There were plenty of outrageous hot takes from MSNBC during the Republican National Convention, but Rachel Maddow might have had the dumbest. On Tuesday, Maddow saw alt-right and possibly Aryan messaging in VP-nominee JD Vance’s Lord of the Rings-inspired venture capital firm.
Maddow was giving her version of Vance’s biograph when she declared, “Like Mr. Thiel, who has named his companies after things in The Lord of the Rings series of J.R.R. Tolkien books. Lord of the Rings is a, sort of, a favorite cosmos for naming things and cultural references for a lot of far-right and alt-right figures within Europe and the United States. Peter Thiel names things after Tolkien figures and places like his company, Palantir, for example.”
Vance, she argued, is similar, “Like his mentor, like Peter Thiel, who had given him all his jobs in the world, Mr. Vance also when he founded his own venture capital firm, with help from Peter Thiel, named it after a Lord of the Rings thing, he called in Narya, N-A-R-Y-A, which you can remember because it’s “Aryan,” but you move the N to the front. Apparently, that word has something to do with elves and rings from The Lord of the Rings series, I don’t know?”
If Maddow doesn’t know, why is she talking about it?
Just to clarify two things: Vance’s wife is of Indian ancestry, so the idea that his company’s name is some sort of nod to ideas of Aryan supremacy or white supremacism is profoundly silly. Second, Tolkien had no tolerance for such people. In 1938, the German publisher, Rütten & Loening, which was considering translating The Hobbit, asked Tolkien to prove his Aryan ancestry. He wrote back:
Thank you for your letter. I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people.
…
I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.
Perhaps MSNBC should do some basic research before making fools of themselves on national TV.
Here is a transcript of the July 17 coverage:
MSNBC Republican National Convention
7/17/2024
9:08 PM ET
RACHEL MADDOW: Like Mr. Thiel, who has named his companies after things in The Lord of the Rings series of J.R.R. Tolkien books. Lord of the Rings is a, sort of, a favorite cosmos for naming things and cultural references for a lot of far-right and alt-right figures within Europe and the United States. Peter Thiel names things after Tolkien figures and places like his company Palantir, for example.
Like his mentor, like Peter Thiel, who had given him all his jobs in the world, Mr. Vance also when he found that his own venture capital firm with help from Peter Thiel named it after a Lord of the Rings thing, he called in Narya, N-A-R-Y-A, which you can remember because it’s “Aryan,” but you move the N to the front. Apparently, that word has something to do with elves and rings from The Lord of the Rings series, I don’t know?
