The alt-right may soon have their Emperor in the White House, but before they got political to help force Donald Trump into the presidency, the movement was largely focused on fomenting culture wars.
So it's hardly a "Luke, I am your father" surprise twist that the alt-right is now targeting "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" (which, by the way, is really, really good.)
It's hardly a "Luke, I am your father" surprise twist that the alt-right is now targeting "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story"
The alt-right is really a loosely affiliated collection of movements opposing what they call "identity politics" but which are actually called civil rights.
What unites them is the feeling that society's longstanding straight, white male supremacy is being threatened by the scourge of equality.
This has sparked what CNN political commentator Van Jones famously dubbed a "whitelash" to efforts that are aiming to increase racial, gender, sexual orientation and ethnic diversity. We've seen this with video games, comic books, Netflix and now it's come to a galaxy far, far away.
The alt-right attacks began long before anyone had seen "Rogue One," with a call for a #DumpStarWars boycott because there weren't enough white dudes in the film and it starred a...woman!
Back in April when the first trailer dropped, so did a flood of tweets complaining about Felicity Jones' Jyn Erso as the lead character.
When another trailer dropped in August, neo-Nazi alt-right sites ramped up their attacks. The Daily Stormer began calling the movie's multicultural cast a form of "white genocide" while InfoStormer dubbed it "nothing but a Jew masturbation fantasy of anti-White hate. Nearly all of the major characters are non-Whites and the main character is an empowered White female."
But they added: "This film should be boycotted."
Now it seems odd for this to be the reason why these Nazis are suddenly mad about a film series that is so much of an anti-Nazi allegory that George Lucas literally called the bad guys "Storm Troopers" but here we are.
The cast is indeed diverse and, spoiler alert, they're all iconic in their roles.
Alongside Jones' rebel leader are Mexican actor Diego Luna's Rebel captain, Cassian Andorby; African-American icon Forest Whitaker's radicalized Rebel leader, Saw Gerrera; British Muslim actor Riz Ahmed's Imperial defector, Bodhi Rook; and Chinese stars Jiang Wen playing bad-ass insurgent Baze Malbus and Donnie Yen as blind warrior monk Chirrut Îmwe.
The cast is indeed diverse and, spoiler alert, they're all iconic in their roles.
Anyway, the boycott idea soon migrated from Nazi websites to Trump supporters who launched a #DumpStarWars campaign after the election in response to screenwriters Chris Weitz and Gary Whitta, who respectively tweeted "Please note that the Empire is a white supremacist (human) organization" and "Opposed by a multi-cultural group led by brave women."
The tweets were deleted, but Weitz left up this image of the Rebel symbol with a safety pin through it, a symbol of support for marginalized people that began after the Brexit vote and had a resurgence after Trump's election.
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Now the idea that a 40-year-old film series which has always featured a band of upstart rebels battling an authoritarian dictator is about Trump says a lot more about his supporters than it does about the "Star Wars" franchise.
Nonetheless, they got triggered by a movie they had not yet seen and made up claims that it was changed to bash Trump.
Which made them easy to mock.
Thing is, if they want to align with the evil empire and the dark side because "Star Wars" films are no longer safe spaces for them, may the force be with them.
They actually tried to do the same thing for "Star Wars Episode XII: The Force Awakens" because it starred Daisy Ridley as Rey and John Boyega as Finn, and that movie only made a little over $2 billion.
I'm betting that this female-led movie full of scrappy multicultural rebels triumphs over the bad guys in real life, too.
As Trump might tweet: Sad!
So we'll see how "Rogue One" does, but I'm betting that this female-led movie full of scrappy multicultural rebels triumphs over the bad guys in real life, too.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
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