Right-wing pundit Michael Knowles rants about Star Wars’ trans clone trooper

Right-wing anti-LGBTQ+ pundit Michael Knowles has waded into the row over Star Wars’ transgender clone trooper.

The Daily Wire host broke into an anti-trans tirade over the new book Star Wars: The Secrets of the Clone Troopers, which features trans character Sister.

Sister is a galactic republic clone trooper who transitioned during the Clone Wars. She is featured in an illustration of the book, wearing the typical white armour, adorned with a few pink and blue decals.

The character initially feared that she would “have to hide who she truly was,” but was given the name by her squadron “as a constant reminder that she belonged.”

She first appeared in the 2022 novel Queen’s Hope, in which she meets Anakin Skywalker, who tells her: “The Jedi are all about transcending things… I don’t think we can complain if you’ve transcended gender.”

But on Friday (11 October), Knowles complained that Star Wars was being contaminated with “transgender ideology.”

He said it was “silly” to include what he described as “modern gender ideology” in the mythical universe.

“[Clone troopers are] all genetically exactly the same,” he said. “So how is it the case that in this new book, which is a canon book, it’s not just fan-fiction… it is revealed that there’s this trans clone trooper?”

He went on to use the existence of a fictional trans character to justify the so-called “social contagion” conspiracy theory, which purports that transgender people are somehow being socially pressured into transitioning.

The theory is so bizarre that even physician Lisa Littman, who hypothesised a version of the conspiracy theory known as “Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria,” has debunked it.

“This is actually pretty right-wing, because by transing a clone, Star Wars, wittingly or unwittingly, is admitting that transgenderism is not biological. Star Wars is admitting that transgenderism is a social phenomenon. It’s a product of the environment and a defect of the will, but it’s not biological,” Knowles claimed.

“If Star Wars had [transed] any other character in the entire universe, they would have been preserving pretty much all the transgender ideology.

“By transing a clone, a character that is biologically, of necessity, identical to all other clone troopers, Star Wars is asserting that transgenderism is not biological.”

In a defence of his claim – which sounded as if it might have come from a galaxy far, far away – Knowles seemingly argued that because Star Wars isn’t real, it “tells us something” about modern times.

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