Tolkien: the original Greta Thunberg-style eco‑warrior or a proto‑Elon Musk?
If not quite the greatest story ever told, then JRR Tolkien ’s The Lord of the Rings (LOTR) is certainly the greatest story ever to feature wizards and warriors, cursed rings and hairy-footed hobbits. Since its publication in the mid‑1950s as a trilogy of doorstoppers, Tolkien’s masterpiece has become one of the world’s favourite books – the sort that changes lives, rewires brains and soothes the soul. Its fans run from Led Zeppelin – who based a fair chunk of their repertoire on it – to Barack Obama , who said that encountering LOTR in his youth revealed to him some dark truths about human nature (“how some people are kind and some are cruel”). But just as Tolkien’s novel chronicles a vast war for control of Middle‑earth, so LOTR has now itself become a battlefield – where individuals with radically different mindsets fight to claim his words as an articulation of their worldview. Depending on who you listen to, Tolkien was either the original of the Greta Thunberg -style eco‑warriors or a proto‑ Elon Musk , with a fetish for strong men waving big swords. Hero, villain, saviour, dangerous codger. Everyone has a take on LOTR and Tolkien in 2026. What is beyond question is the blockbuster appeal of his writing. This weekend, thousands will descend on 3Arena in Dublin to witness an orchestra provide live musical accompaniment to the first of Peter Jackson’s LOTR adaptations, The Fellowship of the Ring. Meanwhile, Hollywood is barrelling ahead with a prequel to the Jackson films, The Hunt for Gollum , while season three of Prime Video’s wretched Tolkien spin‑off The Rings of Power arrives in November. Everywhere, people are talking Tolkien. But whose voice should carry the most weight when assessing Tolkien and the LOTR legacy? As is often the case with contested art, the loudest have tended to come from the right. Perhaps the most famous LOTR fan today is trillionaire Musk, who encountered it as a nerdy nine‑year‑old in South Africa and, by his telling, was never the same again. Musk has carried that love with him into adulthood. He has described LOTR as “probably his favourite book” and says he was inspired by how its heroes “always felt a duty to save the world”. When he met his future partner Grimes and she mentioned her devotion to Tolkien, he immediately quizzed her on Middle‑earth trivia. Their relationship was sealed when she aced his quiz and, for bonus points, compared Musk to the wise wizard Gandalf. Elon Musk’s view of pre-immigration Ireland: Lovely small towns full of ‘hobbits, frankly’ Yet Musk’s passion for Tolkien has metastasised into something more sinister as he has gone from techie boy genius – which is remarkably how the world saw him as recently as a decade ago – to bête noire of progressives. That much became clear when the social media mogul went on the Joe Rogan podcast in 2025 and attacked immigration into Ireland and the UK through the lens of his Tolkien fandom. “These lovely small towns in England, Scotland and Ireland, they’ve been living their lives quietly. They’re like Hobbits,” he said. “They’re lovely people who liked to, you know, smoke their pipe. And have nice meals. And everything is pleasant. The Hobbits in the Shire ... And so one day, 1,000 people show up in your village of 500.” Musk isn’t the only one on the American right to herald Tolkien as a lodestar. His former business partner Peter Thiel named his AI data analytics company Palantir after Tolkien’s mystical seeing stones. Then there is Anduril, the military tech company named after the hereditary sword that the ranger Aragorn brandishes when he travels across Tolkien’s vast patchwork of kingdoms to reclaim his rightful place as king of Middle‑earth. But it isn’t just the tech bros who have Tolkien on the brain. Italy’s right‑wing prime minister Giorgia Meloni grew up on Tolkien, attending “Camp Hobbit” youth meetings as a teenager, while US vice-president JD Vance says his books helped shape his conservative worldview. Last October, the US department of homeland security canvassed for recruits to Ice by quoting noted law‑and‑order expert Meriadoc Brandybuck – Merry to friends – and his warnings that, unless right‑thinking people stand up to evil, then “there won’t be a Shire”. What would Tolkien have thought of all of this? While we obviously can’t say with 100 per cent certainty, he would surely be aghast at how some of the world’s most unpleasant people have taken so much from his trilogy. He might also have wondered if they were paying attention to his story about underdogs standing up to bullies, of everyday people working together to battle far mightier foes. Above all, he would have questions about their humanity and their commitment to justice – qualities that run, like spools of golden thread, through all of LOTR. ‘He is misunderstood. Often by people who haven’t read him or engaged with the original work’ Emily Tesh “The Hobbits are the ones who surprise everybody. The little people who spring the surprises and save mankind basically. It was mankind who would be saved by the Hobbits, rather than the heroic races such as the humans. It was definitely a defence of the little people,” says Phil Hughes, the Wexford‑based fantasy author who has just published his latest novel, The Rebel and the Seeress. “Those of us who love what Tolkien really stood for despair at the misuse and misunderstanding of his works by folks who only seem to have given them a surface reading,” agrees Janet Croft, editor of fantasy journal Mythlore, in a 2025 interview with Wired. “They become blind to the deeper moral issues and implications of his life‑long project.” Jamie Dornan to play Aragorn in new Lord of The Rings movie, The Hunt for Gollum Tolkien’s conservative fans also seem not to have noticed the environmental message at the heart of LOTR. Among the most vividly drawn characters in the novels are the Ents – ancient sentient trees whose forests have been ravaged by the evil wizard Saruman. Here Tolkien is blatantly taking sides. The Ents are wise and gentle and believe civilisation and nature can live in respectful harmony. Saruman, by contrast, is a tech bro in multicoloured robes. He loves clever machines and is big on the sort of territorial land grabs that have been a hobby horse of Vance’s boss, Donald Trump . Tolkien’s writings on nature provide some of the most beautiful and profound passages in LOTR. They are the expression of a worldview forged in early childhood in the bucolic English West Midlands village of Sarehole, which ended when he was accepted into a prestigious school in Birmingham and his family relocated to the city’s suburbs, with their smoke‑stacks and industrial darkness. It is a loss he never quite got over – an ache discernible throughout LOTR. “Obviously he was a man of his time. You couldn’t write a book that was so overwhelmingly male now and not have it commented on as an odd choice,” the award‑winning fantasy author Emily Tesh told me in 2020. “[But] he is misunderstood. Often by people who haven’t read him or engaged with the original work. The themes of nature and the natural world and beauty and destruction of that world stand up. There are moments in The Lord of the Rings that are impossibly sad.” Tolkien is undeniably old‑fashioned in many ways and has been rightly condemned for his crude depiction in LOTR of “The Easterlings”, a “swarthy” horde that rocks up in Middle-earth from the Asiatic east. He also seemed to share the low regard many English people of his generation held for Irish culture, despite making extensive visits to the West of Ireland during his time as external examiner at what is today the University of Galway . He disparaged the Irish language (“mushy”), while the Celtic races are the inspiration in LOTR for Saruman’s uncivilised allies, the Dunlendings – primitive tribes thrown off their land by the Germanic Riders of Rohan and who have lusted for revenge ever since. But he was in other ways a progressive figure. The most powerful character we meet in LOTR is the elf‑queen Galadriel, while the greatest victory chronicled by Tolkien is that of the Lady Éowyn, who defies the patriarchal culture of Rohan to ride into battle in disguise – and slay the ultimate Big Bad, the Witch‑king of Angmar. So while Tolkien was a fuddy‑duddy, he was no head‑banging reactionary, and was vocal about his detestation of racism, reacting with horror when his German publishers inquired whether the Hobbits were “Aryan”. Of course, regardless of its author’s views, a book as popular as LOTR will always be open to multiple interpretations. But it would be a disservice to Tolkien to allow his life’s work to be hijacked by tech bros and right‑wing politicians. They see LOTR as a tale of might making right – when in fact it is the very opposite. The climactic heart of the story comes when Frodo and Sam scale the flanks of Mount Doom with Sauron’s accursed, all-corrupting ring. Frodo is half‑starved and almost wholly broken; Sam is sustained by nothing but a stout heart. All of the odds are against them, yet they do not give up. The lesson is that, when you have nothing else, courage can keep you going – and in today’s troubled world it is a message that resonates more powerfully than ever. The Fellowship Of The Ring will be screened with a live orchestra and choir at the 3Arena in Dublin on Sunday at 12 and 6pm