During an interview last week on The Joe Rogan Experience, the world’s most popular podcast, Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, brought the discussion around to one of his occasional preoccupations: immigration in Britain and Ireland. The language he used to frame the issue was notable for its invocation of a sort of nerd-reactionary fantasy of the cultures of “these islands”, and the threat presented by foreign migrants.
“These lovely small towns,” he told Rogan, “in England, Scotland and Ireland, they’ve been sort of living their lives quietly. They’re like hobbits, frankly. In fact, JRR Tolkien based the hobbits on people he knew in small town England, because they were just, like, lovely people who like to smoke their pipe and have nice meals and everything’s pleasant. The hobbits in the Shire. But the reason they’ve been able to enjoy the Shire is because hard men have protected them from the dangers of the world. But since they have almost no exposure to the dangers of the world, they don’t realise that they’re there, until one day, a thousand p
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