When Meloni was first elected to cabinet in 2008, becoming Italy’s youngest-ever minister at 31, she vowed she would not be corrupted by the “ring of power” – a reference to the ultimate prize at the heart of Tolkien’s works. Later that year, she posed for a magazine profile next to a statue of Gandalf, the bearded wizard who roamed Tolkien’s fictional Middle Earth.
Fourteen years on, Meloni's right-wing coalition was on course to win a clear majority in a general election on Sunday, making her the favourite to become the country's first woman prime minister. True to form, she wrapped up her campaign with a nod to another Tolkien hero, Aragorn, whose fiery battle speech she referenced at her final campaign rally in Rome.
Meloni, 45, has made clear she regards the legends of the rings of power as a lot more than fantasy works: they inspire her worldview and politics.
“I think that Tolkien could say better than we can what conservatives believe in,” she told The New York Times, which investigated her lifelong fascination with Tolkien’s world in an article published this week.
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In that respect, the adventures of Frodo the Hobbit were both a rallying cry for the far right and a “cultural reference they could share with others their age”, he said.
In the late 1970s, the far right’s Tolkien-mania inspired the creation of “Hobbit Camps”, where fans of the author gathered for book readings, political debates and far-right rock concerts, in what some described as a “fascist Woodstock”.
The camps ended in 1981, when Meloni was just 4 years old. Just over a decade later, however, she attended a revival of the festivals, dubbed “Hobbit 93”, in Rome. There she sang along with the far-right band Compagnia dell’Anello (Fellowship of the Ring), whose song “Tomorrow Belongs to Us” was an anthem of MSI’s youth wing.
When Meloni was first elected to cabinet in 2008, becoming Italy’s youngest-ever minister at 31, she vowed she would not be corrupted by the “ring of power” – a reference to the ultimate prize at the heart of Tolkien’s works. Later that year, she posed for a magazine profile next to a statue of Gandalf, the bearded wizard who roamed Tolkien’s fictional Middle Earth.
Fourteen years on, Meloni's right-wing coalition was on course to win a clear majority in a general election on Sunday, making her the favourite to become the country's first woman prime minister. True to form, she wrapped up her campaign with a nod to another Tolkien hero, Aragorn, whose fiery battle speech she referenced at her final campaign rally in Rome.
Meloni, 45, has made clear she regards the legends of the rings of power as a lot more than fantasy works: they inspire her worldview and politics.
“I think that Tolkien could say better than we can what conservatives believe in,” she told The New York Times, which investigated her lifelong fascination with Tolkien’s world in an article published this week.