**Star Wars Was Always a Boomer Myth — Transcript & Summary | SozAI**
Source: https://sozai.app/transcript/star-wars-boomer-myth/

Pageau argues the Anakin Skywalker memes reflect a crisis in the 'World War II consensus' story, and warns against embracing satanic inversions of failing narratives instead of seeking a better story.

## Key Takeaways

- The Anakin meme trend is read as a symptom of the breakdown of the post-WWII liberal narrative in Star Wars.
- Pageau argues that embracing inverted or 'satanic' versions of failing stories is the central danger of this moment.
- Authoritarianism and self-declared revolutionary power are presented as real dangers that the original story was meant to warn against.
- He advocates grounding cultural narratives in Christian structures of self-sacrifice and unity.

## What the video covers

- The host opens by noting a recent surge of Anakin Skywalker memes online and says he is revisiting a video he made about Star Wars symbolism roughly ten years ago.
- He ties the meme trend to political frustration after the midterm elections and to disappointment that Donald Trump did not deliver on his promises.
- The meme's origin is traced to a Substack post, 'Getting Sith Pilled on the Boomers', by Upper Canadian Cavalier, reacting to Jordan Hall's commentary.
- The host argues that Star Wars was originally a boomer revolutionary story: a diverse rebel resistance against a monolithic, European-coded Empire evoking Nazism.
- He claims the 'girl boss' and diversity tropes criticized in the sequels were already present in the original films, with Princess Leia as an early example.
- He describes how long-running stories crank up their volume to hold attention, and eventually only their side effects remain, which he sees in the sequels.
- He reads Anakin's conflict with the Jedi Council as a parallel to young people being told to sit down and stay without a stake in authority.
- He argues Pageau's earlier thesis: the Empire is associated with light and order, while rebels, and Jedi mind manipulation, correspond to darkness and subversion.
- He warns that when a story fails, people may embrace satanic inversions of it, such as rooting for the Empire, forgetting the real dangers of authoritarianism and self-appointed revolutionary power.
- He concludes that the solution is a better Christian-rooted story emphasizing self-sacrifice and unity in multiplicity, and he closes with a plug for a book and a tour announcement.

## Chapters

1. 00:00 The Rise of the Anakin Skywalker Memes
2. 01:11 Political Context and the Substack Origin
3. 02:28 Star Wars as a Boomer Revolutionary Story
4. 03:33 Story Volume, Side Effects, and the Sequels
5. 04:47 Anakin, the Jedi Council, and Youth Frustration
6. 05:59 Empire as Light, Rebellion as Darkness
7. 06:59 Satanic Inversions and the Danger of Authoritarianism
8. 09:23 Toward a Christian Narrative and Closing Remarks

Answers

## Questions about this video

What is the origin of the Anakin Skywalker meme trend discussed in the video?

The host traces it to a Substack post titled 'Getting Sith Pilled on the Boomers' by Upper Canadian Cavalier, which Jordan Hall reacted to. The speaker says the meme gained momentum around the midterm elections amid political frustration.

Why does the host think Star Wars was always a 'boomer myth'?

He argues the original films told a revolutionary story of a diverse rebel resistance against a monolithic, European-coded Empire evoking Nazism, which he describes as the mythology of the post-WWII consensus. He says diversity tropes like Princess Leia were already present in the original films.

What solution does the host propose for the breakdown of this narrative?

He argues against embracing satanic inversions of failing stories and calls for a better narrative rooted in Christian structures, such as self-sacrifice and unity in multiplicity. He warns that rooting for authoritarian power forgets the real dangers the original story addressed.

## Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

00:00

Speaker A

The past week or so, there has been a huge rise in a certain meme online that many of you might have noticed, which is the Anakin Skywalker memes. And so, I thought we could talk a bit about this.

00:13

Speaker A

You know, 10 years ago, I made a video about the symbolism of Star Wars in which I hinted at some of the problems that were in the way that the light and the dark force were formulated. And in

00:25

Speaker A

many ways I've been hinting, of course, talking about the end of the World War II consensus about how this would lead to kind of embracing of, could say, the Empire side of the story. This is something that's been around for a little while. You know,

00:42

Speaker A

I remember up to 10 years ago there was a bit of the, you know, the Empire did nothing wrong or the kind of Vader did nothing wrong imagery. But it's just interesting to see it kind of flare up

00:54

Speaker A

at this moment. Of course, at the moment, during the midterm elections of the US election, to a large part due to the fact that the Republicans lost the midterm elections, there's a kind of frenetic energy around that and a kind of

01:11

Speaker A

despair or, you know, nervousness at watching how, for many people, uh, Donald Trump did not deliver what he had promised, etc., etc. It seemed like the uh meme started with a post, a Substack post. I get this from Jordan Hall, who

01:29

Speaker A

reacted quite eloquently to it, uh, by someone called Upper Canadian Cavalier. And the post is called "Getting Sith Pilled on the Boomers." And of course, in this post, this uh anon here sees exactly, you could say, the problem of

01:46

Speaker A

the World War II consensus story, which is how the entire Star Wars ethics, the entire Star Wars story, was at the outset a boomer story, a revolutionary story, a story about the rag-tag group of diverse people resisting the monolithic empire. And you

02:08

Speaker A

know, I've been hinting at this for a little while also in some of my videos.

02:11

Speaker A

Many people complain about the new Star Wars movies, of how there was kind of girl boss, Mary Sue type characters, and you know, how it was diving into the kind of diversity, DEI type of stuff. But the truth is that all of that was already in

02:28

Speaker A

the original Star Wars. Princess Leia was already the girl boss in those stories. It wasn't as bad, of course, as the later versions, but it was already kind of there, you know, in the original Star Wars movies. And the whole

02:42

Speaker A

idea of the resistance being kind of diverse aliens, uh, versus the, um, Empire, which was obviously all kind of these European men, and was that meant to represent the Nazi regime, was all there in the original Star Wars. And like I've

02:58

Speaker A

said many times before, you know, there, it's a good story. Hey, there's a reason why it was so powerful in crystallizing a vision of the world, crystallizing a kind of narrative. But of course, like all stories, if you play it out long

03:11

Speaker A

enough, then the side effects of that story start to appear. And then you see it. That's what the sequels have been.

03:18

Speaker A

This is what the recent movies have been. In some ways, now, you could say that the positive or the life-giving elements of the original story have run out, and all that's left are the side effects. And you know,

03:33

Speaker A

because as you crank the volume up, you know, when you tell a story and you try to get people's attention, and as you struggle to get people's attention, you keep cranking the volume up so that people who aren't caring anymore start

03:46

Speaker A

to pay attention again. But of course, at some point, very loud things become very annoying. And so this is, of course, the case. And in the original post, uh, "Sith Pilled on the Boomers," this guy also shows this

04:01

Speaker A

idea that in some ways Anakin tried, wanted to do right, wanted to care for his mother, wanted to help her as she was a slave, wanted to do what is right. And the Jedi Council were afraid of him and were trying to keep him out,

04:19

Speaker A

because for all these kinds of technical reasons, that he was too old, that he had, you know, that he had attachments, he had a mother, all these things. There were all these reasons why they knew that he was the most powerful Jedi, but

04:32

Speaker A

they also tried to keep him out. So this has in some ways become an image of the young person today who is being told to sit down, as is written in the article, as Anakin is told to sit

04:47

Speaker A

down when he encounters the Jedi Council, to be there but not participate, and to not have a stake and to not have a role in the authority, even though they would be the best

04:59

Speaker A

person to do that. And so there's a kind of reversal where everybody is now seeing the Empire as an image of order, seeing the Empire as an image of light, actually, which is something that I tried to explain in my original

05:16

Speaker A

video 10 years ago: that in fact the Empire isn't really dark. The Empires are light. Empires don't have to act in darkness. You know, rebels have to act in darkness. Rebels have to be subversive and tricky and do all

05:33

Speaker A

this kind of behavior. You know, you see that, by the way, when the Jedi manipulate other people's minds. It's super interesting that that is somehow the light side of the Force. So when the Jedi get someone else to believe

05:46

Speaker A

something that they don't really believe in, because their mind is too weak, and manipulate them into saying things that they don't want to say, that is somehow the light side of the Force. But clear authority and clear rules and

05:59

Speaker A

clear hierarchy are the dark side of the Force. So anyways, I don't want to go back into the video that I made a long time ago. But I see that people are becoming more and more

06:08

Speaker A

attuned to the fact that Star Wars is the mythology of the World War II consensus. And as it breaks down, people are of course exploring the other side.

06:19

Speaker A

And you know, this is in general what I've been worried about: how, instead of appealing to a better story, people are going to embrace satanic versions of the stories that we have. And so, of course, if we see the problem of the Resistance

06:36

Speaker A

and we see the problem of the rebels, then the Empire must be right, the Emperor must be right, you know, Anakin, Darth Vader must be right, etc.

06:47

Speaker A

If we see the problem with the World War II consensus, then those that were the enemy in World War II, maybe they were the good guys. This is the danger of coming to the end of a

06:59

Speaker A

story: to simply embrace the satanic version of the story that is failing. But then when we do that, we also forget the reason why the story was there in the first place, which is that there are

07:14

Speaker A

dangers, especially the World War II story. There are, of course, dangers of authority. There are dangers of, let's say, taking it on yourself to bring about justice, to declare yourself the leader.

07:25

Speaker A

And this is, of course, one of the problems of authoritarianism: because it is ultimately in some ways self-declared and revolutionary, it often struggles with its legitimacy, and therefore does have to impose its power through force.

07:42

Speaker A

And so the memes go pretty far. Obviously, we have to take them with a grain of salt. There is a humorous aspect to the memes. And we also have to understand the frustration of young people who are wanting, who are seeing

07:56

Speaker A

in Anakin someone who only really wanted to do right, and not only wanted to do it, but had the power to do it.

08:03

Speaker A

But because the boomers, because the people in power, were basically ineffective and corrupt, this person is not allowed to do it. And when he does try to do what's right, and to do the right thing, then he is chided

08:23

Speaker A

for it. And, you know, I obviously read the article. If you're interested, you could read it. It's worth reading. It's very frustrating because it's clearly AI-generated, but the ideas in

08:35

Speaker A

the article, despite the fact that it's AI-generated, seem to have some, you could say, thought put into them.

08:46

Speaker A

Of course, my uh my response to the to the basic first vision of this was is in the movies, you know, there are these two moments that are quite despicable, of course, when Anakin kills the Jedi children and when

09:01

Speaker A

uh the planet is destroyed in the first movie by Darth Vader. So, I thought, wow, this is crazy. Why would anybody embrace this? But to to be fair for to the article, the author points out how these have are not really real stakes,

09:16

Speaker A

right? And I felt that when I watched the Star Wars movie myself, which is that how could Princess Leia watch the destruction of her entire civilization and then at the end of the movie, she's smiling and joking, giving medals to to

09:34

Speaker A

the rebels. You know, there's absolutely no sense of the real tragedy of what supposedly has happened. And the author says that this is simply to to suggest that the empire bad, right? That the empire is bad. Here they are doing a

09:48

Speaker A

genocide. Therefore, they are evil. Um, but as is suggested by the author, he said empires, you know, don't tend to do that. Empires don't want to destroy the lands and the peoples that they are dealing with. They want to rule over

10:03

Speaker A

them, right? they basically want to receive uh taxes and receive money from the lands over which they rule. Um, of course I think this person is missing some of the imagery is missing the idea that at least in the 20th century the you

10:20

Speaker A

know the national socialist if of course they did want to let's say invade France and take taxes and and and get power from France or invade these different places in Poland and get power from these places. They did want to

10:35

Speaker A

eliminate the marginal people, right? they really did want in some ways to uh eradicate those that didn't fit into their kind of ethnostate. And so this is a real thing. And so although I understand that in the movie it's

10:50

Speaker A

clearly just treated as a here are the villains, we have to remember this kind of purity because the type of nationalist purity that existed at the beginning of the 20th century was not limited to the Nazis by the way. It was

11:05

Speaker A

something that existed in many nations that was kind of this nationalist moment that that already was there during during uh World War II and led of course to the great population displacements after World War I. You know, the mo the

11:20

Speaker A

moving of the Armenians, the moving of the Greeks, this kind of this this appeal to the nation state as being a solution to the crumbling empires. So it's not like the Nazis themselves uh simply came up with this idea of kind of

11:34

Speaker A

ethnational purity. It was already in the air all over the place as the the Second World War was coming about. And so this is why we have to be very attentive. That is as we watch the World War II story collapse, you know, we see

11:49

Speaker A

some people trying to grasp toward that idea of a kind of uh ethnoist purity.

11:56

Speaker A

And you know in moving in that direction we're going to cause all the same problems that we had in the 20th century. This is not the solution.

12:04

Speaker A

Actually the real solution or the true solution is something that is looks more like empire in the real sense. I don't know how it you know can exist today but empire in the sense that empires are always multithnic. Empires are not you

12:19

Speaker A

know pure puritydriven. In fact, empires always need to be able to kind of compromise and to assimilate uh all these different peoples, give enough of a unitary vision so that we can feel there's something in common, but also

12:34

Speaker A

leave a lot of place for difference and for diversity to exist within the empire's borders. Of course, in the west, this is something that people I think for a very long time struggle because in some ways the west was so

12:45

Speaker A

isolated. When I mean the west, I mean like France, Germany, uh England, these places were in some isolated from the the Silk Road or the kind of Mediterranean uh uh world and but the Byzantine Empire had to deal with

13:00

Speaker A

multiple ethnic groups. Even during the Byzantine Empire, you know, for the time of Justinian, for example, there even different Christian groups that coexisted together within the empire.

13:11

Speaker A

You see that when the Aryans and the and the Orthodox Christians or the non-caledonians kind of coexist. You see it of course later in the Russian Empire when Mongols and Muslims and Christians have to exist on the same territory.

13:24

Speaker A

There are ways to negotiate a multiplicity within a kind of empire vision. And so we have to be very cautious when we kind of look, you know, as we see this World War II story collapsing, simply looking in nostalgia to, you

13:40

Speaker A

know, the thing that was to the other side of World War II, we're going to run into the same problems. And so this is why I do believe that, and I've said it many times that of course I think

13:50

Speaker A

Christianity is the only solution to this problem. You know, when you look at the Anakin Skywalker memes, what you see is, of course, Nietian will to power and this idea that Anakin should have grabbed power, right? Anakin had every

14:06

Speaker A

right because he was the one with the most power. This gave him a kind of natural right to seize power and to uh let's say uh wield power and display it.

14:17

Speaker A

But of course we know that this type of behavior is the pagan behavior, right? It is the it is the theogy image. It is the image of Kronos, you know, in his power castrating his father. But then because he castrates

14:34

Speaker A

his father, then he is forced to eat his children. And so the will to power, especially in a political sense, is extremely dangerous. You know, when you simply think that because you are the most powerful that that gives you the

14:47

Speaker A

right to rule, you know, then you have the problem which is that you have no legitimate legitimacy of rule except for that power. And therefore, what comes downstream from that is violence uh you know and worse things than simple violence, let's

15:05

Speaker A

say. And so this is why I think that we have to look again to the structures of Christianity to the image of identity in self-sacrifice the idea of course of you know multiplicity in unity the possibility of all looking towards the

15:22

Speaker A

same thing but also accepting the multiplicity that that manifest itself in that unity. There really is no other solution. If we move too much into the reaction to the end of the World War II consensus, then we're simply going to

15:37

Speaker A

repeat the same mistakes. And not only repeat them, but at this point, we're going to repeat them in a way that will be uh far worse than the way that uh it went, you know, after World War I.

15:53

Speaker A

So, these were just a few meditations. I kind of understand why people find it funny and people, you know, like to see the uh everybody freak out, you know, because they're trolling with this kind of Darth Vader meme, but we nonetheless

16:06

Speaker A

have to remain attentive and wise to what this is signaling. And if the imagery of the Empire was the Nazi image, right? That's how it was represented in the in the movie. That is all the imagery of the empire, you know,

16:24

Speaker A

the stormtroopers and everything around that was clearly like based on Nazi imagery, you know, toying too much with the sympathy for Anakin and toying too much with the sympathy for Darth Vader is a very thinly veiled sympathy uh for the other

16:40

Speaker A

side. And so uh so hopefully this is a a meditation and you know I've been the I'm one of the ones of the people that said we have to find a way to reintegrate that side uh you know into

16:53

Speaker A

culture and so but in doing so man do we have to be careful you know and we have to do it in a way that is not simply a nostalgic longing for what if the other side had won what if you know the empire

17:08

Speaker A

had uh had ruled. And so hopefully this is helpful to you somehow. And uh you know don't forget you can check out this very old video that I did 10 years ago looking at the symbolism of Star Wars

17:19

Speaker A

and how it is inverted in its structure. And hopefully that will help you also understand you know the seed of the problem that is there in the World War II consensus story that has been there from the beginning and uh yeah and we

17:33

Speaker A

need to find a solution out of it. So thanks for your attention everyone. Don't forget to get your copy of Valentino Taylor. This story actually has to do with trickery and it does have to do with the dark side you could say

17:47

Speaker A

of the force in the real way that is you what do you do when you are marginal?

17:52

Speaker A

What do you do when you you don't fit? How can you use uh subversion and trickery uh in some ways to be able to resist uh evil and to resist the enemy?

18:01

Speaker A

So very uh worth thinking about right now. One last thing I want to say is I am going to be on a tour, cruise tour of Alaska. It's going to be a mix of a tour and a pilgrimage. We're going to visit

18:12

Speaker A

the holy sites together. It is from July 31st to August 7th. Of course, the places are extremely limited. This is going to be an amazing experience. Uh you can spend, you know, the week with me on the boat. We're going to stop.

18:24

Speaker A

We're going to see all the holy places and venerate the relics. Uh, and even if you're not Orthodox, for sure it's going to be an interesting time to kind of discover how Christianity came to Alaska. And of course, Alaska is a

18:35

Speaker A

beautiful place. And so, we'd love to see you there. We will post the details in the descriptions of how to sign up for this amazing opportunity. So, thanks everyone for your attention. I'll talk to you very soon. Bye-bye.

Topics: Star Wars Anakin Skywalker Jonathan Pageau World War II consensus memes Darth Vader authoritarianism Christianity mythology symbolism

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