Anakin Skywalker memes have gone viral with Generation Z posting them stating that they identify with Anakin. This has been dubbed as right wing and can’t understand why the youngest adult generation is identifying with the man who would become Darth Vader, one of cinema’s most iconic villains.
It’s because Anakin is a revolutionary.
What side of the political spectrum has claimed Anakin as their own is irrelevant because Anakin Skywalker is not an ideologue. This isn’t a subset of the population identifying with a fictional character because that character shares the same politics as they do.
Anakin doesn’t care about whether a republic or an empire runs the galaxy, only that there is a system were rules are enforced and the politicians serve the will of the people. This is made clear when he and Padme, who he will later marry, debate on Naboo in Attack of the Clones. In that debate, we also learn that Anakin will support dictatorship if the policy makers don’t sit down and govern in the best interest of the people.
This is great example of how consistent his character is because it shows Anakin as an enforcer, something that he would be as Darth Vader. But unlike Vader, who is hallowed out man enforcing the Emperor’s will, Anakin’s view is a just one, that the political systems should do the will of the people elected.
And we know Anakin has this view, not because he’s a strong supporter of the Republic, but because he’s a compassion guy who wants a better life for people like his mother, who’s enslaved on a backwater planet, in a whole section of space called the Outer Rim where the Republic law’s are a suggestion. A place where the protection of the Jedi does not extend to.
Palpatine is the ideologue. The chancellor is the one who hates the Republic and the Jedi. The secret dark lord is the one committed to tearing down the Republic. Anakin is the guy who goes along with the Jedi and the Republic until he realizes that the political system is corrupt, broken, and isn’t serving the people.
Anakin is the one who wants change for the better, not to settle some thousand year old grudge. When Anakin gets into vulnerable situation personal situation with him having visions of his pregnant wife’s death, just as he did with his mother, he gets manipulated by Palpatine into helping overthrow the Republic and the Jedi.
What we here is what we have seen time and time again throughout history: a person that isn’t strongly attached to a political system, sees that it is broken and working against them, then tears it down when they get desperate enough. Ankain is the boots on the ground revolutionary. He’s not the one sewing the propaganda against the current system, nor is he the one promising an alternative system.
Anakin is a disillusioned citizen, a jaded member of the elite, and a concerned father. He is reflective of the average, largely apolitical person who is more concerned about those they love and the political system providing for the common welfare for it’s people than the label of that system or who rules it.
Anakin does not care about who holds the power, and we never see him espouse the superiority of one system of government over the other. When he’s on Mustafar and Obi-Wan asks Anakin what he has done, Anakin says he has “brought peace, freedom, justice and security to my new empire.”
Only one of those things is a complete lie and that’s freedom. Whether Anakin brought justice is debatable, but not that he brought peace and security.
What he doesn’t say is anything that suggests a monarchy is better than a democracy. Anakin doesn’t lead by saying he has helped to forge a new empire, because he’s not a political theorist concerned with what form of government is the just one. Anakin thinks he has fulfilled the tasks that all good governments should do, and puts that first when he answers Kenobi.
At this point of the story, while he’s not the black clad cyborg that we all know, Anakin has been named “Darth Vader” by Palpatine, has yellow Sith eyes, and has massacred the Jedi Temple, including the younglings.
The Zoomers who are making the memes aren’t identifying with the character, who is evil at this point, they are identifying with what he says about the old sociopolitical system and his good hearted nature of wanting a government who brings peace, security, justice, and chaos, not war, insecurity, and injustice.
And people are identifying with Anakin’s struggle. Anakin starts out as a boy who believes in the Jedi and spends most of his life doing as they said, trusting that this established wise order of space wizards, knows what is good.
This trust is slowly eroded as Anakin “sees throughs the lies of the Jedi.” He falls in love, but has to marry the woman he loves in secret because of Jedi dogma, and he can’t have a family, including the mother who raised him.
Young people are identifying with Anakin because they too feel that they cannot have a family, not because space wizards told them they can’t, but because they believe it’s too expensive or that the dating system has been broken.
They identify with Anakin because they trusted in the system, did what they were told, went to college, were promised the American Dream and are now underemployed and drowning in student loan debt, only to find a substantial portion of the older generations, who told them college was the path to the American Dream, that their debt shouldn’t be wiped away, despite them only following the path they were told to walk, only to find out that you need experience for an entry level job.
So, when Zoomers and younger millennials watch “The Revenge of the Sith” and see Anakin join the Jedi Council, but not granted the rank of master, despite being a talented Jedi who has done all that was asked of him, they think “I know how what that’s like.”
Anakin Skywalker represents the disgruntled backbone of any revolution, the part of the revolution that isn’t ideological, but practical. Anakin’s the portion of the movement that burns down the old system. He isn’t the one penning revolutionary works inflaming people against the current Regime.
Anakin is in the crowd tearing down the Bastille and the Berlin Wall, in the hope that he can build a better system on the ashes of the old. This is clear when in Episode Three it is Anakin, not Palpatine who dedicated himself to destroying the Jedi and the Republic, leads the clones into the Jedi Temple to destroy the Order
The tragedy of Anakin Skywalker is a reminder that political systems are “instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed” in order to secure the “unalienable Rights” of the people such as “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” It’s also a warning that the just desires of those who see a failing system for what it is can be used to manipulate people into committing atrocities.
More importantly, the memes and the identification with Anakin reveal that we are living in revolutionary times. People are not identifying with Anakin because of his crimes or because he turns into a villain. The youth are identifying with Anakin because they find themselves disillusioned in a system that isn’t working anymore.
Like Anakin they have trusted in the system, doing what the traditional institutions have instructed them to, and are worse off as a result. And like Anakin they don’t view on type of government as superior over the other.
What they want is a system that protects “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness,” and they will head Jefferson’s words “that whenever any Form of Government becomes desttructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Then they will follow Anakin’s example.
Whether they achieve what the founding generation, the greatest generation in American history, and build a system that largely secures these rights and puts the wise leaders at the helm as Anakin wanted, or puts a despot in power remains to be seen.
