When I heard Colbert making jokes about the white supremacist movement boycotting the latest Star Wars movie, I thought he was kidding and forgot about it. But, no, it’s a real thing, as Emma Grey Ellis reports in Wired. She concludes:
The alt-right aren’t the first extremist group to use this strategy. “There are clear points of comparison with how the Klan protested against film in the 1920s,” says Tim Rice, a film studies lecturer at St. Andrews University and author of White Robes, Silver Screens: Movies and the Making of the Ku Klux Klan. “These protests—then and now—seek to position the group as an underdog and the threatened minority.” And, just like the Klan, the alt-right holds up media as a symbol of the problem, so any criticism they receive can be dismissed, or used to reinforce their arguments.
But the KKK cracked up, and so will the alt-right. The group is already splintering into rival factions, and their ambition far outweighs their power. The group’s last big boycott called for people to #DumpKelloggs after the brand pulled its ads from Breitbart, and that call to action hasn’t halted Special K consumption. It’s doubtful that the fringe group will have any more impact on Star Wars—let alone Disney—than they did on the cereal giant.
I see this as a recognition by the supremacists of the power of storytelling – and their natural dread of it. They realize that the story will depict some awful fate that may await supremacists in any galaxy, and that the story will make an argument that such a fate is inevitable. Just as evil quite often breaks into self-defeating factions, as Ellis reports the supremacists are exhibiting at this early date, the story makes assertions that will discourage future potential recruits from joining the supremacists’ little hate groups. And if their little hate groups don’t grow, then the leaders are stuck with their little teacup of power, their influence will remain static and begin to wane, and … the country will end up laughing at them.
Rogue One may be the first strike in the war against the supremacists, but it’s a lot more civilized than the last time we had to deal with white supremacists.
That was called The American Civil War.
