From Notes Towards an International Libertarian Eco-Socialism by Javier Sethness
Revisiting Tolkien’s Anarcho-Catholicism in Light of Trump’s Return to Power: Part I
Review Essay: J. R. R. Tolkien, Beren and Lúthien and The Fall of Gondolin; Robert T. Tally, Jr., Representing Middle-Earth; and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (Amazon Prime)
In Peter Jackson’s film The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014), the beaten and concussed fictional character Gandalf, a gray wizard played by Ian McKellen, regains consciousness on Dol Guldur (the “Hill of Dark Sorcery”) after receiving a kiss of life from the Elven Queen Galadriel (Cate Blanchett). Immediately upon awakening, Gandalf warns his ethereal rescuer, “He is here!” Just as their allies the half-Elven potentate Elrond and the white wizard Saruman fight off the nine ghostly ringwraiths enslaved by the Dark Lord Sauron, Galadriel acknowledges their plight: “Yes: the darkness has returned.”
This dramatic moment arguably marks the beginning of the War of the Ring featured in the three world-renowned The Lord of the Rings novels (1954–1955) written by the English philologist J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973): The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King. These three build upon a prelude, The Hobbit (1937), which the author had originally designed as a tale for his children. As many readers and movie fans know well, The Lord of the Rings—which director Jackson adapted for the screen in his well-known trilogy (2001, 2002, 2003), prior to his three-part adaptation of The Hobbit (2012, 2013, 2014)—portrays the epic defeat of Sauron’s return to Middle-earth, at the end of what Tolkien called the Third Age.
Although Tolkien imagined the Dark Lord having met his initial loss thousands of years earlier at the close of the Second Age, thanks to the crucial founding of the “Last Alliance of Men [or Humans] and Elves,” his undying shadow reinvigorates itself in The Lord of the Rings. It does so by relentlessly seeking the One Ring he had previously forged, with the aim of dominating the entire globe. Through his aggression, Sauron follows the example of his Satanic master, the primordial Dark Lord known as Morgoth (formerly Melko, or Melkor). In the encyclopedic Silmarillion (1977), Tolkien’s creation myth, Morgoth nearly conquers Middle-earth twice during the so-called First Age.
Just like Sauron—whose name itself has reptilian connotations (sauros being Greek for “lizard”), and whom Tolkien also calls the Lord of Wolves, Deceiver, Necromancer, Sorcerer, and Enemy—the master-manipulator Donald J. Trump made a stunning comeback by winning the November 2024 U.S. presidential election. This is despite—or, perhaps to some extent, because of—his status as a newly convicted felon; his explicit appeals to white supremacy and misogyny on the campaign trail; his calls to deport millions of undocumented immigrants; his pledge to use the U.S. armed forces against the ostensible “enemy within”; his threats to cut off military aid to Ukraine to force its government into negotiations with its genocidal aggressor, Russia; and his promise to declare dictatorship “on day one” of his new administration.
In light of the monstrous threat posed by the reactionary nihilism underpinning Trump’s comeback, many of us may have felt like Gandalf and Galadriel on November 6th, 2024; January 20th, 2025; and ever since: namely, stunned, disoriented, suffering from a headache and/or nausea, and all too aware of an impending sense of doom. Indeed, Trump’s return to power portends what journalist Vinod K. Jose calls the “third anti-democracy wave,” after the Fascist (first) and Cold War-era (second) calamities of last century. Yet, even keeping in mind that Tolkien’s legendarium is fictional, and our predicament very real, while recognizing that Sauron’s literary bids for power are based on despotism and conquest, and that Trump has instead been re-elected by a plurality of the U.S. electorate (barring some future revelation of electoral hacking), there are certain affinities between Sauron and Trump that may be worth considering. Above all, they are both pathological liars and “master[s] of shadows and of phantoms,” in Tolkien’s words, whose “dominion [is] torment.”1
As with Tolkien’s Deceiver, millions of people are mesmerized by Trump’s promise to “Make America Great Again” (MAGA). Even and especially when the president lies and sabre-rattles, and despite his established track record of corruption, incoherence, and incompetence, his vast cross-class and multi-racial movement of adoring fans took him seriously enough to re-elect him, despite the numerous criminal charges and convictions against him. Just as Sauron wantonly wages war on Middle-earth in Tolkien’s legendarium, destroying entire peoples, cities, and ecosystems, Trump has pledged to wage war on planet Earth by intensifying the production of fossil fuels, deregulating extractive industries, and prioritizing the maximization of profit, corporate consolidation, and economic growth above all. In the weeks leading up to his coronation, he mused fashion about conquering Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal—as though possessed by Sauron. Bluesky users actually mocked a sedative February 2025 Bloomberg column arguing that Trump’s early actions had tested but not threatened the Constitution by comparing these highly unconstitutional attacks to Sauron’s use of the battering ram called Grond to penetrate the gates of the capital city of the human realm of Gondor in The Return of the King.
Tolkien and Trump 2.0
Now, early in the second Trump administration, it could be helpful for progressives and left-wing radicals to revisit Tolkien’s cautionary tale, as it presents hopeful lessons about defying oppression and the possibility of eucatastrophe (or “good reversal”) transforming sorrow into happiness.2 Against those critics who would readily dismiss fantasy as an idle distraction or an outright waste of time, Robert T. Tally, Jr., author of Representing Middle-earth: Tolkien, Form, and Ideology (2024), clarifies that Tolkien’s high fantasy is “not about escapism.” Rather, as a literary thought-experiment, contemplating Middle-earth can serve “as a means by which to engage critically with our own times and places,” just as it might help us to exercise, expand, and empower our imaginations.3 Tally’s fellow Tolkien specialist Franco Manni agrees, declaring that the author “wanted to talk about our world […].”4
Therefore, in the spirit of juxtaposing fantasy with socio-political criticism, this two-part review essay will consider a few recent productions about, and set in, Middle-earth, while revisiting The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion as the literary basis for the “one long Saga of the Jewels and the Rings”—all from the prism of Trump’s hideous return to power.5 In part I, after briefly considering the “Sauronian” qualities not only of Trump, but also of some of his contemporary leaders of states, we will examine Tolkien’s contradictory politics, between a paradoxical “anarcho-Catholicism” and senseless apologism for dictator Francisco Franco (1892–1975). Franco, of course, notoriously seized power through the ghastly Spanish Civil War (1936–1939).6 Then, in part II, we will analyze anti-managerial and anarchist themes in two of Tolkien’s previously unpublished collections about the First Age—Beren and Lúthien (2017) and The Fall of Gondolin (2018)—and (ironically enough) in the two seasons of Amazon Prime’s new streaming adaptation of the Second Age, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022/2024). We will do, while remaining in conversation with Tally throughout. Lastly, we conclude with some critical comments.
History, Politics, and Middle-earth
Admittedly, the main analogy proposed here, linking Trump with Sauron, is far from perfect. For instance, Manni is right to identify the fictional “Last Alliance” of Humans and Elves which first defeats Sauron at the end of Middle-earth’s Second Age as reflecting quintessentially modern and revolutionary politics: specifically, the organized collective defense of freedom, arrayed against an all-encompassing tyranny.7 Nevertheless, this Alliance seems more consistent with the direct action espoused by the International Workingmen’s Association—otherwise known as The First International (1864–1872), divided between its federalist-anarchist majority and Marxist minority—or the anti-fascist fighters of the Battle of Cable Street (London, 1936) than with the reformism which ousted Trump through Biden’s 2020 election.
That being said, many of the steps Trump has taken early in the first two months of his new term greatly imperil human health and survival, at home and abroad: for instance, dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID); withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Paris climate agreement; terminating U.S. funding of the United Nations HIV/AIDS program; imposing gag orders on federal health agencies like the Centers for Disease Control (CDC); blocking the distribution of grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH); and waging war on such federal entities as the Veterans’Administration (VA), National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), Federal Labor Relations Authority (FRLA), Social Security Agency (SSA), Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), among others.
Still, given the temporal chasm between Tolkien’s heroic romances and the present—with the late Oxford professor insisting that Middle-earth is “not an imaginary world,” but rather, “this earth, the one in which we now live,” just thousands of years in the past8—together with the considerable ontological, socio-economic, political, and technological discrepancies between an enchanted, persistently medieval setting and our disenchanted, post-modern, and neo-liberal context, it might be overstating one’s case to claim that these distinct moments are so highly analogous.
Nonetheless, criticism based in claims about historical discontinuities may be mitigated to some degree by combining Manni’s insight that the geography of Tolkien’s legendarium is uniquely characterized by a kind of “synchronized diachrony,” which paradoxically brings together peoples and principalities from distinct historical periods, with Tally’s interpretation of Middle-earth as “an imagined global system.” In this sense, during the Third Age in which The Lord of the Rings is set, Sauron’s hellish realm of Mordor may represent a mixture of the Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, and Roman Empires of antiquity, as well as Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin’s twentieth-century totalitarian regimes; Gondor may be Byzantium; the Dwarves may take after Jews and Germanic tribes; the Elves may likewise integrate aspects of the Jewish diaspora with the baronial courts of Provence, Benedictine monasteries, and the Knights Hospitaller; and the human riders of Rohirrim may combine the early Anglo-Saxons with certain Native-American nations. Meanwhile, in the Shire, a rural region that is practically stateless but definitely not classless, physically diminutive Hobbits enjoy modern comforts while proclaiming an anti-modern utopianism—perhaps, thus reflecting Tolkien’s own idyll.9
Assad, Bibi, Biden-Harris, and Putin-Trump: Followers of Morgoth-Sauron
Granted, our decision to interpret Trump as a kind of reconstituted Sauron should not be taken as meaning that other heads of State or business leaders lack “Sauronian” qualities, for sovereignty and the managerial domination of workers inherently tend toward the centralization of power and despotism.10 Elizabeth Anderson insightfully describes the intersection between these phenomena as “private government.” Beyond this, the newly ousted Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad—who used chemical weapons several times against civilians, imposed starvation sieges on opposition communities, destroyed entire cities, and ordered the mass-murder of detainees in a failed attempt to put down the Syrian Revolution—undoubtedly typified the gruesome brutality of Tolkien’s Dark Lords. However, to be fair, we must not overlook the authoritarianism or chauvinism of the main armed groups that overthrew Assad, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and the Syrian National Army (SNA).
Plus, the focus placed here on Trump should not be misconstrued as downplaying the sadistic or atrocious dimensions of former President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’s prior administration, which fatally facilitated Trump’s return. The gruesome anti-Palestinian racism of Biden-Harris’ and Harris and Tim Walz’s failed re-election campaigns can never be forgotten or excused. For all their liberal veneer, on Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, Biden and Harris acted—both by omission and commission—in line with the Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy expected of literary devils like Sauron or Morgoth. Indeed, in violation of the International Court of Justice’s order that no State assist Israel in its military campaign in Gaza, the Biden administration served as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu’s loyal enabler of genocide. Biden refused to withhold military aid to Bibi, against whom the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an arrest warrant for directing war crimes in Gaza.
With all that in mind, as hard as it may be to imagine, Trump is even worse than Biden and Harris on the question of Palestine. During his fateful live debate with Biden in June 2024, Trump ominously called on Bibi to “finish the job” in Gaza. He bizarrely described his counterpart as a “bad Palestinian,” while questioning the supposed restrictions Biden had placed on the Israeli military in Gaza. Of course, the Biden administration’s extremely low human-rights standards facilitated Israel’s killing of at least 186,000 Palestinians between October 2023 and mid-2024, according to estimates published in The Lancet, and encouraged the Israeli military to carry out flagrantly genocidal atrocities in real time, like the crime of extermination in northern Gaza.
Yet, even if this were not bad enough, Trump 2.0 is supportive of Israel’s ban on the UN Relief Works Agency (UNRWA), which came into effect at the end of January 2025. Now partially in effect, this ban will have unimaginably devastating outcomes for Palestinians. Worst of all, Trump randomly announced in a joint press conference with Bibi on February 4, 2025, that the U.S. would “take over” and “own” Gaza, forcibly expel the Palestinian people, and create “something phenomenal [sic] […] the Riviera of the Middle East!” This utterly appalling proposal appears to have originated with Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and former senior adviser, who in a February 2024 interview called on Israel to push Gaza’s Palestinians into the Negev Desert—inevitably, there to die out en masse. In the same breath, he brazenly praised the “very valuable” potential of “Gaza’s waterfront property”—inevitably, once Israel has “clean[ed] it up.” Although there may be some daylight between Bibi and Trump, President MAGA appears more open than Biden to the catastrophic ideas of Israel formally annexing the West Bank and possibly resettling Gaza. Indeed, the new administration has targeted the ICC for issuing its arrest warrant against Bibi.
Critically, too, whether because he likes the Russian President Vladimir Putin and wants to emulate his fascist war crimes, or is actually somehow a Russian asset, Trump continues to serve the Kremlin’s interests. At this point, it is clear that Trump means to impose a so-called “peace deal” onto war-torn Ukraine that is favorable to Putin. After all, the U.S. president’s oligarchical adviser Elon Musk has allegedly been in regular contact with Putin and other high-ranking Kremlin officials for some two years—that is, ever since the escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War (2014–present) into a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
As of this writing, Trump has ostensibly released the punitive holds he had placed on weapons shipments to, and intelligence-sharing with, the Ukrainian government, following the gratuitous public humiliation to which he and Vance subjected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office on February 28, 2025. Despite this disastrous clash, Zelenskyy has signaled acceptance of the preliminary terms for a ceasefire set by Trump. Said terms stipulate that Ukraine formally renounce its ambitions to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and recognize Russia’s annexation of the parts of Ukraine it currently occupies—thus effectively abandoning those Ukrainians left behind in the occupied territories—while mandating that Ukraine sign away half of an estimated $500 billion that it expects to create through mineral, oil, and gas exploitation to the U.S. In response, Putin has questioned whether a ceasefire would allow for Ukraine to continue mobilizing and training its armed forces, and he has definitely ruled out any presence of Western peacekeeping troops to enforce a ceasefire.
In light of the myriad atrocities perpetrated by Russia in this ongoing war, it is notable that many Ukrainians refer to Russian soldiers as “Orcs” (Morgoth and Sauron’s infantry), and liken their rampaging neighbor and former colonial master to Mordor. In reality, the Russian high command prioritizes quantity over quality in terms of the soldiers it relentlessly sends against the Ukrainian Armed Forces, mimicking the cannon fodder to which Sauron reduces his Orc legions in Tolkien’s high fantasy.11 Likely reflecting the staying power of Stalinism and Russian chauvinism in the popular imagination, as well, fan-fiction written in Russia in response to The Lord of the Rings, such as Kirill Yeskov’s The Last Ringbearer (1999) and Natalya Nekrasova and Natalya Vasileva’s The Black Book of Arda (1990–2008), often depicts Morgoth, Sauron, and Saruman sympathetically. Yeskov, for instance, frames Gandalf and the Elves as reactionary hangers-on who would thwart the industrial modernization being overseen by supposed visionaries like Sauron and Saruman.12
Tolkien’s Anarcho-Catholicism
Speaking to his own political views, in a revealing letter written to his son Christopher in 1943, while the latter was serving in the Royal Air Force amidst World War II, Tolkien confesses that his “political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control […]).” Furthermore, in a 1956 letter to a curious reader, the artist clarifies that he wrote The Lord of the Rings as “an allegory […] of Power (exerted for Domination).” He acknowledges that the saga was influenced by English romantic socialist William Morris’s novels about Rome’s imperialist wars on the Germanic tribes, in keeping with his own interest in the Gothic language.13
Certainly, the three-part fairy tale features strong anarchist themes—from the “wheels of the world” being figuratively driven by “small hands” (like those of Hobbits Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee), to the world-historical importance of collectives and affinity groups like the Fellowship of the Ring, and the crucial need for militant discipline in the face of pseudo-radical and opportunistic resistance to the Enemy (symbolized in the conflict between Gandalf and Saruman).14 Echoing the epic adventures of Beren and Lúthien in The Silmarillion, Frodo and Sam risk everything in their direct-action campaign to destroy the One Ring. Ultimately, they meet this end in Tolkien’s imagination thanks to their own efforts and good luck, coupled with help not only from the Fellowship, but also from Elrond, Galadriel, and even the creature Gollum.15
Moreover, despite his supernatural abilities, the mysterious forest-dweller Tom Bombadil disavows all “interest in power and control,” according to Tally, thus conveying an anarcho-pacifist message. In parallel, Gandalf and Galadriel refuse Frodo’s offers of the One Ring, fearing that it would overwhelm and corrupt them—even if they aimed to wield it with good intentions. Remarkably, too, Tally highlights an exchange that takes place at the end of The Two Towers from “the other side,” between two Orc captains. One of these complains about mismanagement and lack of transparency from the “Top Ones” (presumably meaning Sauron and/or the ringwraiths), and he fantasizes about “slip[ping] off” and having “no [more] big bosses” once the war ends.16 “No gods, no masters,” indeed!
Nonetheless, reflecting some of his apparent historical inspirations, as well as the nuanced characters he invented, Tolkien’s politics are something like a collage, mosaic, or quilt.17 After all, despite his anarchist tendencies, Tolkien sympathized much more with the UK’s Conservative Party than with Labour. Arguably, this is crystallized in “The Scouring of the Shire,” the penultimate chapter of The Lord of the Rings, which depicts the return of the Hobbits to a despoiled Shire that has been upended by a hostile bureaucratic takeover spearheaded by the disgraced Saruman.18 The “Scouring” may thus be read as a thinly veiled critique of Labour from a right-wing, yet environmentalist, point of view. Along similar lines, one cannot ignore that, besides “Anarchy,” Tolkien identified “‘unconstitutional’ Monarchy” as another, presumably equally valid ideology in the 1943 letter to his son.19 As it turns out, the content of The Lord of the Rings is consistent with this flash of political insight, given that its arc serves to legitimize the reclusive Aragorn II (the Ranger called Strider) as humanity’s rightful ruler. (What is more, even if it wasn’t Tolkien’s choice, The Return of the King is a dead give-away as a title.) In fact, Middle-earth’s literary governments range from monarchical to ultra-imperialist in character: beyond the Hobbits, who are uniquely autonomous and suffer little to no State oppression (thanks in part to protection by Elves and Rangers), practically all peoples of Middle-earth are subjected to monarchs throughout the ages. Republics, communes, and free cities are few and far between.
As such, perhaps, Tolkien is betraying an interest in historical Restorationist regimes, whether those led by brothers Charles II and James II in England (1660–1688), or by the House of Bourbon in France (1815–1830) and Spain (1874–1931). Never mind that the “Conspiracy of Kings,” directed from above, is not typically compatible with the “Conspiracy of the Peoples” surging from below—however much Bonapartists, right-wing populists, and Trumpist fascists have incongruously sought to meld the two.20 In reality, Tolkien’s royalism and naïvetë about medievalism—as conveyed by the author’s rendering-invisible of poverty in Middle-earth—are arguably informed by his devotion as a Roman Catholic, given the overwhelmingly reactionary and legitimizing socio-political roles played by the Catholic Church throughout its history.
Paradoxically, Catholicism permeates The Lord of the Rings.This is despite the fact that Middle-earth, while portrayed as enchanted, is shown to be pagan and lacking organized religions. Such a dynamic yields a certain “anarcho-Catholic” fusion, especially in terms of the plot’s highly visual, beautiful, hopeful, and communitarian dimensions, as well as its obscurantist, sexist, sex-negative, and sadomasochistic aspects.21 In turn, Tolkien’s politics echo Catholic social theory’s simultaneous anti-Communism and anti-capitalism—echoing, for instance, the careers of Father José María Arizmendiarrieta, the Basque founder of the Mondragón cooperative network under Francisco Franco’s dictatorship, and Pope John Paul II, who critiqued Soviet authoritarianism, bourgeois exploitation, and women’s objectification while paradoxically affirming traditional clerical authority. Such volatile ideological concoctions are clearly unstable, tense, and contradictory. Intriguingly, Tally sees such nuances reflected in the written (but not filmed) characters of Sauron, Galadriel, and Saruman, who are neither absolutely evil (although Sauron comes close), nor absolutely good—given Saruman’s betrayal of the struggle against Sauron, and Galadriel’s imperial rule.22
Ultimately, Tolkien’s Catholic piety, royalist sympathies, and own Sauronian tendencies combined to inform a terrible political mistake he made in life: namely, to lend support to Franco’s Nationalist uprising against the Republicans and anarchists during the Spanish Civil War.23
Tolkien’s Francoist Apologism
The Spanish Tolkien researcher José Manuel Ferrández Bru suggests that the philologist’s fateful decision to support Franco and the Nationalists was influenced by his concern for secularist and anticlerical campaigns targeting Catholic traditions during the Second Spanish Republic (1931–1939), a controversy to which he appears to have been attuned by his British-Spanish priestly guardian and mentor, Father Francis Xavier Morgan (1857–1935). Beyond Morgan (who died before the start of the Civil War), Tolkien followed the lead of high-ranking British Catholic authorities, including the Archbishop of Westminster, who promoted Nationalist propaganda and openly urged support for the insurrectionists.24 Notoriously, Franco’s insurgent forces received political and military backing from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy to sustain their rebellion, which overwhelmed and ultimately defeated the isolated and besieged Republic. Actually, five years into the Francoist dictatorship, Tolkien mocked his friend and fellow fantasist C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) for opposing the Nationalist authorities. In a 1944 letter to Christopher, his father complains that Lewis “believes all that is said against Franco, and nothing that is said for him.”25
One could expect to hear such stunning ignorance, denialism, and apologism regurgitated even today by members of Spain’s rightist and ultra-rightist parties (the Popular Party and Vox), and/or supporters of the Francisco Franco National Foundation. In a similar vein, Trump apparently thinks that Hitler “did some good things.” Meanwhile, his vice president, J.D. Vance, has endorsed an incoherent new book named Unhumans (2024), which seeks to rehabilitate dictators like Franco and Augusto Pinochet, as “show[ing] us what to do to fight back.” Furthermore, not only have Trump’s electoral successes helped legitimize Vox in Spain—as well as Brexit in the UK and, with Musk’s assistance, the neo-fascist Alternative for Germany (AFD)—but Franco apologism and the denial of history are now remarkably on the rise on both the U.S.-American and Spanish far-right.
In this light, the unfortunate and under-reported sympathies Tolkien had for Franco call into question his judgment and reasoning, as well as his own commitment to the anti-authoritarian principles he features in his art. In a 2023 study, “Echoes of the Spanish Civil War in Tolkien’s Legendarium,” researcher Alexander Retakh suggests that Tolkien, like many other British Catholics, could have consistently been pro-Franco, yet anti-Hitler.26 However, this interpretation is not so convincing, considering the mutual assistance rendered between Hitler and Franco: one thinks of the Luftwaffe’s atrocious destruction of the Basque town of Gernika in 1937, and the Spanish volunteers in the “Blue Division” fighting for the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front during World War II. (Echoing Morgoth in The Silmarillion, Spanish Falangists actually sought to destroy Gernika’s oak tree, a symbol of Basque self-determination, in the immediate wake of the terror-bombing.) To this point, Tolkien himself refers to German soldiers as “Orcs” in his 1943 letter to his son, and he curiously has the aforementioned Orc captains from The Two Towers greet each other in Spanish.27
This then leads us to the inevitable question: how could someone who figuratively refuses to ‘bow before [Morgoth’s] Iron Crown […]’ have supported Franco? How can it be that the fashioner of the collective defiance and resistance portrayed in the “Saga of the Jewels and the Rings” shares an uncritical and ahistorical opinion of Franco with the neo-fascist vice president?28 Well, for one thing, we must not forget Frodo’s stunningly self-destructive cry on Mount Doom in Mordor near the end of The Return of the King, which almost turns the three-part epic journey into what Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger calls the “longest tease in literary history”: namely, “The Ring is mine!”29 In a similar way, Tolkien’s utter senselessness on Franco and the Spanish Civil War ironically proves his own point about the dangers of unreason, poor judgment, and/or outright cruelty synergizing with the imposition of the will—a persistent concern that Trump’s Sauronian return to power only accentuates.30
Works Cited
Beal, Jane 2017. “Tolkien, Eucatastrophe, and the Rewriting of Medieval Legend.” Mallorn, no. 58. 17–20.
Bru, José Manuel Ferrández 2011. “J.R.R. Tolkien and the Spanish Civil War.” Mallorn, no. 51. 16–19.
Craig, David 2020. “Queer Lodgings: Gender and Sexuality in The Lord of the Rings – Reprinted with New Introduction from the Author.” Mallorn, no. 61. 20–29.
Cramer, Zak 2006. “Jewish Influences in Middle-earth.” Mallorn, no. 44. 9–16.
Flieger, Verlyn 2020. “Defying and Defining Darkness.” Mallorn, no. 61. 15–19.
Garbowski, Christopher 2003. “Tolkien’s Middle-earth and the Catholic Imagination.” Mallorn, no. 41. 9–12.
Lagalisse, Erica 2019. Occult Features of Anarchism. Oakland, CA: PM Press.
Manni, Franco 2009. “Real and Imaginary History in The Lord of the Rings.” Mallorn, no. 47. 28–37.
Retakh, Alexander 2023. “Echoes of the Spanish Civil War in Tolkien’s Legendarium.” Journal of Tolkien Research, vol. 18, no. 1. 1–26.
Tally, Robert T. Jr. 2024. Representing Middle-earth: Tolkien, Form, and Ideology. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co.
Tolkien, J. R. R. 1981. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Eds. Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien. London: George Allen & Unwin.
— 1994a. The Fellowship of the Ring. Boston: William Morrow.
— 1994b. The Two Towers. Boston: William Morrow.
— 1994c. The Return of the King. Boston: William Morrow.
— 2001. The Silmarillion. 2nd ed. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.
Footnotes
1 Tolkien 2001: 156.
2 Flieger; Beal.
3 Tally 1, 14.
4 Manni 28 (emphasis in original).
5 Tolkien 1981: 162.
6 Tally 104.
7 Manni 31.
8 Tolkien 1981: 257.
9 Manni 29–30; Tally 33, 80; Cramer.
10 Tally 104.
11 Tally 135.
12 Tally 21, 114.
13 Tolkien 1981: 74, 263 (emphasis in original), 321, 381.
14 Tolkien 1994a: 262.
15 Craig.
16 Tally 35, 123–5; Tolkien 1994b: 720–1.
17 Tally 35.
18Tolkien 1994c: 998–1020.
19 Tolkien 1981: 74.
20 Lagalisse.
21 Manni 31; Garbowski.
22 Craig 28; Tally 98–117; Manni 35.
23 Bru.
24 Bru 16–17.
25 Tolkien 1981: 108 (emphasis added).
26 Retakh 8.
27 Tolkien 1981: 74; 1994b: 718.
28 Tolkien 1981: 74, 162.
29 Flieger 18; Tolkien 1994c: 946.
30 Tally 113.
Original title: "Revisiting Tolkien’s Anarcho-Catholicism in Light of Trump’s Return to Power: Part II"
Update, March 18th: In an interview about Trump with the Guardian published on March 16, 2025, Russell T Davies, screenwriter of Queer as Folk and Doctor Who, said: “I’m not being alarmist. I’m 61 years old. I know gay society very, very well, and I think we’re in the greatest danger I have ever seen […]. The threat from [the United States of] America, it’s like something at The Lord of the Rings. It’s like an evil rising in the west, and it is evil.”
In the second part of this two-part review essay dedicated to revisiting J. R. R. Tolkien’s anarcho-Catholicism in light of Donald Trump’s return to power (see part I here), we will turn to two of the writer’s previously unpublished collections about the First Age—Beren and Lúthien (2017) and The Fall of Gondolin (2018)—and the two seasons of Amazon Prime’s new streaming adaptation of the Second Age, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022/2024). This is done, while remaining in dialogue with Robert T. Tally, Jr., author of Representing Middle-earth: Tolkien, Form, and Ideology (2024). We then conclude in a critical spirit.
The Silmarillion, Beren and Lúthien, and The Fall of Gondolin
Posthumously published and edited by Christopher Tolkien (J. R. R.’s son), these three high-fantasy volumes—The Silmarillion, Beren and Lúthien, and The Fall of Gondolin—present the elder Tolkien’s spin on the Book of Genesis through a mythopoetic (or myth-making) account of Middle-earth’s First Age. The Fall of Gondolin, which lays out Morgoth’s tragic discovery and ruination of a long-hidden Elven kingdom, was actually Tolkien’s earliest foray into what would become the larger story of the legendarium. He wrote its first draft in 1917, during World War I, while on medical leave from military service, having fought at the ghastly Battle of the Somme.
The Fall of Gondolin’s solemn tone and otherworldly content convey Tolkien’s considerable sense of traumatic loss and need for solace, within the bleak context of the so-called “Great War” and ostensible “war to end all wars.”1 By contrast, the joyful and lyrical plot of Beren and Lúthien—which anticipates the romances between both Aragorn II and the half-Elven Arwen Undómiel, and between Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee, in The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955)—may somewhat temper Gondolin’s devastating fate. According to Verlyn Flieger, the recurrent “oscillation between light and dark” often seen in the artist’s writings is the very “hallmark” of his “story-telling style,” and The Silmarillion (1977) is no exception.2
Given that this epic may be less well-known today than The Lord of the Rings, let us briefly provide some context here. As an encyclopedic collection that includes chapters on the stories of Beren and Lúthien, The Fall of Gondolin, The Children of Húrin (2007), and many others, The Silmarillion constitutes an epic cosmology full of heroic romances and tragedies. As in The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien in The Silmarillion places a great emphasis on historical cycles and repetition, just as he presents a recurrent thematic opposition between the horizontal strategies of direct action, unification, and collective liberation vs. vertical strategies of surveillance, division, and conquest. He emblematically proclaims the anarchism of love and interspecies mutual aid, among other liberatory themes.
In Tolkien’s imagination, as revealed in The Silmarillion, the cosmos emerged through music composed by Eru Ilúvatar, the universe’s principal deity. This followed Eru’s creation of the lesser gods, known variously as Ainur or Valar. Dissonance was introduced, on this account, by the Ainu Melkor (“He who arises in Might”), who deigned to play a different tune in a bid to expand his influence and power. Melkor (who is later termed Morgoth, the “Dark Enemy”) sought to leave the heavenly realm of Valinor and cross the Great Sea to colonize Middle-earth, where Elves and humans would soon arise, so that he could readily dominate them. In such nefarious schemes, he is assisted by his lieutenant Sauron and monsters like Balrogs, dragons, and the giant spider Ungoliant, just as he is opposed by the remaining eight Valar. Above all, he is resisted by Manwë, Lord of Winds and “first of all Kings,” and his wife Varda, Lady of the Stars, who monitor Melkor’s movements from their palace atop Taniquetil, the tallest mountain in Valinor.3 (Intriguingly, such vertical imagery foreshadows Sauron’s own surveillance of Middle-earth from his tower of Barad-Dûr in Mordor, as though to suggest that there are Orcs “on both sides,” as Tolkien puts it.4)
While paying tribute to the Bible and Norse sagas—and sometimes verging on plagiarizing the latter—The Silmarillion gives broad range to Tolkien’s Catholic and Romantic views.5 Known as Ilúvatar’s Firstborn, the Elves awaken on the shores of a lake named Cuiviénen, where they “beheld first of all things the stars of heaven.”6 In keeping with the Catholic faith, these celestial and luminous images and motifs are meant to symbolize inspiration by the Holy Spirit—or what is called the “Secret Fire” in Middle-earth. Consistent with the Romantic admiration of nature, The Fall of Gondolin opens with the hero Tuor embarking on a contemplative journey through the wilderness, which is suddenly interrupted by an exhilarating encounter with Ulmo, Lord of Waters.7
Arguably conveying Tolkien’s respect for non-human animals, the human outlaw Beren, who anticipates Aragorn, is similarly described as the “friend of all birds and beasts that did not serve Morgoth.” In turn, a myriad of good-natured creatures come to help Elves and humans to survive and achieve their just aims during this fraught First Age. Such interspecies cooperation is seen in the assistance that Huan—a “hound of Valinor” who feared neither “master nor man”—renders to the half-Elven, semi-divine Lúthien Tinuviel in her direct confrontation with Sauron, as in the emergency medical evacuation provided to a gravely injured Beren by Thorondor, King of Eagles—who “loved not Melko.” Likewise, Thorondor and his host of fellow raptors immediately provide defense and protection to Elven refugees fleeing from Gondolin.8
Even so, however visionary Tolkien may have been in his fiction, he was quite backward when it came to evolutionary biology and astronomy. Unlike science-fiction writers like Kim Stanley Robinson who aptly integrate the latest research into their art, Tolkien apparently favored creationism and geocentrism—both notoriously bolstered by the Catholic Church—over the scientific method. To wit, in The Silmarillion, Elves and humans alike appearsuddenly from the ether, fully formed—just as early Middle-earth is ostensibly illuminated internally by surface lamps, and then by two holy trees. (As in the Book of Genesis, the sun and moon come into play only later.9)
How Beren, Lúthien, and Eärendil Overthrew Morgoth
In mythopoetic terms, Melkor/Morgoth is a Satanic figure who “squandered his strength in violence and tyranny,” rather than seek harmony and peace, like Manwë, Varda, Ulmo, Yavanna (Giver of Fruits), and other Valar ostensibly do. Among his crimes, which foreshadow those Sauron later commits on his own, Morgoth wrecks the lamps and Two Trees of Valinor; robs the three Silmaril jewels crafted by the Elven inventor Fëanor, containing the undying light of these very Trees; orders the construction of the fortresses and forced-labor camps at Utumno and Angband to establish and maintain his dominion over Middle-earth; and aims to divide Elves from humans in an attempt to enslave and/or exterminate both peoples or “races.” By the end of The Silmarillion, with the previously well-protected and hidden Elven realms of Doriath and Gondolin destroyed, Morgoth’s scheme for world-domination has almost prevailed.10
Despite Morgoth’s gruesome hegemony, the fairy tale of Beren and Lúthien provides evidence of “joy” and “light that endures,” despite the “shadow of death.” In this story, Huan subdues Sauron in wolf-form, and Lúthien takes control of his tower, “declar[ing] her power.” Her jubilee spell tears down the walls and gates of the fortress and liberates its prisoners, including Beren. The couple then go on to brazenly attack Morgoth’s stronghold of Angband head-on all by themselves, thus accomplishing “the greatest deed that has been dared by Elves” or humans—they succeed in retaking one of the stolen Silmarils embedded in Morgoth’s Iron Crown! Beren and Lúthien achieve this incredible end by means of a sedative song and dance that Lúthien performs for Morgoth and his “host of hell.”11
Like the conclusion to Frodo and Sam’s epic journey to Mordor in The Return of the King, the climax of Beren and Lúthien is hence “deeply religious; it is about the ideal of love struggling against enormous odds, with only a slim glimmer of hope, and yet conquering.”12 This eucatastrophe (“good reversal”) is an affirmation of the anarchism of love, whereby passionate attachments serve to level existing socio-political hierarchies, and of the idea that Amor Vincit Omnia, or “Love Conquers All.” The Elven “Lay of Leithian” poignantly describes Lúthien’s spell of somnolence: “the vast form / crashed […] and prone lay Morgoth in his hall. / His crown there rolled upon the ground […].”13
Still, in Tolkien’s mind, Beren and Lúthien’s daring direct action does not singlehandedly defeat Morgoth, as the lovers end up only having the chance to remove one of the Silmarils from his Iron Crown. Further pursuit of their mission is left to Eärendil, Tuor’s half-Elven son, who, with his parents, ends up being one of the few survivors from the ruins of Gondolin. Eärendil travels with his wife Elwing across the Great Sea, bearing the recovered Silmaril back to Valinor—a thought-image echoing how the Biblical figure Noah was supposedly asked by Yahweh to make a tzohar, or a jewel containing the primordial light, for the ark before the Great Flood. In Valinor’s Blessed Realm, Eärendil successfully pleads the case of Elves and humanity oppressed by Morgoth before the Valar, convincing them to intervene. This summons therefore marks the beginning of the War of the Wrath that would oust Morgoth forever, yet leave Middle-earth in ruins.14
Ironically, this dynamic would facilitate Sauron’s rise to power in the Second Age, for Tolkien imagined the newfound Dark Lord taking the opportunity to present himself as a “healer” of the wastelands abandoned by the Valar, in the interest of self-aggrandizement.15 Sauron shares such shamelessly deceptive public-relations strategies, in the interests of authoritarian consolidation, with the current neo-fascist U.S. President Donald Trump.
Interlude: Trump, Musk, and Sauron
Like Sauron the Deceiver, Trump is a total fraud. In his momentous pre-sentencing order issued two weeks before Trump’s inauguration, Judge Juan Merchan, who presided over the president’s “hush-money” trial, rightly blasted Trump’s “premeditated and continuous deception” about his extramarital affair with Stormy Daniels prior to the 2016 election. Moreover, in a post-election interview with Time from November 2024, Trump said it will be “very hard” for grocery prices to come down during his administration. This follows his performative obsession about food prices on the campaign trail, together with his false promises to tackle them, if he were to be re-elected.
Over the past two months, the president has clearly conveyed that inflation is not a priority to him, and he’s taken several steps—above all, his senseless imposition of tariffs—to worsen it. On March 7, 2025, while meeting with FIFA President Gianni Infantino in the Oval Office, Trump actually blurted out that the only reason he had become president was electoral fraud.
As a grifting megalomaniac, Trump shamelessly capitalizes on power, peddling everything from Bibles to watches, acoustic and electric guitars, and cryptocurrency. During his second term, he can be expected to continue selling access to the highest office, and presumably, to divulging and/or selling classified information to various interested and nefarious parties.
Clear parallels can be drawn between Trump’s horrendous cabinet picks and Sauron’s nine ringwraiths, whose corruption only worsened as they pledged themselves to the cause of Mordor. Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, Kristi Noem, Kash Patel, RFK, Jr., Russell Vought—these are all extremely dangerous neo-fascists, and “the Enemy’s most terrible servants […].”16 They are highly narcissistic, dishonest, and self-aggrandizing individuals, like the ringbearing monarchs who deliver humanity to the Enemy in Tolkien’s vision. Perhaps more than any other figure in Trump 2.0, though, Elon Musk aims to aggressively overhaul U.S. society overnight through his unofficial “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE). As of this writing, DOGE has gained direct access to the electronic systems of the U.S. Treasury Department, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), among other entities, with unclear yet highly ominous intentions.
Undoubtedly, in this light, Trump’s re-election constitutes a profound historical setback. As Dan La Botz perceptively wrote in New Politics on early February 2025: “Musk’s take-over is tantamount to a coup, and far more effective, serious, and dangerous than the insurrection that Trump organized on January 6, 2021.” In a way, Trump’s comeback is reminiscent of Morgoth and Sauron’s literary devastation of the Elven cities of Gondolin and Eregion in Middle-earth’s First and Second Ages. (See below for discussion of the fall of Eregion, as depicted in season 2 of Amazon Prime’s The Rings of Power.) MAGA’s fascist plans to impose corporate feudalism, ignore collective-bargaining agreements with federal workers, gut the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and aggressively extract fossil fuels recall the “rumour vast / of Morgoth’s forges” emanating from the fictional fortress of Angband.17 After all, Trump’s EPA is now mulling reversing the established scientific finding that planet-heating greenhouse gases are harmful to human health.
Given the dire immediate need for a just transition to a post-capitalist society based on renewable energy, in light of the accelerating and evermore destructive socio-economic, political, climate, and environmental crises, Trump’s return to power might be described, like the fall of Gondolin, as “the worst work that Melko ha[d] yet thought of in the world.”18
The Rings of Power, Season 1: Who is Sauron?
As we transition toward closing this review essay, let us consider Amazon Prime’s series, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022/2024), a streaming adaptation of Middle-earth’s Second Age based on Tolkien’s Appendices in The Return of the King.
Cinematographically, The Rings of Power is beautiful, although the writing and acting are often wanting, and even terrible at times. The series, which so far has consisted of two seasons, has been criticized for its portrayal of the Harfoots (predecessors of the Hobbits) as “leprechaun-esque nomadic travellers,” whose representation arguably reproduces anti-Irish attitudes. Its timeline inconsistencies have also been questioned, given that certain events from the Third Age anachronistically appear in this series dedicated to the Second. In their defense, on the latter question, the showrunners apparently wanted to simplify the story. Regarding allegations of anti-Irish prejudice, they appear less concerned.
To its credit, The Rings of Power features some actors of color, such as Sophia Nomvete and Ismael Cruz Córdova, whereas Peter Jackson’s six films include none whatsoever. Yet, sadly echoing the misogynist travesty of Gamergate (2014–2015) and the racist abuse to which people of color starring in recent Star Wars productions have been subjected, many apparent Tolkien fans have shamefully engaged in a racist backlash to the diverse casting found in The Rings of Power. This is despite Tolkien’s own repudiation of specifically Nazi racial theories—in turn notwithstanding the artist’s evident Orientalism, as reflected in his envisioning Orcs as “Mongol-types,” his depiction of the Arab-coded Haradrim as enthralled to Sauron, and Mordor’s geographical location being in southeastern Middle-earth.19
In terms of plot, season 1 of The Rings of Power is dedicated to uncovering the mysterious identity of the Dark Lord, prior to rising to power and threatening all of Middle-earth. Once the series launched in September 2022, this uncertainty was a gimmick that the showrunners used in real time to maximize views and profits—presumably as well, to optimize their contributions to paying off the $1 billion the show has cost thus far: Who is Sauron?
Ultimately (spoiler alert), viewers discover that Sauron is Halbrand, a newly invented human character played by the white Australian Charlie Vickers. In the first season, Halbrand misrepresents himself to Galadriel (played by Morfydd Clark) and the Elven craftsman Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards) as the lost heir to the realm of the “Southlands.” Given that Morgoth and Sauron are shown as hailing from the West and North in The Silmarillion, and that Western imperialism and white supremacy persist hegemonically in our own world—now greatly re-entrenched by Trump and MAGA, despite widespread resistance—this choice to cast Vickers as Sauron was apt.
Dismally, MAGA has found special purchase among young straight men, who hope President Trump will intensify their control over women’s bodies and minds by mandating a return to more traditional gender relations. Such sexism is reflected in surging post-election misogyny, and summarized in the vile Trumpist slogan, “Your body, my choice.” This tragic reassertion of toxic masculinity among male youth mirrors how, in season 1 of The Rings of Power, the young Southlander Theo (Tyroe Muhafidin) is secretly fascinated by a broken sword hilt fashioned by Morgoth—just as, in The Plot Against America (2020), the Jewish-American teenager Sandy Levin (Caleb Malis) initially admires the fascist celebrity and “America First” isolationist Charles Lindbergh, who is elected president in 1940 within the alternate historical timeline portrayed in this miniseries, based on Philip Roth’s 2004 novel of the same name.
The Rings of Power, Season 2: Sauron’s Managerial Ruses, and the Fall of Eregion

Among other plot-lines, season 2 of The Rings of Power (2024) features Sauron’s sadistic manipulation of Celebrimbor, Elven lord of the city of Eregion. Being somewhat better-quality than its predecessor, the series’ second season centers the forging of the nine Rings of Power that the Dark Lord would later use, according to Tolkienian lore, to enslave the kings who would become his ringwraiths. Reproducing the cycle of oppression that started with his own subjugation to Morgoth, Sauron exploits and sacrifices Celebrimbor to facilitate his own dominion over Middle-earth.
To compel Celebrimbor into making the nine rings, after the craftsman forged the Elves’ three Rings of Power at the end of season 1, Sauron fraudulently claims to be “Annatar, the Lord of Gifts,” an emissary from the Valar (see above image).20 Thereafter, Annatar functions as a dark empath who shares crumbs of knowledge while feigning a care ethic to seduce Celebrimbor and his assistants into serving his nefarious ends. (By this time, according to Amazon’s timeline, Sauron had not yet forged the One Ring, and the seven rings he had given to the Dwarven lords had failed to bring them to heel, for Dwarves “ill endure the domination of others,” according to Tolkien.21) As a supervisor or project manager, Annatar/Sauron is depicted as highly manipulative and psychopathic—an archetype with which most viewers and readers sadly will be all too familiar. The association that is ironically thus made in this billion-dollar show between Sauron and the phenomenon of “bad bosses”—or really, managerialism as such—is consistent with Tolkien’s own anti-capitalist views: for, as he puts it, “the most improper job of any [person], even saints […], is bossing other [people]. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.”22
In line with such anti-managerial critique, Annatar’s abuse of Celebrimbor only escalates in The Rings of Power as the project of forging the nine Rings of Power approaches completion—in an illustration of the phenomenon of “crunch-time.” Even as an army of Orcs approaches Eregion to besiege it, Annatar places Celebrimbor into a prison of the mind, so that the poor soul completes his grim labor, oblivious to the evident dangers. Such mind-control and denial of reality are consistent with everyday strategies used by capitalists and their agents to coerce workers into following orders. Consider the 11 Impact Plastics workers who were swept away in Tennessee during flooding caused by Hurricane Helene in September 2024. This occurred after management insisted they come in for work, despite the storm, and reportedly delayed allowing them to evacuate until it was too late. Such managerial ruses are straight out of Trump’s playbook, as well.
Moreover, it is emblematically significant that Celebrimbor is the grandson of Fëanor, a bold yet ambivalent figure from the First Age who in Tolkienian lore invented the scripts underpinning the Elven languages, created the Silmarils, and led an Elven exodus out of Valinor back to Middle-earth to pursue Morgoth. Like the titular character of Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus (1947), a spin on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust (1808), Fëanor and Celebrimbor end up destroying themselves through their proud creative spirit and disregard of limits—for the former dies in single combat against Balrogs outside the fortress of Angband, and the latter, at the hands of Sauron following his forced completion of the remaining nine Rings of Power, as Eregion falls to the Orcs.23
The writers of season 2 of The Rings of Power may have been partly inspired by The Fall of Gondolin in their portrayal of the desolation of Eregion. Both urbicidal episodes are moving portrayals of historical reversal and loss from Middle-earth’s early mythical past that mirror real history. In particular, the fall of both cities, as facilitated by deception, is reminiscent of Troy’s tragic fate. As well, the Orcs who are shown setting fire to Celebrimbor’s papers recall the Spanish conquistadores and priestswho burned Mesoamerican codices en masse; the marauding Mongol armies who razed the House of Wisdom in Baghdad; the U.S., Israeli, and Russian militaries that have bombed Iraqi, Palestinian, and Ukrainian hospitals, universities, and museums, respectively; and the twentieth- and twenty-first century fascist movements and powers that have burned and banned books. The latter, of course, includes MAGA and DOGE, which have now imposed a coup regime, while copies of The Lord of the Rings have actually been burned publicly for reportedly promoting Satanism.
Conclusion: Tolkien, Trump, Sauron, and Franco
In closing, all of the titles reviewed in this two-part essay—Beren and Lúthien, The Fall of Gondolin, Representing Middle-Earth, and The Rings of Power—convey what we have called Tolkien’s anarcho-Catholic spirit. Whether written or visual, these works underscore such critical themes as the destructiveness of war, the abusiveness of bosses, the dangers of socio-political hierarchy, the role of working people in making history, the importance of collective unity, interspecies cooperation, and the anarchism of love, among others. These ideas are all highly relevant, now that Trump is back in the driver’s seat, thus exemplifying “the system’s ultimate corruption.”
While Trump’s return to power may signify “the end for Ukraine” and Palestine, a global autocratic emergency, and a new Sauronian era, reflection on Tolkien’s legendarium may dialectically help encourage us to imagine alternative futures—specifically, by means of the utopian dimensions of fantasy. Along these lines, Annatar/Sauron’s infamous deception of Celebrimbor, as featured in season 2 of The Rings of Power, serves as a cautionary tale illustrating Tolkien’s anarchist belief, as Tally summarizes, that “what we think of as ‘evil’ is the power to control the wills of others, which is ultimately the power of rule itself.”24 How ironic, but also typically capitalist, that this critical depiction of Annatar as a corporate psychopath should be platformed by Amazon, the world’s second-largest corporation, which has engaged broadly in illegal union-busting, and whose Chief Executive Officer is openly aligned with Trump. Although Trump may resemble Sauron and Morgoth more than any other world leader, many other potentates and magnates mimic these figures’ Machiavellian destructiveness—Musk, second to none. As shown by Beren and Lúthien in the First Age, and then by Frodo and Sam in the Third, the remedy for this type of calamity might well be heroic direct action.
Even so, as useful and compelling as Tolkien’s anarcho-Catholic art often is, the author’s conservative impulses sometimes qualify and undermine his anti-authoritarian insights. As discussed in the first part of this review essay, if Trump’s return to power attests to the relentless juggernaut of Sauronian power, the unfortunate sympathies that Tolkien had for Francisco Franco and his Nationalists during and after the Spanish Civil War prove the artist’s own point: namely, that Morgoth’s “lies” about “the Power of Terror and of Hate […] are a seed that does not die and cannot be destroyed.”25 Looking retrospectively, Tolkien might have served the cause better by taking greater interest in the Enlightenment and modernism, rather than medievalism, and by being more critical of Catholicism, monarchy, and Francoism. With such lessons in mind, let us proceed simultaneously with caution and courage in our newly fraught context.
Works Cited
Bru, José Manuel Ferrández 2011. “J.R.R. Tolkien and the Spanish Civil War.” Mallorn, no. 51. 16–19.
Cramer, Zak 2006. “Jewish Influences in Middle-earth.” Mallorn, no. 44. 9–16.
Ellison, John 2003. “From Fëanor to Doctor Faustus: a creator’s path to self destruction.” Mallorn, no. 41. 13–21.
Flieger, Verlyn 2020. “Defying and Defining Darkness.” Mallorn, no. 61. 15–19.
Tally, Robert T. Jr. 2024. Representing Middle-earth: Tolkien, Form, and Ideology. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co.
Tolkien, J. R. R. 1981. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Eds. Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien. London: George Allen & Unwin.
— 2001. The Silmarillion. 2nd ed. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.
— 2017. Beren and Lúthien. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. Boston: William Morrow.
— 2018. The Fall of Gondolin. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. Boston: William Morrow.
1 Ellison 13.
2 Flieger 17.
3 Tolkien 2001: 16–29, 31.
4 Tally 86, 144; Tolkien 1981: 95.
5 Tally 47.
6 Tolkien 2001: 48.
7 Tolkien 2018: 37–47, 150–68.
8 Tolkien 2001: 173–86, 335; 2017: 172; 2018: 106.
9 Tolkien 2001: 35–9, 48–9, 99–100, 103; Genesis 1:3, 1:16.
10 Tolkien 2001: 25–77.
11 Tolkien 2001: 162, 175, 180; 2018: 75, 85; 2017: 75–6, 203.
12 Craig 28.
13 Tolkien 2017: 211.
14 Tolkien 2001: 246–55; Cramer 14–15; Genesis 6:16.
15 Flieger 17; Tally 99–105; Tolkien 2001: 286.
16 Tolkien 2001: 289.
17 Tolkien 2017: 189.
18 Tolkien 2018: 111.
19 Tolkien 2018: 293.
20 Tolkien 2001: 287.
21 Tolkien 2001: 288–9.
22 Tolkien 1981: 74 (emphasis added).
23 Ellison 16–19; Tolkien 2001: 107, 288, 321.
24 Tally 63, 113, 161–2.
25 Tolkien 2001: 255.
Comments
He was not an anarchist
anarcho (not verified) Wed, 03/19/2025 - 00:40
Tolkien was not an anarchist -- as can be seen from the full quote: "My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs) – or to 'unconstitutional' Monarchy. I would arrest anybody who uses the word State (in any sense other than the inanimate realm of England and its inhabitants, a thing that has neither power, rights nor mind); and after a chance of recantation, execute them if they remained obstinate!"
An "unconstitutional" Monarchy is a dictatorship -- so he was confused, to say the least.
As such, "the unfortunate sympathies that Tolkien had for Francisco Franco and his Nationalists during and after the Spanish Civil War" comes as no surprise. He was not an anarchist, he was a conservative.
Also, "Lord of the Rings" is boring -- Michael Moorcock is much better and he IS an anarchist.
He "would arrest anybody who…
anonymous (not verified) Thu, 03/20/2025 - 00:54
In reply to He was not an anarchist by anarcho (not verified)
He "would arrest anybody who uses the word State" under a country with no "power, rights nor mind," per your own quote. In other words, he was satirizing his affinities for medieval European history and his nostalgia for non-industrial pastoral life, while showing an ultimate disinterest in statecraft and politics. His support of the Nationalists during the Civil War had much more to do with his religious views -- probably reports of Republicans summarily executing priests and raping nuns -- than enthusiastic backing of Franco. Not saying he was right to support the Nationalists in this regard, of course.
Tolkien's hobbits are a self-insert, probably the best vision of whatever society he idealized -- whether or not he intended it as a political program (unlikely.) Agrarian, quiet, peaceful, with government reduced to a symbolic vestige -- the shiriffs mainly just returning lost animals to their proper farms, and the mayor mainly presiding over banquets. Importantly, the Shire is out of the reach of (or simply ignored by) the major powers in his world.
Pro-Franco meets reactionary…
anonymous (not verified) Thu, 03/20/2025 - 22:44
Pro-Franco meets reactionary rural utopia. Thank you -- next!
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