The Weird Tolkien Fandom on the Italian Far Right
Last edited Tue Nov 21, 2023, 02:18 PM - Edit history (1)
A few days ago, Giorgia Meloni, Italy's Prime Minister from the far right "Brothers of Italy" (FdI) party, visited a new exhibit dedicated to JRR Tolkien at the the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, one of Rome's premier museums. I have been a superfan, Meloni declared, and there were even things that I didn't know! She also added a political twist. With an eye toward her opponents on the left, she added gleefully that culture would no longer be the province and property of one political party. Those days, she inveighed, are over.
If you saw only that story, you could be forgiven for not knowing what in the hell Meloni was talking about. How would a retrospective on JRR Tolkien at a national museum be a reproach to some imagined ownership of culture on the Italian left? What in the world was she on about?
Well, in Italy, Tolkien was taken up as a far right wing hero, particularly among the neo-fascist youth groups to which Meloni belonged as a teen and young woman. Tolkien fandom is virtually a signifier of belonging to right wing activist groups (even youth paramilitiaries!). So the JRR Tolkien retrospective at one of Italy's most prestigious museums is viewed by the right as a massive cultural victory, complete with snide comments from the country's leadership!
Anyway, round and round we go. See this NY Times story for more. Meloni's comments appeared in the Italian press but were not added to the NY Time story.
= new reply since forum marked as read
I edited to change the spelling throughout.
To be fair, I only inverted the e and the i. I didn't leave the "L" out.
