The first Star Wars movie came out in 1977. The Cold War was at its apogee, and the United States was weak. South Vietnam had fallen to Ho Chi Minh’s communists two years earlier, an ignominy after 20 years of war in Vietnam. America, meanwhile, was in the midst of a domestic energy crisis that had led to fuel rationing. Jimmy Carter’s nascent progressive administration exuded incompetence in addressing these challenges, foreign and domestic, extending a political doldrum that began after the chaos of Watergate. It was a rough time for the country.
Against this backdrop, Star Wars offered a “new hope” for American viewers tired of dejecting loss. The movie took us on a fantastical journey of righteous victory, showing a Rebel Alliance of planets, led by Luke and Leia, fighting for freedom and democracy against the Galactic Empire of Vader and Palpatine. It showed how even through adversity, democracies could survive against an autocratic order. And it expressed why democracy was worth fighting for and how it might be sustained, even if those defending it were raucous, disorganized, and disoriented. Those who grew up with the original trilogy imagined themselves in this universe — full of action, adventure, courage, adversity, and victory — and experienced both thrill and catharsis, with an overriding theme of freedom.
It’s all quite conservative. Each of these central themes — armed revolution, civil struggle, democracy, liberty — also features in the story of America. A long time ago, in a land not so far away, 13 different and divided colonies scraped together a hasty rebel alliance to take on the British Empire, then the world’s greatest power, of which they were once part. They fought for liberty and justice despite being hopelessly outgunned and outmanned, and won.
This fight and these principles, since embodied in the U.S. Constitution, are the heritage of America. They are the bedrock of conservatism. The plot of Star Wars exemplifies these themes, beyond the mere conflict of good and evil. In that sense, it is a uniquely conservative franchise. Its creator, George Lucas, has acknowledged this historical influence on his writing of the original screenplay. As communism gained ground in the ’70s, Star Wars reminded us of how America defied the odds and won.
Furthermore, in the context of the Cold War, when the Soviets were now the imperial threat, Star Wars replenished the cultural appeal of America’s first principles, then under existential assault. As a new empire struck at the ideals of liberty, the Rebels’ continued heroism was a subconscious reminder of their enduring vitality, and a metaphor for America’s relentless defense of its values. Opposition to the fictional totalitarian empire by the Rebels was akin to fierce opposition to the real one by conservatives. Anti-communism, at the time, was a “touchstone” for conservatives to unite disparate groups into a working coalition, as Matthew Continetti argues in The Right, his new history of the movement. The Rebels and American conservatives are close parallels.
No wonder, then, that when Ronald Reagan won landslides over progressive challengers in the 1980s, he used Star Wars vocabulary to frame the fight against communism — against an “evil empire” with universalist designs. The term “Star Wars” itself was derisively appropriated by opponents to nickname his Strategic Defense Initiative, a plan to defend America against nuclear war through space satellites. As Americans eagerly watched Luke, Leia, and space cowboy Han Solo (uncannily similar to characters in Reagan’s westerns) form alliances to gain momentum as they defeated the Empire, they voted resoundingly for Reagan, Thatcher, and Bush to do the same against the Soviets. Fiction ran alongside reality. The fall of the Berlin Wall, like the destruction of the Death Star for the Rebels, symbolizes the triumph of American conservativism in an existential clash of civilizations.
After such congruity, Star Wars even takes its conservatism up a notch with “the Force.” The concept — a transcendental cosmic power that flows through all living beings — is bound up in Judeo-Christian ideas of God: unseen yet omnipotent and omniscient. Just as the Abrahamic faiths have their priests, the Force has Jedi — preaching and defending its gospel of piety and virtue — such that they may bring “balance” to the universe, made possible by their lifetime of devotion to the concept and religious grounding in its teachings. Anakin Skywalker, the “chosen one” of the Jedi who later falls to the Sith as Darth Vader, casts a shadow of Lucifer and illustrates Christian lessons about the temptations of sin. For America’s conservative Evangelicals, these dramatizations hammer home their central values: a personal relationship with God and a moralistic politics they have demanded since the 1980s, a time when Star Wars movies bearing these subtexts became blockbuster hits.
It may be that these similarities are a mere coincidence, or a superimposition by conservatives seeking validation from a hugely successful franchise. Amid the roiling controversies of culture wars, Disney — the franchise’s new owner — has been quick to forswear any political message. Yet Star Wars is clearly conservative. It invigorates ideals unique to the American story, defended by the American Right. As these ideas come under assault again, the franchise might be our New Hope in this new fight for freedom.
