As strange as it is to say, Elon Musk has spent the final hours of the midterms, an election cycle which saw Musk become the largest single political donor in American history, posting about Anakin Skywalker. On November 1, the Grok master posted an AI-generated image of Anakin, Padme, Luke, and Leia dressed in Imperial black with the caption, “This is what they stole from us.” It’s not just him. Over the last week, a whole crew of techno-fascists and probably bots have made “Anakin Posting” their final argument for voting Republican today. Similar to the “Thanos Did Nothing Wrong” meme from a few years ago, which was, unsurprisingly, a variation of “Hitler Did Nothing Wrong,” these memes show images of Anakin against captions explaining why he was correct. From the outside, it seems like an obvious misstep. What does the sand-hating Jedi traitor who killed his wife and a whole school of younglings have to do with the affordability crisis or Iran or health care or any of the myriad problems Americans face today? Well, to the world’s richest man, it’s everything.
Many people like to point to “Anakin Posting” as an example of fascists misunderstanding art. But consider the alternative: Anakin Posters do understand Star Wars, and they’re deliberately undermining its message. They like the fascists and want to tweak Anakin’s downfall as an example of systems failing him. Fascists want to control thought, and part of that means reshaping truth. People think of Star Wars as the story of a rag-tag rebellion defeating a fascist empire; fascists want them to think of it as the story of an ambitious, talented young white man being held back by “woke,” “DEI,” “political correctness,” or whatever racist grievance is bothering them today. One meme captioned “white male experience” shows Anakin’s journey going from child “normie” on Tatooine, to a “Libertarian” teen, “Conservative” adult in Revenge Of The Sith, and a “fascist” in Darth Vader. No surprise, they see Anakin’s disagreements with the Jedi council as an “Extremely talented and competent white man” being held down by “DEI hires” like Yoda and Ki-Adi-Mundi.
Star Wars prequel memes exploded online in the years surrounding Gamergate, the online social movement that built the political playbook for our current moment. Sheeveposting was a contemporary of Pepe the Frog on 4chan. It’s all born from the same primordial soup that’s more or less made liking anything online intolerable. They weren’t all fascist, but Star Wars memes were instrumental in reshaping American culture. Not only did the prequel memes help endear the Star Wars prequels to the generation who grew up on them, but they defied the conventional opinion that the prequels were bad. In the years after The Force Awakens, Star Wars became one of the hottest button issues in America, the spark for a culture war that exploded in 2017, when prequel enjoyers could point to The Last Jedi and say, “See: it’s all bad now, and it’s because of diversity.” From their perspective, it worked. Cast members were harassed, and Disney reversed course—not that anyone was happy. The purpose is twofold: One, it normalizes and spreads the fascist ideology using more or less anodyne images, and two, it offers plausible deniability. They’re just joking around online, you see. At the same time, it opened the door to new members whose childhoods are being ruined and who see new Star Wars installments centering people of color or women. Elon Musk’s validation means a lot to people like that.
The last decade should have taught us not to discount these sorts of things. After all, there are a lot of people out there who do think the Empire is cool; who don’t get that Starship Troopers is a satire; and who think Malfoy would make a hot girl. Everyone laughed off Musk’s campaign to save Peanut the Squirrel the week of the 2024 election, and look how that turned out. But there is a desperation in “Anakin Posting,” a style of politics that hasn’t really been in vogue since Musk took over Twitter in 2022. It might be the Star Wars of it all. After The Rise Of Skywalker, the series just hasn’t carried the same cultural weight it used to. Not to mention, the government has been regularly using these Gamergate tactics for years now, posting Halo-inspired propaganda to recruit people for ICE and photos of Trump as a super jacked Jedi with a red lightsaber. No, he doesn’t care that red is the color of the Sith sabre. They know they’re the baddies. They like it like that.
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