Blog: Is My Generation Okay? – the Anakin Chudwalker Meme

2026 has been a weird year for many reasons, one of which being the use of major pop culture icons as symbols for Gen Z’s struggles, frustrations, and hopes. I recently covered one of these symbols known as “Malfoid,” and how the Malfoid meme has given men a space to yearn for classic romance, be creative, and even start improving themselves in the hopes of one day having the ideals of marriage, family, and fatherhood that are represented by this meme. But alongside Malfoid is another meme, this time coming from the Star Wars fandom that has been nicknamed “Anakin Chudwalker.”

I don’t know how I feel about this one.

First of all, though, some explanation, starting with the name since the name explains a lot about this trend. “Chudwalker” comes from the slang term “chud,” which is short for Canibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller from the 1984 movie C.H.U.D. Originally, it was a derogatory title used to refer to an ugly, stupid, and unsociable person, but in 2019, it became more political as it was used as an insult geared towards right-wing men. Since then, young men on the right have taken the title of “chud” and made it their own, using it to refer to themselves.

Don’t you love the evolution of language?

So, with that in mind, we can kind-of get a sense for what the Anakin Chudwalker meme is all about. Anakin Chudwalker is just Anakin Skywalker, but it’s Anakin as the collective symbol of right-wing Gen Z men who are angry at the world. They see Anakin as one of them, as one X user Kangmin Lee put it:

Very pleased to see so many young right-wing zoomers finally recognizing just how incredible the Star Wars prequel trilogy really was.

George Lucas, a visionary, created perhaps the most profound piece of right-wing media in sci-fi form.

Anakin Skywalker is the archetypal disenfranchised chud: a young man who genuinely wanted to do good, believed in justice, and trusted a system that presented itself as noble, democratic, and righteous, all to have his innocence, idealism, sense of justice, and vulnerabilities systematically exploited by the very institutions he believed in. He wanted to make a difference, only to discover that the entire political order he had devoted his life to defending was deeply corrupt, hypocritical, and wicked. And in his disillusionment, he became vulnerable to the very evil he once sought to destroy.

A cautionary tale for an entire generation of young men who grew up believing the system was fundamentally good, only to discover that the system was never quite what it claimed to be.

George Lucas understood the chud psyche long before the chud was actualized in the zeitgeist.

Another X user, ThomBrady5 explained Gen Z’s particular fascination with Anakin Skywalker as a symbol of their disillusionment this way:

The Star Wars memes are fascinating. The Jedi religion is a good representation of how Boomers made a political formula into a religion. Anakin is born a slave, which is how Boomers view younger generations. Boomers turned standard political questions into sacred moral dogmas which you are not allowed to renegotiate. Count Dooku was an elite insider who understood the system, he was correct about everything, he was a legitimate political dissident, but he was treated as a religious heretic.

Luke Skywalker and Anakin both rebel against the status quo, they are mirror images, but the difference is that when Boomers were young they saw themselves as Luke Skywalker, but after Boomers became the new establishment incumbents, Boomers enslaved younger generations as debt serfs and made it illegal to disagree with their religion. And the Boomer civic religion of multicultural liberalism is propped up to benefit their own material interests.

The entire story is about inheritance, legacy, generational succession, the cycles of how elite networks cultivate young men and pass down their traditions.

Third World mass migration is a huge piece. The Empire is a 90% white ethnostate which rules over a balkanized favela slum of tribal ethnic cartels and swarming hordes of barbarian biomass. The Republic is disgusting and dysfunctional and drowning in Third World trash propped up by a corrupted bureaucracy.

Maybe the most ridiculous element is that Jedi violence is good when it’s balanced, Jedi violence is bad when it’s emotional. Motivated reasoning all the way down. The outcome is subordinated to empathy, just being a decent human being dudes.

When Boomers were young, they celebrated the rebellion of youth. As soon as they got old, they criminalized it. And they built a religion around denying young men the freedom of self-determination. Anakin is not allowed to find a wife, leave the military, or choose his own destiny. He starts his life as a slave, and then he becomes a soldier, but at no point is he a free man. He simply trades owners. And when he escapes slavery, his courage is condemned.

So, yeah, the entire Anakin Chudwalker meme is about how Gen Z men feel like they are being stomped on by the powers that be, symbolized by the Jedi. Count Palpatine, then, is the threat of becoming like the previous generations, and creating a similar issue for later generations…I think.

It’s kind of hard to tell since this meme is mixed with so many facets of Gen Z right-wing politics that the metaphor can change depending on who you talk to. One minute it could serve as a metaphor for how traditional conservatives feel in today’s world and the next, you’re talking to a Tucker Carlson type who wants to rant about how someone in the meme represents Israel.

Interestingly, similar to the Malfoid meme, this has inspired young men to start thinking up alternate endings to the prequel Star Wars trilogy. In the alternate ending that they look up to, Anakin is victorious but doesn’t turn into Darth Vader (or Order 66 the padawans). Instead, he acts more as Ceaser over the Empire, instead of essentially being the space version of Hitler.

Overall, I think this is a strange bit of Internet lore that exposes a lot about how sick Gen Z is of the current way of things. I can’t even say that it’s all Gen Z men that feel this way, as some women almost undoubtedly feel it too. We too are also suffering the consequences of our ancestors’ actions. But the issue that I see in this trend is how while it’s understandable, when it comes to real life, I don’t think the solution it proposes is necessarily the best.

The solution proposed by the Anakin Chudwalker meme is a total overhaul and restructuring of the government and society. It’s something that, while it sounds good, demands that we essentially stop trying to save what we have. Instead of trying to fix it, it demands we scrap it and make something completely new. However, in real life, you have to wonder how well that would really go over.

Until next time,

M.J.