Lit Fascism in Star Wars

Thank you. I was legit disturbed reading Legacy whenever we saw the Fel Empire. Frankly even SW fans who I know do not agree with the empire and FO, tend to be far far too accepting of their ideologies and the individuals who join them. Like I don't care if Hux was abused and brainwashed, he is a Nazi. Whatever good you may think you do, or reason you have; once you partake in fascism, you're a fascist.

 

I like three-dimensional and fully formed antagonists (or even villains) where you can enunciate their motivations without it seeming contradictory. I have difficulty with Sith philosophy sometimes because if they really WERE purely selfish then they wouldn't teach their apprentices to betray and kill them. I find the Bioware version much more palatable while equally evil. The Empire is similar in that I don't mind nuanced 3-dimensional Imperials and people with many sympathetic traits but I like when it's remembered, "these people are the bad guys."

I loved Grand Admiral Thrawn in the original Thrawn Trilogy but I feel like the more recent books feel like apologia. The original trilogy had Thrawn trying to kidnap babies to give to an insane Jedi master who would have surely killed them. He enslaved the Noghi with the decontamination droids. He regularly broke his word. He also did execute people for incompetence (which is what Vader did). Similarly, I like Rae Sloane because she's a woman who absolutely is believable as a Imperial without being a monster yet also unleashes the First Order on the galaxy. Tank was also good because he was depicted as racist against aliens and kind of a scumbag but believably so.

I had trouble with Soontir Fel because the character never quite jivved with me. He's supposed to be this honest, noble, and respectable Imperial but I don't actually ever get WHY he thinks the Empire is so superior to the Republic. Thrawn is an autocrat and military dictator fanboy. What does Soontir really see in the Empire that makes him so happy to serve it that he defects to the Rebellion then DEFECTS BACK. If the answer is, "he's a fascist who doesn't believe in democracy" then say it. Don't dance around the subject.

It's why I kind of feel guilty about the fact I disliked BATTLEFRONT so much. Iden Versio is a character who defects from the Empire and that is a great plot. We've had a bunch of awesome Imperial defectors like Tycho and Face Lorran. However, Iden's story just doesn't jive for me and doesn't make her a likable character. On the other hand, I'm not sure I'd want a game entirely about playing an Imperial who eventually joins the FO.

The FELPIRE just confuses me. Because 80% of the Galactic Empire legit joined Darth Krayt and recognized him as their Absolute Dictator with no problem because the Grand Moffs supported them. They killed the Jedi (again) and are all about allying with the Sith. However, a lot of fans are like, "Oh, the REAL Imperials sided with Emperor Fel." Who still went to war with the New Republic.

 

I don't have a problem with Imperial characters being three dimensional as long as the stories remember that they are, in fact, the villains. One of the uncomfortable facts that many people don't want to face about fascism, after all, is that most people in historical fascist regimes were normal people.

It's less scary and more comforting for us to dehumanize Nazi, Japanese, etc. soldiers as fanatical monsters. In reality, the horrifying truth is that most of them were perfectly sane and normal people who had their own complicated reasons for supporting such putrid regimes. Nobody is born a fascist. The terrifying truth about fascism (and its sister on the opposite end of the spectrum, communism) is that most of us could fall for it under the right context. Hateful and cultish politics is a learned behavior, which is why we all have to be vigilant and make sure we're not falling into it.

So I'm okay with having Imperial and First Order characters who are compassionate, honorable, intelligent, easy-going, have reasonable motivations, or have any other array of sympathetic qualities... as long as it's clear that the regime they work for is evil. That was my main problem with the Fel Empire in the old EU- it basically created a faction of "good fascists" when there is no such thing.

 

That's one area where I do think canon improves on the conflict between the Rebellion and the Empire. The Imperials in canon are repeatedly hammered home as being disgusting people. Our first introduction to them is Count Vidian who is a psychotic nutjob who wants to blow up a planet to mine it faster. We get the slave-like conditions of Kashkyyk and Ryloth. Operation: Cinder isn't that different from the kind of superweapons and evil we saw in Legends but it also hammers home what sort of monsters the true believers were. I like, also, how the Empire is DEFEATED in Star Wars canon and it's clear almost no one outside of its inner circle mourns it. In Bloodline, its clear people loathed it.

I was always a bit nonplussed at how the Legends New Republic was eager to make peace with the Empire and let it keep rulership over thousands of enslaved worlds. Also, how a good quarter of the galaxy (maybe I'm exaggerating the numbers) seems like it'd prefer to be under Imperial rule.

 

I've occasionally wondered if fictional franchises extensively marketing villains in general might be harmful. Probably some part of everybody wants to be an awesome supervillain ("Isn't that Sweeney there beside you?"), and when pop-culture validates that part I can easily see that leading unpleasant places.

 

I'm guessing no one has ever been turned into a Nazi by the Galactic Empire in RL. I do think the people with fascist tendencies try to justify the Empire, though. I think "normal" people among Star Wars fans get they're the bad guys and being fans of them as villains is mostly harmless.

I.e. The Bad People Who Love Bad People were attracted to their badness to begin with.

Hell, the 181st Stormtrooper Division is a children's charity.

 

Lindsay Ellis did another great video on fascism and the First Order.

 

I'm offended you went with "old Will Smith" when Colin Salmon already exists and looks this good:

 

I do think that there is a risk of normalizing that behavior however, if we are not firm enough in saying "no these fers are straight up Nazis. Like I was just doing a vid on the FO and Ren today and someone tried to make the case that Ben is not a nazi or evil in the case of the execution of the villagers since they fired back and it was FO protocol. They did not actually think it was a good thing by any means, but still the fact that SW fans who are not bad, sometimes tend to normalize those kinds of things even just from the character's pov can be harmful. We can get why the character is a certain way, and be able to see the characters getting killed as props for the story; but at the same time fiction holds legitimate power in our world. Ignoring or justifying that for the sake of Ben's redemption can feed into people's justifications of being far right. I love TLJ, but this is something TFA did so much better. JJ may yes see Ben as a full person with sympathetic elements, but he has ALWAYS been clear that the character is a neo nazi. Having sympathetic reasons for being that way does not undo the fact that in a very real world sense he is intended to reflect neo nazis. We MUST keep that in mind when talking about the empire and FO.

 

I dunno, I guess I just think Deadshot had a similarity.

While I don't necessarily disagree with you, I do think there's a sense that the distance which used to exist for characters has dramatically diminished. Ben Solo/Kylo Ren wasn't created to be an embodiment of the school shooter/Alt Right/entitled to have you/upper class white kid who joins ISIS. I.e. a lot of what people have seen inside him. There's been a nasty upswing in radical white nationalism and misogyny among geekery that wasn't visible back in the days of Darth Caedus.

I think Kylo Ren was just meant to be a Vader fanboy without much belief in he fact he's a Neo-Nazi but just a guy who wanted to be an Imperial fanboy in-universe. It's just real life events have affected the interpretation people have of the First Order that didn't exist before. Especially among those of us who have noticed fandom has become a lot more dangerous place. Yes, people harrased Karen Traviss but it was, "there are trillions of droids dammit" not "you should die and I will kill you if I see you!"

In short, there is the question of how seriously we should take the First Order and Imperials as bad guys versus the reverse of their fanboys.

 

I mean it's still a shame we couldn't see Trevarrow's take...Sure he would been the most fascinating

 

I think there is actually a really interesting meta-text to the idea the First Order are literally reminiscent of the Imperial apologists among fans.

 

Oh I got a whole thing with Movie Bob about the entire ST being Meta (Apologies for the video posting spree)

 

I love Movie Bob but he's the guy who talked about how Ghostbusters was about Science Killing God.

He sometimes...reaches.

Edit:

He also reaches heavily in that video too.

 

Fair enough- I do think there are meta elements in the ST. But hey to each there own my friend to each there own

 

Okay, having finished it...

Yeah, he's mostly spot on.

 

It's definitely a take I subscribe too if nothing else in terms of the broad strokes..

 

I hate The Last Jedi with a burning passion of an exploding Alderaan but I wish I could see it this way.

 

Beauty of Art we all see things differently.

But back to Facism in Star Wars......I really like how NuCanon and this era has....IDK I think done a better job of staying true to Star Wars in this field and how the foundations are built more .....Well i don't wanna say left right dicomodies here but definitely i feel the overall new canon has more a anti-facist message to it than maybe the later EU started to become.

 

Here's the thing, I think Legends EU didn't have a Pro-Fascist message but I think it had a drift from WHAT IS THE EMPIRE?

I think the Bantam/Del Ray/Dark Horse Empire was always gun shy about depicting the Empire as Nazis. Maybe they felt making the Empire explicitly Nazi-like was something that could conceivably send the wrong message. George Lucas understood who and what he was creating and this is why TIE FIGHTER 2 was cancelled despite TIE FIGHTER being one of the best flight simulator games of all time.



Instead, the Legends Galactic Empire is basically the BRITISH EMPIRE. They're racist against aliens but not running Wookiee concentration camps like in Aftermath with actual nods to Schindler's List. The slavery business is downplayed, COMPNOR is almost nonexistent outside of the RPGs, and they are mostly about snooty aristocrats as well as the honor and glory of His Majesty's Navy. It's a conflict between the aristocratic Imperials and the plucky independent Rebels.

Order versus Freedom.

Which is why Zahn seems to think people who choose "Order" aren't bad. Except, of course, the Nazis were never about order nut reactionary destruction of the Old Order and the canon Empire is about looting the galaxy, oppression, atrocity, and a nonstop horrorshow from beginning to end.

The British-esque Empire of Legends has a bunch of corruption, British East India company-esque merchants, lords and ladies, plus a lot of native subjugation but it's something you can understand people wanting to fight for--or maybe being okay to have remain in a diminished state. One of the EMPIRE comic arcs is even an homage to Zulu with Tank serving as the protagonist.

@GrandAdmiralJello can probably attest.

Versus the Empire of, "We need to destroy this completely."

 

There isn't a lot in Legends that's pro-fascist but once the prequels came out the entire timeline became suffused with an ongoing theme of "democracy is stupid and doesn't work."

 

The recycling of plotlines became problematic.

NJO = The New Republic is a failure as it refuses to defend itself against Space Aztecs

Legacy of the Force = The Galactic Alliance names Jacen as Space Mussolini

Fate of the Jedi = The Galactic Alliance names someone EVEN WORSE as dictator

Legacy= The Republic is defeated again.

I feel like Daala got a lot more soft pedaling than she ever deserved because people wanted a Rae Sloane figure when she was always Dinah Meyer as Grand Moff Tarkin.

 

Real shame the EU never saw fit to develop leftist alternatives to the Republican model. Our political choices IU are always representative democracy(well, sort of) or fascism. How was there not then a Rebel faction of anarchists modelled after anarchist formations in the Spanish Civil War? How are there not now?

I'd be interested in the Resistance taking that on.

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The Confederacy of Independent Systems gets ignored a lot but I think that's because an oligarchy is a weird enemy since they're usually NOT all that warlike.

I also do love the Corporate Sector Authority and think it's one of the best inventions of legends.

As for Leftist enemies, we did have the Yevetha who were (unfortunately to my distress) based on Middle Eastern terrorists as well as victims of colonialism.

Anarchism is a hard thing to do though as terrorism shows in the Clone Wars shows as a threat but our protagonists can usually deal with that pretty easily. Star Wars likes going for the big epic wars.