"Culturally Significant Anakin Poasting": A 2026 Midterms Special

This podcast is brought to you by our partisans, Shelby Von Trapp and Bobby Chudhury. If you want to find out how to join up with Saw's Rebels, or if you want access to our bonus episodes, head over to patreon .com slash andorkspod. We're not discussing Andor, or rather, we're discussing Andor writ large, because everything went insane.

The internet, which is famously normal, got even more normal and decided that we're really going to burn through months of discourse in like a 48 -hour period. We have dedicated the better part of a year talking about the intersection of Star Wars and politics, and then... The Democrats account just tweeted it out. Yeah, they just tweeted it out. And then the Nazis went and even further. So it kind of felt like we needed to put together an emergency pod to discuss what the fuck just happened. Yeah. I guess if anybody's blissfully offline, it started. I don't know.

We should have probably made a timeline. It was like five days ago. It was like the Thursday before the election or the Friday. Who started Anakin posting? I don't know. I mean, it got to Elon Musk, which is when I think it hit a fever pitch. Yeah. Let me see. I'm going to knowyourmeme .com now to try to find the origin. They're based on... Why is it talking about Ki -Adi Mundi?

Because they're always talking about Ki -Adi Mundi. In The Phantom Menace, Jedi Master Ki Adi Mundi is among the council members who express reservations about Anakin's training. Which, while later films depict Anakin's resentment toward the Jedi Order, these scenes subsequently became the basis of numerous memes portraying Anakin as a young man who feels misunderstood, rejected, or betrayed by established institutions.

You know, our fan casting of Biden as Ki -Adi Mundi is really holding strong now. It looks like the first post was by... At Architect Oracle on X, the site formerly known as Twitter. Life of Gen Z. College left you in debt for a degree nobody wants. COVID stole your 20s and prime memories. AI deleted the jobs. Rent takes half your paycheck. Boomers still call you lazy. And then it's a picture of Anakin burning on Mustafar.

And at that point. The right basically realized we are exactly like Anakin Skywalker. So I think we actually have to start before that because I don't think this starts with Anakin. I think this starts with Malfoy. I hate that I know what Malfoy is. I think there's a I think this is like a fucking Steve Bannon quote, but it's a it's a paraphrasing or whatever. But he's like American politics is that liberals control culture.

but so desperately want to control politics. And then right -wingers control politics and so desperately want to control culture. Yeah. And I think, I don't know, anticipating a like mental breakdown that was about to happen. Right wingers sort of like decided that like, we're going to go all in on heck and millennials and we're going to turn Malfoy. We're going to force them Malfoy into like a borderline lowly con figure who represents like, what we wish we are, which is like white, but also mean, but then everyone thinks we're hot. It's like we're the evil, mean, rich girl. And that's why they're jealous of us. Yes, none of the girls like us.

So we need to project outside an image of a girl that would like us. Yeah. And so then if that's the aspirational figure that they want, is Anakin then representing the person they think they are? I think, I don't know. I mean, it must be because it also ends up matching reality in the sense that they immediately got their legs cut off and then set on fire. And now everyone's laughing at them. Well, I think they would argue that's what they're arguing is that the cucked media takes a hero like that and then makes him fall apart at the end. That's why it's bad. Anyway, we should talk about how the fucking White House posted one of these. Yeah, it went it went be like this posting started and I was like, you

know, the right has been trying to co -op Star Wars for as long as Star Wars has existed. This isn't really anything special. We don't need to do an emergency podcast about it. And then Elon Musk posted an AI generated Star Wars thing. with Anakin and Padme on the Imperial throne. And I was like, okay, fine. Like maybe there's something here. And then the Department of Education posted anime Anakin. Well, they had posted Malfoy a couple of days earlier. Yeah. Whatever incel is in charge of their Twitter account. Oh God, I'm going backwards here. There's a lot of stuff I had not seen. A lot of normalcy happening here.

But yes, they posted like a Malfoy education meme. Yes, on October 27th, they put there's magic and learning where they have a Malfoy in it just to, you know, wing to their base. And then on October 30th, they posted a AI image. Clearly, I don't know why, taking the artwork from Death Note to have Anakin and Padme and quote, there's magic and learning and then make education great again. And then all hell broke loose. So the question is, like, why is this such a recurring phenomenon? Because culture died 20 years ago and we haven't moved on. And I would even go a step further than that. And I want to quote the Iranian cleric Shahab Muradi.

There you go. Who said, in your opinion, if anyone around the world wants to take the revenge on the assassination of Soleimani and intends to do it proportionally in the way that they suggest, that we take one of theirs now that they've taken one of ours, who should we consider to take out in the context of America? Think about it. Are we supposed to take out Spider -Man and SpongeBob?

They don't have any heroes. We have a country in front of us with a large population and a large landmass, but it doesn't have any heroes. All of their heroes are cartoon characters. They're all fictional. So instead of being able to post, like they can't even like giga post about Trump anymore because Trump has failed them. Like the hero that they have invented. has failed them, and now they have to retreat to Anakin and even gender -bent Draco Malfoy. Well, failing is good, actually. They want their characters to fail.

That's what makes them good. You know, maybe The Last Jedi had a bigger impact than they wanted. I mean, we'll get to the election results, but just the shared agreement that in Woke 7 or whatever, just The Last Jedi will be shown at all hours of the day. I don't know. We can get into this. But I'm just like, clearly, Disney does not know what the fuck they're doing with Star Wars. Like, Adam Driver came out today and was like, I wanted to do Hunt for Ben Solo, but as far as I know, I'm done. Unless they wanted to do something else, in which case, I'm not done. But I do not think that the John Watts trilogy is going to happen. But they have... Andor is just free money on the table. Everyone loves it. Like every time

something like this happens, it gets a huge amount of like viral media. Just throw the fucking cash truck at Tony Gilroy. I don't understand. Behemoth is not getting such good reviews that he's so busy with Behemoth. I saw that Andor rewatches are surging after the midterm results. The Democrats posting Nemec's manifesto. Yeah, so in response to all the right wing stuff, the Democrats account started. tiktok account posted a montage of various clips against nemex manifesto yeah and or fan cam it's also funny because i think one of the things that i maybe is a something i talk about a lot which is that andor does not really have an answer of how to fix like what to do after fascism like it's really good about fighting

fascism and why the dangers of fascism are but it does not offer any like answer so doubling down on just the like The idea of like the Democrats just won this monumental win at the house. What do we do with it? I don't know. It's just actually kind of more emblematic of Andor than they think it is. Yes. The way that everybody is posting the end of episode six with everybody celebrating that the empire has been defeated just makes me think about how. the Empire is able to rebuild out in the outer rim of the galaxy and then come back and just destroy everything right over again.

Okay, so here's a good Anakin tweet I found. It was from Arminius Speaks. Got every one of these as just fucking some Greek statue as our Twitter icon. And quote, the prequels at the end of the day are about a young man trying to claim what is rightfully his and he's treated with suspicion, contempt, or even outright hatred because of it. He wants skill, power. influence, order, hierarchy, and isn't afraid to tell people that. He kills the guilt that he used to feel for wanting what he should have. It's remarkable how relatable all of this is actually for young men. Made to feel guilt for who they are, denied what is rightfully theirs by birth, villainized by a weak, corrupted, aging republic that has

long outlived its usefulness. Fortunately, everyone seems to be on the same page as us. We're going to reclaim what is ours. And the AI image of Anakin. un unmarred on a throne with uh sexy padme and evil in evil dress i can only describe it as like the dress when you're evil and then two baby luke and baby leia i i saw another one that was talking about how anakin was being held back by all the dei hires on the jedi council who were clearly inferior to him and like pointing out like Mace Windu was holding Anakin back, even though Anakin was better than him. I'm like Mace Windu was a million times a better Jedi than Anakin was by any text that you follow.

Even Anakin would say so. It's just fun. It's so funny that this happened before election day. Yeah. Because I think to me. what i think this election proves and we get we'll talk a little bit more about the election after uh in a little bit at behind the patreon wall so we can get real spicy um yeah head on over to patreon .com and orcs pod for and orcs after dark uh a woo um is that the i don't think this election i was just talking to somebody and i'm like we've had one two three four five six seven elections since trump was on the ballot i think that's correct yeah there's yeah i think seven but my point is that like we have not everyone that wanted like the general like revulsion of society

of being like let's get rid of this guy hasn't happened and i think people want to pretend that this election is that and i'm not sure it is I think in some ways these weird right wingers are parallel images to the left of like we need to construct this like narrative that people need to embody. And then by embodying this narrative, they will we can create change when I think it's most of the voters were like gas too expensive.

I think that if it wasn't anything more than gas too expensive, this would have happened any time in the last 10 years. I think that being in California helps me to. understand what the average voter is thinking because every year or every election year we have a variety of ballot propositions and it you can just tell that whichever one is going to win is just the one that is on the tv the most like there's no real coherent ideology to which ballot propositions pass In a massively left -wing blue wave election year, our billionaire tax failed, and we even passed a proposition to make it so that we can never pass a billionaire tax ever again. No, that's not quite correct. The one that passed is the—

I thought it's the no personal property tax one. I think it's housing property. The other one didn't pass. Oh, so that's with personal property. Yeah. I think I might be getting that wrong, I believe. In any case, we have failed to stop, you know, indentured servitude through the prison system. We have kept the death penalty. And, you know, at the end of the day, Trump won with the promise of deporting people and starting a trade war with China and starting a war with Iran. And people did go for it. And now it's just, oh, when we see it actually playing out in front of us, that's when people, I guess, don't like it. And they'll just forget about that in another five years. I guess it's finally

like Trump won on a promise of like two things, like I will make things cheaper and also no war. And he just blew through those things immediately in like six months. Maybe my memory is wrong, but did those things happen the last time he was president? Because I don't remember. We did not go into any new wars, really. No substantial boots on the ground wars. Sure. And we were coming off of, and the economy was doing fairly good after coming out of Obama. It was churning for a couple of years there. So we got the benefit of the doubt there. But the Democrats still took over in those midterms. But there was not a huge wave. But then it all it didn't take long for, you know, Trump to get a huge wave and he won

and got everything along with him. So it's hard for me to imagine this blue wave lasting for very long. Again, to to use the Star Wars analogy, like it didn't take that long for the first order to show up. And Trump is even still in office right now. Yeah, I mean, I guess the question to me is I don't, this does not mean that there is not somebody who can find other juice, but Donald Trump has a unique control on the American psyche by being a TV figure who's existed since the 80s, that he has just like 50 years worth of mass awareness. He has battle, force battle meditation. He can connect with people from across the nation using his mental powers. Yes, exactly.

But I don't like, he cohered everything together. And I don't know, look, I'm sure they'll find somebody who they'll immediately just all glom onto and I'll look like an idiot. But like, unless you're getting like Joe Rogan to run, I don't see any other way that you can recreate that like. that people will buy into because there is nobody who is that... They don't even need to be trusted, but just prominent in society.

Again, we have no heroes. Who would it be? That's why they have... Malfoy is going to run. They're going to Hatsune Miku a presidency. We're going to have our first Vocaloid president soon. Fuck, that's just a Black Mirror episode. God damn it. I just... Yeah, I don't know where we're... I think eventually we'll just sort of like end up in like two, we'll just be in like a very balkanized country where like New York and California and various states and cities have like functioning governments. And then it's a little bit Mad Max y outside of those places. And we'll just keep trudging along. I don't really see any, I don't see any great like reorganization of society happening in either direction. I mean, society

will keep falling apart, but we're not, I don't see any real movement forward. Like I don't, I'm glad. I got to live out for 24 hours. I have no fucking idea what the Democrats are going to do in office. No idea. And I am very plugged into politics. I have no idea what the actual coherent plan is, what they're going to do when they get in there. I saw a recording of a conversation with Elisa Slotkin, senator from whatever state she's from. Sorry, Elisa. I believe Michigan.

Sure. No, we love Michigan. Thank you, Michigan. She was talking about going to Hungary and meeting with, you know, the politicians there who just, you know, overthrew their authoritarian dictator after 16 years. And what she learned from them was that they basically had within each of their, you know. committees and avenues of power they they found star cases in which they could prosecute and make an example out of the remnants of that prior administration the thing that concerns me is that the examples that she pointed out were things like building the east wing of the east wing nobody cares Nobody cares. And what is the reflecting pool? These areas of graft and yeah, no one gives a shit about that. She

did also name Jared Kushner, right? As like somebody who has obviously profited off of it. And so that's where I'm like, that is a good idea. We want to prosecute people. That'd be fun. But they're going to find the dumbest way in which to prosecute people is what I'm worried about. And then Trump's just going to pardon them. Yeah.

There's the issue of it's the right thing to do, but that the voters who matter will not care. If the price of gas, if the price of diesel, if the price of eggs does not come down, they don't care if the person who... voted to make this blue wave happen will not care. I mean, the helpfulness is that it will still be a anti Trump wave. Trump is still president for two more years. So the next wave will just be still a reaction to Trumpism. So I think the Democrats are actually, if they were a functioning political party, would be in a really good position in two years because then they are very close to getting to 60 because they've won in seats this year that they should never have won in. And

then the next cycle are much more favorable seats. We're looking at Mississippi right now. The problem with that is our House Majority Leader is Hakeem Jeffries and our Senate Majority Leader is Chuck Schumer. And I saw somebody from the Israeli government posting about how Those are both strong friends of Israel. And so as much as we want to say the genocide in Palestine and people's moral objection to that helped fuel this blue wave, I think the storm walls are up to prevent that from leading to the kind of change that we want to see happen. Trump already announced that basically we're going to stop. And Netanyahu's fine with this. we're going to stop giving weapons to Israel and we're just going to let Israel

buy them from our giant military industrial complex. Like there's no actual difference to it. Yeah. I think Netanyahu referred to it as we're growing up and we're going to start just buying things that's supposed to be given them. Like that's, they have plenty of money. Let's just keep buying it. That doesn't actually functionally fix the issue. I mean, it's nice that we're not, our taxes are not paying for it, but we still have a state that is basically undetachable from the military. So I don't fucking know. What do I know? I'm a fucking Star Wars podcast. I just want to talk about some good posts. If I can make one more Star Wars reference, we have our beloved Mon Mothma lead the rebellion to victory.

And then what does she do? But immediately disarm it. And if I hate to prognosticate about the future, I have been wrong about. Just about everything that has happened over the last 10 years. But I hope that one doesn't come to pass. Disarm what? Again, not prosecuting the outgoing administration, I guess, would be my version of disarming. Coming into power and then not using your power. I just feel like the I guess meme guy. Like, I guess, yeah. Why not? I don't think it fucking matters.

Like, it's the right thing to do and it should be done because it's the right thing to do. But to me, until there's some functional reorganizing of how society works, it's just going to be a little bit worse each year because there's nobody actually interested in building a better vision. It's just a reaction to what already is bad.

Yeah. It's like people who I always get mad at people when they're like, well, that's late capitalism for you. And I'm like, I don't know why you're so optimistic that we're late. We could just be in the prime of capitalism. I don't think we're anywhere near late. It's still working pretty well as far as capitalism is concerned.

Yeah, I just wanted to call out some good quotes. Some good quote tweets of stunking on right -wingers of, that's right, Libs. I've been duped by an elderly pervert and I'm mere hours away from having my cock and balls incinerated in a volcano. Very good. That was from user... At QQQQ. Thank you for your service. Yes. May the force be with you. Where was the other ones? I like these both on my personal account and the Andor account.

Crucially, everyone has decided that The Last Jedi is actually good, which is also great. Where is it? 24 -hour endless loop of The Last Jedi. Director Rian Johnson on every cable channel in North America for the next four years. Actually, every movie is going to be deleted from existence except for The Last Jedi, directed by Rian Johnson, by at Samantha That Arlie. Yes, and then also...

May the force be with you. At informal majesty, The Last Jedi is now the only Star Wars movie ever made. And from at Reed Star Wars, the acolyte is getting renewed after tonight. I also want to quote the call. I don't be sure of Anakin becomes so invested in advancing the political agenda of a weird old grandpa that he loses his wife and becomes estranged from his children.

So he has a very good allegory for right wing men. And I think if anything best described our podcast, it was at murder with which is right wing Star Wars discourse. The destiny of the West now hinges on how many hype edits of child murder we can use to juice midterm turnout. left wing Star Wars discourse. There's a new three foot -tall annoying alligator man, and he is my best friend. That's it. Congratulations to Biddy Blaze for being elected to the Senate in Alaska. I hope you serve us well. The problem was that they also had someone named Biddy Blaze spelled B -L -A -Z -E, and they're not sure if people voted for the right one. If I can share two to Ernest. that are Andor related. I know,

I know. The first is from Maggie Lovett, deputy editor of news over at Collider, who said, I would like to sincerely thank Andor. It may be purely anecdotal, but I've seen folks on Facebook who have never spoken out politically and always leaned right, using Andor to express themselves for the first time and finally lean left. The first time I read that, I thought... I thought Oprah. I don't think that Andor made those people left. However, what I do think is that art provides us with a voice that we do not necessarily know that we have. It provides us with words that we ourselves are not as smart enough to put together in the way that Tony Gilroy is able to turn a concept into poetry, right? And when it is done

well, it can resonate with you and you can carry it with you into the real world. And I guess that's the best version of what Andor and what Star Wars and what art can do, which is that it can give you new vocabulary with which to engage with the world around you. I think that's a fair framing of it. I think people just so quickly go to, this is the magic show that's going to solve everything. And if people just watch the show, magic will happen. I mean, that's where the show's ratings going up now. Watching Andor should not be high on your priority list after this election result. High on your priority list should be signing up for our Patreon at patreon .com slash andorxpod. Now that's going

to help fuel the rebellion. Yes. No, I mean, it's, it's, it's, I think, do we want to, uh, do I, oh, I was gonna say, do we want to talk Digger, but maybe we should, uh, Mike just texted. Yeah, we're gonna go ahead beyond the paywall now to talk to the very first Andorx elected official. But yes, an insane thing that is true.

That's the end of the... free portion of our and orcs detour emergency episode head on over to our patreon at patreon .com slash and orcs pod where for just five credits a month you'll get access to this full episode including our conversation with the very first and orcs endorsed elected official mike van gorder along with our bonus episodes like our Talkin' Tony miniseries going through the filmography of Tony Gilroy and our episode going through the rise and fall of the Galactic Empire. Check that out at patreon .com slash andorkspod. Later, dorks.

"Culturally Significant Anakin Poasting": A 2026 Midterms Special

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