Why the Empire is evil

When you go on YouTube you will invariably lots of videos where people basically say that "the Empire aren't really evil", "Crenic's just a minor functionary" or "the Empire probably brought stability to the galaxy".

Which is fine until you realise people are being serious about this.

Lets interrogate the facts:

* The Empire strongly resemble Nazis. This was a brutal totalitarian regime that committed the holocaust. If you are making your villains Nazi's in space its probably a not so subtle hint that they are evil.

* The Empire is led by a Dark Lord. Like Sauron. He comes from the Dark Side of the force. A bit like how theres duality between good and evil; a bit like Heaven and Hell. So, basically this Empire is evil in a supernatural sense.

* You see the Empire blow up an entire planet. You see them torture people. You see them gloat about the downfall of the Republic.

* This is a regime that seized power in a coup de etat by purging the Jedi Order after orchestrating a civil war in which countless people died. It is not a popular government. This is why you see all the people rejoicing at the end of Return of the Jedi which resembles (retrospectively) when the Berlin Wall came down.

* None of this bad behaviour has any moral equivalency from the Rebels. They are a band of Freedom Fighters trying to restore the legitimate.

* The Republic ran the galaxy in an age of peace and prosperity for thousands of years. It only started to fail because of the manipulations of Darth Sideous.

So why do people insist on this argument?

Theres two main reasons:

1) Imperial fanboys like how powerful the Empire is. Power is good and is equated with success. So surely there must have been something natural in the rise of the Empire. People would recognise that the Empire was an efficient and orderly society. There is a certain twisted logic here. Indeed, this notion has actually started to permeate the films and the movies. Think Huxs speech in the Force Awakens and how he stresses Order.

The problem is that the narrative purpose of the power of the Empire is not to stress its success. The rebellion are not weak because we are being told they're failures. Its part of the set up to allow the little guy to fight the big guy. This requires the Empire to be a threat and to make the good guys victory all the more incredible. So if you had say, the whole Republic mobilised for war, it would be vastly more effective and powerful than the Empire; but then that set up wouldn't have the sort of conflict they want for a Star Wars movie. The Battle of Jakku clearly demonstrates this.

2) Because Star Wars is a family film they seriously tone down how evil and cruel the actions of the antagonists are. So most of the violence like planets being blown up is heavily sanitised. You never see anyone get tortured. This can lead a viewer to conclude that "well they don't seem so bad". When actually the Empire really are as bad as the Nazis, for example enslaving all of the Wookies and putting them in to camps. You just don't see this sort of cruelty and barbarism but the Nazi hats are supposed to clue you in.

 

I think you are absolutely right, I find trolling Imperial apologist arguments annoying, but I think this thread will get locked soon.

 

This is getting into trolling territory. We have plenty of threads to discuss the Empire in their proper forums.

Locked.