A social-media campaign built around Star Wars character Anakin Skywalker has become a talking point among right-wing influencers, who present the character’s fall from idealistic young Jedi to authoritarian Darth Vader as a metaphor for political disillusionment. The trend has drawn support from figures including Elon Musk and the U.S. Department of Education, while critics argue that it reflects an exaggerated and confused attempt to turn fantasy characters into reactionary political symbols.
How Anakin became a political metaphor
Christian streamer Kangmin Lee argued that Anakin Skywalker represents a “typical disenfranchised youth” who becomes radicalized after discovering that the “political order” he once trusted is “deeply corrupt, hypocritical and evil.”
Right-wing Substack author Max Mersault described the Anakin posts as “culturally significant,” adding that it would be difficult to design “a better anti-progressive memetic virus.”
Elon Musk, after putting nearly $500 million into Republican candidates this term, shared a supposedly AI-generated image of Anakin sitting on a throne beside his lover Padmé Amidala and their children, Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia. Imperial Guards and Stormtroopers surround the group, beneath the message: “This is what they stole from us.”
Who “they” are, and what exactly was supposedly stolen, is left unclear. For MAGA supporters facing a potential blue wave amid inflation, senseless wars in the Middle East and the president’s historic unpopularity, the details may matter less than the emotional message. The meme promotes a fascist worldview, a desire for corrupt power and continuing frustration over immigration and “DEI.”
The meme’s supporters also appear unconcerned that Anakin was transformed into an evil servant by a decrepit old wizard and slaughtered children at his command. In the political reading being promoted online, that violence becomes the supposed cost of subverting democracy.
From Malfoid to the Department of Education
The Anakin trend followed an incel-adjacent boom in “Malfoid” content. The term refers to a fan-fiction premise that turns Draco Malfoy into a gender-flipped female character and makes her the main character’s love interest. Some users treated the trend as another effective form of reactionary propaganda, describing it as a slippery slope.
The U.S. Department of Education also joined the meme conversation, later updating its post with Anakin images.
Katie Miller, a podcaster and the wife of Trump’s top adviser Stephen Miller, said on Sunday that the administration was similarly confusing fantasy franchises. She posted on X: “The number of seconds users spent posting Anakin with no regrets is zero.”
Claims of a cultural victory
The Republican Party and the tech right are not known for especially coherent analysis of the stories they claim to value, so their comparison with murderous tyrants is not entirely surprising. More difficult to explain is the apparent belief that the message will reach and resonate with well-adjusted voters beyond their specialized social-media communities.
One user claimed that Anakin had become “No Longer a Meme” and represented a “monumental zeitgeist victory.” Alongside the Malfoid trend, another user claimed that the posts had “reversed a decade of cultural corruption and damage in less than a week.”
Outside those online circles, however, the campaign appears no more consequential than playing with action figures. Wanting to be Darth Vader is the dream of a 10-year-old who is told to clean his room and eat his vegetables.
Hayden Christensen, who played Anakin Skywalker in the first part of the series, told Variety in 2023 that the film depicting Anakin’s journey to the dark side “humanized” him while showing him to be “a pathetic human being” trapped in a life he probably never truly wanted.
Conservative influencers connected to a weakened President Trump may be in a similar position, though they are unlikely to acknowledge that their mediated display of anxiety functions as a coping mechanism. Whatever happens in the election showdown, they will probably find another ambitious antihero to adopt—and expect the rest of the internet to treat the next important post with equal seriousness.
Source: www.wired.com