Politicians are embracing ‘Lord of the Rings.’ Tolkien had something different in mind.

Until recently, “The Lord of the Rings” seemed as unassailable as the fortress of Minas Tirith.

In the 70 years since J.R.R. Tolkien published the first volume in the summer of 1954, the series has sold more than 150 million copies. It’s been translated into 80 languages. (Though not, alas, Elvish.) It’s influenced everything from “Star Wars” to “Game of Thrones” to Led Zeppelin lyrics. Peter Jackson’s movie adaptations netted 17 Academy Awards and a billion dollars. The second season of Amazon Prime prequel “The Rings of Power” arrives Thursday – and new film iterations are expected both this year and next.

Of late, though, Tolkien’s lore has gotten mired in controversy. Politicians in Europe (populist) and the United States (MAGA) including Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance, have said that “The Lord of the Rings” reflects their ideology.

Concurrently, the story has become a culture war battleground. When “The Rings of Power” cast people of color in 2022, it sparked a vitriolic response. A loud online faction claimed that a fictional country populated by Hobbits, Orcs, and Elves should be totally white. In Britain, a counterterrorism program called Prevent flagged “The Lord of the Rings” as a key text for white nationalists. Some commentators on the left aren’t surprised. They claim to detect racist subtext in Tolkien’s works. 

So much for “one ring to rule them all.”

Then again, even the rancor between Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits, and “the race of Men” was supplanted by a fellowship. Tolkien’s stories make an argument for setting aside differences. Many fans and scholars say that the author, who fought in World War I, was aware of the dangers of nationalism. Yet “The Lord of the Rings” avoids political messaging. Its mythology endures because it’s rooted in humane qualities. Tolkien invites us to see our better selves in the modest Hobbit heroes, Frodo and Sam.

“His stories speak about the light, about friendship, about hope, about loyalty,” says fantasy author Kellie Rice, who uses the pen name K.M. Rice for her “Afterworld” series. “A lot of the other postmodern or modernist writers that came out of World War I were very misanthropic and very malistic, after what they’d been through. ... [He] still saw a message of hope and a message of, ‘No matter how dark it gets, you will find the light.’”

A history of interpretation about Hobbits and Ents

When “The Lord of the Rings” broke out as a cultural phenomenon in the 1960s, it resisted political capture. It was beloved by conservatives at National Review and liberals at The New Republic. Counterculture hippies felt an affinity for Hobbits, far-out “halfling” creatures who didn’t wear shoes. Environmentalists loved the stories, too. The plight of the Ents in Fangorn Forest might tempt even a logger to become a tree hugger. 

Now, decades later, “The Lord of the Rings” has become enmeshed in culture wars. Some political leaders have claimed the series as a cultural touchstone. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, for example, has said, “Tolkien could say better than us what conservatives believe in.” (Long before she developed a taste for elegant pantsuits, Ms. Meloni liked to dress up as Tolkien characters and also attended a far-right “Hobbit Camp.”) As she sees it, Tolkien’s mythological world represents cultural homogeneity and an ethnocentric order. Some have gone even further. They imagine Middle-earth as a mythological representation of white supremacy. That fueled some of the fuss over multiracial casting in “The Rings of Power.” Some conservatives objected because they believed the casting choices were driven by “woke” social justice messaging. 

“If you are not bothered by dragons whose wings could biologically not carry that level of weight, if you are not bothered by the conceit of an evil ring that twists the spirits of everyone around you, and you are in fact bothered by an Elf that has melanin, I simply think you must go take a long walk and reconnect with the trees that Tolkien himself so loved,” says Tolkien superfan Anna María. 

The young millennial, who dropped her last name due to safety concerns during her work as a community organizer, helped online fan forums navigate the “nasty, racist discourse” in 2022 and beyond by fostering productive conversations.

A survivor of the bloody Battle of the Somme, whose children fought in World War II, Tolkien feared nationalism in his own country as well as abroad. It’s a point Tolkien scholar John Pagano made last year to a political science student, who asked for his thoughts on Ms. Meloni’s appropriating Tolkien “to bolster her particular stance on immigration and nationalism.” 

“I pointed to the irony of such a stance referencing Tolkien for support, since the Fellowship he lauds as the only chance to combat Evil is composed of multiple races working in harmonious collaboration,” he says in an email. 

“Influenced by Tolkien”

Years ago, Senator Vance told a podcaster that Tolkien is his favorite author. “I’m a big ‘Lord of the Rings’ guy, and I think, not realizing it at the time, but a lot of my conservative worldview was influenced by Tolkien growing up,” he said. Mr. Vance added that the British author was grappling with big problems, in much the same way as Tolkien friend and fellow author C.S. Lewis.

How, exactly, Tolkien influenced the Ohio senator’s worldview isn’t clear. He didn’t elaborate. Yet, last month, left-wing TV commentator Rachel Maddow caused a firestorm when she asserted there was a Tolkien-related meaning in a name that Mr. Vance chose for his venture capital firm.

“He called it Narya, N-A-R-Y-A, which you can remember because it’s ‘Aryan’ but you move the ‘N’ to the front,” Ms. Maddow told MSNBC viewers. That’s despite the fact that Mr. Vance’s wife, Usha, is Indian American and they have multiracial children.

Narya is the name Tolkien gave one of the rings of power. 

In fact, Tolkien rejected “wholly pernicious and unscientific race-doctrine.” In 1938, a German publisher expressed interest in translating “The Hobbit” into German. But, first, the publisher wanted to verify that the author was of Aryan stock. 

“In the letter of publication he had to give his ancestry, his genealogy, and note that he had no Jewish blood,” says Bradley Birzer, author of “J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle-earth.” “He wrote back a scathing letter in which he said it’s terribly tragic that I don’t have that noble blood in my ancestry. And he refused to have them publish it because of that. It’s just a beautiful anti-racist letter.”  

What did Tolkien really want to convey?

While his books are interpreted in many ways, Tolkien found allegorical interpretations as distasteful as Gollum’s appetite for raw, wriggling fish. Scholars say his stories aren’t pedantic. They eschew doctrine. The lines between good and evil aren’t simplistic. Numerous characters succumb to greed and the temptation of power. For example, Sauron wasn’t evil to begin with. Even Frodo has shortcomings – he ultimately fails to relinquish the corrupting ring of power. It’s Frodo’s unassuming best friend Sam – a character inspired by the salt-of-the-Earth soldiers that Tolkien fought alongside in the trenches – who emerges as perhaps the most heroic figure. 

“There’s a lot of unanswered questions and I think that’s a great strength of the book,” says Nick Groom, author of “Tolkien in the Twenty-First Century: The Meaning of Middle-Earth Today.” “There’s no single theory for making sense of the world as we experience it. There are lots of different day-to-day theories, and that’s really what the book shows. Different people make sense of Middle-earth in different ways and they’re not always compatible.”

It’s that complexity that draws Anna María in. She first read “The Hobbit” at 7. When a prominent character died, she recalls handing the book to her father to read aloud because she was sobbing. By 12, she’d devoured “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Silmarillion,” using flash cards, highlighters, and a glossary to keep track of Tolkien’s dense lore. She still rereads all the books annually. 

She says that her peers, who grew up online, are prone to thinking that they’re experiencing the end times in ways previous generations have not. Nonetheless, Anna María says, her online generation doesn’t have much of a filter against darkness in the world. The weight of the world can feel as heavy as the ring at the end of Frodo’s quest. That’s why Tolkien’s themes speak to her. His beautiful and poetic stories don’t shy away from horror. But they never lose sight of hope.

“The story he created [is] grounded on themes of love and fellowship across nations and races,” says Anna María, who recently attended the red carpet premiere for the second season of “The Rings of Power” in London. “We still have each other and that is literally all we have. That is literally what we must fight for. You can’t get more timeless than that.”