Comment by Y-bar
3 months ago
What’s up with Maga people using LotR names for their military/panopticon companies?
Anduril, Palantir, Lembas have I seen so far.
3 months ago
What’s up with Maga people using LotR names for their military/panopticon companies?
Anduril, Palantir, Lembas have I seen so far.
It's the only book they've read, most likely.
Here's a 2022 from Quartz article that might have some context on this. Anduril isn't on the list according to the footnote, but Thiel and Lucky have since had a history collaborating on projects with the same naming scheme.
[1] https://qz.com/1346926/the-hidden-logic-of-peter-thiels-lord...
[2] https://fortune.com/2025/07/07/peter-thiel-palmer-luckey-ere...
Is it a MAGA thing, or is it just a Palmer Luckey thing?
JD Vance has a company named after the ring Narya.
Peter Thiel too
It's especially interesting because their philosophy is the opposite of Tolkien's. They seek power at all costs, trying to create 'rings' and dallying with bad people.
One common rhetorical tactic, commonly used by their political allies, is to use their (perceived) enemies' most powerful words and ideas against them, to disarm and counter-attack. 'Woke' was a term on the left; racism became descrimination against white people, diversity becomes affirmative action for conservatives, banning and mocking and even embracing discussions of Nazis, etc.
I don't know what Tolkien's personal philosophy was but I think a reasonable reading of LOTR would put it at centre right. The culture it valorizes has military capability and heroism at its core.
His personal philosophy was very Catholic. My reading of LotR is that it is consistent with that, valorising faithfulness, the personal in place of the modern, and avoiding the temptation to sin for power. I agree it's centre-right (though idiosyncratically) but not about military capability: the orcs are the most modern military capability and they are decidedly not valorised. The central heros are a member of the rural gentry and his gardener, who barely fight. The Shire is defiantly non-military and pre-industrial.
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The LoTR had a great distrust of power as dangerous and corrupting - the Ring corrupted everyone who tried to use it - and a rejection of those who abided with evil. The mission was to destroy the power, not build a super-army.
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His personal philosophy was deeply anti-industrial. He felt as though industrialization was destroying everything good and pure and green in the world. That's why the orcs burn forests to produce their assembly lines.
Their philosophy is in LOTR, as Morgoth.
Tolkien was right-wing even in his own time, for instance he was a supporter of Franco.
From the internet:
> J.R.R. Tolkien had a complex relationship with Francisco Franco, as he expressed some moral support for Franco's Nationalist side during the Spanish Civil War, primarily due to concerns over the destruction of churches by Communists. However, Tolkien's views were not strictly political and were influenced by his personal connections and Catholic beliefs.
It is maybe considered right wing to not want to destroy churches, but so what? Who cares what the side is, when the point is he didn't like Communists destroying churches.
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Interesting. Right-wing meant something different then. Churchill was right wing, but has nothing to do with current white christian 'masculinist' nationalists.
> One common rhetorical tactic, commonly used by their political allies, is to use their (perceived) enemies' most powerful words and ideas against them, to disarm and counter-attack. 'Woke' was a term on the left; racism became descrimination against white people, diversity becomes affirmative action for conservatives, banning and mocking and even embracing discussions of Nazis, etc.
Heresy is at truth taken too far, or a virtue emphasised to the detriment of others - paraphrasing Chesterton whom Tolkien almost certainly read given their similar locations/religions. It's a theme you see with Sauron's love of order in particular.
I think a lot of the Maga people pretty much take this view of DEI or Nazi hate. That diversity was originally good when it was about helping minorities but not when hurting whites, however tricky those are to separate in zero sum environments.
Very interesting!
> however tricky those are to separate in zero sum environments.
Framing the issue as zero sum environments is the key to defeating DEI, etc. Arguments are won (and lost) in the way they are framed.
Economics, for example, is not at all zero sum. But people work to frame it that way in order to divide and conquer.
Lembas seems unrelated to the MIC, or is there some investor or board member in common?
(EDIT: thanks to a reply for researching; it is the same people.)
As for the rest, I think because it's many of the same people and the same VCs.
Lembas LLC is owned by Peter Thiel.
Nerd culture. Def not maga, more silicon valley and tech startup types.
I'm not so sure, JD Vance created a company called Narya after Gandalf's ring and Viggo Mortensen has more than once had to call out far-right groups trying to co-opt the fandom or litterature:
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-48187786
https://www.reddit.com/r/Fauxmoi/comments/1litq7h/viggo_mort...
https://www.brego.net/article/viggo-mortensen-interview-3/
Narya was a Thiel investment vehicle; Vance is a Thiel employee.
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It's been exclusively used by right-wing people, mostly those close to Peter Thiel
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