentary. 

But a range of groups still embraced his work, claiming that it represented them. That list includes campaigns against nuclear bombs, movements to protect the environment and the liberal counterculture of the 1960s.

"Tolkien himself rejected any kind of allegorical interpretation of his books," says Pecere. "Then one might wonder: did this fictionalized world have any connection to the history of the 20th Century? Indeed it had, but it was very different because Tolkien started working on it after the war, after losing his friends, and so there was a sense of loss."

Tolkien's work means very different things to different people. But its appeal may actually lie in its ability to strike a common chord. Just about every part of the political spectrum seems to find meaning in the noble quest of a small band of hobbits, making their way through Middle Earth. 

Perhaps that is the true power of Tolkien. 

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Cover image: The Lord of the Rings books continue to spark debate more than five decades after their author died./FSN