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:
I actually have to grant that the “Chimpout guide” was pretty funny, if only for the the “time machine” bit. But sadly, that was probably unintentional and I’m still feeling like I lost valuable brain cells in looking at those stupid memes.
What I’ve never understood about “Planet of the Apes” is why the Apes would build a Statue of Liberty as well.
Isn’t Lando Calrissian a black character from the beginning?
” Or Chuck C. Johnson.”
Handy, since you never know when ol’ Chuckles might decide to poop on the floor AGAIN.
No, because they share the typical social conservative obsession with “purity” and know fuck-all about genetics.
Happy Cat,
Sure, but Lando is a gambler and a con artist, so these guys probably called it “realism.”
Nequam,
Alasdair says he doesn’t know what’s going on, but this happened last year for a while and it might be an unpaid bill. He’s emailing Kyra.
#BoycottStarWarsVII proving that you can’t spell ‘Shit lords’ without ‘Sith lords’
I’ve noticed that most other places reporting on this are calling the bigots “Trolls” (as in assholes who lie about what they believe to piss people off, not as in assholes who say exactly what they believe to piss people off) and the mockers “Freaked out/hysterical/angry” – even while linking to Twitter accounts filled with years’ worth of pro-Hitler rhetoric and quoting tweets that say “LOL!” Cluelessly assuming the best in men and worst in women, or deliberately covering for racists?
@Orion: I thought it might be something like that. Britishhorrorfilms.co.uk had something like this happen to them. I hope they can get it straightened out– I like them.
@Argenti
unfortunately this poster was part of a display put up by a local community organization *in a government building*. I’d say something but my guess is there’s not much they can do since it’s one part of a fairly large display from a mainstream organization so they’ll actually run into free speech issues if they try to take it down.
Alan: Fair point, there’s an episode of Star Wars: Rebels where Ezra infiltrates Imperial Cadet training, and those members seemed to be voluntary as well.
(Kit’s point that Imperial Stormtroopers aren’t clones is valid)
Han Solo used to have been an Imperial officer, back before Disney ditched most of the media.
Given that most of the Imperial command crews in the original films were white men, presumably stormtrooper training:Imperial Academy::boot camp:West Point.
@ leftwingfox
Ah, not familiar with that. As far as I’m concerned Star Wars is just the original three brilliant films. That is to say:
Star Wars
The Star Wars Holiday Special
Empire Strikes Back.
Or a training montage in their underwear for some reason?
I’m hoping we eventually get the hot tub stormtrooper scene from Lego star wars added back into the original movies.
For serious though, even if Attack of the Clones definitively established that every stormtrooper ever was a clone, that’s the worst movie in the whole franchise. Why the hell would people be up in arms about violating the canon of a really shitty movie we’ve spent the past 10 years trying to forget?
Alan:
Someday I’ll learn the code:
I thought that at some point (the Dark Empire comics? The Thrawn trilogy?) it was established that they stopped using clones because the emperor wanted to make sure he had a monopoly on the technology so it was only used from then on he only cloned himself.
Right, but Star Wars no longer has a single canon. The prequels violated the EU and this one is also set to violate the EU. So the choices they make are not fundamentally about “factual accuracy,” to the extent that that’s even a meaningful phrase, but about artistic choice.
Which is as it should be. Being completely beholden to a canon just means being forced to comply with someone else’s artistic vision, and in this case, parts of that vision are really shitty. They can and should simply be abandoned rather than forcing all future films to drag along George Lucas’ worst ideas.
The Empire not using clones for Stormtroopers has been referenced a few times, but Clone Wars/Rebels is considered Canon with the new films, last I checked, which is why I tend to reference them.
Local soldiers make more sense than clones, really. If you need to send people to die abroad, clones are great, because they have no family ties; you suffer no political consequence for their loss. As a domestic occupying force though, that becomes a liability. By getting locals integrated into the force, it makes rebellion more costly as you have to face family members or neighbours under the helmets.
‘
I’m just imagining all the Stormtroopers doing a Maori war chant and being on the receiving end of that.
http://i.imgur.com/gCwdZhG.gif
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Cb8sCrhrXEY/UQBXfzoMCYI/AAAAAAAABe4/m4PsZ8SILAA/s1600/django-meme-generator-madam-you-had-my-curiosity-but-now-you-have-my-attention-1c91f2.jpg
Well, the clones were only used because the Republic had no standing army (!!)* and needed to get something up and running ASAP because they were about to declare war on the Separatists.
I expect that shortened life span is only one of the long-term problems with the clones, and the Empire transitioned over to recruitment as soon as it was feasible.
*I believe the excuse was, one, member systems used their own forces when needed, and two, there was shenanigans in the Senate blocking funding.
Oh, also, one of the ideas behind the Grand Army was that it was loyal to the Republic, and not to any of its members, to avoid any divided loyalties.