{"id":249921,"date":"2025-10-30T01:56:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T01:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/249921\/"},"modified":"2025-10-30T01:56:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T01:56:08","slug":"ice-ads-pivot-from-misunderstanding-halo-to-lord-of-the-rings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/249921\/","title":{"rendered":"ICE ads pivot from misunderstanding Halo to Lord Of The Rings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Watching the current White House and its various lackeys\/minions\/catspaws attempt to wrestle with \u201cmemes,\u201d as an artistic format, has been a little bit like watching a dog try to aim and fire a machine gun: Bizarre, darkly amusing in a sick sort of way, and ultimately likely to end in tragedy. We\u2019ve been tracking<\/a>, for instance, the Trump administration\u2019s recent embrace of Halo\u2014truly, the hottest gaming property of 2005\u2014in its latest stab at convincing the nation\u2019s gym teachers and gym teacher-minded folk that working for ICE would be a cool thing to do. Now, the Department Of Homeland Security\u2019s efforts to screenshot-post its way to popularity have spread to encompass The Lord Of The Rings, too, posting an online recruitment ad<\/a> pulled from\u00a0Peter Jackson\u2019s\u00a0The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers.<\/p>\n

Now, we have to take a second and acknowledge here that the political and philosophical battlefields surrounding J.R.R. Tolkien and Lord Of The Rings\u00a0are\u00a0insanely\u00a0complicated. (And have only been muddied further by Jackson\u2019s films, which simplify some of Tolkien\u2019s more nuanced ideas about morality by doing things like excising one of his most important chapters<\/a> in favor of more time spent on big, setpiece battles between good and evil.) Whole books have been written about how Tolkien\u2019s Catholic conservatism, his contempt for bullies, his \u201cguy born in 1892\u201d takes on race, his overall disdain for any of the trappings of modernity, etc., add up to a fantasy universe that both the left-wing and the right-wing have seen themselves in, and tried to take exuberant grip of, over the years. (For instance: Both Peter Thiel and J.D. Vance are massive Tolkien fans, and have both \u201chonored\u201d the Professor by naming tech and investment companies\u2014which he likely would have loathed to the very core of his being\u2014after words he invented.) None of which makes it any less gross to see poor Dominic Monaghan get his face plastered on a virtual ICE recruitment poster trying to sell the idea that America is some idyllic Shire, in desperate need of protection via an army of masked goons who live in mortal fear of inflatable frogs.<\/p>\n

Of course, the irritation is, presumably, part of the point: Laying claim to fictional heroes who can\u2019t do inconvenient things like tell ICE to go fuck itself when it invokes them is an easy way to both annoy people who are\u00a0pretty\u00a0sure Merry and Pippin would look at the various bullies and cowards currently populating the administration for like five seconds before telling them to go kick rocks, and to convey some clout into the minds of those who are convinced that fielding an army of masked thugs dragging people out of their homes makes themselves \u201cthe good guys\u201d in this looming \u201cgreat battle of our time\u201d that they\u2019re all apparently obsessed with. DHS media reps have previously stated that the new ads are a deliberate pivot to trying to target the things that Vance was really into when he was like 16, specifically, saying,<\/a> \u201cWe will reach people where they are with content they can relate to and understand, whether that be Halo,\u00a0Pok\u00e9mon,\u00a0Lord of the Rings, or any other medium.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Lord Of The Rings: The War Of The Rohirrim rides onto Max on February 28<\/a>Lord Of The Rings anime War Of The Rohirrim gallops down a well-trodden path<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Watching the current White House and its various lackeys\/minions\/catspaws attempt to wrestle with \u201cmemes,\u201d as an artistic format,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249922,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,134,344],"class_list":{"0":"post-249921","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}