#consumer-subjectivity

     The American public is immensely vulnerable to Fascist rhetoric, and one place where this is very visible is the Star Wars franchise.      I have known Americans, who walked out of the theater after seeing a New Hope, and who thought to themselves "the Empire is correct", or "the imperial social order is equitable and just", or who were simply upset about the fiscal cost of the Galactic Empire losing the Death Star.       As it turns out, the Galactic Empire's excesses are exactly those of the 20th century Axis Powers, this entailing pointless expansionist wars in every single direction, the manufactured emiseration and slavery of every single minority group in imperial space, the pointless wunderwaffe projects, etc. Probably other excesses as well, though of sorts which were either too viscerally disturbing for a family friendly laser film (as w/ the widespread sex slavery in Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan), or which simply did not intervene in the plot of an adventure film (as with the mass art theft perpetrated by Nazi Germany and the Kingdom of Italy). Furthermore, as pertaining to the Rebellion, the central political actor in the original Star Wars films, it is not a politically radical force. They aren't communists, or sexual libertines, or even social democrats, but rather liberals; liberals attempting to reestablish the fairly livable way of life from the pre-Phantom Menace Thousand Year Peace. The Rebellion began with discontents within the galactic ruling classes, chiefly from Mon Mothma and Senator Origana Senior, about the excesses of Clone Wars-era Chancellor Palpatine, chiefly in his assumption of 'emergency powers' and complete disregard for term limits or other regular proceedings of Democracy. They'd dedicated their resources to deposing him, and establishing a new Galactic Republic (this is the exact wording they use) once Palpatine is gone in the phase of the Galactic Civil War after Return of the Jedi.      Diatribe aside, the point is that not only is the Galactic Empire not admirable in any respect (and for all the same, often silly reasons that the Nazis were not admirable), but within a liberal point of view, the Rebellion are completely inoffensive advocates for a present-day bourgeois-democratic social order. Jumping and hollering about how much resources were lost with the destruction of the Death Star completely obfuscates its construction using slave labor, its position as the central weapon in the Galactic Imperial system of State Terror, and the opposition therefrom being completely ubiquitous from all areas of the Galactic social order, even people from the highest echelon of galactic society like Mothma and the two Senators Origana.       Though the discourses into George Lucas's gordian knot of power politics, extraterrestrial spirituality, and action figure sales that is the Star Wars franchise have been useful, they have not, however, answered the question posed. Why is it that viewers will go into the Star Wars franchise, and leave in support of the Galactic Empire?       This may, perhaps, be due to the second half of Fascistic rhetoric, the first being the Suicidal Destruction of the Other, effectuated externally through the Fascistic State's total war against its neighbors, and effectuated internally through the Fascistic State's genocides and internal purges. The second half, to the first, is a regression into a dreamt womb of symbols, which provides comfort for the individual Fascist, while neutralizing their reasoning faculties so that their actions, beliefs, and conjectures are never questioned. This is what was observed in Nazi Germany with the constant iconography of the fictionalized blonde aryan woman, as well as w/ the Nazi regime's fixation on Wagner (whose operas are largely uncritical recitations of a Germanic perspective on the universe).       Where this may be found a second time is in the contemporary Right, as with the Proud Boys requiring initiates to be able to recall three breakfast cereals, as with Evangelical Christian passion plays where the crew of the USS Enterprise sing pop song parodies about God and Jesus, as with former U.S. president Donald Trump's constant fixation with fast food brands such as Wendy's and Coca Cola, etc. Star Wars is one of these symbols from the period of a consumerist childhood, which reaches the surface once more in the continually infantilized mindset of the subjectified consumer-fascist, and what does Star Wars have, but a fascistic regime in every single respect?      here may also be the factor of the consumer-subject's fear of radical change, as exhibited in the MatPat video about everything which was destroyed in the destruction of the Death Star in Star Wars: a New Hope.       --