Sith, The Empire & Xenophobia

Was trying to figure out were all this started?

In Deceived it's intimated that "aliens" were looked down on. I've also seen something hinting to this in Palpatine's Empire. So when did this get introduced in the SW story lines?

 

I always assumed it started with TTT. To illustrate how Thrawn was such an exception in the Empire and to illustrate why he didn't go farther in the Empire while Palps was still alive.

Course I haven't read the books in years but I thought Tim Zahn started it all. He also probably based a lot of it on how there really were no non humans in the Empire in the OT (if he was the one who started it).

 

yub it started with Thrawn like the antiwomen stuff started with Daala and KJA based on lack of women in visuals of the movies. same way one can argue Zahn based it off of the movies lack of Aliens in the Empire visuals.


But it is not just Imperials treatment of Ewoks or Alien Bounty Hunter "scum", it started already in ANH with "walking carpet" Chewbacca and the Empire seeing Wookiees as slaves and prisoners on the death star as nothing special.

thus basically it was born out of movie lack of diversity which was GL intentional. authors drew upon this and expanded the idea. especially it can be seen reinforced by the Naboo's view upon the Gungans pre-TPM as TPM showed.



chronologically inuniverse, it started with this:

human homeworld is in the Core... and most early human colonies there too. so historically humanity is most common on core worlds with aliens in the rim. expansions of humans for need of space and ressources lead to wars with aliens early on. and when it came to ruling the galaxy, the core and rim factions always were on edge. see the wars between Coruscant and Rim worlds for the right to be capital, or the Pius Dea Crusades of anti-alien churches ruling the Republic. so historic precedent is the conflict that never got really settled and breaks out furthered by sith agendas who employ the underlying unsettled problems for their shemes.

especially since the outcast Jedi that became the Sith interbred with Aliens and thus became alien hybrids. thus the sith of old oppose human high culture, while their non hybrid sith members later took over and furthered human high culture among sith even. as the Essential Atlas portrayed nicely.

 

It?s essentially the same as Hitler and his belief in the superiority of the Aryan race. Likewise Palpatine believes Humans are a superior species to that of ?alien? species. The reasons for both are in the history of both races/species, the origin of their nation, and the fear of the other peoples which they suppress.

They likewise both view a religious order as corrupting, over-influential and having a ?conspiracy? to overthrow the state. These of course are the Jews and the Jedi.

The Sith could be considered Occultists in this same vain I guess (something Himmler (the Nazi Vader in some respects with the 501st as the SS) believed in, and rumored Hitler himself). Furthermore the word ?occult? in Latin means ?knowledge of the hidden?... which is also something descriptive of the Sith I guess.

I guess you could also say that there is an irony in that neither Hitler nor Palpatine originated from the ?homeland? of their superior race. With Hitler being from Austria and Palpatine from Naboo (although I guess you could suggest the ?German race? also exists in Austria).

I wrote an article about this over at ForceCast.Net...

Basically Palpatine thought Humans were superior in every way. They began the Republic and they were a powerful species.

 

Palpatine himself was likely not racist; he had plenty of aliens in his employ, and never treated them any less than his human stooges. The Core nobility he was courting, however, responded well to those attitudes; much of Human High Culture was shaped by them, COMPNOR, and Sate Pestage (who probably was a pretty big racist).

In regards to the OP, I think it's mostly in the Sith Empire to make it more like the other Empire. I don't think it makes much sense myself, since this Sith Empire was founded out of an alien species.

 

I don't see how it serves the story or the ongoing MMO or whatever at all. There is literally no logic to it. Would these human Sith xenophobes kill any alien force adepts rather than train them? Do they give a reason for this mandate? What if you want to play the game as an alien Sith? You're out of luck?

 

In the X-Wing Strategy Guide, it states that one of COMPNOR's main goals aside from HHC was to pit all species against each other; Human vs. Wookiee, Quarren vs. Calamari, Sullustan vs. Twi'lek, and so forth. Divide and conquer, as it were.

As for the Sith Empire's racism, one of my pet theories is that the TOR-era Empire is actually a union of Sith refugees and Pius Dea outcasts. I theorize that after Pius Dea lost power, its members immigrated to the far reaches of space rather than live in an alien-friendly Republic. Thousands of years later, the 1st Emperor happens upon the Pius Dea remnant, invites them to join his cause, and allows them to exploit the Sith refugees as they see fit. Aside from explaining the Sith's new speciest additudes, it also explains why the TOR-Empire use accents and ship designs that seem to have originated from the Core Worlds instead of beyond the Outer Rim.

 

Armchair_Admiral:

Do any of the Ancient Ones here remember if any pre-Thrawn materials mentioned Imperial racism? The older role-playing books, perhaps?

 

Ah yes, a pre-Thrawn accusation of Imperial racism in the EU canon shows up in the 1990 RASB as part of the Formal Declaration of Rebellion.

 

not just WEG RPG did feature it, also Marvel comics!


and earliest source outside of movies to feature this: Splinter of the Minds Eye written and published even before TESB and ROTJ were made! With Lucasian input and the Empire treating local Mimbanite aliens pretty bad like slaves and working stock.



or does the Holliday Special count too?

 

It was a bit strange to me about the True Sith Empire having a Human High Culture attitude and felt too much that they were just transplanting the Galactic Empire into the TOR era with just the Sith in command. But... having said that, I think mostly that the rise of Humans within the Sith Empire came as a result of perhaps the Sith species being decimated as a result of the Great Hyperspace War leading to a greater reliance on slaves. The Timeline videoes has one of the first Grand Moffs being a Human soldier who pioneered the rise of the Sith Imperial Military so it seems that Humans soared high within the Sith Empire during their exile with greater reliance on them. So far, I have not seen any Massassi within the Sith Empire of the TOR era so whether they are still in service or in fewer numbers is not known yet so its possible they have been replaced with Sith troopers from Human and other species.

As for the Empires speciesism, I think its mostly boiled down to seeing no aliens within the Imperial military. Same with seeing no women and Daala saying that she was one of the highest ranking female officers in the Navy with her being disciminated against due to her gender. Most of the thinking that Palpatine was xenophobic got turned on its head with the prequel era and seeing that he employed a lot of aliens. Personally, I like to think that he wanted to cultivate that dark atmosphere and keep all his enemies against one another. Perhaps the whole wave of xenophobia helped promote the dark side in some manner with all the negative feelings and the like?

 

Because they don't necessarily kill them. Some are enslaved and plenty who show potential earn the right to be trained. This is a large part of the Sith Inquisitor story in TOR (with species like Zabrak and Rattataki being available). From what we can see of the Sith Empire of TOR's time, Force aptitude automatically places you on a higher social strata than those without it, without regard to your species. Racism still exists at that level but it looks to extend even more to "normal" individuals. Humans and pure Sith simply being at the top because they are, presumably, the two species who originally fled Sith space during the GHW. I'd also imagine that Odile Vaiken's importance in settling Dromund Kaas and reorganizing the Sith military played a part in this as well.

 

To be honest, Palpatine saw everyone as inferior.

The Sith aren't themselves racist; Darth Plagueis and Darth Maul weren't human, and for what it's worth, the Sith take their name from an extinct species. (That doesn't say much; the Improved Order of Red Men didn't allow Indians in until the 20th century. And the Sith species actually are red.)

It makes little sense, but I can see someone like Palpatine using genocide for his own political purposes. Modern, postwar genocides are often done for political purposes.

 

Racism (or would that be "speciesism?" or something?) in the Sith Empire has been around ever since, well, the Sith Empire.

As far back as TotJ, we had Naga Sadow and Ludo Kressh feuding over whose right it was to rule: those closest descended from the Jedi Exiles, or those with the purest blood of the native Sith people. Then, due to the mixed up depictions of Naga Sadow in the original comics, we've had rivalling accounts with Sith blood being strong in the dark side and making the Exiles who interbred stronger, and then we've also had other accounts that claim there was nothing special in Sith blood, that it was unclean, and that it watered down the strong Jedi bloodlines from the original Exiles.

Is that related to species as such? Well, yes and no: "yes", in the sense that if you subscribe to the notion Red Sith are naturally Force-strong, then they should be ruling the Empire and so the Humans now in charge may be scared of the natural Sith and want to preach humanocentricism as a front to reinforce their own powerbase and discredit claims by Red Sith of their right to rule; and "no", in the sense that it's unclear how much the original Exiles themselves were actually "human" as such, though going by TotJ, Lost Tribe and TOR, most of the Jedi who became Sith Lords appear to have been Human, so while there may have been a few aliens in the mix, the Seelah's of the Empire seem to have been calling the shots. Seelah certainly wanted to ensure it was her children and dynasty that continued to rule the Lost Tribe, not some alien inbreeds; for her, the best way to ensure her offspring retained control was to get rid of the other species, at least that was one set of challengers out of the picture - and they were a set of challengers who her fellow Humans would not object to her having killed off, even if the others did ever find out what she'd done: she'd helped all the humans hang onto the Grand Lordship of the Tribe, so they'd thank her.

Moving away from the Old Sith Empire itself to the resurgent Sith Empire in TOR, it's worth keeping in mind why the Sith Empire collapsed: Sadow and Kressh's feud -- which continues to TOR, with the Sith Emperor hunting down and destroying Sith spirits, seemingly still wanting Naga Sadow in particular destroyed, and so forth. Is the Emperor himself actually the human boy king or not? We won't know until TOR, but he's certainly using the youthful appearance of a human boy to keep the Red Sith in line and the Humans on his side. When the multispecies followers of Sadow were battling with the pureblood supremacists of Kressh, it would have been easy pickings for a group of Humans to see the implosion of the Sith Empire as the fault of all these filthy halfbreeds and aliens, and want to instil in the Sith Empire the sort of orderliness found on many of the Core Worlds, i.e. a more humanocentric culture, with humans in the majority, and aliens in the minority. It was the Red Sith activists like Kressh that brought the Empire down, so the few pure bloodlines from the Exiles still in existence would quite possibly have changed their views about Sadow's belief in might-is-right, since: Sadow lost, meaning his politics would have been discredited as failed. (Of course, one also has to inject the Tapani royalist culture injected into the Sith Empire's own culture, and it may well have been those Humans who formed the backbone of the powerbase that arose after the Great Hyperspace War: and royal bloodlines like to keep themselves pure, so will have a much more dynastic attitude than the might-is-right of the halfbreed council of TOTJ.)

In the end, the politics of the TOR Sith Empire is going to depend what actually happens in TOR. If the Emperor himself is indeed Human, then it's likely as I've described above, and that the pureblooded descendants of the Exiles took revenge on their Red Sith slaves for failing them, and wanted to wrestle control of the Empire back for the ruling families of the Exiles. If, however, the Emperor is playing a massive game and turns out to be an alien hims

 

Edit: And just realized Zorrixor jumped in before me and pretty much said everything I was trying to below.

Well, the ideologies of the Sith are all based on a blend of the Sith species' doctrines - and do recall they had an Empire long before the Dark Jedi showed up - and, of course, the aforementioned Dark Jedi Exiles, who were more than happy to breed with the Sith. Definitely nothing humanocentric there; that said, there's plenty to indicate the Sith race, and the Sith-Jen'jidai hybrids, paid attention to the purity of their blood. Some seemed to have thought pureblooded Sith were great and everyone else was scum, some thought pure Dark Jedi blood was great and hybridization was abominable.

Xenophobic? Well, many Sith worried about other races mingling with the Sith and causing the extinction of their species, but ONCE this occurred, we really see no cause for xenophobia of any kind. In fact, I'd say the philosophy of the Sith disagrees with racism - anyone can reach for power - and of course there's plenty of nonhuman Sith out there.

I think the only two cases that can be made for xenophobic Sith are; the Sith Empire of TOR and the Galactic Empire. In the former's case, it's hardly xenophobia - just a wish to preserve the pure, Force rich Sith bloodlines. This, of course, was no longer a problem after TOR. As for the Galactic Empire; well, there's also examples of sexism, etc. I don't believe Palpatine was the main influence; he had an alien for an apprentice, and a master. Instead, humanocentrism did run strong among Imperial officials; indeed the Old Republic bureaucracy showed a lot of xenophobia too, from minor derogatory comments regarding race to the full blown Pius Dea Crusades.

Can't blame the Sith for any of that... unless the Sith are beyond the Crusades as me and Sinre are currently discussing.

 

But that's the thing. There were many non-human Sith Lords. So was that just an attitude of that particular Sith Empire?

 

It depends what you mean by attitude... that particular Sith Empire was comprised of nonhuman Red Sith; their wish to preserve their pure, Force strong bloodlines is all that can be constituted as xenophobia. But there's certainly no humanocentrism here; indeed, Ludo Kressh hated the thought of humans 'corrupting' the Red Sith-Jen'jidai bloodlines.

I don't think xenophobia or humanocentrism was ever a part of Sith ideology. The Old Sith Empire's wish to preserve the Sith species and the Dark Jedi/Red Sith blood cannot be construed as a sign of xenophobic policies IMO.

 

The Pius Dea Crusades did a lot to create human-nonhuman and core-rim tensions.

 

Or you could just select one of the available alien races for you play a Sith with: twi'lek, Zabrak, Pureblood Sith etc...

 

John Jackson Miller gave an excellent explanation.

The Tapani humans were actually the racist ones. They bred into the original Sith and became the basis for anti-alien culture. The fact that the Lost Tribe of the Sith outright MURDERS all of the Massassani to make sure only human children survive shows me that they're probably the driving force behind High Human Culture in the Sith Emperor's Sith Empire.

 

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Not exactly, it was only some of the Humans that hated the Sith and I think that may have been used as a way to explain why there are no red Sith in the Tribe.

Also the Human high culture has always been part of the core.

As to why the SWTOR Empire has it is, cause Bioware wants to make their Empire as similar as possible to the OT Empire to avoid "confusing" people, who don't know lore. Also helps with Nazi parallels.

 

How so? Because it makes the essentially 'Nazi' Palpatine Empire the 'reestablishment' of the SWTOR Empires system, with a 'democracy' splitting the two states? Thus helping the Palpatine Empire with Nazi parallels. German Empire - Republic - Third Reich... Sith Empire - Republic - Galactic Empire. Or because it simply makes the TOR Empire like the Nazi Empire in characteristics? Thus helping the TOR Empires Nazi parallels.

 

Indeed. Though that had nothing to do with their species, really. He didn't have had a problem with human lineage derived from the Jen'ari/Jen'jidai at all.

I do think it's rather funny how the accepted wisdom in the Ancient Empire that the "less Sith" you looked the more Jedi blood you had in your veins must have been COMPLETELY flipped on its head with the arrival of the Tapani. Suddenly looking more human than Sith would no longer be a guarantee of a high pedigree.

Despite his professions of purity, pure old Naga Sadow was probably constantly being accused of Tapani descent by the Sith Tea Party. Not to mention progressive "socialsith" ways.

 

I rather enjoy the effect the Tapani have had on Sadow's politics too.

On one side, you've got Sadow purporting his Exile blood gave him the right to rule; on the other side, you've got the Tapanis no better than any other slaves, making the biogenetic arguments of the Exiles no longer hold weight beyond for their dynastic heritage -- which I'm surprised the Lost Tribe books haven't suggested to have lain behind the resurgent Sith pureblood movement championed by Kressh.

Not that Kressh himself was pureblood either; he, like Sadow, just played to the gallery, albeit the Sith faction rather than the Human one. Gotta feel sorry for poor old Ludo, so strong in the Force, and yet belittled because he's just the illegitimate third cousin five times removed of Ajunta Pall's little nephew. You lose, Ludo, Naga's the first born... or so he wants you to think; don't mind the cheek fins, that was his grandmother's mistake.

It all just adds to how no matter what era it is or which Dark Lord, the one thing they all have in common is they'll say whatever they need to to get into power. Palpatine hardly cared anymore for the Core than the Outer Rim either -- they were all slaves to his almighty will as far as he was concerned -- but if pandering up to the Republic helped get him into the Chair, then so be it. The Sith Emperor had just done the same thing, exploiting the political infighting after the Great Hyperspace War in the same way as Palpatine exploited the infighting of the Separatist Crisis.

Is adds to why I really, really want the Emperor to himself be a Red Sith, just to be able to expose during TOR how the entire social order of the Sith Empire is constructed on a great big lie. "Humans are better, Your Majesty? Well, off with you then!"

 

What I meant was that it helped with the Nazi parallels with the OT Empire. Since Biowear wants the SWTOR Empire to be a carbon copy of that the parallels get transfered, even if at the time it would be core that was human high.