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:
@Alan
Don’t even go there.
I know Return of the Jedi tends to get the most flak out of the original trilogy, but if you tune out the Ewoks, it’s still pretty good. It has the best space battle of the films by leaps and bounds.
Also, I’d recommend giving Rebels a try. The first couple of episodes might feel a bit inconsequential and “kiddie” (for lack of a better term), but there are a couple of major drama bombs throughout the season that make the show’s tone more serious over time.
Return of the Jedi is my favorite and it makes me sad that so many people rag on it. Sure, it’s got weak points, but it’s also got Jabba the Hutt, and the Emperor, and Boba Fett with a jet pack, and Admiral Ackbar saying “It’s a trap!” and…
Since people brought up the Ewoks and Return of the Jedi, here’s a relevant article y’all might find interesting.
Return of the Jedi is my favorite too.
But I unironically love the Ewoks.
I like the Ewoks too. Maybe it’d be different if I’d seen Return of the Jedi as an adult. As a kid I loved them so why change now?
This is funny because of the topic of this post. My phone autocorrected Jedi to Jewish. I guess Google is in on the conspiracy!
@ Gipsz
The Holiday Special is interesting in that it shows the only example I can think of in the entire Star Wars universe of high platforms having railings.
Ironically the railing gives way and somebody dies. Actually maybe that’s why people in Star Wars don’t use them; they haven’t figured out how to build them properly. In all fairness, this was long long ago.
If you do regard Empire as the last one though, the trilogy has a happy ending.
The terrorists are defeated, an illegal mining operation now has to pay its fair share of taxes and a drug smuggler is arrested and brought to justice.
Here are some more things I find ironic.
1) Stormtroopers were originally based off Nazi Germany SS troopers. Point being Lucas made it blatantly clear that the stormtroopers are actually the bad guys, and then they get mad when a bad guy is not portrayed by a white actor, and they call it “white genocide”. Both actual Nazi SS soldiers and Stormtroopers are obviously evil, and they are insisting the evil side of the force can only be portrayed by white actors. Even if I were an actual white supremacist myself, I would still laugh at them because they are pwning themselves so hard.
2) The only thing good about this “boycott” is that I think it will prove the overwhelming majority of star wars fans are not racist people, just as George Lucas himself is not a racist. This movie will do very well at the theaters, and this “boycott” will be borderline-irrelevant.
@PI
A stormtrooper haka directed at these whiny little racist brats would make them pee their pants like Niagra Falls, for any variant of a Maori haka is the most. Badass. Thing. EVER.
*watches the beginning of All Blacks matches just for the haka*
@ caketasty
In what way are the stormtroopers “obviously” Evil?
There’s nothing in the films to suggest that. They’re just the military of the Empire. An Empire that Leia was a ruling member of. Which does of course make her murdering of her own employees even more problematic.
@Alan
The same way as the Nazi soldiers. They were also just soldiers following the orders of their government. That didn’t help them in court, or in the court of public opinion.
Sbel: Only a few of the top Wehrmacht officials were ever tried. The rank and file were not, and it wouldn’t have made sense to, because they were mostly conscripted.
No joke, Attack of the clones is the first, and I think only, movie that I walked out of the theatre. Usually I’m too brown to walk out of a movie after paying for a ticket, but this was the one movie that completely overcame my ethnicity
Were the Stormtroopers specifically based off the Waffen-SS? If anything, they seem to be more Wehrmacht than Waffen-SS due to the grey uniforms; the Waffen-SS wore black dress uniforms and camouflage battle dress while the Wehrmacht only adopted camo right at the end of the war.
They are very clearly based on the German military, though: the sharp grey uniforms are a giveaway. Nothing makes you look quite as good when conquering things as Feldgrau does.
What could you try any of the Imperial military for?
There’s nothing in the original films themselves to suggest that the Empire is particularly bad. The films (apart from ESB) pretty much glorify terrorism.
@Alan:
In the first film, we have evidence of at least two deliberate attacks on civilian targets (Uncle Lars and Aunt Beru’s farm, and the destroyed sandcrawler), one attack on a consular vessel, several counts of execution of prisoners and one count of torturing a detainee. There’s also the minor matter of blowing up Alderaan.
The stormtroopers seem obviously ready to execute any order, regardless of how insane it is. They allow Darth Vader to do cold blooded torture, too. It’s not a bad thing per se, but it’s a thing that dictators want.
And the empire, in addition to all the connatation on his name and his esthetic, is obviously at least as bad as the Nazis, given that they are willing to destroy *planets* to stop insurrections, which in my book is a crime against mankind. In the “it’s clearly an authoritarian state”, the executive power put the parlement under arrest after removing most of its power, and have the liberty of directing enormous amount of money directed in secret projects without supervision of any kind.
And the stormtroopers visibly know of all thoses shady stuff, given they are the main staff for anything important. Once again, no stormtrooper bat an eyelid when the first death star destroy a planet.
So, the stormtroopers, as the visible and willing arm of a governement, are the bad guy and evil. They could be worse in that they don’t spontaneously abuse their authority and only follow order, and their superior seem a lot worse. But they aren’t just the army.
The only way to not cast them as evil is to supposed they all are brainwashed, mentally controlled, or blackmailed into obedience. Given the universe, it’s completely possible, but it’s not really hinted at.
@EJ
Imagine if a US senator had stolen files illustrating all the weaknesses in the American defence system and wad trying to get them to Al Qaeda. I don’t think anyone would feel the FBI should be too constrained by claims of diplomatic protection, especially whilst under fire from the purported consular vehicle.
We have no idea what happened at Lars farm or the sandcrawler. It’s easy to imagine Lars kicking off though and presenting a threat. Jawas don’t seem particularly law abiding either, and they’re routinely armed.
Interrogation is a controversial subject, and some people get squeamish about it, but most people will recognise the safety and security the Empire brings so I don’t think they’ll be too fussed about some mild discomfort to a few terrorists.
I can’t remember any examples of killing prisoners, it was the terrorists I’m the habit of killing in cold blood and with no warning.
As for Aldearaan, it was a major terrorist hub and Training ground. It was a completely legitimate target, like Dresden, Hiroshima and Afghanistan. Unfortunate but necessary.
@Alan:
Attacks, detention and searches of ambassadors and consular vehicles or premises are violations of articles 22 and 29 of the Vienna Convention. Even the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese, scarcely the most humane of governments, respected this. (Check out Raoul Wallenberg’s actions in Germany. Dude was badass.) Diplomats routinely make contact with dissidents and spies as part of their duties and don’t forfeit their protected status as a result. C’mon dude, you know this. I know I don’t have to explain international law to you.
Re Lars and Beru’s farm: Lars is depicted as a peaceful man who dislikes young Luke’s glorification of warlike stuff, trying to encourage him to live a farmer’s life; I’m not sure how hard he would kick off that would justify killing him and Beru and then burning the place. Nonetheless, even if he did resist, that doesn’t justify a wholesale massacre. Even the South African police during the Apartheid era generally frowned on arson.
The fact that the stormtroopers disguised the incident as the acts of a local ethnic minority is pretty much proof of a guilty mind: if what they were doing was kosher then there was no need to do that. The risk of local farmers taking reprisals against the sand people and so kicking off a spiral of ethnic violence was evidently not a problem to them. These aren’t the actions of a lawful police force, but of an occupying army.
Interrogation is, as you point out, a difficult issue. I think we differ on that, but then I’m a pacifist and you’re not, so reconciliation might be difficult.
Re prisoners: Execution of prisoners happened when Leia’s diplomatic ship was captured at the start of A New Hope. Those rebel soldiers were clearly under the protection of the Geneva Convention, being as they were uniformed members of a regulated military group, even if the conflict was not of international character.
Re Alderaan: I seem to remember Tarquin destroying it only after they received confirmation that it wasn’t a military target.
@Alan
I suspect you’re having fun trying to come up with convoluted ways to spin the Empire as the good guys, but it’s not really working at this point. The whole Death Star plans thing, for example: first of all, the Death Star is not a defense system, it’s a terror weapon. And the theft of the plans would be more akin to a Nazi official (or a spy posing as one) leaking information about Nazi weapons to the French resistance.
As for stormtroopers (and other Imperials), I think the consensus on them is that they range anywhere from bastards, through otherwise ordinary people who found themselves in the military by circumstance, to idealistic but naive soldiers who don’t realize they’re propping up a totalitarian regime. One of the Expanded Universe stories (which is no longer canon, but interesting nonetheless) depicted the Death Star gunner as being utterly horrified by Alderaan’s destruction, and when it came to destroying Yavin IV, desperately stalling for time, just hoping that something would happen to prevent it. (“Stand by… stand by…”)
@ EJ
Well even if the Vienna Convention applied it’s not quite as robust as people think. For a start the conventional protection only exists for legitimate consular activities. Using consular property for terrorism wouldn’t count. (we busted an embassy here for running an illegal currency exchange business)
There’s also the fact that the Emperor almost certainly has the power to revoke diplomatic immunity anyway. That’s how Federal government works.
As to Lars farm and the sandcrawler, how do we know this all wasn’t the result of some Tatooine gang problem? We only have Osama Ben Kenobi’s word that the Empire was involved, and he’s quite candid about his lying to Luke to motivate him for his own ends.
The blockade runners crew were guilty of perfidy, that’s a war crime and even under earth law that might remove them from protection under the various conventions. They can therefore be executed under criminal law.
And let’s not forget the terrorists, not only did they kill who knows how many of Leias own former employees on the space station, Leia also quite happily blew up Jabbas palace when the only people left there were, possibly trafficked, sex workers.
Tarquin knew Leia was lying about Dantooine so it was a legitimate assumption, later proved correct, that Alderaan was the correct target.
@ Gipsz
The big space station is akin to our own nuclear deterrent systems, like Trident in the UK.
Some people call them terror weapons. In a way they’re correct, deterrence works on fear. But that doesn’t make them illegitimate.
If an MP or senator did leak details of the nuclear deterrent to an enemy, whilst a handful of CND types might applaud that action, I suspect the bulk of the population would overwhelmingly regard that act as treason and expect the perpetrators to be dealt with accordingly.
Now then Alan. You of all people shouldn’t be caught in an argumentam ad populam fallacy. Just because the bulk of the populace would regard such a person as a traitor and demand their punishment doesn’t mean it’s necessarily the right thing.
To give a real life example of that, Nelson Mandela’s imprisonment faced protests because the majority of South African citizens (read: a majority of the white minority) wanted him hanged as a traitor and a terrorist (which he was) rather than allowed to live in jail. In that case, of course, treason and terrorism were the morally right thing to do, and he should have been lauded for it instead of imprisoned.
The public interest is not the same as what the public are interested in. You’re the person I learned that from.
Ha, good point.
However an appeal to popularity is relevant in the context of Leias actions.
If the bulk of the far away galaxy’s population support the military project, whether for Defence reasons or just the boost to the economy such a building project would entail, then Leia just demonstrates her contempt for democracy.
Still, it’s nor surprising to find an elitist Streak in a Princess.
Your argument is irrelevant because the death star was a *secret* project, and not a public effort. There is no comtempt of democracy when denouncing a project that is secret to the public.
In other word, the support for militarism don’t mean all form of militarism, even the secret project, are automatically approved. Because of that, Leia’s action are in good faith ; at the very least, stealing thoses document provide her with a way to show the secret projects that should be made in plain light.
Also, the fact that the public is actually consulted for the project is a big leap of faith in universe, especially since one of the first thing that happen in episode IV is the dissolution of the senate.
The death star may have been constructed with an eye to security, a sensible precaution in view of the subversive elements at large, but it was known to the public. It’s rationale as a deterrent required that.
Getting rid of the Senate isn’t necessarily anti democratic. it just removes an irrelevant layer of professional politicians. The average being in the street wasn’t affected one iota. From what we see in the films the Empire is a very light touch regime. It’s model of governance just seems to be one of subsidiarity.
You can see how political elitists like Leia would be threatened by that. It puts her out of a job.