Hobbits and the Hard Right: How Fantasy Inspires Italy’s Potential New Leader | World News,The Indian Express

In Italy, the adventures of Bilbo Baggins and the maps of Mordor have informed generations of post-Fascist youths, including Meloni, who, the latest polls strongly suggest, will emerge from the election Sunday as Italy’s first female prime minister — and the first descended from post-Fascist roots.

Thursday, Sep 22, 2022

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		HomeWorldHobbits and the Hard Right: How Fantasy Inspires Italy’s Potential New Leader		

							
													Hobbits and the Hard Right: How Fantasy Inspires Italy’s Potential New Leader
													
														In Italy, the adventures of Bilbo Baggins and the maps of Mordor have informed generations of post-Fascist youths, including Meloni, who, the latest polls strongly suggest, will emerge from the election Sunday as Italy’s first female prime minister — and the first descended from post-Fascist roots.
															
					
											
						
														
								
									
										
											
																									
													
														By: New York Times		
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	Rome | September 22, 2022 2:23:28 pm														
													
															
													
												
												


		
		
			
				
			
		
		
			
				
			
		
		
			
				
			
		
		
			
			
			
		
	

											
											
														
														
														
													Right-wing party Brothers of Italy's leader Giorgia Meloni addresses a rally as she starts her political campaign ahead of Sept. 25 general elections, in Ancona, Italy, Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2022. Riding high in voter opinion surveys for weeks now, Meloni might become Italy's first far-right premier since the end of World War II. Italy will elect a new Parliament on Sept. 25.  (AP Photo)Giorgia Meloni, the hard-right leader who is likely to be the next prime minister of Italy, used to dress up as a hobbit.

As a youth activist in the post-Fascist Italian Social Movement, she and her fellowship of militants, with nicknames like Frodo and Hobbit, revered “The Lord of the Rings” and other works by British writer J.R.R. Tolkien. They visited schools in character. 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.

All of that might seem like some youthful infatuation with a work usually associated with fantasy-fiction and big-budget epics rather than political militancy. But in Italy, “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 think that Tolkien could say better than us what conservatives believe in,” said Meloni, 45. More than just her favorite book series, “The Lord of the Rings” was also a sacred text. “I don’t consider ‘The Lord of the Rings’ fantasy,” she said.

Tolkien’s agrarian universe, full of virtuous good guys defending their idyllic, wooded kingdoms from hordes of dark and violent orcs, has for decades prompted scholarly and convention center debate over the author’s racial and ideological biases, his view of modernity and globalization. More recently, his works have also provided a fertile shire for nationalists who see themselves in his heroic archetypes.

https://indianexpress.com/article/world/hobbits-and-the-hard-right-how-fantasy-inspires-italys-potential-new-leader-8166227/


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