Mopologetics and "Star Wars"
Posted: Mon Aug 17, 2026 9:04 pm
A throwaway remark on SeN caught my attention the other day:
So let's start with the notion that the Interpreter President is somehow like Darth Vader:
Is he? Consider the basic arc of Vader's story: he's a highly promising young Jedi ("the chosen one") who winds up turning to the dark side out of desperation and fear. He has nightmares that his beloved Padme is going to die somehow and so he pledges himself to Lord Sidious in the hopes of learning the dark side powers that can prevent her from dying.
Okay: sure, I can see certain parallels. It's easy to imagine the Afore turning to evil out of fear that he's going to die--i.e., he goes full-blown Sith and engages in a decades-long campaign of bullying and attacking people in the hopes that this will somehow guarantee his entrance into the CK. But the difference is that this kind of "dark alliance" is pure selfishness. In the Star Wars universe, Anakin *is* selfishly motivated: he wants to save Padme for himself, but he also still wants to save Padme. There is no indication that the Afore is aligning with the Dark Side because he hopes it will benefit anyone other than himself.
And then there is the issue of Vader's basic power. There were those among the Jedi Counsel that thought of him as the "chosen one." I'm sure that the Afore has been entertaining delusions along those lines for many, many years, but I doubt anyone else has. And I'm sorry: I simply cannot buy the Brethren as being akin in any way to the Jedi Council. But could one or more of the Brethren be seen as the Emperor? Certainly. What if we view the launch of Mopologetics as a kind of dark-side oath in which Neal Maxwell demanded that FARMS "hunt down" critics in the same way that Vader hunted down and exterminated the post-Order 66 Jedi? It's certainly interesting to think about it in that way.
Above: An analog for Louis Midgley? Or Neal Maxwell?
Of course, I've always been fond of comparing Louis Midgley to Emperor Palpatine, thanks to his deranged and curmudgeonly callousness, along with the rather jaundiced pallor of his vindictive mien. But I could see many of the Brethren also stepping into the role: Packer? Monson? Nelson? Sure: all Emperor-esque. All exuding the menace and dread that one associates with the dark side of the Force.
As for the Afore, I think that better comparisons can be made than Vader. What about Jabba the Hutt, for example?
Frogs, sure. But what about mushroom Swiss burgers? Or cheese fondue? Or date milkshakes? Or chicken-fried steak?
The opening crawl in Return of the Jedi describes him as a "vile gangster." He has the carbonite-encased Han Solo hanging on the wall of his dungeon-palace as a kind of decoration--sort of like how the Mopologists were fond of collecting embarrassing emails from critics to "hang" on the "walls" of SHIELDS. And recall that Jabba seems to spend most of his time lounging around, eating weird frog creatures, being ferried around to festive events on Tatooine via a flying sail barge, and relishing the idea of publicly executing his enemies.
Or, if not Jabba, then what about Nute Gunray?
Gunray first appears in The Phantom Menace as a kind of sniveling toady who's being manipulated by Darth Sidious. Gunray is also the greedy-minded public face of the Trade Federation, and he has a peculiar, hard-to-place accent. Ultimately, he's hacked to pieces by Anakin/Darth Vader, along with the rest of the Separatists towards the end of Revenge of the Sith, but prior to that, he seemed to think that he was going to prosper enormously from his alliance with Sidious.
Anyhow: you get the point. It's interesting to think about other similarities. Perhaps Midgley is more like Darth Plagueis? And is Greg Smith similar to Ochi of Bestoon, the gaunt, sallow-faced killer with buttons for eyes who murders Rey's parents in The Rise of Skywalker?
Well, I will simply leave you with a final thought, which is this: did the bad guys in the Star Wars films ever actually see themselves as being "bad"? Vader tells Luke in The Empire Strikes Back that he wants to "bring order to the galaxy." In any case, I cannot help but think that the "Star Wars" universe offers up quite a rich mode of interpretation vis-a-vis Mopologetics.
May the Force be with you!
The appropriate initial reaction to this, of course, is a hearty roll of the eyes: yes, yet another dumb, self-deprecating remark. "Ohhh! Look at me! I'm so evil! I'm so despicable!" Etc. But it's disingenuous, and actually makes me wonder just how familiar the Afore actually is with the "Star Wars" narratives. Indeed, it actually may be of some value to scholars of Mopologetics to consider the ways that Star Wars can shed light on the phenomenon of Mopologetics. While I understand that the imaginative world of Lord of the Rings tends to be the one that the Mopologists themselves tend to gravitate towards, maybe Star Wars is the more effective interpretive lens?The Afore wrote:It scarcely needs to be pointed out that I’m a far more despicable person than Darth Vader.
So let's start with the notion that the Interpreter President is somehow like Darth Vader:
Is he? Consider the basic arc of Vader's story: he's a highly promising young Jedi ("the chosen one") who winds up turning to the dark side out of desperation and fear. He has nightmares that his beloved Padme is going to die somehow and so he pledges himself to Lord Sidious in the hopes of learning the dark side powers that can prevent her from dying.
Okay: sure, I can see certain parallels. It's easy to imagine the Afore turning to evil out of fear that he's going to die--i.e., he goes full-blown Sith and engages in a decades-long campaign of bullying and attacking people in the hopes that this will somehow guarantee his entrance into the CK. But the difference is that this kind of "dark alliance" is pure selfishness. In the Star Wars universe, Anakin *is* selfishly motivated: he wants to save Padme for himself, but he also still wants to save Padme. There is no indication that the Afore is aligning with the Dark Side because he hopes it will benefit anyone other than himself.
And then there is the issue of Vader's basic power. There were those among the Jedi Counsel that thought of him as the "chosen one." I'm sure that the Afore has been entertaining delusions along those lines for many, many years, but I doubt anyone else has. And I'm sorry: I simply cannot buy the Brethren as being akin in any way to the Jedi Council. But could one or more of the Brethren be seen as the Emperor? Certainly. What if we view the launch of Mopologetics as a kind of dark-side oath in which Neal Maxwell demanded that FARMS "hunt down" critics in the same way that Vader hunted down and exterminated the post-Order 66 Jedi? It's certainly interesting to think about it in that way.
Above: An analog for Louis Midgley? Or Neal Maxwell?
Of course, I've always been fond of comparing Louis Midgley to Emperor Palpatine, thanks to his deranged and curmudgeonly callousness, along with the rather jaundiced pallor of his vindictive mien. But I could see many of the Brethren also stepping into the role: Packer? Monson? Nelson? Sure: all Emperor-esque. All exuding the menace and dread that one associates with the dark side of the Force.
As for the Afore, I think that better comparisons can be made than Vader. What about Jabba the Hutt, for example?
Frogs, sure. But what about mushroom Swiss burgers? Or cheese fondue? Or date milkshakes? Or chicken-fried steak?
The opening crawl in Return of the Jedi describes him as a "vile gangster." He has the carbonite-encased Han Solo hanging on the wall of his dungeon-palace as a kind of decoration--sort of like how the Mopologists were fond of collecting embarrassing emails from critics to "hang" on the "walls" of SHIELDS. And recall that Jabba seems to spend most of his time lounging around, eating weird frog creatures, being ferried around to festive events on Tatooine via a flying sail barge, and relishing the idea of publicly executing his enemies.
Or, if not Jabba, then what about Nute Gunray?
Gunray first appears in The Phantom Menace as a kind of sniveling toady who's being manipulated by Darth Sidious. Gunray is also the greedy-minded public face of the Trade Federation, and he has a peculiar, hard-to-place accent. Ultimately, he's hacked to pieces by Anakin/Darth Vader, along with the rest of the Separatists towards the end of Revenge of the Sith, but prior to that, he seemed to think that he was going to prosper enormously from his alliance with Sidious.
Anyhow: you get the point. It's interesting to think about other similarities. Perhaps Midgley is more like Darth Plagueis? And is Greg Smith similar to Ochi of Bestoon, the gaunt, sallow-faced killer with buttons for eyes who murders Rey's parents in The Rise of Skywalker?
Well, I will simply leave you with a final thought, which is this: did the bad guys in the Star Wars films ever actually see themselves as being "bad"? Vader tells Luke in The Empire Strikes Back that he wants to "bring order to the galaxy." In any case, I cannot help but think that the "Star Wars" universe offers up quite a rich mode of interpretation vis-a-vis Mopologetics.
May the Force be with you!
