Elon Musk has been desperately trying to prod the United Kingdom into chaos for years. He eagerly promotes far-right hate groups, reposts ludicrous white supremacist conspiracy theories, supports violent hate-monger Tommy Robinson, and recently said he believed civil war in the United Kingdom was “inevitable”.
Now he’s come out with his most deranged and nonsensical comments yet, arguing that rural England is effectively the Shire from JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, with its inhabitants peaceful, pipe-smoking, barefoot Hobbits whose bucolic lifestyle is under threat from dark-skinned invaders from the south.
Speaking on the Joe Rogan Experience, he said:
Elon Musk: "These lovely small towns in England, Scotland, Ireland, are living their lives quietly [Like The Hobbits in The Shire] — until one day, a thousand people show up in your village of 500 out of nowhere and start r*ping the kids."pic.twitter.com/iPNQosh0wH
— Joe Rogan Podcast News (@joeroganhq) November 2, 2025
“They’re lovely people who liked to, you know, smoke their pipe and have nice meals. And everything is pleasant. The hobbits in the Shire. The reason they’ve been able to enjoy the shires is because hard men have protected them from the dangers of the world. But since they have no exposure to the dangers of the world, they don’t realize they are there. And so one day, 1,000 people show up in your village of 500 and start raping the kids. This has now happened, God knows how many times in Britain.”
Musk is, as every British person commenting on this pointed out, talking absolute nonsense. But let’s leave aside his conspiracy-minded lunacy for a moment and focus on his complete misunderstanding of Tolkien.
“If there’s some good in this world, it’s worth fighting for”
The moral of The Lord of the Rings is not that the peaceful Shire must be protected from invasion by “hard men” but that it is saved by kindness, cooperation, loyalty, and friendship between disparate cultural groups from across Middle-earth.
The Fellowship, the lands of men, and the elves must overcome their differences, individual prides, and racial animosities to join forces against a larger evil seeking to corrupt and divide them with selfishness and hatred. Tolkien couldn’t be clearer that compassion, not violence, is what saves Middle-earth, with Sauron’s destruction a result of Frodo and Sam’s compassion for Smeagol rather than burly “hard” guys with swords.
And anyway, comparing Tommy Robinson and his beer-soaked fascist ilk to the men of Gondor is insulting. Is Robinson’s racial demagoguery supposed to somehow be equivalent to Boromir’s redemption through suicidal self-sacrifice or Faramir’s noble renunciation of the Ring and lack of desire for dominion over men?
If there is an actual parallel between modern events and The Lord of the Rings, it’s that Musk is Grima Wormtongue. A foul, unpleasant creature who’s squirmed his way into a position of influence and is busy whispering poison into people’s ears, hoping to bend them to his evil will. We can only hope that he meets a similar fate to his Middle-earth counterpart.
