  Dark matter that is electrically neutral but couples to the electromagnetic
current through higher-dimensional operators constitutes an interesting class
of models. We investigate this class of models at the Large Hadron Collider,
focusing on the anapole moment operator in an effective field theory (EFT)
framework, and utilizing the vector boson fusion (VBF) topology. Assuming
proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 13$ TeV, we present the VBF anapole
dark matter (ADM) cross sections and kinematic distributions as functions of
the free parameters of the EFT, the cutoff scale $\Lambda$ and the ADM mass
$m_{\chi}$. We find that the distinctive VBF topology of two forward jets and
large dijet pseudorapidity gap is effective at reducing SM backgrounds, leading
to a $5\sigma $ discovery reach for all kinematically allowed ADM masses with
$\Lambda \le 1.65$ (1.15) TeV, assuming an integrated luminosity of 3000 (100)
fb$^{-1}$.
