Twitter Troll Tricks BBC: ‘Star Wars’ Racist, Homophobic, And Misogynist
The BBC World Service sought out guests who had never seen the Star Wars movies for a segment on its radio show last Friday. The idea was to get their impressions on the new Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer. Instead, the BBC was burned by a top-level Twitter troll named Godfrey Elfwick with outlandish remarks about racism, sexism, and homophobia in the sci-fi franchise.
Elfwick posts from his Twitter parody account where he describes himself as a “Demisexual genderqueer Muslim atheist. Literal good guy. Itinerant jongleur. Pronouns are Xir, Xirs Xirself. Filters life through the lens of minority issues.”
In case you haven’t guessed, extreme left so-called “social justice warriors” are Elfwick’s targets. His posts are the embodiment of Poe’s Law, which states “without a clear indicator of an author’s intention, it is often impossible to tell the difference between an expression of sincere extremism and a parody of such extremism.”
Thus, you get gems like this from Elfwick.
I used to identify as #atheist as I don’t believe in God but when I saw how racist the movement has become I converted to moderate Islam.
— Godfrey Elfwick (@GodfreyElfwick) April 14, 2015
And then there was this Star Wars troll post that got the attention of BBC’s Angela Sheeran.
I’ve never actually seen #StarWars but the fact that the bad guy was all black and ate watermelons was unbelievably racist even for the 70’s — Godfrey Elfwick (@GodfreyElfwick) April 17, 2015
Sheeran was oblivious to Elfwick’s shtick and extended an invitation to appear as a guest on her BBC show. She has since deleted all posts related to the segment but Ace of Spades blogger Arthur Kimes made sure to screenshot the entire exchange on Twitter, immediately recognizing the potential for shenanigans.
Uh-oh. https://t.co/kt9O8fFCBw pic.twitter.com/1fGsegVGQu — Arthur Kimes (@ComradeArthur) April 17, 2015
Elfwick was able to successfully carry his Twitter person over to the BBC segment on Star Wars where he was joined by another guest who genuinely had not seen the series. The expert troll was able to keep his voice straight and serious throughout the broadcast as he tossed out one outlandish mock concern statement after another.
“There’s a lot of social problems with Star Wars, rooted in casual racism, homophobia,” he opened with as part of his impression of The Force Awakens trailer before adding, “Star Wars reeks of misogyny.”
That was just the warm up, however, before he dropped a more obvious troll bomb.
“The main bad guy, what’s he called, Dark Raider. He’s all black. He listens to rap music. He’s just a real bad racial stereotype.”
Those two lines were only in the very first couple of minutes of Elfwick’s appearance. You can catch the full audio in this YouTube capture below.
[Images via Star Wars]
