Lit Does loyalty justify serving an evil regime?

For me, I come with the view that in real-life, a lot of people take the view Luke Skywalker did that they hate the Empire but the problems of it are things which are very far away. Luke might have wanted to jump ship and join the Rebellion after the Academy but it's also possible he might have become like Tank and decided the Empire wasn't so bad. Unlikely, but he was at an impressionable moment in his life.

I've done a couple of Imperial tabletop roleplaying games and generally I went with the view of TIE FIGHTER that the soldiers of the Empire might be aware of the Dark SIde (pun intended) of their organization but they generally get fed a steady diet of propaganda. Most don't try and question their cause very much as they assume the government above them is benevolent or has better knowledge of the "Big Picture."

There's a lot of talk of "Necessary Evil", "terrorism", and "doing bad things for the greater good." It doesn't change the fact the Empire exists only to line the pockets of its leadership and to serve the will of a psychopathic lunatic devoted to a religion of self-agrandizement. Being loyal to a cause and self-sacrificing is wonderful IF THE LORD RETURNS IT--if he doesn't then the entire samurai-master relationship is meaningless.

 

If your government do everything right then institutional cultural and personal should align and everything is dandy.

However, speaking for myself only, if they don't align. I think it's important for the cultural loyalty to come first. It's the idea the isms that one follows. The come to the institutional loyalty. Of course the institution should be the same as the cultural ideally. Personal loyalty (morality, or pesonal thinking of evil or not) should come last.

 

Mind you, that's the sad part of the Mandalorians.

Their culture was a warrior culture and that's a dead end.

I think I'm probably the only person who thinks the Pacifist Mandalorians are infinitely cooler than the warrior ones.

 

I believe in objective good and evil.

We might not exactly know all the details, but generally it is not good to impose your will on others past a superficial point. That most forms of pretty-clear evil acts can be boiled down to this.

Therefore, it's more important to be Good than to be loyal, if those two are ever at odds.

Having said that, I like how CS Lewis treated the faithful Calormene soldier in the Last Battle. He was loyal to "the other side," but always trying to be a good man, trying to be good. Aslan said that all those times he thought he was being faithful to Tash, he was really being faithful to him (Aslan). And all the times Narnians were doing evil and treacherous things in the name of Aslan, they were really serving Tash.

 

That is a good point to bring up-good for an objective end or absolute versus good in the service of a person or in that case a deity.

I loved the last battle myself personally.

But how as the philosophers of the world will retort do you define "good" is it what benefits the most people? Oneself? The advancement of a certain ideal? What makes that ideal good? How is good influenced by cultural and relativistic factors and how much if any is it absolute?

But that's waay to philosophical and really off topic

 

I admit, this is why I play LS Sith in The Old Republic.

I love the idea of the Sith Warrior and Sith Inquisitor who may have some loyalty to the Sith as a people (Sith Warrior) or simply believe they are the only salvation they have (Sith Inquisitors for slaves and the oppressed) so they need to fight to stop the Republic as well as other enemies so they can reform it.

It's an interesting dynamic I find far more interesting than the LS Republic which can be sanctimonious at times.

 

Justice is the advantage of the stronger.
Of course not.
Justice is the seeming advantage of the stronger. i.e. what the stronger want, doesn't have to be actually be advantageous to him.

I also think we are off topic slightly. Therefore I will say be careful and think four times before joining the army/navy/air force. but once you do, stick with that army no matter what.

Mu out.

 

No. That's a terrible philosophy, and actually leads to terrible things in the real world. Like, not to Godwin things, but I'm Jewish, and a significant proportion of my family died due to people who joined a military and stuck with that military no matter what. Sometimes, there is good and there is evil, and people should never support evil. It's that simple. Similarly, if you're working for the Empire after Alderaan, let alone after Endor, my sympathy is minimal at best.

 

I tend to view Alderaan's destruction as the litmus point for most people in the Rebellion vs. the Empire. Basically, unless you are PROFOUNDLY ignorant, the destruction of Alderaan is something you have to lie to yourself about to remain decent and serve the Empire.

And if a person does that, are they really decent at all?

 

Isn't that the crux of Lucifer's Star, after all? Oh, Mass/Fel might be honorable, they might be personally good . . . but they were still fighting for a evil regime, and they knew it.

 

Pretty much, yeah. They can claim ignorance as much as they want but if they were ignorant, at some point they had to admit it was willful ignorance.

Which is the same as guilt in a lot of people's mind--and not without reason.

Thanx for the reference.

 

Odd kind of question. There's no loyalty to be held to an usurper like Krayt. If you are loyal to the Throne and Empire, then you are loyal to Roan Fel. For what reason would anyone loyal to more than his salary (the surrendered GA soldiers which formed the bulk of Krayt's Empire) or power (the Moff Council of the Fel Empire) support Krayt's usurper regime?

 

Why would you be loyal to Roan Fel? He betrayed the Empire and continually sided with the Jedi as well as Galactic Alliance when the Vong were up to their old tricks again. The Sith spilled blood beside us and are endorsed by the Moff Council. He deserves to die like all Jedi! *

* This announcement is a paid advertisement by The Committee for the Preservation of the New-New Order.

Also, the idea the bulk of Krayt's forces were Galactic Alliance soldiers is hard to believe. Where are you getting that? You're seriously arguing the people who FOUGHT Krayt and the Empire not only all put on Imperial uniforms but swore allegiance to him even when the Empire itself didn't?

 

Lost Stars musing

Weirdly, I would love to have a conversation about Nash Windrider and what she thinks about him because I am really sympathetic to him. The narrative paints him as a close minded psychotic Imperial but he has a lot more reason to have my sympathy than Ciena. He's a guy who is brainwashed by the Empire to hate his own family and homeworld because it's the only way to cope with it as well as betrayed by a close personal friend who tries to kill him. Ciena, by contrast, KNOWS the Empire is evil and yet still serves it.

Who is the greater fool?

The fool or the fool who follows him?

 

See something like that would've been interesting, but Fel really didn't do all that much to say, defend the Jedi. All he did was go 'you don't HAVE to fight the Jedi' ONLY to his Imperial Knights. If he gave orders to the Imperial Military to cease combat actions, but popular jingoism called for otherwise, THEN a populist coup against a moderate monarch seems like something that could be plausible for people to be even thinking of considering Krayt a 'legitimate monarch'. But instead you just had some tattooed guy and his entourage walk in and say 'we're taking over now' and everyone's just okay with it. The way I explain it (and some sources confirm) is that a vast majority of GA Forces (and a number of Imperial forces) are loyal to whoever rules from Coruscant to give them their salary. Now as soon as atrocities are committed, Krayt's house of cards comes falling down, which is why you don't see any Krayt loyalists among non-Force Users after the Battle of Coruscant.

I mean, it's not like the first time something's like this happened. Numerous institutions went 'oh, you conquered Coruscant? Sure! You have our allegiance' back when the New Republic did it. It's a huge flaw, I'm sure even Jello agrees that some Tusken Raider walking in and calling himself Emperor and everyone being okay with it is a really big problem. People should be loyal to the ideal of Coruscant rather than Coruscant itself, as in the Roman Empire where it continued on being legitimate even regretfully without Rome itself.

 

"Citizens of the empire ignore and neglect this insidious propaganda you have been subjected too. This Lord Krayt is a usurper, and a tyrant who conspired with rebellious moffs and ruined our plans for a peaceful reannexation of GA territory. Moffs Veed, and Callixte are traitors. Fel is the true emperor." Brought to you by the True Empire Information Bureau.

Seems to me a GA security zone was used as a practicality. Most GA soldiers and citizens never experienced Palpatine's empire and had already served under various triumvirates. So co-opting GA forces for garrisoning and local security seems like a smart strategic decision for the empire as well as a PR one.

The 501st apparently remained loyal to Fel and they were the elite and pride of the Imperial army so if that says anything about the attitudes of the imperial soldiers.

As for Krayt walking in and claiming power remember the galaxy had just gone through the Sith Imperial War, the jedi were not destroyed but had retreated to Ossus and Gar Stazi had not surrendered. Krayt obviously had allies amongst the moffs-Callixte, and Veed but more importantly the One's Sith's participation had turned the war in favor of the imperials and ten thousand sith lords make a potent coup force.

 

Reposted from "Battlefront" thread:

What I want from Battlefront II:

A plot very much like Spec Ops: The Line (which Walt Williams wrote) about how an Imperial officer increasingly justifies everything they do in hopes of bringing order to the galaxy and protecting the masses despite how clearly this is UTTERLY INSANE. Spec Ops: The Line did the same with American jingoism, albeit Williams said he wasn't criticizing the US military per se but the fact so many 1st Person Shooters are fairly vile in how they turn real life conflicts into good versus evil. I, for example, used to love Call of Duty but the developers keep telling in interviews "no, we don't want ambiguous conflicts. We want good vs. evil so the players feel like heroes when they're shooting the enemy."

Spec Ops: The Line is about how three invincible American soldiers who slaughter their way through a situation in Dubai and make things consistently worse because they want to be heroes and only know how to kill the enemy--even when they're fellow Americans.

I could very easily see a story about Iden Versio becoming an insane military commander who believes the New Republic is EVIL and has turned the galaxy into a hellhole that needs to be liberated while ignoring every crime the Empire has committing and probably committing quite a few more on the way.

Basically, Nash Windrider: The Video Game.

What I EXPECT:

Lots of shooting Rebels.

 

Real life is more difficult and more complicated than what this question asks. It depends on the circumstances of the person and on what specifically they are doing.

For Fiction well it's much more clear cut

 

Jumbly threads can be fun

 

This thread is a moral question with very real historical relevance. Everbody of course has an opinion and an interpretation.

 

Yeah but the example given isn't exactly... coherent. There is no logic why someone would be loyal a guy that just walked into Buckingham, staged an assassination attempt on the Queen and went 'I'm the King now'. Again, if we were given a better context and background on this, maybe.

 

The Moff Council was the real authority and since they endorsed Krayt he was probably seen as legitimate by the majority.

 

it's what happened. But the Moff council if it existed in real life, would never endorse Krayt in the first place.
Even if someone such as Krayt offered money to bribe/black mail/use the force persuade I doubt every single one of them wold go to his side.
They would know sooner or later to solidify his rule, Krayt would kill them. Their salaries and prestige/power were solid in Roan Fel's rule. They would not bite the hand that feed them.

I think western society as a whole take the concept of capital too dang important. Napoleon thought if he took Moscow the Russians would surrender. The French surrendered in ww2 as soon as Paris was taken (Their army was out of place and I think it was still intact).

 

That's a pretty thin excuse though. In any society, if someone attempts to kill the reigning monarch, declares himself King, and a bunch of government officials went along with it, it would be obvious to everyone that they were just doing it to save their own skins. People might go along with the coup out of fear or because they think the new king will be a better ruler, but no one in their right mind would say "Yep, the would be assassin is legally the new monarch." Which is what people in the Legacy comics do.

The argument "The Moff Council is the real authority, the position of Emperor is a figurehead" don't work when the pro-Sith Imperials say things like "We owe our authority to a throne, not a man!", which makes it sound like they truly believe Krayt is the rightful Emperor . . . somehow.