Star Wars and the Return of Myth

Archeofuturism and civilizational struggle

Michael Kumpmann on Constantin von Hoffmeister’s Multipolar Galaxy: Star Wars as an archeofuturist vision of tradition and civilizational struggle.

After Esoteric Trumpism and MULTIPOLARITY!, Constantin von Hoffmeister has now published his third book, MULTIPOLAR GALAXY: Star Wars as a Myth of Civilizational Rebirth. While his previous two works dealt with political themes such as Dugin’s philosophy and Donald Trump, his newest book—as the title already suggests—focuses on George Lucas’s Star Wars series.

Since he had already explored Guillaume Faye’s concept of “archeofuturism” in his earlier books, it is only logical that he would address the Star Wars trilogy. When one examines the term archeofuturism closely, Star Wars is almost the first work that comes to mind, as it is the best-known example of this type. Other works in a similar vein—such as Flash Gordon, Masters of the Universe, John Carter of Mars, A Canticle for Leibowitz, or Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind—are either too old and forgotten, achieved only niche recognition, or were well known yet never reached the level of success attained by George Lucas’s Star Wars trilogy. For that reason, Star Wars is essentially the archetype of such a future.

Personally, I also consider it tactically wise to engage not only with abstract philosophy but also with aesthetics and fiction in order to develop a compelling vision for people and ignite dreams within them. One can see how successful this approach has been among the Left today. With a great many young leftists, it becomes clear that they have never understood—or even read—Marx, but were shaped instead by works like Star Trek. Figures such as Limonov, Greg Johnson (with his analysis of Dune at Counter-Currents), Martin Sellner, and Dugin (who, among other things, wrote an analysis of David Bowie) have already done valuable groundwork in this area. I attempted something similar at Compact and Arktos, just as Constantin is doing now.

Star Wars lends itself well to such a project. It contains strong borrowings from ancient Rome, from chivalric legends, and from the samurai tradition. At times it deliberately employs Taoist iconography, and Yoda’s warnings to Anakin (“Fear leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering,” as well as the idea in Episode III that fear of loss can be connected to greed) refer to the so-called Three Poisons in Buddhism—greed, hatred, and delusion—which Buddhists consider responsible for all suffering, with hatred representing the deepest stage of spiritual decay. For traditionalists, Star Wars is therefore a treasure trove.

Star Wars also offers points of connection for the broader Right. Interestingly, alongside Dune and John Carter, Edward Elmer Smith’s Lensman series was another major influence on Star Wars. The spiritual warrior order described there received its knowledge from an ancient, noble people called the Arisians—a name that should catch the attention of many on the Right. In some early drafts of Star Wars, George Lucas even considered calling the light side of the Force the “Arisian” side, as a direct reference to Lensman.

The table of contents immediately reveals that the author concentrates on the films produced by George Lucas and, understandably, leaves out the Disney trilogy. Likewise, elements such as the Expanded Universe (comics, video games, books that form an additional continuity), series like Rebels and The Clone Wars, and Lucas’s Ewok television films are not central; the focus rests solely on Lucas’s theatrical releases.

It is also immediately noticeable that one chapter refers to Oswald Spengler. The author had already drawn on Spengler in his previous books, yet the connection makes particular sense in relation to Star Wars. Spengler described how a republic must grow corrupt and eventually be overthrown by a Caesar who establishes an empire. The parallel is quite obvious; when I first heard of Spengler at seventeen, I immediately thought of Star Wars. Still, almost no one else seems to make this connection—even though George Lucas all but pointed it out during the release of Episode III and explicitly compared Palpatine to figures such as Napoleon and Julius Caesar, whom Spengler himself cited as examples of the Caesarian type.

The foreword explains, much as I have done here, why Star Wars is worthwhile for traditionalists. It also describes a certain left-wing, anti-authoritarian dimension, particularly in the heavily psychoanalytic father–son conflict between Luke and Vader. That fits as well. In a sense, Vader represents a negative aspect of Jacques Lacan’s description of the father archetype as the “voice of the law.” One must remember, however, that Luke does not simply destroy Vader in the end—he redeems him. Luke does not fight for modernity and neophilia in order to tear down the “old,” as many progressives desire. Rather, the problem of the story is that Vader has broken with tradition, while Luke fights for the teachings of tradition against their corruption by Vader and Palpatine. In this sense, the conflict is not between progressive change and paternal authority, but between the deeper legacy of ancestral tradition and the father’s corrupted inheritance. One might almost say that Luke is the lost youth of modernity and postmodernity who must rediscover tradition in order to find stability and guidance, whereas Vader resembles the boomer who rebelled against the “dead weight of centuries” and in doing so drove society into ruin.

The first chapter describes the influence of Joseph Campbell and his theory of the monomyth on Star Wars (Campbell, a Jungian, proposed that all myths across cultures share the same fundamental structure). However, the book does not delve deeply into Campbell’s theories; instead, it compares the story with specific Greek figures. Familiar comparisons such as Oedipus appear, alongside parallels with Hercules and Medusa. Towards the end of the chapter, the influence of Christian ideas, Taoism, Buddhism, and samurai films such as Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress is briefly discussed.

The following chapter portrays the Galactic Republic in Episode I as an ineffective, over-bureaucratic talking shop incapable of making decisions in moments of crisis for selfish reasons—hence its need for Palpatine—and compares this with Oswald Spengler’s and Carl Schmitt’s critiques of democracy, contrasting it with the famous statement, “Sovereign is he who decides on the exception.” The comparison is very fitting, as Palpatine is an almost perfect example of Schmitt’s theories. (It also aligns with Dugin’s description, in his latest book, of the “sovereign dictator”—the ruler who accumulates power for its own sake—as a “satanic figure,” which suits Palpatine well.)

The next chapter compares Naboo’s blockade by the Trade Federation with the thalassocratic tactic of blockades and sanctions. This time, however, the author does not explore the land–sea theory of geopolitics in depth, as he did in earlier works, but limits himself to a brief critique of sanctions policy.

The subsequent chapter addresses the emergency decrees through which Palpatine accumulates power. Constantin von Hoffmeister does not mention that in the 1960s—when George Lucas developed the concept of Star Wars—there were widespread debates throughout the West and in countries such as Japan about emergency powers, militarization, and similar issues, accompanied by mass youth protests (not to mention that right-wing dictatorships in South America and South Korea were supported or newly established by the United States in the fight against communism). All of this profoundly shaped Star Wars.

Instead, the author uses the theme to criticize bureaucracy and legal procedure as ends in themselves, contrasting them with Evola’s concept of the Empire and the Emperor as embodiments of eternally valid ethical values. He makes the important point that Palpatine is essentially a continuation of rule as mere procedure and fails to embody Evola’s vision of the Empire as a manifestation of eternal values. It should be noted that, as I argued in my article in Compact (issue 8/2025), the Republic itself had already laid the groundwork for the Empire through its legalistic attempt to counter the Separatists and had begun silencing dissidents in the name of “protecting democracy.” (For example, Padmé Amidala becomes the target of a massive smear campaign in an episode of The Clone Wars, declared an enemy of democracy simply for criticizing endless wartime spending and advocating diplomacy and negotiations—a fate that strongly recalls the treatment of figures such as Sarah Wagenknecht, Alice Weidel, and others, as well as campaigns organized by AIPAC against people like Thomas Massie, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tucker Carlson, and so on.)

While I described the concerns of the Separatists as legitimate in my Compact article, Constantin von Hoffmeister instead compares the Separatists—built up by Dooku on Palpatine’s behalf—to a Soros-style color revolution. This interpretation is certainly possible. The following chapter compares Order 66 with Hitler’s Night of the Long Knives and the persecution of the Strasser brothers—a comparison frequently made. The author then relates the fall of the Republic to measures such as the Patriot Act and other forms of surveillance emerging from the War on Terror, something George Lucas himself explicitly confirmed in interviews.

The author next discusses Ernst Jünger’s thesis of the Worker as the archetype of modernity and the degeneration of the warrior from a traditionally noble knight into a soldier as worker—de facto a paid contract killer and a slave of technology. He rightly interprets the clone army as the culmination of this technologization of warfare, in which the warrior ultimately becomes a mass-produced disposable commodity. In the following passage, the Jedi are described as Jünger’s forest rebels (Waldgänger), standing as a counterpoint to the Worker.

The final duel on Mustafar in Episode III between the former friends Obi-Wan and Anakin is interpreted, once again in Spenglerian terms, as the result of eroding authorities and values and the rise of nihilism, which—according to Spengler—culminates in a Hobbesian war of all against all. The author builds a bridge to the current condition of the West, which desperately and forcefully seeks to construct a new myth and mobilize the masses (for example, framing the Ukraine war as a struggle against a “new Hitler”—an absurd exaggeration visible to anyone). Political crises such as the Ukraine war and the pandemic reveal that social solidarity has virtually disappeared, with people increasingly willing to betray one another over trivial matters. Constantin von Hoffmeister is right to argue that elites desire precisely this outcome. We are entering the very situation Confucius criticized millennia ago: loyalty to children, spouses, and family is meant to count for nothing, replaced by unconditional obedience to legalism.

The author then turns to the original trilogy, beginning with an analysis of the Death Star. He makes an important point: according to Evola, the warrior is an archetype of the Path of the Right Hand, whose primary function is construction and protection. Constantin von Hoffmeister rightly interprets the Death Star as a symbol of the modern military’s shift away from preservation towards the tactic of technical annihilation and overwhelming weaponry as instruments of coercion. He argues that this cannot succeed and that such “military bullying” tends instead to provoke resistance and counterforce. It is a highly contemporary theme, ultimately compared with Trump’s Tomahawk discussions. One might also add this year’s Iran conflict, in which Netanyahu’s attempt to humiliate Iran resulted only in a massive counterattack involving hypersonic missiles.

In the following chapter, the author points out an interesting connection: the Empire is uniform and purely human—aliens are absent—whereas the Rebels form a proverbial “colorful band” composed of the most diverse personalities. The book interprets this as a metaphor for the multipolar order and its resistance to globalism, which makes sense. In a later chapter, Chewbacca is interpreted either as an outsider degraded to subhuman status by a racist dominant culture or as someone who, despite his difference, can be a friend and ally—an extension of the same theme.

Han Solo is the subject of the next chapter, used to explore the themes of the space western. While many interpret the western and its archetypes—such as Sergio Leone’s “Man with No Name”—as a specifically American nomos and a reaction to the frontier, the author reads it as a general European trait, seeing the cowboy’s thirst for freedom as little different from Goethe’s “mad scientist” Faust, who seeks encounters with demons in pursuit of hidden knowledge. He also draws parallels with European medieval mercenaries such as Götz von Berlichingen. There is probably a grain of truth in both interpretations. Europe has such figures as well; yet certain libertarian ideas linked to the “cowboy spirit,” such as homesteading or seasteading, are distinctly American and never truly took root in Europe.

Where Han appears as an unbound free spirit and Luke as the victim of Vader’s betrayal, Constantin von Hoffmeister characterizes Leia as someone determined to continue the legacy of her adoptive father Bail Organa and thereby preserve roots and tradition. This emphasis on traditionalism is excellent, for the aspect is crucial. Many “traditional companies” in Asia—such as Japanese zaibatsu and Korean chaebols—serve above all as instruments for preserving the family. As Confucianism makes especially clear, the family is the primordial ground of tradition; traditionalism is, in essence, the preservation of the family. Evola likewise remarked that the truly poor person is not the one without money but the one without a family, and the pariah is, broadly speaking, the one cast out from it. In postmodernity, however, the pariah has almost become the norm.

Naturally, family and tradition must not degenerate into empty obligation or into what Evola called a “tradition of mere form.” Anyone raised in a “respectable bourgeois family” and constantly instructed to behave and hold back so as not to endanger “father’s good reputation”—together with the attendant theatricality—knows well what tradition in form alone looks like. Constantin von Hoffmeister describes precisely this problem in a later chapter, drawing on Spengler and identifying it as a central issue in the downfall of the Jedi Order—a parallel, in turn, to Christian churches in Europe that concern themselves more with institutional self-preservation than with faith, even entering into pacts with the woke zeitgeist.

The subsequent chapters address Endor as a Vietnam allegory and compare Star Wars with the Iliad.

Overall, the book is very good and highly interesting, even if the topics are often treated rather briefly. It is extremely well structured and easy to read. The book does not dwell extensively on which specific religious traditions correspond to particular elements within Star Wars, remaining instead on a meta-level. Nor does it move in the direction of prescribing which aspects of the Jedi a traditional society should adopt. Rather, Star Wars is treated strictly as a fictional work rich in metaphors and messages. This is a good and important book, one that will hopefully be followed by many further works of similar orientation applied to other themes.

(Translated from the German)

Order MULTIPOLAR GALAXY here.