The General Star Wars Thread

Why wouldn’t they trust their friend, Palpatine?

Or their pal, Friendpatine?

Edited by Patar136 on Apr 9th 2024 at 11:49:50 AM

I am so glad someone got it.

Except no enemy presence could justify blowing up an entire habitable world. I can *imagine* a potential threat that would require killing everyone *on* a planet, but destroying the whole thing permanently removes a very limited resource, especially since nobody in the setting seems able to turn a lifeless world into a habitable one.

Well killing everything on the planet but leaving world itself intact or just blowing whole thing up makes little difference to billions who died. Nor is former truly any less monstrous that latter.

The Empire doesn't care if it's overkill. Let me remind you that one of their military protocols was "Base Delta Zero", which was a full orbital bombardment of a planet.

I kind of like the fact that the Empire thinks there are enough planets in the galaxy to straight up destroy populated ones for the sake of testing a weapon and proving a point. That's very Hitchhiker's esque, with that book starting with Earth being destroyed to make way for a motorway.

Seriously, how can even pro-fascism fans support these guys? It's not even like the blowing up planets is a new thing added to the lore to make them seem more evil, they literally do it in the first ever piece of Star Wars media!

They generally think they would be the ones either with the finger in the trigger or left alone unlike some green guys.

The usual justification I've seen is that The Empire was responding to Rebel Terrorism, and it was justified in doing whatever was necessary. This is a pretty ludicrous claim.

I'll say from what I understand of Fascist ideology, it's not too difficult to justify:

• Fascism regards pacifism itself as a form of betrayal. "He who does not wish to fight in this world of eternal struggle does not deserve to live" - the simple fact that they are pacifists is in and of itself a justification for violence. Pacifists are deadweight at best, if not outright collaborators.

• Fascism is a highly collectivist and highly ruthless ideology. Individual life simply does not have much value to them.

• They believe heavily in terrorism as a tactic, and the Nazis did engage in random massacres for minor infractions.

Fair enough actually, if Rebels kill a few people, respond by killing billions. Blow up a planet, a level of genocide that is of a completely incomparable scale to any atrocity every committed on Earth, destroying the lives, culture and history of billions.

Even if we're just looking at the cold hard facts of what benefits the Empire, I can't imagine that destroying a presumed economic powerhouse like Alderaan will be good for the galaxy's economy, especially during the very war against rebels that destroying Alederaan was supposed to help with. And of course, while Utopia Justifies the Means is an understandable view (even if it is one that is often used to justify...unforgivable things), I have to wonder whether there would ever be a point where blowing up billions of people, for very little benefit for the Empire (it's not like Alderaan was even the main rebel base or anything, and if they really needed a demonstration, which they didn't, couldn't they pick a less inhabited and therefore less useful planet to show the Empire's power or incense people against the rebels), would possibly be outweighed by a 'Utopia'.

Am I really making a large argument about how a fascist regime blowing up a planet for no reason is wrong? Let's just leave it at: killing billions of people is bad.

And also remember what happened in Andor. A simple bank robbery resulted in a galaxy-wide crackdown for no reason other than sending a message.

I mean, Tarkin had a theory, it was 'fuck everyone else, their opinion doesn't matter, because we've got a Death Star.' He explicitly isn't blowing up Alderaan because of any threat it poses, but to send exactly that message 'there is no defense except total submission.'

And that may, in fact have worked (though the history of strategic air power isn't really an optimistic model), except that the Death Star got blown up, so his theory devolved into 'fuck everyone else, their opinion doesn't matter, because...' which was never going to work.

Edited by ECD on Apr 9th 2024 at 4:58:17 AM

I mean, we can point to any RL fascist atrocities that are beyond pointlessly evil.

Umberto Eco, who is both one of the 20th century's best writers and also a guy who grew up in a fascist country, said that philosophers and academics struggle to define fascism because they keep trying to think of it as a coherent intellectual philosophy. It has qualities but it doesn't have rules.

Because it's emotion driven. Fascists do things because it feels right in the moment, not because it is intellectually arrived at.

It rewards blind loyalty, Heroic Sacrifice (even for evil cause), and denies rationality for The Determinator with a heaping dose of Testosterone Poisoning. The Leader is always right and it sometimes even engages in Card-Carrying Villain attitudes as Good Is Dumb.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Apr 9th 2024 at 5:38:03 AM

Cruelty is THE point for a lot of people.

Sadly, there's of people nowadays who will freely, happily admit that they think mass violence is the only way to respond to people who disagree with their politician of choice, aren't quiet about being a different race/gender/sexuality than them, think people from either of those two camps deserve rights, etc.

Lost Stars (which is a marvelous character study of "how much can a person condone or excuse before it becomes too much") makes a good point that more people than you think would be fine with something like the Death Star (or at least have bystander syndrome about it) until the reality of it actually hits close to home.

Anywho, it looks like we missed it, but Star Wars Outlaws had both a story trailer and a big interview with one of its developers:

I always thought that one Imperial officer from Alderaan who became even more of an Imperial fanatic to cope with the Death Star blowing up his home was a morbidly fascinating case.

He's one of my favorite villain turns in this franchise for that reason. The idea that in order to cope with the guilt, he would just dive insanely into believing Imperial propaganda because it's the only way his mind could make sense of what he was involved in, makes Nash really interesting - and I wish he'd interacted with other Rebels more.

Nash Windrider's whole character is really clever, because before Alderaan happened he's blatantly given all the elements of a character you'd assume would jump ship and join the Rebels. He's even got a Luke Skywalker-esque name.

The Stinger implies he becomes a founding member of the First Order, too. Have we seen him anywhere else?

Not yet. But I've always thought Pryde in TROS should've been someone we'd already heard of like Nash instead.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Apr 9th 2024 at 7:07:28 AM

I have NO idea if this is true but I've heard rumors that the role of the elderly FO commander in TROS was originally written for Veers, but Julian Glover wasn't available. Again, reliability of this account deeply uncertain.

There is actually a quote in some Star Wars media somewhere (I forget where) which has a comment on that. To paraphrase:

"Scholars who discover Sith texts often try to search them for some hidden truth or kernel of wisdom, not understanding why people would believe in such a crude and hateful ideology. What they don't understand is that's exactly what makes it appealing"

I will say...maybe not in fairness, but there are reasons why people support fascism, and it isn't just cruelty. Namely:

• Fascism appeals to humanity's tribalist mindset. You know School Pep Rallies and such? That's essentially the aspect of the mind that Fascists want to put their finger on.

• It's very convenient to be able to pin all your life's problems on one group of people. It allows you to dodge personal responsibility and creates a simple all-solving solution of fighting them.

• Fascism does have a "Utopian Vision": it calls for an end to class conflict and partisan divisions in favor of altruistic service towards advancing your nation's greatness, and being unified against your "real" opponents.

• Likewise, if you're sufficiently racist, slavery starts to sound like a post-scarcity utopia.

Of course, it's important to note that selling the opportunity to be cruel is important to fascism, and it would especially make sense for something like The Sith. Anger is an addictive emotion, and being given free range to engage in it has a certain appeal to people sufficiently hooked on it.

Anyone who has ever been a victim of bullying as a kid knows what fascism is. If they do try to find deeper meaning in it, it's only because they don't want to admit they are dealing with grown up versions of the same kids who pushed them off jungle gyms or smashed garbage into their faces for no reason at all.

Palpatine was the ultimate bully. He reveled in having power over others and abusing them just because he could.

Edited by M84 on Apr 9th 2024 at 10:33:08 PM

That’s half the fun of being a Sith in SWTOR.

Oh just using force lightning in random people, mass murdering Jedi, and ordering protesters dead is a hell of a way to kill time.

Thought I'd share this here. Chris Kempshall of the upcoming book 'The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire' shared a link to amazon uk that includes a sneak peak at the book.

Also here's an interview with him on the podcast Daughters of Ferrix.

That's probably not true because they recanonized Veers death before Rise of the Skywalker.