Lit From Endor to Exegol - The State of the Galaxy Discussion Thread (Tagged Victory's Price Spoilers)

The case of France would seem to indicate that France fell in 1940 not JUST because the Germans were notably good at their jobs, but also because the French were notably bad at theirs. The incompetence and/or indecision of Georges, Weygand, Reynaud, and Lebrun made things relatively easy for Hitler, Keitel, Guderian, and Rundstedt.

 

In fact, history makes it a point the Germans were SPECTACULARLY BAD at efficiency. They more or less only got away with it by looting the economies of every other nation and burning everything they had for short term gain.

We've come a long way from Spock believing they were one of the most efficient states.

 

I mean...on one level, yes, the entire idea of a Galactic civilization and government is absurd. But obviously Star Wars is built on that conceit, and always has been; the Old Republic is the ancient, immemorial Galactic-scale government and civilization that almost everyone is, apparently, deeply committed to and finds impossible to imagine living without. Obviously, in a Galaxy with diverse planets and species and ideologies, we would expect fragmentation on a massive scale to be the norm; but, again, the entire point of the Star Wars setting is that, somehow, all those different species and worlds got together a long, long time ago and formed a single government, that by the time of the films they are really and truly used to being together, and also want to be together. Thus, when the Republic turns into Empire, most people stay onboard with it not because they're really into its governing ideology, because it's the Galactic civilization and government, and they want to be a part of it; the people who don't stay onboard with it don't go off by themselves and form different factions, but immediately get together into one big Galaxy-spanning group whose aim is not to end, but reform and/or replace the existing Galactic government. Then, when they win that internal struggle to radically reform the Galactic government, most people get onboard with them not because they're all necessarily thrilled about the Rebellion's governing ideology, but because they're all ultimately committed to being a part of Galactic civilization. This is all logical enough if you accept the basic premise.

If you don't, then fine. There are real world parallels, though: like the Roman Empire, which in the 3rd century broke apart but was eventually brought back together again, in large part because most people found it impossible to imagine not being Romans and part of the one Roman Empire; or the Catholic Church, which divided during the Great Papal Schism into multiple factions supporting different Papal claimants, but which was ultimately united again because all parties could only imagine there being one universal Church with one Pope. People can be committed to being part of a larger civilization or group over being committed to particular ideologies or partial identities or small-scale opportunities for power.

Of course, in the new canon, as people have pointed out, there is in fact more and longer-lasting fragmentation coming out of the fall of the Empire than there was before, even as the Republic largely succeeds in smoothly replacing the Galactic government. So there's room for both realities in canon, I think.

 

John Gill was a dumbass. And he was supposed to be a HISTORIAN...

 

It's hard not to see him as Space David Irving now. My headcanon is that John Gill really was an awful human being who wanted to enslave the locals with his superior knowledge (and did) but Kirk was so enamored of his former teacher he took the most flattering take on the subject possible.

 

Pretty much any rational study of WWII shows that the only hope the Axis powers had of victory was for the Allied nations to give up prematurely. There's a reason why the Alien Space Bats trope was originally used in reference to Operation Sea Lion succeeding. The Pacific War, which I've put more time into studying, is an even more blatant example - Pearl Harbor was not the crippling blow it was made out to be, and Japan had made little preparation for an all-out war.

Trying to compare the Empire to the WWII Axis is a pretty flawed comparison since the Axis powers were very much on the short end of the stick when it came to war production and resources. About the only valid point of comparison is that the Empire and Axis both sank resources into extravagant superweapons that could have gone to better use elsewhere.

 

The solution is clear: we need portrayals of the Rebel Alliance military to have more Imperial defectors, more stolen/defected Imperial ships and equipment, more variety of ships (including Clone Wars ships and refitted civilian ships), and waaay more aliens/alien resistance armies.

Not only would it help justify the relatively short time between Endor and Jakku, not only would it emphasize that we are witnessing a whole galaxy rising up together, but visually it would look pretty damn cool.

Ah, but the Empire (like many sci fi/fantasy bad guys) isn't based on the actual, historical Nazis, it's based on the common pop cultural perception of the Nazis. (With shades of Ancient Rome of course).

 

Mind you, I think there's a good question of how quickly SECTORS fell over planets. When Naboo defected, for example, was it Naboo defecting or the entire Chommel Sector? What about Chandrilla?

How about their local fleets?

I also think the Empire is a lot more inefficient than people think. We've seen the mass slavery, plundering of planet's resources, and crushing of economies--emphasized by the changes to Lothal. Planets under the Empire very often are treated exactly like the historical Nazis were--taking everything not nailed down.

 

I find fandom discussions revolving around comparisons between the Galactic Empire and Nazi Germany to be tedious in the extreme. Obviously the Imperials (and their First Order successors) take some design and nomenclature pointers from the Nazis, but if you really want to make sweeping comparisons it's more useful to see the Empire of Star Wars as a stand-in for totalitarianism in general.

More than anything else, it's the lack of any obvious ideological component to the tyranny of the Empire that makes it a very poor analogue for any of the specific totalitarian powers of real-life modern history.

 

At the risk of asking a question which exposes how very little we agree on--what is remotely DIFFERENT from the Nazis and the Empire except for the fact its aliens than Germanic minorities?

The Empire really is a stereotypical example of it and I like how canon is emphasizing that.

 

This is where I think Rebels dropped the ball...aside from the Hammerhead corvette there really wasn't a "new" ship for the rebels. Aside from the Quasar-Fire class carrier all the other ships appeared in the OT. I would have loved to see some things pulled from other old EU sources and maybe a couple Seperatists ships...a munificent and an recusant with rebel markings would have been really cool to see. Maybe also a few Marauder corvettes.

 

To explain my above post, I think the canon Empire is far closer to the Nazis versus the Legends.

COMPNOR has a far bigger role as does the secret police
Religious persecution
The Inner Circle politics
Looting planets
Forced Labor

The ideological core of recapturing past glories. It's a far more brutal and ruthless organization in the novels with a lot more on-screen villainy as well as the suffering inflicted on the public at large. The depiction of "Tarkin Towns" and Lothals transformation into a polluted hellscape with Jedha as a occupied hellhole illustrates whatr was previously off to the side.

 

As I wrote earlier, the fact that Palpatine's tyranny has little to no basis in any discernible political ideology makes it pretty much impossible for the Galactic Empire to function as an effective analogy for Nazi Germany, save on a highly superficial level.

The great totalitarian dictatorships of the 20th Century - particularly Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union - obviously provided a fair bit of aesthetic inspiration for George Lucas's Galactic Empire, and have also served as a source of inspiration for some of the writers who have contributed to the Star Wars EU, in both its former and current versions. That does not mean however, that the historical reality of these regimes is actually analogous to the Star Wars Empire in any meaningful sense, or that comparisons between them impart any significant insight into the story. Quite the contrary, imo.

One of my biggest takeaways from reading the history of the Nazis and Soviets, is that you cannot understand them and what they were about unless you wrap your mind around the extent to which they really believed in their insane ideologies. A Nazi without National Socialism or a Soviet without Marxism-Leninism is just a garden-variety authoritarian playing dress-up. It was the belief in (and willingness to act on) Hitler's singularly nihilistic brand of racialist anarchism that made the Nazis the Nazis, and makes them distinct from the long list of empires and dictatorships (in both history and fiction) who have engaged at times in similar behaviours.

If you insist on playing the game of modern political analogy, the Galactic Empire of Star Wars bears more resemblance to the bad guys in Orwell's 1984 than to Nazi Germany. I see even that as a misleading comparison however, because it makes the fundamental error of trying to map the politics of Star Wars onto the sensibilities of our modern era, defined as it is by mass political movements and organized political parties. The politics of Star Wars, timeless fantasy that it is (the technological trappings of space travel, sentient robots, and laser weapons notwithstanding) are profoundly premodern, and Palpatine is much closer in spirit to Tamerlane or Tiberius than Hitler or Stalin, and his minions more like Sejanus or Rasputin than Eichmann. Genocidal massacres, slavery, plundering and corruption, elevation of favoured minorities at the expense of oppressed majorities, wilful ecological destruction, and so on are not quintessentially Nazi traits - they are epidemics general to the history of dictatorship, tyranny, and empire.

In my experience, the ability to appreciate the thoroughly premodern nature of Star Wars as a political drama is a very reliable indicator of ability to portray 'Star Wars Politics' in a compelling way. It is not a coincidence that by far the best writer currently engaged with the franchise is Claudia Gray - with her oft-expressed love of Ancient Roman history - and that other writers, when they attempt to shoe-horn in modern or contemporary political references, have thereby bequeathed some of the more cringe-worthy material in the franchise. That's the essence of why I find it tedious when people lean too heavily on the idea that "The Empire = The Nazis". It smacks too much of using Star Wars primarily as a vehicle for political commentary, and doesn't actually do anything to enhance the story - any more than dwelling over-much on Nazi-parallels with the villains of Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter is a productive way to engage with those texts. It's putting the cart before the horse.

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TL;DR - Saying that the Galactic Empire is primarily a stand-in for Nazi Germany is a bad comparison, because the Empire never did anything resembling the Holocaust (in terms of motivation) or believed in anything like a 'Master Race'.

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Edited to respond to this:

None of that stuff is distinctively Nazi though. It's generic totalitarianism - no more specific to Hitler's empire than to the empires of Stalin or Hirohito. As noted above, you don't even have to restrict yourself to the modern totalitarians. The Russian Tsars did most of that stuff on a good day.

 

Yeah, that's my confusion because everything in the setting shows the Empire is fanatically ideological.

We may not see much of that ideology on the screen, though General Hux gives us a sense of the general ideology of the Empire/First Order. However, that ideology implicitly exists. It's not a state which functions on nationalism alone but a reactionary transformative cultural shift which turns the Old Republic's cosmopolitanism and egalitarianism overnight into a xenophobic expansionist military state which is designed around destroying the "enemies" which the Clone Wars Separatists serve as scapegoats for.

The details don't matter but it's drilled into the followers constantly and brainwashed into them to the point the Empire does have an incredibly loyal demented fanbase which scares the hell out of everyone else.

 

I disagree. I think that you're projecting the existence of an Imperial 'ideology' that has no evidential basis in the actual text.

Drilling your followers to be fanatically loyal, and building a cult of personality around the ruler, is not 'ideology', it's standard practice for authoritarian power structures. Wilhuff Tarkin and Armitage Hux aren't 'ideologues' in any meaningful sense of the word - they worship power for the sake of power, and the fact that they're (ostensibly) loyal to their masters doesn't alter that. O'Brien from 1984 would have recognised something of himself in them.

I also think you misread the cultural shift that attended the transition from the Republic to the Empire. The late Republic wasn't 'egalitarian', it was rapaciously elitist and decadent. Palpatine simply replaced the old elite with a new elite that was even more rapacious than the old one.

 

In addition to what Axendale said about those things not being unique to the Nazis, all those were present in the Legends Empire to some extent. I think it's debatable whether or not these traits or more pronounced in the new canon.

And one of the more Nazi-esque traits of the Empire, the racism/species-ism, is definitely **less** pronounced in the New Canon. In Legends most of the alien population of Coruscant was shoved into ghettos, while in the New Canon it's more of a "some of my best friends are non human" type of xenophobia.

Jason Fry even said in an interview "I had some back and forth with Story Group and the executive producers about this question while Edge of the Galaxy was taking shape, and where we wound up was that the Empire may not be openly and uniformly xenophobic, but if you’re a committed xenophobe, you’re probably also a pretty rah-rah Imperial."

Not that racism/genocide is something ONLY the Nazis ever did of course. But my point is that just like in Legends, I think how many parallels there are between the Empire and the Nazis (and how on the nose those parallels are) is something that varies from author to author.

 

No one ever said it was unbeatable, just that it did plenty of things that made it out to be one of the most feared states in history, up to the point where when you need bad guys, you go to the Nazis. They never bombed their population, for one, and weren't defeated by a few snubfighters by another. And before Yavin and Endor are pointed to, those were individual battles that are said to be when the Rebellion finally delivered MAJOR victories. Not the Empire losing pretty much all the time to a bunch of A-Wings and them being so weak on loyalty that a top indoctrinated member of their SECRET POLICE and one of their most able squads defects in its ENTIRETY like nothing, in a single scene.

But the New Republic isn't the Galactic Republic. It's an entirely different government that may well be based on different principles. I can't say much on principles, because we don't know much of the New Canon Old Republic, but the Legends Old Republic pre-Ruusan was very much close to the Legends Empire in operation. Legally speaking, the New Republic can't be the Galactic Republic because Sheev didn't just come out and invade the Republic. In both instances of canon, new and old, he enacts a well-maneuvered political takeover. Everything was voted on by the Senate, moral or not, legally the Republic becomes the Empire. From then on, Mon Mothma leads her Rebellion as the essentially the first Warlord State (we don't know much if there are any others), giving herself a non-existent title and operating on no legal authority. Ergo, there's no reason for say, the President of Corellia, to recognise the authority of this New Republic unless he was one of the founding members of the original Rebellion. This is why in Legends the NR doesn't encompass even half of what the OR used to be, and it takes years of incorporating other worlds and defeating Imperial warlords. Not the instant defections of new canon.

 

We know what the Empire is based on. Comparisons are fun and helpful, but the Empire, like SW as a whole is overtly a narrative pastiche. The Empire is Nazi, especially in appearance. But also fall of the Roman Empire. And also US Nixonian politics. And then just blatant pulp fiction, Flash Gordon serial space opera.

It doesn't need to be any one thing. It isn't any one thing.

I think it would be interesting to discuss current influences in the new Cannon for the Empire and the FO.

FO has a terrorist influence there, IMO. Particularly the almost jihad-like zealotry we see. This also ties to the difference between the old and new Canon Empire. Imperials weren't all that loyal. They mostly just followed the main vane of wherever the money and power was from. Some were loyal to what they thought the ideology of the Empire was. I think that can help explain Iden. When the truth you believed in is exposed to be a lie, what do you do? She was a believer in the cause, not a power hungry Moff. It's a tough narrative position because they had to show her as both loyal and able to discern the propaganda for what it was. It seems to me we didn't get much in terms of seeds of recognition, so the transition seems forced, like Anakin and Kallus (the worst one, IMO).

And Imperials did branch off and start their own things. We have lots of that. It just isn't emphasized as much into main stories...we had so much of that. Do we really want more? We also have a quite successful branch, it seems. Lol. So I guess we did get more.

And they do a lot of intentional, or so it seems to me, playing with that grey area of freedom fighter vs. terrorist... particularly for the Rebellion. Which has interesting allusions to the American revolution.

Sent from my Moto X-Wing

 

Havoc123

Spoiler

one of their most able squads defects in its ENTIRETY 2 out of 3 members of one of their most able squads defects like nothing, in a single scene level. There, I fixed it for you. Look I agree that her defection was rushed, but you're exaggerating to the point of factual inaccuracy.

Um, what? The only similarity is that they are both galactic governments. Granted we don't see much of the Legends OR government Pre-Ruusaan, but they have a senate and a chancellor instead of Moffs and an Emperor for one. And then there's the Legends Empire's implementation of Oversectors, legalization of slavery, ect. I mean, I agree with what CaptainPeabody said about how (regardless of ideology) people would want to join the Galactic Government because it's the galactic government and they want to be apart of that. But that doesn't mean there's NO difference between them.

First of all, if the legality of the Empire was the only issue, then Mon Mothma and the Rebels wouldn't have ANY followers.

Second, it's ridiculous to say that the *ONLY* reason the leader of any given planet would support the New Republic is if they were a founding Rebellion member. There are lots of reasons. They were on the fence about joining the Rebels but now see that the NR is winning, they want to stop the Empire and think joining the NR is the best way to do it, they want a chance to shape this new government, either for altruistic purposes or to gain personal power, Mon Mothma is just that charismatic, ect. It's been 20 years since they had a government that didn't list "destroying planets" as both a hobby and a career choice, the New Republic comes along offering to be a better, less genocide-ey government, and you don't see why people would find the appeal in that?

It definitely took longer in Legends, I would have liked the Endor-Jakku period to be 2 or 3 years instead of 1, and I definitely would like to see more Warlordism. But again, I think you're exaggerating. There are mentions of warlords in Lost Stars and apparently different factions in the Aftermath books (such as the Neo Separatists and Southern Latitudes, though it sounds like they're gone around the time of Bloodlines). Bloodline mentions that Ryloth is one of the worlds that is on friendly terms with the Republic, but doesn't want to join because the Empire has made them wary. It's been mentioned that while the New Republic Starfleet is the largest fleet in the galaxy, it's a fraction of what the fleet was for the Old Republic. So by all accounts the New Republic ISN'T as big as the Old Republic, even decades later. It may not be the parade of warlords we got in Legends, but there is some balakanization.

 

The lore for nu Star Wars just isn't very interesting.

There was no need for episode IV-VI if you follow Disney canon, you have a bunch of pointless stuff that leads to the First Order.

 

I didn't say there's no difference between them, I just said they act very similar in some respects. The Republic engages in clear cut genocide, wiping out all Sith from Sith Space under the tenure of Chancellor Pultimo. They were incredibly imperialistic in their early years of expansion, and they even had a proto-Imperial group in power (the Pius Dea) which directed Republic policy for centuries.

I agree I may have exaggerated there, it's not unrealistic for the NR to gain members outside of founding members of the Rebel Alliance. After all, we see Hapes enjoy good ties in Legends. My only real problem is that there's clear Imperial-lite people like Carise Sindian and Imperial-leaning worlds that really have no reason to be members of the New Republic. I know she's a secret agent of the First Order, but why go through all that trouble when all the Imperial worlds could've just not joined the New Republic to begin with? These people hate the NR with the very fibre of their being, why bother going through all the sneaky Hydra stuff when they can just not have joined in the first place? I'd get it if there was some kind of arrangement similar to what Admiral Oxtroe proposed with Ederlathh Pallopides (but without the actual Ederlathh) where the New Republic and Imperials decide to join together, and the Centrists' Imperial nostalgists are the Imperial half of the NR, but this isn't really the case.

We hear mentions, we hear of all these interesting names, but we don't see much of them. The Galaxy should be balkanized on the level it was in Legends, if not greater than that if they wanted Operation Cinder to actually be effective.

 

so now that BF II is out i hope we finally get an updated version of the events between Endor and Jakku.

 

I'm not saying the Empire is a one for one for the Nazis but I dislike the idea they're an ideologically absent group which does not bear extreme resemblance to the general pattern of fascist regimes.

 

Well fascist is an in-universe term in both Legends and New Canon to describe the Empire. The Legends Empire was multi-faceted. It had clear ideological fascists, run-of-the-mill authoritarian militarists, Sith cultists and so forth. Overall policy kind of reflected all of them. So yeah I'd agree both Empires have their obvious fascism to it.

 

Havoc, I feel like you're still putting too much emphasis on de iure legitimacy and perfect ideological fit in why people would accept the New Republic. Most governments are accepted because they de facto govern and hold the place they say they do. The Holy Roman Empire's claim to legal continuity with the Roman Empire is rarely accepted by anyone (though as a filthy Papist, I don't think it's trivial, properly understood), but just making that claim and playing that role, even to a small degree, had massive effects.

In the New Canon, the New Republic seems to have pretty quickly and pretty aggressively claimed to be the de facto governing authority of the Galaxy; they could also claim with some fairness to be more ideologically in tune with the Old Republic than the Empire. Per Rogue One and the New Canon seems to have been a very totalitarian, radically exploitative and heavy-handed military government, very much representing a break with the Old Republic which, per the Prequels, didn't even have a standing military. At the very least, lots of people could view the New Republic as more in continuity with the Old Republic in particular ways than the Empire. All this would help ease the transition.

In any event, lots and lots people who wouldn't ideologically agree with this could very easily get aboard with the New Republic on a de facto basis. The New Republic was militarily very powerful, and in position to govern the Galaxy, while no one else really was. That's usually more than enough.