Tolkien and the Italian Right

Anybody who has watched a few spaghetti westerns knows that Italy's take on American stories is going to be wildly different from the American one -- recognizable, but still very different. Japanese takes on American westerns (often in the guise of samurai films) are also this way. 

Now, it turns out that the Italians also have their own take on J.R.R. Tolkien. (There's a paywall, so I'll quote enough to give you the idea.)

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni quoted an unlikely source: Faramir, son of Denethor, who battled the orc hordes at Osgiliath.

“I do not love the bright sword for its sharp edge, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for its glory,” Meloni, referencing J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, told an April conference in London. “I only love that which I defend.”

Italy’s first female prime minister — and its most far right since World War II — has channeled Daenerys Targaryen from “Game of Thrones,” posing atop a smoke-spewing dragon at a 2018 comic convention in Rome. During last year’s election campaign, she briefly posted an image of herself next to an Iron Throne alongside the caption: “A mass invasion of foreigners? Not today.” Her far-right brethren from the Brothers of Italy party retreat each year to Atreyu, a summerfest named after the dragon-riding warrior in “The NeverEnding Story.”

Yet for Meloni and a horde of fantasy-loving politicians in Italy’s far right, nothing is more precious than the works of Tolkien, in whose writing they see themselves as a ragtag fellowship battling the Lidless Eye of the European left. Italy’s post-fascist far-right hosted “Hobbit Camps” for young conservatives as far back as the 1970s. In her autobiography, Meloni concedes to a lifelong adoration of Tolkien’s works, including dressing as the hobbit Samwise Gamgee with other politically aspirant youth.

Now, Meloni’s government has transformed her greatest literary passion into a massive new Tolkien exhibition at Rome’s National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art. 

"Post-fascist," eh? So, progress, then?

I have to admit that I never considered identifying myself with Samwise Gamgee, but rather with Gandalf or -- obviously -- Beorn and his son Grimbeorn. I wouldn't think that someone whose takeaway from the story was that Sam was the real hero would be much of a threat to anyone -- rather, perhaps, that they were unusually clear-eyed observers of the book. 

The opposition is not amused.

“The problem is not Tolkien or the Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit, but the fact that this is being put through a political lens and used as a tool for revenge by right-wing culture,” said Matteo Orfini, a national lawmaker from the opposition Democratic Party.

He added, “I mean, I loved the book too … when I was 15.”

That's the sort of claim to being too sophisticated for Tolkien that one often sees from people who would like to think of themselves as intellectuals, forgetting that he was himself a scholar of great depth, who wrote large parts of the Oxford English Dictionary as well as the best scholarly article ever penned on the Beowulf. 

It's somewhat akin to the take mocked in this parody video, in which a contemporary fantasy writer claims to be 'Rock 'N Roll" compared to Tolkien. The riposte the authors wrote for Tolkien is outstanding.