This week, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow welcomed J. R. R. Tolkien’s fantasy epic The Lord of the Rings to the fellowship of things, such as patriotic flags and, uh . . . physical fitness, that are now bad because the “far right” likes them. Maddow reacted to Donald Trump’s selection of J. D. Vance as his running mate by noting Vance’s connections to tech billionaire Peter Thiel, and finding fault in their affinity for Tolkien’s work:

Mr. Thiel . . . has named his companies after things in the Lord of the Rings series of J. R. R. Tolkien books. Lord of the Rings is a sort of favorite cosmos for naming things and cultural references for a lot of far-right and alt-right figures both in Europe and the United States. Peter Thiel names all of his things after Tolkien figures, like his company Palantir, for example. Like his mentor, like Peter Thiel, who had given him all his jobs in the world, Mr. Vance also when he founded his own venture-capital firm with help from Peter Thiel named it after a Lord of the Rings thing. 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. Apparently that word has something to do with elves and rings from the Lord of the Rings series. I don’t know.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/does-the-left-really-want-to-argue-that-enjoying-lord-of-the-rings-is-far-right/