How Silicon Valley misreads JRR Tolkien’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’

On October 30, 2025, the Department of Homeland Security in the United States posted a Tolkien meme. It pictured Merry Brandybuck – one of JRR 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 JD 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...

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