Taking the #BoycottStarWarsVII Troll Seriously
On Oct. 19, Twitter user End Cultural Marxism tweeted “#BoycottStarWarsVII because it is anti-white propaganda promoting #whitegenocide." This tweet provoked a heated discussion about the casting of the hugely anticipated sequel, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, to the original trilogy.
The film features a lead black character called Finn, played by John Boydega. The other main characters include a young white woman, Daisy Ridley, and Oscar Isaac, a man of Guatemalan and Cuban descent. The Twitter user End Cultural Marxism (Twitter handle: @genophilia) called director J.J Abrams an “anti-white nut” and a “Jewish Activist.” This tweet about the cast was met with both outrage and a shocking amount of support. Those supporting the tweet claim that casting a black lead is a form of discrimination. They even go so far as to describe it as "white genocide."
These accusations were met with some resistance.
And so the debate goes. Some say it's racist to cast a minority as a lead in a film saga that has been predominatley white. Others say that it's' racist to think white people have the right to lead roles in film. I agree with the latter. But there are others, like the End Cultural Marxism troll, who seem to think that having a diverse cast in a Sc-Fi movie is a threat to white people.
The level of drama and discussion begs the question: are these “trolls” really just “trolls?" Urban Dictionary (the online appendix of modern expressions) defines a “troll” as “one who posts a deliberately provocative message to a newsgroup or message board with the intention of causing maximum disruption and argument.” So basically trolls are immature people who pick fights via online insults for fun. People claim that the #boycott tweet was not sincerely rascist, but just wanted to be “controversial” to start a Twitter fight for his or her own amusement. I do not think this is the case. I took a good look at the End Cultural Marxism user page, as well as their personal blog.
End Cultural Marxism has long been involved in non-Star Wars related Twitter conversations using hashtags like #ISaluteWhitePeople. The user appears to be a young woman in her twenties who, according to her Twitter bio is "fed up with political correctness". Through her personal blog “Destroy Cultural Marxism”, she self-identifies as a “critic of Cultural Marxism” who believes that “cultural Marxists intend to commit genocide against white people through mass non-white immigration, assimilation, transracial adoption and miscegenation.” She sincerely believes in concepts like “genophilia” or “the love of one’s own race” and that the United States as a nation should strive for “racial homogeneity.” So basically #boycottstarwars was not a troll hashtag. It was not a silly internet prank made to push Twitter's buttons and irritate Star Wars fans. That tweet was a bold, sincere and radical racist call to action.
So the fact that this tweet turned into a debate worries me. It shows that people see this radical thinking as a point of view to be discussed, and not as a problem to be addressed. One proud Twitter user named “Captain Confederacy” accused this film of being "non-White" and created by “Social Justice Warriors.”
If people are seeing social justice as a threat, then we really do have a problem. Mainstream radical thinking worries me. This is 2015. In the United States, we have had a black President for eight years, and yet people are just as shocked at a black storm trooper as they were at the interracial kiss on Star Trek in the seventies. It's actually ironic if you think about it, since Darth Vader (the main character in Star Wars and one of the most iconic movie characters) was voiced by a black man, James Earl Jones. Fans pointed this out, as well as the fact that George Lucas is married to an African-American woman named Mellody Hobson. Both the orginal trilogy and the prequels featured black characters, Lando and Mace Windu.
So black people have been around for awhile. It has been established that the “galaxy far far away” has a diverse population. But for some reason viewers still can’t deal with that. This is not the first time people have protested diverse lead characters in movies. People were upset with the black leads in The Hunger Games, The Fantastic Four and Annie. People were upset with the new black/hispanic Spider-Man cartoon. People are genuinely threatened by seeing a black, hispanic, or female leads on television.
Twitter trolls are not just trolls anymore, they are young members of our generation who share values similar to those of war criminals of the last century. And that worries me.
