Anakin Posting and the Thin Veneer of Chud Fascism
The right has re-embraced the 'Star Wars' prequels recently—and played the same old trick in their tired playbook in doing so.
The right is obsessed with Star Wars again. But this time, if you believed them, it was in a celebratory fashion.
In recent weeks, the terminally online wing of conservatism has seemingly put aside one cultural trend—"Malfoid," or the mysoginistic concept/transphobic fever dream of a female Draco Malfoy from Harry Potter—and replaced it with another in the form of the Star Wars prequels. Instead of the usual right-wing approach to the culture war, this time posters weren't screaming and crying over the presence of minorities or women in the galaxy far, far away, but rather insisting that 20 years of re-litigating the prequels was, in fact, about the acceptance of Anakin Skywalker as a conservative icon.
Spaces like Twitter have become flooded with "Anakin posting," brooding shots of the fallen Jedi of Revenge of the Sith conflated with ideas that his descent into being a tool of fascism had nothing to do with the almost-literal embodiment of evil whispering in his ear, and more that the Jedi and the Republic, stand-ins for liberal democracy, ostracized Anakin until he had no choice other than to kill a bunch of kids and usher in the Empire. The prequels, and their long-restored reputation, instead become always-loved darlings of a bygone age that we must return to. Elon Musk is posting the absolute worst photoshops of "what was stolen from us," in the form of Anakin sitting on a jagged throne surrounded by Imperial guards, Goth Padmé, and the faces of his adult children photoshopped onto the bodies of toddlers.
Naturally, as is often the case with any clash in the culture war, detractors on the left have taken to correcting this fallacy by returning to the text of Star Wars. "Media literacy," they cry, pointing to the obvious flaws that Anakin's transformation into Darth Vader is not inspirational hype moments and aura, but the tragedy of an angry, idealistic young man pushed down a dark path that consumes him, body and soul, in the process. Elon and his cronies just don't "get" Star Wars, because they're stupid, and if they only just listened to us, they'd understand how wrong they are.