Rachel Maddow Connects JD Vance Liking Lord of the Rings to Far Right: ‘It’s Aryan But You Move the N to the Front!’

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow dug a rabbit hole and then climbed down into it to insist that Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance’s decision to name his venture capital firm “Narya” after a ring in The Lord of the Rings was indicative of his affinity for the far right ahead of his speech at the Republican National Convention Wednesday night.

Maddow made the accusation in an aside while describing Vance’s career.

Mr. Vance then was able to go and start another venture capital firm with, surprise, yet more help from Peter Thiel,” began 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 favorite cosmos for naming things and cultural references for a lot of far right and alt right figures, both in Europe and the United States. Peter Thiel names all these things after Tolkien figures in 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 founded his own venture capital firm with help from Peter Thiel, named it after a Lord of the Rings thing. He called it Narya, N-A-R-Y-A, which you can remember because it’s Aryan, but you move the n to the front,” she continued. “Apparently that word has something to do with elves and rings from the Lord of the Rings series, I don’t know.”

According to a wiki page dedicated to the series, Narya, or the “Ring of Fire,” was described by Tolkien “as having the power to inspire others to resist tyranny, domination and despair, as well as having the power (in common with the other Three Rings) to hide the wielder from remote observation (except by the wielder of the One) and giving resistance to the weariness of time.”

Maddow’s monologue preceded one from her colleague Alex Wagner, who accused Vance of dropping an “Easter egg of white nationalism” by nationalism by mentioning that he hoped to be buried in his family’s plot in Kentucky during his speech.

Watch above via MSNBC.

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