New Star Wars Trailer Stirs Nostalgia, Racial Grievance

Looks pretty good. (Also, embedded below.)

The racial grievance angle is white racial grievance, with some neoconfenderates allegedly rankled to see a black stormtrooper.

Now, if you remember, there was previously a nontroversy about this. Sean Davis came on the podcast a long while back to note that the left was screaming that "conservatives" were in a tizzy over seeing a black man in a stormtrooper outfit. (What, you're saying a black man can't be an imperial stormtrooper? Wake up, kid, times have changed: it's a long time ago in a galaxy far far away.)

But Davis couldn't actually find people complaining of a black stormtrooper. What he found was liberals postulating that the conservatives who exist in their imaginations should be upset by the Black Stormtrooper, and then denouncing such imagined upset; but he couldn't find any actual conservatives bothered by this.

But maybe racial grievance technology has improved since then, because World Net Daily says they've found the white supremacist bots you're looking for.

The hashtag #BoycottStarWarsVII exploded on Twitter Monday, just hours before the release of a new trailer during ESPN’s Monday Night Football game between the New York Giants and the Philadelphia Eagles. The reason: Abrams' movie is allegedly a dream come true for race activists.

"#BoycottStarWarsVII because it is anti-white propaganda promoting #whitegenocide," an account called End Cultural Marxism said. "A friend in L.A. said #StarWarsVII is basically '[Black Lives Matter activist Deray Mckesson] in Space.' Jewish activist JJ Abrams is an anti-white nut."

The Hollywood Reporter found a tweet by a user identified as Captain Confederacy saying, "[Social Justice Warriors] complain about White artists 'misappropriating' culture created by blacks but then celebrate a non-White Star Wars."

"It’s nothing more than a social justice propaganda piece that alienates it's [sic] core audience of young white males,” another user tweeted, the website reported.

Um, whatever.

I think ABC/Disney should be boycotted on other political grounds, but not on this. Even if you're a stickler for "canon," remember, this is not the "Empire," this is the Imperial Remnant. The Empire was blown up at the end of the last real Star Wars movie. Some Imperial hold-outs are rebuilding an Empire, but it's not the same Empire.

So it's wrong to conclude that all the stormtroopers must still be clones. Maybe they were all liberated, and maybe the Imperial Remnant is just recuiting non-clones.

By the way, we don't even know the stormtroopers where (white) clones by the time of the real Star Wars movies. That was never even hinted at (as George Lucas hadn't made up this stupid idea yet). Maybe the stormtroopers were clones in the stupid prequels, but by the time of the original series, most clones had retired and had been replaced by normal non-clone recruits.

Personally, I think this whole "clone" business is stupid, and I ignore it (as I ignore all the prequels), and I'm happy that J.J. Abrams is ignoring this nonsense as well.

Now, is this latest nontroversy real? Remember, the last one wasn't real -- just a lot of hot air from liberals preening and virtue-signaling.

Well, looking at this alleged #BoycottStarWarsVII hashtag, I see zero actual outrage at black stormtrooper, but lots of outrage that someone else was allegedly outraged.

Jim Treacher and Jon Gabriel suspect this is all a put-on by 4chan, doing some low-investment, high rate-of-return trolling:

Whether it's fake or not, I don't know, but I do know, fake or real, we're talking about a number of tweets that can be counted on one hand allegedly expressing this Keep The Empire Racially Pure nonsense.

And then thousands of tweets from outraged liberals, demanding that the Empire finally be integrated.

In the end, I'd say this is a hoax either way. It's definitely a hoax in this sense: There is no idea so stupid that a few idiots don't believe it, and the fact that you could possibly find a handful of idiots who really think that black stormtroopers say something about "Social Justice" says almost nothing about anyone else.

And to run hot-take stories treating this as if it is actually anything at all is a hoax, a deception for purposes of one's own political agitation, whether or not the five or six anonymous people saying this were on the level, or actually just trolls trying to see if they could prime the Outraged Liberal Anger Machine with as little effort as possible.

Anyway, about that trailer: Looks good. All the trailers have looked good.

Which is why it's going to really hurt to boycott it (as I will). But again, not for this stupid reason; just because ABC/Disney/Marvel/ESPN is a very obnoxious and powerful leftist propaganda outfit.

Oh, and Andrew Stiles wants you know how old Han Solo is:

Oh, and some interesting overanalysis by Ben Domenech.

posted by Ace at 02:11 PM

| Access Comments