The picture above is the death of Mace Windu. It has a lot do with the rise in fascism and Nazi-love online. And J.K. Rowling knows it better than most of us.


Okay, let’s take a step back, because that sounds insane.



Let’s start with PewDiePie. He’s a YouTube star — the YouTube star, really, with around 50 million followers. That’s about as many people who voted for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. It’s a huge number — and he’s made a lot of money off that following. But recently, that empire began to crumble. A tasteless joke with a strong anti-Semitic vibe caught the attention of those who help him monetize that audience and, effectively, they dropped him. This Vox article outlines the details and makes the case for why Pewdiepie isn’t just an innocent provocateur who danced too close to the edge. You should read it, because J.K. Rowling has, which is what brings us here today.




J.K. Rowling is the author of Harry Potter. She’s rich, famous, and — she wrote Harry Potter. There’s not much else to say about her fame, wealth, and following. If you follower her on Twitter, you know she’s an outspoken critic of fascism, Donald Trump, and the Nazis now somehow rebranded as the “alt-right.” I know about the Vox article above because she tweeted about it. It got me to read the article. Many of PewDiePie’s fans to came to his defense in her mentions. They argued that Rowling doesn’t watch PewDiePie’s videos and doesn’t get his shtick. They argue that PewDiePie is just a rookie comedian who is still trying to find the line between funny and offensive. And they argue, probably correctly, that PewDiePie isn’t a Nazi himself.

But none of that is the actual issue here. Whether PewDiePie is a Nazi is not the right question to ask. Whether he is in emboldening actual Nazis is.


We already know that PewDiePie has become a celeb of sorts in the online Nazi world — if you need evidence of that, read that Vox article again or read these tweets. PewDiePie’s defenders will claim that Nazis are simply co-opting him, and he’s an innocent party who never intended to provide them with such fuel. That may be true (and as one who assumes good faith, I’m willing to grant that it is). But it’s also irrelevant — because what happens next is in the hands of his fans.

What Rowling knows — and what I’ve experienced as a dad, as you’ll see — is that a small group of fans can make very convincing things out of small hints and clues, and those spread — even about simple, unimportant trivia. Take that picture of Mace Windu comes from The Revenge of the Sith, the best of the Star Wars prequels, which isn’t saying much. Windu is about to kill Chancellor Palpatine, the just-revealed Sith lord, when Anakin intervenes, cuts off Windu’s hands, and Palpatine Force-lightnings Samuel L. Jackson’s character out the window. Windu falls to his death, presumably.


Presumably, though, is the key word there. Losing your hand in battle is something of an occupational hazard for Jedi — Luke loses his to Vader in Empire Strikes Back, Anakin loses one to Count Dooku in Attack of the Clones, and Anakin returns the favor toward the beginning of Revenge of the Sith. A Jedi can survive without a hand (and, in fact, can get a new one). Falling great distances? That’s also something Jedi can do. Luke, again, survives the Cloud City battle with Vader despite a precipitous drop, and there are other examples of Force adherents jumping or falling great distances and surviving. (In various novels, both Palpatine and Darth Maul survived their apparent falls to death.) It’s possible — possible — that Mace Windu is alive. But don’t take my word for it: type “Mace Windu” into Google and autocomplete — that crystal ball of collective knowledge — and you’ll see “Mace Windu alive” is one of the top searches.


That’s most likely garbage. Windu losing his arm was likely an homage to other examples of Jedi losing their hands. Him being tossed out the window was likely an easy way for the filmmakers to show the power of Force lightning while killing off a character. When Revenge of the Sith came out in 2005, it’s incredibly unlikely that George Lucas — especially given the lack of nuance in the prequels — was thinking “Windu is really alive and you’ll see more in 2018.”



But if you ask my tween sons, they’re convinced otherwise. Convinced. And that’s the scary part.


Go back to that Google search and you’ll see another autocomplete suggestion: “Mace Windu Snoke.” There’s a fan theory out there — a well-developed, incredibly detailed one — which argues that Snoke, the evil mastermind in The Force Awakens, is actually Mace Windu. It’s a hotly-debated theory and its acolytes point to a bevy of “evidence” — Windu could have survived, his last act was (as Anakin correctly notes) was “not the Jedi way,” and my personal favorite, that his purple lightsaber shows the tension between good (Obi-Wan’s and Anakin’s blue lightsabers) and evil (Vader, Palpatine, and Dooku’s red ones), in the same way that Luke’s green lightsaber apparently shows that he’s not yet committed to a side. And so on. The big video on this runs for more than 17 minutes and has nearly five million views.


Seventeen minute of hints and clues which, to outsiders, are invisible. To us insiders, myself perhaps included, they’re neat little references to the rest of the series and add some depth to the story. And to the die-hards, these are clues to the One True Way: Windu is alive and, by the way, he’s Snoke. If you haven’t heard an 11 and 13 year old passionately argue this point, it’s hard to fully experience the thrill of being one of these insiders, invited into the secret circle by some convincing YouTuber who popularized the theory.



Now, not all of the Star Wars superfans buy into this theory. Some are of the “you’re nuts, dude” camp. Fans bicker, sides are drawn, etc. That’s not the important part. The important part is that these ideas take on a life of their own, changing the fan experience. I’m not asking you to take my word for it though. I’m asking you to take J.K. Rowling’s. Because she lived through it in a way that a few of us will ever experience. For a while, Harry Potter fans concocted a well-articulated theory that Ron Weasley was a time traveler who came back as Albus Dumbledore. Rowling, in 2015, ultimately said no, “false theory.”


And like that, the theory died. A whole community of Ron/Dumbledore Truthers felt their movement come to a thud. The same will be true when Star Wars Episodes VIII and IX come out — we’ll know who Snoke is, and the Mace/Snoke Truthers will fall on the ash heap of adolescent history. Some of us will grow up wondering why we wasted our time concocting and arguing over such bullshit. Others will remember that time wistfully. But either way, it’ll be over. Ultimately, the storyteller decides what actually happens.

Rowling knows that power. And she knows why PewDiePie’s casual jokes about killing Jews is dangerous. Right now, PewDiePie’s followers have bought into his narrative just like my kids think that Snoke is Windu, and just like some of Rowling’s fans were convinced that Ron is Dumbledore. But those two are about works of fiction and, ultimately, unimportant. That narrative that PewDiePie’s followers have bought into is very real and very dangerous. They now believe that you can use references to Hitler and genocide and fascism for laughs without putting real lives at risk. You can’t.


PewDiePie can stop this from spreading among his fans and stop some some of them from becoming dangerous. He can stop it by telling his fans that what he did was unacceptable, even though unintentional. He can delete the videos where he approvingly references Nazism and uses its imagery. He can make videos showing contrition and asking his followers to help those who are victims of fascism and bigotry. He can do what any regular person would do when an actual Nazi says “hey, man, thanks for supporting us!” and say “fuck you, I don’t support you, you fucking Nazi!”

J.K. Rowling gets this. She knows that when her fans run in a direction with her story that isn’t the narrative she wants, her words matter. Just like she was the only person who could definitively say to her fans that Ron was not a time traveler, PewDiePie is the only person who can definitively say to his followers that jokes about killing Jews and comparing your popularity to Hitlers are beyond the pale. Until he does so, he’s in the wrong.


PewDiePie, and we, should listen to J.K. Rowling.



Unless he’s trying to support Nazis, in which case, he can go fuck himself.