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 Spain’s general election last Sunday, the far-right Vox party attempted to recruit author JRR Tolkien’s fighter to its cause, tweeting an image of the character Aragorn in Peter Jackson’s 2003 film The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King with the caption, “Let the battle begin!” Having slapped the party’s logo on the warrior’s 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; women’s 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.