Tolkien used as political football in Italy
Tehanu @ 6:10 pm EST

This came in from Robert at Italian website Caltanet
"Alleanza Nazionale -the most important right-oriented Italian political party, heir of the ancient fascist party - has taken a picture from Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings to promote a speech by his leader, Gianfranco Fini, the vice-president of the Berlusconi’s new government, to the youngest audience of the party. You can see the pic here

This is very important because in Italy, since the date (‘70s) of the first publication of LOTR, Tolkien’s book is considered fascist or nazist or “naziskin”, as the famous journalist Natalia Aspesi called it this May reporting the Lord of the Ring’s day from the Cannes Film Festival. We are the only Italian journalists who denounced these stupid prejudices in the hope of start also in Italy a real cultural debate about Tolkien and his books. Hopefully before the Italian release of Fellowship of the Ring, on 18 January 2002.

If you and your readers want to join our protest, please send us an e-mail with your thoughts to: tolkien@caltanet.it