How Silicon Valley misreads The Lord of the Rings

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Fathom Entertainment On October 30 2025, the Department of Homeland Security in the United States posted a Tolkien meme . It pictured Merry Brandybuck – one of J.R.R. Tolkien’s four hobbit protagonists in The Lord of the Rings – speaking to another hobbit Pippin at the climax of The Two Towers , the second of Peter Jackson’s film adaptations. Merry, the older and wiser of the duo, is trying to persuade Pippin not to return home to the Shire. He wants Pippin to join him in persuading the tree-shepherding Ents to join the climactic battle against the forces of the wizard Saruman . Beneath Merry’s ominous warning (“There won’t be a Shire, Pippin”) are written the words “JOIN.ICE.GOV”. The post and the flood of Tolkien-themed anti-immigration memes that followed are symptomatic of a larger trend: the use of Tolkien, especially his heroic good-versus-evil imagery, in the rhetoric of the New Right. Such rhetoric is prominent among influential figures from Silicon Valley, such as Elon Musk , whose influence can be felt in the ICE meme, US vice-president J.D. Vance and Peter Thiel , whose surveillance company Palantir is named after Tolkien’s “seeing stones”, the palantiri . Tolkien, as recent commentators insist , would hardly have enjoyed such uses of his work. But are these readings of Tolkien really misreadings – readings without foundation in The Lord of the Rings? Homeland Security and the Shire The Homeland Security meme has no counterpart in Tolkien’s book. In the book, the Ents are not recalcitrant. Unlike the Ents in Jackson’s film, they decide to intervene in the war on their own, after a long process of careful deliberation. The book’s ending does, however, confront the scenario Merry fears in the film. The Shire is taken over by a hostile force. The episode – presented in the The Lord of the Rings’ penultimate chapter, The Scouring of the Shire – has an anti-totalitarian edge. A band of “ruffians” (human outsiders) and their hobbit collaborators have taken over the Shire. They institute rules and curfews. They describe their activities (stealing, burning and knocking down houses) in an Orwellian vocabulary of “gathering and sharing” and “fair distribution” – meaning “they got it and we didn’t”. Scholarly interpretations emphasise the internal nature of this threat. In David M. Waito’s account , the “pressures of conformity” in the Shire at the start of the book reemerge in this concluding episode. The same hunger for power the adventurers learnt to resist in Mordor was always present in the Shire. Hobbit collaborators such as Ted Sandyman and Lotho Sackville-Baggins , are suspicious of nonconformists – a category which includes our hero, Lotho’s cousin Frodo Baggins . Lotho – the instigator of the takeover – starts as a capitalist mogul. “Seems he wanted to own everything himself and then order other folk about,” says the elderly hobbit Gaffer Gamgee . Palantir and the palantiri The danger of power – the desire to “order other folk about” – is a central concern for Tolkien. In 1943, he wrote to his son about his “political opinions”, saying they “lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control)”. Tolkien’s deep suspicion of power can be found throughout his work, but especially in the Shire’s utopian social system. The only proper government official is the Mayor of the Shire, but “almost his only duty was to preside at banquets”. Silicon Valley readings of Tolkien take account of his anarchic utopianism, which has affinities with its suspicion of government regulation. This, according to Peter Thiel , is the reason he named Palantir Industries after Tolkien’s palantiri. The company’s surveillance and data-management technology should not fall into the wrong hands – the hands, in the words of Palantir’s website , of “powerful institutions”. Tolkien’s readers are first introduced to the palantiri by Aragorn (the king who returns in The Return of the King). Aragorn’s description of the stones is echoed in standard explanations of the name Palantir Industries. A palantir is “dangerous indeed”, but “not to all”. As the rightful king, Aragorn may claim one (and he does). Aragorn can be read as a “redemptive” hero , set apart in his ability to safely wield power. For Thiel and other tech giants, it is individual entrepreneurs — not governments — who should control new technologies. Aragorn mastering the palantir in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) New Line Cinema. The book’s seeing stones, however, were made long before they were used by the kings of Gondor . The wizard Gandalf provides a deeper history than Aragorn, telling us that the palantiri came from beyond Westernesse, from Eldamar. The Noldor made them. Fëanor himself, maybe, wrought them, in days so long ago that the time cannot be measured in ye