Yes. Hobbit.
Luxon shouldn’t have been surprised. Meloni is known as something of a superfan — as are many members of her Fratelli d’Italia party (no relation to Fratelli, the charming Italian restaurant in Wellington’s Blair St just five minutes away from the Embassy Theatre that hosted Lord of the Rings premieres), which its heritage back to post-fascist parties that emerged in Italy after the war.
She probably relished the opportunity to discuss Hobbits with the Prime Minister of the country most associated with the writing of J.R.R. Tolkien, despite him never having set foot here.
Last year, the website Politico reported Meloni dressed up as a Hobbit in her youth and was clapped on to the stage at a campaign rally with a quote from Aragorn’s battle speech in The Return of the King film. It also reported Meloni has “quoted liberally” from Tolkien throughout her career, from her speeches as a youth leader in 2002, to her autobiography in 2022.
In 2015, she dubbed the global financial elite — and this is quite difficult to take seriously — “the rings of power”.
After first becoming a minister, she posed next to a statue of Gandalf for a magazine photo shoot. After becoming Prime Minister, her sister, Arianna, also a Lord of the Rings obsessive, vowed to stand beside Meloni like Samwise Gamgee stood beside Frodo Baggins.
The New York Times reported Meloni did not consider the books fantasy.
“I think that Tolkien could say better than us what conservatives believe in,” she said.
This is no joke.
The Italian Ministry of Culture recently funded an exhibition in Rome marking 50 years Tolkien’s death at a cost of €250,000 ($444,000 — chump change compared with the lavish sums spent on The Lord of the Rings by the New Zealand taxpayer).
The exhibition was described as a “gift” by Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano, who appeared to lean into allegations the exhibition had something to do with the new government taking office.
Politico and other international media including the New York Times have reported about the fact the Italian right “appropriated” The Hobbit, which has remained a “sacred text” of the Fratelli d’Italia party.
The cause appears to be Tolkien’s Catholic background, which made him an icon for cultural conservatives in Italy. The New York Times reported the agrarian life of Hobbits struck a chord with conservative Italians.
The Italian right even held “Hobbit Camps” (don’t laugh).
Umberto Croppi, a former member of the Italian Social Movement, one of the founders of the camps, told the New York Times the purpose of these camps was to move beyond the old unpalatable symbols of the movement, like spraying swastikas or quoting Mussolini and to capitalise on a sense isolation, smallness and sense of victimisation on the right.
Croppi said they would make their hero “not the warrior Aragorn, but the little hobbit — we wanted to get out of this militarist, heroic idea”.
The party’s old guard was “perplexed”, said the Times — who can blame them?
