Fantasy Literature as Rebellion
The Enchanted Mind vs. The Managerial State
I might be on a government watchlist.
See, the problem is, I really like JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis and according to the British government liking these icons of British literature is suspicious.
Not only are Tolkien and Lewis dicey, so is reading classic works of philosophy by John Locke and Adam Smith, and watching certain BBC programs about train travel.
This round-up of suspicious activity comes courtesy of the government’s Prevent unit, which is tasked with the prevention of extremism, including opposition to fundamental British values.
But The Lord of the Rings? The Chronicles of Narnia? Why is fantasy literature seen as such a threat?
The Danger of Fairy Tales
From the earliest days of the modern age, fairy tales were considered dangerous. The modern era was built on reason, rationalism, and the rejection of the supernatural – fairy tales didn’t fit. This was a seismic shift for Western civilization; people throughout history had previously seen themselves as part of a vast, sacred order that was radiant with deeper meaning, a cosmic story that stretched from heaven to earth.
But modernity dissolved the world of its meaning in an acid of skepticism. People were taught that the universe around them was not radiant with the divine but just meaningless matter. And in world newly stripped of mystery, fairy tales became not just silly but subversive.
But the inclusion of classic works of British fantasy on a government watchlist takes things to another level. Those who support it say that it isn’t the content of the books, but the fact that certain online subcultures that valorize tradition often reference these texts, so it’s useful to lump them into a larger symbolic ecosystem associated with the right-wing. Now, I don’t really think I’m on any government watch list just for liking Tolkien, despite the razzle-dazzle rhetoric of my opener. But I do think the establishment’s perception of these texts as potentially dangerous is part of a larger trend unfolding across much of the West that pathologizes traditional aesthetics, moral clarity, and a love of heritage.
Today we don’t seem to notice how jarringly strange it is for our own governments to be opposed to so much of our own history. For most of its existence, the British establishment promoted a cohesive national identity grounded in pride over shared heritage and tradition. This is something most governments do as a matter of course. In recent decades, however, that role has been inverted. Now, promoting tradition is often treated as a red flag.
So how did we get here?
Well, partly through a long, deliberate erosion of the moral and cultural foundations that once held society together.
The Rise of the Managerial State
In the wake of the Second World War, a growing consensus emerged among Western intellectuals that traditional life was a breeding ground of authoritarianism. Societal structures that formed the bedrock of Western life, like religious values, inherited rituals, even the family home, began to be seen as dangerous precursors to fascism. Over time, a new model of governance took shape: the managerial state. This is a system of governance in which unelected bureaucrats and institutional elites shape policy and cultural norms without direct democratic accountability through regulation, surveillance, and soft coercion, in the name of progress and ideological safety.
This regime gradually dismantled the historical memory of Western nations by embracing and amplifying the message that Western heritage was uniquely oppressive and shameful – despite the fact that the West is not unique in its sins, but unique in its virtues. Over time, there developed an implicit intellectual framework that elevated rootlessness and hyper-individualism as elite ideals, while denigrating as backward – and dangerous - a love of nation, tradition, and roots.
Under the guise of safeguarding democracy, the managerial state constructed a new global order defined by international integration and managerial oversight. This was the era of free markets and free movement, where the tantalizing promise of universal prosperity was used to justify the dismantling of borders, traditions, and communities. Mass immigration was inaugurated without democratic mandate and economies were forced open to global capital while local livelihoods were undermined. Traditional values were sneered at as morality became subjective; everyone was free to choose their choice and the only sin left was the sin of not going along with it.
The result is a society in free fall. As tradition and meaning and roots have been weakened, we have become unmoored and isolated. Rates of loneliness, mental illness, addiction, and deaths of despair have soared. It seems the more we are promised “liberation,” the more we slip into disconnection.
Like much of the Western establishment, the British government now wears a skin-suit of its traditional values, while operating within and strongly enforcing an entirely different framework. It invokes “British values” as an ideal to defend, while including on their watch-list many of the very texts that were instrumental in the development of those values. They are not genuinely interested in upholding these ideals, rather they use them as an excuse to cudgel anyone who takes them seriously enough to resist the logic of the managerial state.
Rewilding the Imagination
CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien saw this coming. They came of age at the dawn of the 20th century, witnessing firsthand the rise of industrialization, bureaucratic control, and the erosion of cultural life. Even then, they recognized the signs of a world turning away from meaning. As boys, they were captivated by ancient myths and fairy stories, finding meaning in the tales that many in their era scorned. As adults, they retained their love of myth, recognizing that they carried truths deeper than modernity liked to admit, offering glimpses of a reality richer than the disenchanted world unfolding around them.
In The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien offers a profound rebuke of the bureaucratic, mechanized world. The Shire is a bucolic vision of rooted English life. The love the hobbits have for the Shire, their customs, land, and way of life, is portrayed not as parochial or something to be educated out of them in the name of progress, but as something worth defending from the forces that seek to destroy it. The narrative stands as a warning against the logic of progress divorced from truth and beauty, revealing that the courage and sacrifice of the humblest among us in service of the good is of immense value.
In The Chronicles of Narnia, Lewis counters the flattening of the modern world by opening the doors to another. Narnia is enchanted, moral, and vividly real. It restores the moral imagination by pulling the reader into a world where right and wrong are not relative, but radiant and knowable. The children are not trained into conformity by progressive institutions, but by trial, wonder, and encounters with Aslan. And Narnia itself is more than just a random backdrop; it is a beloved homeland, full of ancient cherished traditions, all of which must be remembered, restored, and defended.
The Last Rebellion
Today, many contemporary fantasy novels claim to be subversive by embracing “edgy” progressive ideals - but these books don’t show up on government watchlists because they aren’t really subversive at all. In fact, they conform perfectly to the dominant cultural script. What actually constitutes suspicious thinking today is as simple as believing in age-old virtues like rootedness, tradition, and faith. When people today want the same thing their ancestors enjoyed for centuries they are flagged as risks, because to the managerial state going against their ethos of disintegration and progress is as dangerous as it gets.
Today we are told that suppressing our longing for truth and beauty makes us modern and intellectual, but what it actually does is make us susceptible to the propaganda of the managerial state. The stories of Tolkien and Lewis offer us the antidote to these evil enchantments of modernity by responding to the longing of our soul, offering us a powerful vision of reality as both objective and enchanted, awakening our hunger for what is Real.
These classic stories are suspicious today because they invite us to become more than what the establishment tells us we can be. While political ideologies can be neutralized, wonder remains stubbornly subversive. It glimmers in the margins, blooms unexpectedly, and offers a wild vision of the world that runs against the logic of the regime. The managerial state wants to industrialize every aspect of life, including us, but it’s hard to industrialize people who remember they are made in the image of God. This makes the enchanted mind, with its devotion to meaning, mystery, and the divine order of things, one of the modern world’s last rebellions.
Further Reading:
Narnia Against the Machine: Deep Magic for the Modern Age
How Fantasy Literature Lost its Soul: From Narnia to Nihilsm
Disney Adults Just Want God: A Theological Defense of Artificial Wonder