Good news for Star Wars fans: when you finally get your chance to go see Star Wars: The Force Awakens in theaters, you won’t find yourself stuck sitting next to a white supremacist. Or Chuck C. Johnson.
Yes, it’s true, #BoycottStarWarsVII is a real thing, brought to you by more or less the same motley crew of racist trolls and “alternative right”-wingers who catapulted the term “cuckservative” into mainstream Republican discourse not that long ago.
Their complaint? That the upcoming episode in the Star Wars saga, directed by JJ Abrams, supports “race mixing” and therefore “white genocide.” Because one of the main characters is, you know, B-L-A-C-K. And some of the others are B-R-O-W-N. Oh, and JJ Abrams is a J-J-JEW.
I’ll let this Twitter dude explain.
https://twitter.com/DarklyEnlighten/status/655910679971389440
https://twitter.com/DarklyEnlighten/status/655911535710081024
https://twitter.com/DarklyEnlighten/status/656165064882302976
He’s also apparently worried about property values in the far-away galaxy where Star Wars takes place.
https://twitter.com/DarklyEnlighten/status/655911807949799424
Naturally, the boycotters took this as an excuse to make and post an assortment of new, Star-Wars-centric racist memes.
https://twitter.com/RealDoctorWhite/status/656260309993177088
https://twitter.com/awyattman88/status/656178020546383872
https://twitter.com/MemeMurderer/status/656192384867377152
https://twitter.com/DanielGenseric/status/656176982644928513
Others used the boycott as an excuse to post some old favorites:
https://twitter.com/leftisright4now/status/656268012891320322
https://twitter.com/leftisright4now/status/656262856145551360
https://twitter.com/leftisright4now/status/656239300770668544
https://twitter.com/awyattman88/status/656169620433469440
Do any of these putative Star Wars boycotters actually give two shits about Star Wars? Do they know how many suns rise and set on Tatooine? Could they tell a sarlacc from a hole in the ground?
Nah. Most of these guys are fake geeks trying to use the phony “boycott” as a way to spread some of their favorite white supremacist catchphrases into mainstream discourse — notably their daffy contention that “diversity = white genocide.”
https://twitter.com/officialCritDis/status/656268371407826944
https://twitter.com/KatieFromLudlow/status/656238508130996225
Apparently they don’t know, or care, that most of those who’ve even noticed the “boycott” are laughing at them — noting how fragile their “whiteness” must be if the very thought of a black guy playing a stormtrooper causes them to screech about “white genocide?’
As one of the mockers put it:
https://twitter.com/ashleylynch/status/656207477394964481
But the boycotters aren’t the only opportunists here.
Everyone’s favorite internet garbage “journalist” Chuck C. Johnson has also jumped onto the Star Wars boycott in an attempt, presumably, to capture some of its notoriety (and traffic-driving potential) for himself. In a post on his garbage site, Johnson offers a tortuous explanation for his alleged outrage over the muticultural cast of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
“[T]here’s a disturbance in the force,” he writes, because he’s the kind of hack who thinks a reference to “a disturbance in the force” in a post about Star Wars is clever.
[A] group of white nerds are rightly upset that Star Wars is painting white people as the enemy.
Is the very white Star Wars being culturally appropriated by the Jewish J. J. Abrams? …
Star Trek is a productive of a white America whether or not we want to accept it. The action figures that made George Lucas a billionaire were purchased by suburban white families.
By “productive” he apparently means “a product of.”
It was white and Jewish-American nerds that put us into space and yet it’s Guatemalan-born (Oscar Isaac), Mexico-born Kenyan (Lupita Nyong’o), and the British-born white girl (Daisy Ridley) and the British-born Nigerian (John Boyega) who get to fight for the Rebel Alliance.
None of these countries even have a space program.
Wait, what?
I’m pretty sure muppets don’t have a space program either, but they’ve played a rather important role in the Star Wars saga.
Space belongs to the people smart enough to invent rockets and indoor plumbing. It belongs to a frontier people, thank you very much. And now the frontier is flooded with the Third World, drowning out the ambitions of those white nerds. … young white boys (yes, they’re boys) … won’t be much interested in a version of the future where they are cast as the villain.
On a small planet named “Earth” in the Milky Way galaxy, James Earl Jones looks upon Twitter and laughs.
It sounds like this:
White Americans ! The masters of space travel that currently have to hitch a ride on the rockets of their former enemy the Russians.
Translation: White nerds had a lot invested in the idea that they were naturally superior to people of colour, and disabusing them of this notion makes them uncomfortable. This is bad, for some reason.
So, checking wikipedia, of the thirteen leading actors cast, ten are white, two are black, and one is Hispanic. The film is 77% white. In other words, the #BoycottStarWars crew’s race (I’m guessing all are white) still makes up more than 3/4ths of the cast. If this constitutes white genocide, is this some sort of bizarre reversal of the 3/5ths compromise? Now one black person is greater than five white people?
Or more likely, they’re so used to be the dominant race that the slightest bit of screen time and credit given to an actor who isn’t white (even tough Star Wars was never an all-white film and prominently featured black actors in the original trilogy and the prequels) sends them into paroxysms of terror.
George Takei and Nichelle Nichols would like to have a word with you…
I’m a lousy internet detective. A site called Ferretbrain that I used to read went down a few weeks ago, and while I figured it would come back, it hasn’t. I only know the real name of one person who wrote there. I tried googling his name but haven’t found a way to contact him. Does anyone know how I could find out what happened?
“I was going to get a PhD in astrophysics and join the space program, but after seeing black people in Star Wars, colonizing the stars seems kind of pointless.”
…said no young white nerd, ever.
“Oh, and JJ Abrams is a J-J-JEW.”
O my Gawd, now the Jews are making movies. What next? Next you’ll tell me that cars drive on roads and that the roads are even built for that specific purpose. It beggars belief. It freakin’ boggles the mind.
Assclowns: ruining everything for everyone since the dawn of time. Don’t these people have any sense of ridiculous?
Can’t believe we’re having this conversation and no one has brought this up. The definitive word on the subject.
https://youtu.be/7L9io-b9Uew
Apparently black people and Brits are unprecedented in Star Wars. Except Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fischer are just about the only white Americans in the original trilogy.
Wow, it’s like the “boycott Mad Max” all over again, except with trolls who aren’t trying to get people to take them seriously.
Honestly, I never know how to deal with this bullshit. “It’s just trolls so ignore them” or “don’t feed the trolls” just doesn’t feel appropriate. So I’m just supposed to let some asshole say bigoted things in the hopes that he or she will eventually stop out of sheer boredom?
Nah, I’d much rather point and laugh.
Ah, the British space program (programme?)–this is a great book about it:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/aug/14/featuresreviews.guardianreview12
Also I love Johnny Clegg–was first introduced to his stuff by the locals when I was working in Malawi.
Add to that Levar Burton, Micheal Dorn, Avery Brooks, Cirroc Lofton, Tim Russ, Linda Park, Anthony Montgomery, and probably a few others I’ve forgotten.
“Oh, and JJ Abrams is a J-J-JEW.”
So that’s why his movies are so good… Then again, I’m trying to figure out what those people do to be so good at making movies, TV shows, acting, and working in music. Maybe it’s dedication and the fact they don’t let such petty things as race get in the way of their work.
Likewise, seeing white people on the screen all the time is boring, we need more diversity, and CGI aliens or muppets don’t really count.
Dude, Chuck, why do you insist on using “-born” to denote someone’s origin? The rules are pretty simple: you stick a person’s birth nationality or ethnic origin right in front of the nationality they legally possess.
Here, let’s try it together. Oscar Isaac is a Guatemalan-American. See how easy that was? Let’s try it again. Lupita Nyong’o is aMexican-Kenyan. Very good, you’re getting the hang of it.
Now let’s try on something a bit harder. People in the UK are either British,or the nationality of one of the four nations of the UK they may belong to, however they prefer. So Daisy Ridley is either a Briton or an Englishwoman.
So for the final lesson, let’s mix the two together. We’ve come a long way, but I think you’re ready for it. Here we go. John Boyega is either a Nigerian-Briton or aNigerian-Englishman. Exellent! You’ve made me proud!
So either do that, or just call them by the nationality they actually have instead of the place they were born, you xenophobic shithead.
@snowberry
Crag Charles (Lister from red dwarf) Christopher Judge (Teal’c from stargate sg-1) Herbert Jefferson, Jr. (Lt. Boomer Classic, Battlestar galatica) to add a few more
My hope: Their attempts to boycott the movie will alert more people to the casting and character choices made and will push some who may have been on the fence about seeing it.
These guys suck.
I hope that between this and Captain Phasma:
(And – OH NOES! – the lack of boobies on her uniform)
they throw progressively awful hissy-fits until their howls of indignation are drowned out only by my peals of laughter.
Not to mention
http://i.imgur.com/8xbZoKs.jpg
Dumbest thing I’ve read about on WHTM so far. I can barely believe this is real. -_-
Is it true han Solo dies at the end?
In any case, they are likely going to do to Starwars what they did to Star Trek, ugh…
Also, since when do space epics have to be produced by countries that have space programs? The U.S. didn’t have a space program until 1958 either. Does that invalidate all of the science fiction America made before NASA was founded?
@ Terrebeau
Identity here is pretty complex. You forgot Cornwall for a start, and I mainly identify as Yorkshire. I’ll only use British when I’m chatting to American friends.
John Boyega’s identity is pretty simple though. He’s from Peckham so he’s a “Laandener”!
John Boyega does have prior experience with aliens.
http://viewerscommentary.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/attack-the-block-moses-runs-from-the-aliens.png
I thought white Americans were superior because of their Anglo Saxon heritage, but now it’s bad for English people to be in movies? It makes no sense. Even within the poor internal logic of white supremacist opinion.
It’s also sad that they misuse the term appropriation so. It reminds me of the time a troll told me I was appropriating Norwegian cult because I wasn’t outraged about Idris Elba playing Heimdall. When I pointed out that I was part Norwegian he said the rest of my ancestry must be African as if that would cancel it out.