aimmyarrowshigh:

kylosky:

jewish-mccoy:

aimmyarrowshigh:

bluestripeddoe:

aimmyarrowshigh:

jewish-mccoy:

just a not so friendly reminder that both Kylo’s parents are jewish so uh?? maybe consider that idk before you call him a nazi since he’s coded jewish 

A not-so-friendly “hey, you’re absolutely wrong, and I’m a Jewish SW fan who calls him a Nazi ABSOLUTELY FOR A REASON AND THAT REASON IS HE’S MEANT TO BE SEEN AS ONE” –

An integral part of Kylo’s entire storyline as a villain is that he is
ethnically Alderaanian (Space Sephardi Jewish, as far as current canon
can be compared to real-life ethnic and cultural groups) and raised by a
mother who both witnessed the genocide of the Alderaanian people AND
had the responsibility of representing their culture on the Galactic
stage so that their presence wouldn’t be forgotten entirely after the (lowercase-h)
holocaust…

But then he, as an adult man, of his own free will, CHOSE
to reject his heritage and join an explicitly neo-Nazi-coded fascist
military/political junta that existed solely to finish the ethnoracial
cleansing the Empire started in the Galaxy and centralize power under
one tyrannical leader who believes that only human beings (all white, in
the films, although there are some Black FO officers in the
novels/comics) is fit to have independent autonomy. The First Order is
literally called The First Order because “the first order of business is begin [the Empire’s reign] again.”

One of the first acts of the FO/final acts of the Empire was to hunt
down and exterminate all surviving Alderaanians, illustrating that it
was NOT solely a political decision on Tarkin’s part – it wasn’t about getting Leia to reveal where the Rebellion HQ was; he was always going to destroy Alderaan because its culture and governing body were antithetical to the Empire’s ideals and goals and Tarkin himself HATED Alderaan and Alderaanians. (In fact, a lot of the antisemitic stereotypes neo-Nazis and antisemites associate with Jews IRL are traits that Tarkin ascribes to Leia, Breha, and Bail, particularly in that he thinks that they’re manipulative wealth-hoarders who have a secret agenda to take over the Galaxy for their own gain [which, of course, is fucking rich coming from a Grand Moff of the Empire, analogous, of course, to a rank of Reich Minister.])

Further, Kylo Ren chooses, as an adult man, of his own free will, to reject his Alderaanian heritage EXPLICITLY BECAUSE HE IS GIVEN A REASON TO BE ABLE TO SHED THAT IDENTITY. He joins the First Order – again, an OVERTLY neo-Nazis-coded illegal fascist junta, in the movie, which IDK if you saw, but is very overtly coded as a neo-Nazi regime – because he finds out that he isn’t actually the biological grandson of Bail Antilles and Breha Organa of Alderaan, but of Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader. He was not raised as Vader’s OR Anakin’s grandson, but as the grandson of the Organas – he joins the FO very shortly after a statue commemorating the Alderaanian Genocide is erected at the New Republic Senate building (which, btw, Kylo helps to destroy in the FO’s OWN genocide in TFA, because it’s on Hosnian Prime). He violently rejects his Space Jewish identity, and he joins the First Order to prove it.

Honestly, did you watch TFA? Have you read the extended canon materials? I honestly have no idea what the fuck Rian Johnson is doing with his Kylo/FO apologism boner, but Abrams (a Jewish director and writer) and the Kasdans (also Jewish Lucasfilm writers and producers) went out of their way to make the parallels between the First Order/Empire and the Nazis/neo-Nazi movements as nail-on-the-head obvious as they could without literally renaming them. (Someone on here once pointed out that Armitage Hux, the FO’s screamy speechifying figurehead general, even has the initials “A.H.”) Abrams doubled down on making sure that the “Kylo Ren is exulting in being able to disconnect from the Alderaanian genocide” thing by having him KEEP HUMAN ASHES AS A TROPHY, which is OBVIOUSLY rooted in Shoah imagery even if it’s a grandiose departure from reality. (It’s a movie, so of course it is.)

Beyond the fact that their jackbooted stormtroopers are LITERALLY CALLED “stormtroopers,” their film presence as universally White in the upper echelons of power – the dynamics of Rae Sloane, and why she is no longer a part of the FO’s power structure, are something I hope Lucasfilm can explain well, tbh – and Space Racist (their core belief, beyond the radically conservative “central seat of power” form of government they originally advocated for, is that only humans should have power in the Galaxy, as I said above, which is a SUPER common scifi trope for racism), and the fact that Abrams and Kasdan and Lucas have all SAID that they’re meant to be Nazi allegories, there’s the whole “Hux’s FO speech was meant to mirror the Nuremberg Rally, visually and in content” thing, and it succeeds.

Like, basically, Kylo’s parents both being played by Jewish actors – although Driver is not – and Leia and Han being Jewish-coded characters is PART OF Kylo’s characterization as a neo-Nazi. His internal struggle, the Light versus the Dark, his pain of being torn apart, is an extreme hatred of himself. A big part of his canonical anger at his parents is that they never told him that he was not actually genetically Alderaanian, but was raised that way anyway. It’s… like, it’s very much an intentional choice.

I agree with most of your posts, @jewish-mccoy, but you’re not correct on this hot take. Maybe stick to Star Trek meta?

Do y’all ever just chill the fuck out and enjoy something?… Like breathe it’s fiction.

idk can y’all ever shut the fuck up and recognize that fiction both reflects and shapes reality? and that sometimes that means to enjoy something, you have to have a viewpoint and be willing to criticize stuff you love?

@aimmyarrowshigh maybe get off your high horse, since you sent me multiple nasty asks

“A big part of his canonical anger at his parents is that they never told him that he was not actually genetically Alderaanian, but was raised that way anyway.”

This is, to put it simply, bullshit. Kylo canonically knew Anakin and Padmé were his biological grandparents, per Bloodline. He just didn’t know, along with the rest of the galaxy, that Anakin = Vader.

I’m not touching the rest of this with a ten-foot pole, but yeah. If a huge part of your argument relies on bullshit, let’s just say the rest of your argument isn’t going to hold up so great. @aimmyarrowshigh

@kylosky  I have to assume you’re referring to (and misreading, or at least interpreting VERY differently) this passage from Chapter 13, which is the only one that mentions both “Anakin” and “Ben” –

Which, granted, I will give you COULD be read as “Ben will learn that Luke and Leia’s father was not only Anakin Skywalker, but also Darth Vader,” but does not say that. It can also be read the way I interpreted it, which was “your grandparents are Bail and Breha Organa of Alderaan [and Han’s parents, if he remembers them/tells Ben about them/etc] {and we’ll tell Ben about the adoption/birth situation/Vader all at a later date, when he’ll be able to understand it}.” For all we know from this passage, Ben assumes that Luke and Leia grew up together on Alderaan and has no idea that either were adopted in the first place. We don’t know whether Ben knows that Anakin Skywalker ever existed.

I’ll give you that the passage is more vague about it than I recalled while angrily writing about how it’s bullshit to say that Jewish artists (Abrams, Kasdan) don’t have the right to create overt neo-Nazi metaphors (which they themselves say are neo-Nazi metaphors) and have them be respected as such by the audience. The argument that only Germans from 1938-1945 can be called Nazis is bullshit and part of how the “alt-Right” goosestepped their way into the mainstream today. Call a spade a spade.

But anyway:

Leia, throughout Bloodline, as a central PART OF Bloodline, makes her identity still – 25 years later or whatever – about being the child of Bail Organa. NOT Anakin Skywalker. At the very end, because she is forced to by a political enemy, she admits to being Anakin|Vader’s daughter, but Bloodline makes it really, really clear that’s not how she sees herself, and it’s not how she would have raised Ben. Whether you’re right, and he knows he’s not GENETICALLY Alderaanian, or I’m right, and he doesn’t, does not matter as much as the fact that Leia raised him to understand the importance of Alderaan and the tragedy of its loss. Leia’s literal job is to remind the Galaxy of Alderaan through her (largely ceremonial) representation of their diasporic community in the New Republic Senate. You can’t seriously claim that Ben didn’t grow up knowing that his grandparents, for all intents and purposes, were Bail and Breha Organa, and that he came from an Alderaanian family.

Which is also a super Jewish POV! And which he also STILL intentionally threw away to join the First Order!

It does not ultimately change Ben’s choice to intentionally throw away the family he was raised with, his mother’s values and identity, and the importance of the people he was raised to help remember. ESPECIALLY SINCE PADME IS ALSO JEWISH, NOT THAT YOU CARE ABOUT ANY STAR WARS CHARACTER EXCEPT FANON BEN.

Ben was raised by the literal Galactic voice for the memory of Alderaan.

He knew he was Alderaanian.

He made the choice to shit on that legacy when he joined the First Order and become Kylo Ren.

Period.

Like, other than cherry-picking for mentions of Ben, did you… read Bloodline? Do you NOT give a shit about Leia and what Alderaan means to her and how it infused her life? And if so, do you REALLY think that wouldn’t make an impact on how she raised Ben? Leia and the story of Alderaan, especially her feelings towards Vader and the Empire and the First Order rising, are a DEEPLY Jewish story, ESPECIALLY in Bloodline. One of the best parts of the New EU is the way that it’s really brought out in the canon text how much the Alderaanian genocide mattered to Leia and how much she was affected by surviving it. To suggest that she wouldn’t have impressed on Ben how his real grandparents – because Bail and Breha were her real parents, biology or not – were the last Queen and Viceroy of Alderaan… is insane???

You don’t come from a family that survived a genocide by the slim margin of a single individual and NOT know about the family who died, and how they lived, and how you have a responsibility to live for them. Come on.

Ben, whether we agree that he knew about the adoption or not, KNEW what he was throwing away. He knew while watching the Hosnian Genocide what he was supporting. He had the choice to leave every day before the Hosnian Genocide and didn’t, and he had the choice to leave with Han. He chose the Dark.

EDIT: So according to Bloodline, Luke- and Leia’s official story is that they were war orphans, and there’s no clarification whether they acknowledged to Ben (or anyone besides Han) that they knew who their birth father was – Leia does say that “many” in the Galaxy know that Padme was their biological mother, but remember that during Padme’s life (and death) the identity of the father of her unborn child(ren) was a total secret.

But anyway, the entire argument really is “it’s not cool to tell Jewish artists that they can’t use metaphor to communicate their anti-Nazi messages or stories of intergenerational trauma and that if they use metaphor instead of exact realism, it doesn’t count and can’t be acknowledged as an intentional artistic choice.”