Spanish far-right partys anti-LGBT tweet makes star of tiny gay ghost
Voxs tweet shows Lord of the Rings Aragorn as party tackling LGBT symbol
Sam Jones in Madrid
Thu 2 May 2019 14.37 BST Last modified on Thu 2 May 2019 20.00 BST
Aragorn, son of Arathorn, pal of hobbits, scourge of orcs and wielder of a legendary sword, appears to have met his match in a tiny gay ghost.
A few hours after the polls opened in Spains general election last Sunday, the far-right Vox party attempted to recruit author JRR Tolkiens fighter to its cause, tweeting an image of the character Aragorn in Peter Jacksons 2003 film The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King with the caption, Let the battle begin!
Having slapped the partys logo on the warriors cloak, Vox lined Aragorn up against the jumbled ranks of its own many and varied enemies: communists; anarchists; Catalan pro-independence campaigners; the liberal media; womens groups and, last but by no means least, a small, rainbow-hued ghost intended to represent LGBTQ people.
The bellicose tweet, topped off by an incorrect accent, soon did its job on social media, eliciting groans, mockery and the odd proprietary response.
As well as despairing of the partys graphic design skills, Twitter users pointed out that Viggo Mortensen, who starred as Aragorn, is a member of the pro-independence Catalan group Òmnium Cultural, and that Gandalf was played by Sir Ian McKellen, one of the founding members of Stonewall, Britains biggest LGBT charity.
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