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:
This can never be posted enough.
I didn’t read all of the comments yet, but I just wanted to comment on their objection to British-born actors.
Even if you assume that everyone in Star Wars should sound American, that’s still a silly thing to object to. Sons of Anarchy and The Walking Dead are 2 very popular, very American shows, and each one has an English actor for their main character. So if an English actor can convincingly play a Californian biker, and another English actor can convincingly play a sheriff from Georgia, I think there are probably a lot of British actors who can play someone from a galaxy far, far away.
And that’s assuming everyone should sound American. The Star Wars galaxy is a big place. There should definitely be accents imo.
I know it’s made up, but it still flies over my head a bit. I’m not a science person (Of course, the manospherians would argue it’s because I’m a woman, and not because I happen to be an individual who’s not good at science), and the only science I really got into was biology, but that’s just because it kind of related to art.
So yeah, even made up science kind of makes my eyes glaze over a bit.
A: Fuck the racists.
B: The new trailer is tickling me in all the right ways.
“Today I saw a poster proclaiming that Italian-Americans are more negatively stereotyped than any other ethnicity and portraying them as professional criminals is “cultural genocide””
I realize how far off topic this is, but as an Italian American, I gotta call bullshit. On all levels. This is fractally wrong. Fuck, it’s like “leave the gun, take the cannoli” made people like cannoli, not hate Italian Americans (which could be because cannoli = best dessert EVAR!)
Sure, it’s assumed I’m a smart ass, but it’s also assumed that there will be plenty of good food so accept the damned invite! Number of times any of my family have been accused of being mob, besides as a joke? Approximately zero, and I’m related to Capones! (idk if it’s those Capones, but if this was some wide spread serious prejudice, would that matter?) And even as a joke it isn’t “we’re violent” but “we take care of our own” (in the actual caring “sure I can babysit” sense)
Arggggg, if this jackass isn’t Italian, he can leave us alone, if he is… go say that to your mother, she’ll set you straight!
Yes, let the hate flow through you.
Let us all know that you are part on the douchebro side of the force.
@Orion: thanks!
Never mind race. You should boycott Star Wars VII because:
1) Star Wars wasn’t a very good franchise to begin with, and launched (along with Jaws) the blockbuster mentality that finished off what little creativity Hollywood had left.
2) Lucas managed to drive his own franchise into the ground with three prequels, while he tried to tinker with the integrity of the earlier films, damn the purists, to bring them down to their level.
3) And now Disney gets to have another go at it.
Sigh. Star Wars VII: A New Nope.
@Shaenon
Thanks. You’re one of the good ones.
iif you want to get technical no stormtrooper should be either black or white, they should be hispanic. That’s because stormtroopers are supposed to be clones of Jango Fett, and he was featured with a hispanic actor.
I thought I would be able to edit my comment, sorry. I don’t normally use this site. Anyway to stay true to the originally storyline they would have to either have to get an actor that looks like the original Jango Fett, or not show their face at all. But if you aren’t going to do either of those things, it is no worse to portray stormtroopers as black as it would be to portray them white. That actor was a brown man, and “black” and “white” are pretty much equally far away from each other.
With all this being said if they were protesting under the hashtag “don’t mess with the original storyline” that would almost be one thing, but with their “preserve white culture and we hate black actors” nonsense, it portrays them as the racists they really are. I am a massive star wars fan, and these people embarrass me.
Temuera Morrison, who played Jango Fett, is Māori, with Scottish and Irish ancestry. Not Hispanic. It’s a pretty major distinction, especially for Māori people.
Ah, I jumped the shark. Well his Maori ancestry dominates his appearance, as I would never guess him to be Scottish or Irish. Either way he is simply brown, and not white. These people are saying they are the only ‘true’ star wars fans, and that stormtroopers should only be allowed to be portrayed with white actors. Pathetic.
Even if their absolutely meaningless definition of “genocide” were what the word actually meant, it would only be genocide against Maoris. And unlike white supremacists, I am not seeing any Maoris complain about this.
Should they all be clones? Armies don’t last forever and it has been a long time by this point.
I would be utterly behind the stormtroopers all being cast with Maori actors. That would make me squee in happy ways.
That’s not what “jump the shark” means.
I would be okay with this. Could…could we get them to take off their shirts?
@caketastydelish
You’re thinking of Clone Troopers. Stormtroopers are conscripted soldiers.
@katz:
Hmmm. The iconic white shell armour might make that difficult.
Could we have shower scenes, perhaps? Or totally-not-gratuitous stormtrooper barracks pillow fights?
@ Kit
Is there anything to suggest they’re conscripts? Like was anxious to go of to some academy; but was prevented from doing so by his uncle.
That would seem to suggest that the Empire’s military is a volunteer based service.
Did he just demonstrate his 100% true geek cred by mixing up Star Trek and Star Wars? That’ll show those fake geek girls. (If he knew what a Star Trek was, he would have been boycotting it decades ago, possibly before he was even born.)
As far as I know, some clone troopers did go on to serve as stormtroopers under the Empire, but even by the time of the original trilogy, most of the stormtroopers were ordinary recruits, not clones. And with their accelerated aging, it’s unlikely that any clones survived until TFA.
They didn’t even make the obvious joke “Star of David Wars”?
I’m offended as a person with a sense of humor.
OK, if, for the sake of argument, we accept not only the notion of “race” and the idea that “race-mixing” is white genocide, isn’t it also black genocide, then? And genocide of whatever other “races” are being mixed?
No wait, that would at least be consistent, so of course it doesn’t.