What The Right Gets Wrong About Lord of The Rings

The Bitchuation Room

TYT Network

News Commentary, News, Comedy, Government

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 13 September 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Every fantasy franchise has an insufferable part of its fan base. But this one takes the cake. Powerful conservatives are obsessed with The Lord of The Rings. We know this because they name their military tech companies, surveillance companies and venture capital firms after objects in Middle Earth. Billionaire Peter Thiel has named 10 of his companies after things in Lord of The Ring, including Palantir, the Trump's regime's authoritarian surveillance company of choice. JD Vance has called himself a "Lord of the Rings guy", Elon Musk has hot anti-woke takes on The Rings of Power, and Jeff Bezos helped make that series by buying the rights to the franchise via Amazon. Even the far right even in Spain and Italy identify with the Lord of The Rings. They believe they’re in a fight against dark forces, and that they’re heroic men of Gondor, or Elves of Rivendell. Yeah that’s right: the people helping ICE disappear mothers and fathers think they’re the good guys. What’s worse is that they believe that Tolkien’s Catholicism means he would agree with their world view that immigrants, feminists and global cooperation are the enemy. Francesca digs deep into “The Nerd Reich’s” misreading of Lord of the Rings and how they took all the wrong lessons from the story. She looks at how their behavior and beliefs are more the stuff of Saruman than saviors. But they’re even more like another creature in the bogs of Mordor… **** Support independent media and these long-form videos by becoming a Patron of The Bitchuation Room: https://www.patreon.com/bitchuationroom. You can also be a member on YouTube, Twitch, or a paid subscriber on substack: franifio.substack.com. *** See Francesca LIVE PASADENA - October 1st- New World Disorder. Tickets here: https://www.showclix.com/event/new-world-disorder-10-01-25-7-45-pm BROOKLYN - October 13th Francesca and Matt will co-headline The Bell House. Tickets here: https://www.ticketmaster.com/event/300062E2C3694548 Get 20% off SUNSET LAKE CBD with code FRANTIFA at check out. Explore all their organic, vertically-integrated craft CBD products including tinctures, gummies, smokables, salves and more: https://www.sunsetlakecbd.com *** Tip the show: Venmo: @TBR-LIVE Cash-App: @TBRLIVE Get your union-made TBR merch: www.bitchuationroom.com *** Thanks to Paige Oamek, Andy Vasoyan & Brent Godin *** Follow The Bitchuation Room on Twitter @BitchuationPod Check Out The Bitchuation Room Podcast on: iTunes: http://bit.ly/iTunesbitchuation Google Music: http://bit.ly/GoogleBitchuation Stitcher: http://bit.ly/stitcherbitchuation Spotify: http://bit.ly/spotifybitchuation Find Francesca On: Twitter: https://twitter.com/franifio YouTube: The Bitchuation Room’s channel: https://www.youtube.com/franifio Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/franifio Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Franifio Insta: https://www.instagram.com/franifio/ BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/bitchuationroom.bsky.social Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's time we talk about something that's been on my mind for a while. A burning question I have that we've got to get to the bottom of.
0:07.8	Why are all the right-wing weirdos so obsessed with Lord of the Rings? That's the question. And we're not talking about normal fandom.
0:17.0	Normal fandom is going to Comic-Con 10 years in a row dressed as Aragorn,
0:22.9	meeting the love of your life dressed as Arwin,
0:27.0	and then hiring a Gandalf impersonator to officiate your Shire-themed wedding.
0:28.7	That's normal.
0:34.1	What's not normal is naming your military tech company after a Lord of the Rings sword,
0:38.3	your surveillance company after a Lord of the Rings crystal ball, or your venture capital fund after a Lord of the Rings ring.
0:42.9	Naming objectively evil things that kill, monitor, and swindle people after heroic objects
0:47.8	in the Lord of the Rings is a misunderstanding at best and terrifying at worst.
0:53.4	So why are people like Jady Vance, Elon Musk, and Peter Thiel obsessed with this story
0:59.0	about how small hungry gingers save the world?
1:02.0	What about second breakfast?
1:04.0	And how is their obsession, a painfully hypocritical misreading of Tolkien lore in the Lord of the Rings?
1:10.0	Let's get one thing out of the way.
1:11.7	I am not a Lord of the Rings superfan, nor an expert. I am what some of you might call
1:17.3	a filthy casual. I like the Lord of the Rings a healthy amount. I might watch the return of the
1:23.3	king, the week between Christmas and New Year's while my body absorbs untold amounts of triptophan, and I will always wonder at the end why Frodo and Sam don't end up together. That's love, okay? I don't care how many kids Sam has later on with his wife. But what I will say is that like any great work of art, people have had multiple interpretations
1:46.0	of Lord of the Rings, many seeing it as an allegory for real-life problems ever since the
1:50.6	books were published in the 1950s, and when the films by Peter Jackson came out in the
1:54.8	early 2000s.
1:56.4	In the late 60s, the Lord of the Rings was seen as bolstering a counterculture that was against war,
	...

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