Hobbits of Britain beware! Why Tolkien fan Elon Musk is like Grima Wormtongue, dripping poison in our ears
Elon Musk’s ludicrous claims that civil war in the UK is inevitable and everyone faces being murdered ‘if the tide of illegal immigration is not turned’ are as wrong as his interpretations of The Lord of the Rings
I read JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings when I was 11 for the first and only time. My big sister had read it when I was absorbed in The Hobbit and it felt like I was moving on from a book for children to a much more grown-up story.
For Christmas, I’d been given The Beatles Ballads compilation album, which introduced me to songs like Hey Jude, Let It Be and Nowhere Man, and to the art of John Byrne whose wonderful painting of the band adorns the cover.
Over a few weeks, I listened to the record as I read the book, and the two became intertwined in my mind, so that today each reminds me of the other. Both the music and the book made a lasting impression.
READ MORE: How far-right lie that asylum seekers are criminals and sex predators is taking hold in Britain
Tolkien’s outrage at racist request
Occasionally, I’ve dipped back into it as an adult but never persisted for long. The fascination I felt as a child, it seems, is somehow lost and I rather miss it. Some of the language – like the use of the word ‘swarthy’ to describe baddies – also now jars. I can see why some people think it’s a bit racist in parts.
However, I’ve felt similar disquiet when reading non-fiction writing from Tolkien’s time. It seems like we have become better at identifying potentially racist remarks or attitudes as time has moved on, so that comments which would have been largely overlooked in the past are now controversial. I regard this as progress.
But Tolkien, in a similar way to Winston Churchill, doesn’t deserve to be ‘cancelled’ because he failed to fully understand the moral errors of his time. And on the 20th century’s great division between sheep and goats – the rise of the Nazis, fascism and their violent racist ideologies – both saw the dangers and chose the right side.
In 1938, Tolkien was outraged by a request from a publisher in Berlin, who wanted to produce a German edition of The Hobbit, to confirm whether or not he was ‘Aryan’.
“If I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people… I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name [like Tolkien] will no longer be a source of pride,” he wrote in a draft letter. It doesn’t appear to be clear if that letter was sent but The Hobbit wasn’t published in Germany until 1957.
A dehumanising comparison
Tolkien was also keen for people to avoid treating Lord of the Rings as an allegory, a book with a hidden political or moral meaning. He wanted us to see it as a story about a mythical land or, in other words, a fantasy.
I first became aware of his books being used in a sinister way as a journalist, when an anti-racism campaigner told me that the far-right sometimes referred to black people as “orcs”. I can’t remember whether I heard this before or after the films came out, but I wish they had done more to avoid any and all echoes of this dehumanising comparison.
So it was with dismay that I read Tesla tycoon Elon Musk’s recent comments about the murder of a man in Uxbridge and the arrest of a suspect – a suspect – originally from Afghanistan.
“When Tolkien wrote about the hobbits, he was referring to the gentlefolk of the English shires, who don’t realise the horrors that take place far away,” Musk wrote on social media. “They were able to live their lives in peace and tranquility, but only because they were protected by the hard men of Gondor.”
According to Musk, “all of England” faces being brutally murdered “if the tide of illegal immigration is not turned” and “it is time for the English to ally with the hard men, like [English Defence League founder] Tommy Robinson, and fight for their survival or they shall surely all perish”, presumably, in his head, from an invasion of Sauron’s orcs. Musk also believes it is “inevitable” there will be a civil war in the UK.
A far-right fantasy, not reality
Forget facts like migrants are actually “under-represented in the prison population” and are further under-represented among those convicted of violent offences, according to Oxford University’s Migration Observatory. Reality doesn’t matter when you are revelling in a far-right fantasy.
It seems to me that if there are any orcs alive in this world today, they are not refugees fleeing wars, but those who embrace violence, like the Taliban, evil megalomaniac Vladimir Putin or the far-right thugs who attacked innocent people during the riots after the Southport stabbings.
Would Aragorn have turned desperate people seeking shelter away from the gates of Minas Tirith? I feel certain he would not. While Tolkien did not like allegory, he was comfortable with what he called “applicability” in which people draw their own life lessons from his books.
‘What would Aragorn do?’
For me, the question “What would Aragorn do?” has occasionally served as a half-joking exhortation to do the right thing or a mildly mocking rebuke when I’ve failed to live up to his high standards.
I think Musk gets Lord of the Rings all wrong. Some might say he is acting like Sauron by under-estimating the hobbits, whose courage and fortitude ends up saving the day in the book. But I think a better comparison is Grima Wormtongue, the creepy advisor who drips poison into the ear of the magically befuddled King Theoden and blinds him to the truth.
However, I also can’t quite shake the suspicion that he just might be more like The Beatles’ Nowhere Man, a lost soul in need of someone to lend him a hand.
Comments
Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.