Dhe prospective Italian prime minister has hair on her teeth, not hair on her feet. It is quite possible that Giorgia Meloni still feels like Frodo Baggins after his successful journey to Mount Doom since her election victory. Or maybe like King Aragorn, the chosen one. The mission of the two heroes from JRR Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” is to fight against evil. Meloni also thinks he’s on the way on this mission. She likes to pretend to be a character of the famous fantasy tale herself.
Meloni has never hidden her passion for the work and its author. On January 3, she sometimes posts congratulations for Tolkien, who died in 1973, on Facebook, and her social media accounts are playgrounds for elves, hobbits and other fantasy creatures from his world. It sounds bizarre, but corresponds to reality: “The Lord of the Rings” inspires Meloni’s world view and politics. References to it have been part of her performances since the beginning of her career. In 2008, when she first became a cabinet member, she vowed not to be corrupted by the “ring of power.” Her message now is: I will deliver Italy from the clutches of evil as Frodo and his companions saved Middle-earth from darkness. For Meloni, the orcs are what she sees as the unjust EU, migrants, the LGBTQI lobby, left-wing politics and pluralistic life plans that do not correspond to the image of the Holy Family. Addressees of Meloni’s messages are Tolkien lovers and their ultra-right audience.
