Elon Musk Posts Star Wars Meme to 220 Million X Followers as Right-Wing Anakin Trend Grows
Updated
Updated · Gizmodo · Nov 2
Elon Musk Posts Star Wars Meme to 220 Million X Followers as Right-Wing Anakin Trend Grows
1 articles · Updated · Gizmodo · Nov 2
Summary
Elon Musk on Sunday posted a Star Wars image of the Skywalker family on X with the caption, “This is what they stole from us,” amplifying a fast-spreading right-wing meme around Anakin Skywalker.
A viral X post viewed more than 1.5 million times helped drive the trend, which recasts Anakin as a symbol of white male grievance and paints the Jedi as out-of-touch gatekeepers.
Other conservative-aligned posts fed the meme, including AI art from the Department of Education and a Halloween post from Katie Miller urging followers to “Find the Anakin in your life.”
The trend has drawn backlash because Anakin becomes Darth Vader in the films, joins a fascist empire, kills Jedi younglings and force-chokes Padme—making efforts to romanticize him especially contentious.
George Lucas has long framed Star Wars as a morality tale for 12-year-olds about resisting tyranny, underscoring the gap between the franchise’s stated message and its latest political repurposing online.