Curumo’s Current Affairs #001

Please note With the recent wars in Ukraine and Israel/ Palestine Tolkien-inspired imagery has been used many times but not only in these contexts. J.R.R. Tolkien’s writings have become a global phenomenon and people from all over the world appreciate them, are inspired by them - or abuse them.

I do not want this newsletter - the Roving Ranger - to be a medium of political discussion but of information; so I will be presenting you articles I consider relevant and important if you take an interest in these issues at the bottom of this newsletter in a new category: Curumo’s Current Affairs.

Curumo’s Current Affairs

I will be providing you with current affairs’ mentions of Tolkien’s works to the best of my ability. Having said this, the complexities of the issues involved often make it difficult to discern the biases of the writers and their intentions. If you happen to have more insights in any of the topics mentioned please do not hesitate to send me suggestions.

Transparency note I was born in 1972, raised in Germany by German parents, from a working-class family, a union member for more than twenty years, raised in a mixture of protestant and catholic ethics but am now an agnostic, and consider myself to have a left-centre bias.

The Italian Tolkien exhibition continues to make headlines. Here is a list of posts you might want to read to better understand where this is coming from, particularly looking back at Italian history, for example, the Years of Lead (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), and the making of the Hobbit Camps (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).

Tolkien about fascism (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [Socialist Worker] | Tolkien’s biggest fan? Italy’s Giorgia Meloni opens new exhibit (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [Washington Post] | Meloni gifts herself an exhibition on Tolkien, a reference point for the Italian radical right (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [El País] | An Exhibition of Orcs and Elves Has Rome Abuzz, and Bewildered (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [New York Times] | How Tolkien’s hobbits got political (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [GZERO] | Italy's Far-Right Leader Giorgia Meloni Is a 'Lord of the Rings' Stan (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [VICE] | One ring and the right wing: Giorgia Meloni’s love of Tolkien (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [New European] | From 2022: Italy’s New Leader Is a Very Weird, Tolkien-Obsessed Right-Wing Extremist (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [Mother Jones]

The Lord of the Rings, Israel, and Palestine: Reflections of the Gaza-Hamas War in Tolkien (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [Real Context News]

Constructing the Orc: Embracing Fiction in Ukraine’s Tactical Narrative (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [RUSI is a UK security and defense think tank (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)]

Elves, Orcs, Hobbits And The One Ring: Echoes Of Tolkien In The Ukraine War (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [Worldcrunch]

The religious angle:

Tolkien's Literary Output: Fundamentally Religious and Catholic? (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [Church Life Journal]

Bradley J. Birzer mentioned on Xitter (Öffnet in neuem Fenster):

The revised and expanded Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien affirm one major thing: Tolkien was even more Catholic than any of us expected him to be. And, many of us already thought he was really, really Catholic.

The Gurtum Charity Foundation (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) has built a hobbit house (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) as a bomb shelter for children in the Kyiv area.

The Hamas Massacre Is A Wake-Up Call For America To Fortify Itself Against Evil (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [The Federalist; media bias (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)]

J.R.R. Tolkien Offers an Antidote Against New Forms of Paganism in the West (Öffnet in neuem Fenster); Joseph Pearce on Hobbit Day and Tolkien Week (Sept. 23) (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [National Catholic Register; media bias (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)]

J.R.R. Tolkien is one of the most important and influential vectors in the transmission of Christian culture and transcendence from the earliest ages to our own era, and it is probably not a coincidence if currently there is a true battle raging around the interpretation and reappropriation of Tolkien’s work.

Austin M. Freeman easily agrees, calling Lord of the Rings a Christian classic (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).

Slovakian IT workers certainly seem to be hardcore Tolkien fans (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).

How J. R. R. Tolkien Influenced Tim Keller (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [The Gospel Coalition]