“A New Founding Text for Our People”: White Christian Nationalism and Tolkien’s Mythopoeia

This past summer, on the anniversary of D-Day, U.S. “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth delivered the customary remarks at an American military cemetery in northern France. After describing the heroism of those who died fighting Hitler’s advance across Europe in 1944, Hegseth raised the specter of a new threat to “freedom” and “peace”:

Hegseth has been widely criticized for likening contemporary immigration to the Nazi invasions—for the Great Replacement vibe, for the insult to sovereign European nations, and for the basic illiteracy of the comparison. But the comment did work, like many of the Trump administration’s supposed rhetorical missteps, to further align American policy with white nationalism and alienate traditional allies.

Hegseth praised Americans who are “a living embodiment of the warrior ethos we today revive at the Department of War” and demanded that European nations follow the U.S. in defending “our Western tradition of freedom.” He admonished, “America will lead, and we must. But capable allies must be right there with us, shoulder to shoulder in the breach when it matters.” The “breach” Hegseth sees today is demographic change, and he used the anniversary of D-Day to advance a white nationalist agenda.

Hegseth’s description of the Second World War era was dire: “the survival of Western civilization hung in the balance,” he said. “Dark forces had swept across Europe.” Other commentators have drawn connections between Hegseth’s rhetoric and the anti-immigration novel The Camp of the Saints, by the French author Jean Raspail. The imagery of an invasion sweeping Europe also recalls a more familiar 20th-century author: conservative Catholic fantasy writer JRR Tolkien. Both authors are currently very popular among the far right; but unlike Raspail, whose intention was entirely racist, no one is suggesting that Tolkien be removed from reading lists. It is, however, important for Americans to know about the growing use and misuse of his books within these far-right ecosystems.

Far-Right Readings

Each of these individuals identifies with different aspects of Tolkien’s work, variously channeled. And as Professor Lee Konstantinou wrote last year:

Tolkien’s works do not stand up as well as we might like to long-standing charges that Middle-earth preserves the same kinds of ethnic and geographical hierarchies plaguing much of life on the real Earth. Some primary documents do show Tolkien’s rejection of Hitler and claim that his works are not analogous to the real world. But others evidence his Eurocentric biases and Jewish stereotyping; the plot favors whiter northern and western groups in a civilizational struggle. Regardless of authorial intent, which changed throughout the years Tolkien was active, fascism’s tendency to connect a nation’s mythic past to a vision for a purified future makes Tolkien’s work into a potentially dangerous cultural tool.

Regardless of authorial intent, which changed throughout the years Tolkien was active, fascism’s tendency to connect a nation’s mythic past to a vision for a purified future makes Tolkien’s work into a potentially dangerous cultural tool.

Here, I add to the conversation about how today’s far right use the legends of Middle-earth, accurately or otherwise, to bolster their agenda. First, I discuss a recent identitarian book from France and its review on an American white nationalist site. Second, I look at Tolkien’s place in conservative Christian education in the United States. While politicians and technocrats envision their lives as some kind of enactment of Tolkien, less noticeable cultural platforms see in the author’s works a road back to Christian white supremacy. Through all of these, the legendarium is marshaled as a foundational text that can influence readers, especially young readers, to engage in the cultural recapture of Europe and the United States.

“Both a myth and a destiny”

In 2022, Armand Berger, a white identitarian described as a specialist in Germanic studies, published a book called Tolkien, Europe, and Tradition: From Civilisation to the Dawn of Imagination. The book was produced by L’Institut Iliade Pour la Longue Mémoire Européenne (The Iliad Institute for Long European Memory), a Paris-based far-right think tank. This organization’s mission statement, included in the book’s English translation from Arktos (another publisher “dedicated to the furtherance of European Civilisation”), blames the “current elite” for Europe’s degradation because “no one passes down to [Europeans] the cultural wealth of which they are the inheritors.” Iliade combats the supposed “Great Erasure of culture” by supporting “Europeans’ reappropriation of their own identity” in the anticipated “new renaissance – one of identity, freedom, and power.”

Berger is especially taken by what he calls Tolkien’s “identity problem.” While other nations are rich in legends, Tolkien was, according to a 1951 letter, “grieved by the poverty of my own beloved country” regarding stories “bound up with its tongue and soil.” He began developing myths that were, again in his own words, “redolent of our ‘air’ (the clime and soil of the North West, meaning Britain and the hither parts of Europe: not Italy or the Aegean, still less the east).” Berger finds great nobility in this regional and national impulse, and he refers to Tolkien as an “Anglo-Saxon bard.” In the end, Tolkien’s plan to give England a homegrown mythology fell short; his stories lean significantly on other northern legends (Celtic, Germanic, Scandinavian) and even some Mediterranean models for the great cities. But for Berger, the admixture of Christian thought brings “a new vitality” to those pre-Christian sources. Berger refers to the outcome as a “modern mythology” of “remodeled traditions.”

What Berger calls “the teaching of Tolkien” relies on the conscience of white Europeans. To make the right decisions, “It is up to modern man to know his modern mythology and the heroes related to it.” He lectures, “Tradition is a matter of choice: either to pass it on, to ensure its succession, and to keep the heritage alive, or to let it disappear in the face of nihilism.” Europeans can “sink into a sad madness with a fatal end” or “like the Hobbit in love with his land and the traditions…take control of our destiny.” Lauding Tolkien as a “noble herald” who has “brought our civilisational wealth to its pinnacle,” he closes with this hope: “May his work, as a new founding text for our identity, allow us to maintain the sacred fire.” 

“The Homer of the Anglosphere”

Berger’s dramatic directive feels similar to the “warnings” that close so many book reviews and essays on the white nationalist site American Renaissance. It is not surprising that frequent AmRen contributor Kevin DeAnna picked up Berger’s charge in a December 2023 review called “Tolkien: The Homer of the Anglosphere.”

DeAnna places Tolkien at the center of current civilizational struggles, describing the texts as “an important battleground” that can “win new audiences every generation,” and inspire them to “fight for their people.” The Lord of the Rings is described as “the tale of our real civilization,” with Peter Jackson’s film trilogy being “an inspiration for many white advocates” because “it was made before the era of ‘race-swapped’ casts” and correctly displayed leaders as “manly men who really were whiter than white.”

But increasingly, DeAnna complains, “our rulers” (the liberal enemy) engage in white erasure by “deliberately writing whites out of our own history. This includes even myths and legends.” An example discussed at some length is the 2022 Amazon Rings of Power series, and DeAnna is not alone in his concern: diverse casting and some “woke” interpretations triggered the white entitlement of so many viewers that Amazon temporarily suspended public comments when the series was being “review bombed.”

Claiming Tolkien is important to DeAnna. Quoting a passage from Berger about being “fully immersed in one’s culture, to the point that an unstoppable furor spreads within one’s self,” he smugly remarks, “This is certainly not something most scholars now want to admit was [Tolkien’s] mission.” But there is more evidence of this being DeAnna’s mission than Tolkien’s. And, though he knows “the question of whether Tolkien was ‘for’ whites” is contested, he emphasizes the author’s cultural affinities with an oft-quoted letter in which Tolkien names “that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved.” Turning to his own perennial concerns, DeAnna speculates that Tolkien would have “scorned” the alleged modern assumption “that whites—and whites alone—have no culture to be proud of.” This, of course, is a strawman; no serious writers are making that argument.

DeAnna’s discussion of Berger’s book is framed by his typical recruitment and call-to-action rhetoric. DeAnna, who once founded a group called Youth for Western Civilization, introduces the book as being “up to the task” of teaching “[y]oung readers, especially” the value of Tolkien’s work:

By internalizing such stories, today’s youth can “become the generation that will become the source of mythology in our future.” Echoing Berger, DeAnna reduces Tolkien’s storyline—and by extension the position of Western whites today—to “a choice” between “decadence and destruction” or being “saved by the return of the king and a cavalry charge reminiscent of the relief of the Siege of Vienna.” This is a reference to Western Christian forces defeating an invasion from the Ottoman Empire. Like Pete Hegseth on D-Day, DeAnna challenges his audience to drive back the non-Western enemy.   

Tolkien and Berger’s book about him are praised by DeAnna for the ways they “appeal most to white advocates.” Some readers might see irony in the reduction of Tolkien’s creative achievement to its perceived utility for the movement today. But in this fascist view, the greatness of a cultural artifact is measured by the extent to which it inspires and authorizes white nationalism.

Tolkien and Classical Christian Education

DeAnna takes solace in the idea that “one of few relatively recent cultural creations that derives entirely from European mythology” remains canonical. His desire to have young people read Tolkien is also gaining traction through white Christian nationalist educational initiatives. The author appears in the reading list for the relatively new Classic Learning Test (designed to replace the SAT) that caters to classical Christian education. I have written elsewhere about the CLT’s place in the far-right takeover of education in Florida, including Governor Ron DeSantis’s support and DeSantis-appointed New College trustee Mark Bauerlein’s involvement in its development.

This rationale uses similar language to the website of Hillsdale Academy, the “model” school run by the ultraconservative Hillsdale College as part of their national outreach into K-12 education: “The mission of Hillsdale Academy is to train the minds and develop the hearts of young men and women through a content-rich, Christian classical education.” The Hobbit is the one summer book required of all incoming sixth-graders, “because of the way it augments the curriculum.”

Developing Civilizational Bonds

Organizations embracing re-whitened and re-Christianized cultural curricula are no longer obscure in the United States or Europe. The U.S. State Department has recently opened a $5 million funding opportunity called “Developing Civilizational Bonds, Democratic Resilience, and Rule of Law in Europe.” Proposals should address challenges to “our common Western civilizational heritage”; suggested modalities include “conferences, cultural engagements, and support for civil society” rather than efforts “to reform the legislative processes of host governments.”

Despite the State Department’s claim that the program will only fund cultural and civic platforms, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz responded with a reminder not to “interfere” with sovereign politics. A State Department spokesperson assured Politico that the program aims not to interfere in elections but “to support our European allies in defending…their civilizational self-confidence and sovereignty.” The distinction between what Merz calls interference and what the State Department calls support asks us to consider which populations the American administration considers an ally inside those European nations. Perhaps Pete Hegseth’s apparently illiterate historical comparison was more intentional than it seemed. Now, in this version of Earth, numbered among the Trump administration’s allies are growing numbers of Nazi-nostalgic white supremacists awaiting defensive support from a very different kind of American invasion.

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Laura Jeffries is Professor of English at Florida State College at Jacksonville, where she teaches British literature, literary responses to imperialism, and writing about contexts of American race and ethnicity. Publications include articles situating Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden” in its original American magazine provenance along with its afterlife in white supremacist meme culture; the intersections of British religious and political history; and language use among young women posting on YouTube. She writes Narrative Nation on Substack and is developing a book titled “Loads of Heresy”: Far Right Revisions of the American Narrative.  Contact: laurakjeffries@gmail.com.

Image made using “Where there’s a whip there’s a will – Orcs driving a Hobbit,” by Александр Коротич licensed under CC Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International; “Ron DeSantis (53453776707),” by Gage Skidmore licensed under CC Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic. All other images used are in the public domain.