Lit So what did the non-Sith/Corporatist Separatists actually want?

This is closes to my view of the Legends only, Pre-Clone Wars CGI cartoon, Confederacy of Independent Systems. Remember that Raxus and the Separatist parliament did not originally exist as a concept in the early Legends Clone Wars universe. Instead we were always led to believe that the corporate alliances split from the Republic and their leaders made up the Separatist Council which was the leadership of the Confederacy. At the time, the only corporate interest established to be officially neutral was InterGalactic Banking Clan. That was confusing. How did corporations, which everyone seemed to b vomplaining about in The Phantom Menace all of a sudden become the heroes to thousands of planets?

The answer, I always assumed back then, was the Trade Federation and their ilk had better propaganda tactics. Independent minded people and cultures, especially those that see boogeymen in all governments, tend to blame organized government no matter what. Since corporations are seen as part of the private sphere (even though in reality many get chummy kickbacks from the government) they tend to be given a pass if they can produce a proper argument to convince people. "it's not our fault that the government is corrupt, we're just making profit and it's in our nature so you can't blame us" and "we have to do shady thins because the government is inept and unable to keep up with progress" and the classic "We didn't really do that and here's the truth...". Even though a corporation is almost has become large and just as controlling of people's lives in its own way as any government, people remain blinded by their politics and cannot see this. The private corporation can make itself the hero of the people, a scion of independence and liberal thought even as it enslaves entire peoples. :cough :Apple: :cough: You just need a young, spikey haired, anorexic, skinny jean wearing poster boy and all of a sudden you champion the people and work to reform governments and bring together all people.(would love to see a Neimoidian in skinny jeans)

However, with the Clone Wars cgi cartoon giving us Raxus Prime and the Separatist Parliament and seemingly establishing almost all the corporate guilds as being neutral, we don't really need to resort to such as explanation any longer. First, we don't know when or if the guilds were ever revealed as being involved in the Separatist conspiracy. We don't know if the Separatist Council shown in Revenge of the Sith was established from the beginning of the Clone Wars or came into existence between the end of the Clone Wars cartoon and the beginning of Revenge of the Sith. We don't know if the Council was public or if it was the shadow government of the Confederacy. From what we were shown in the cartoon,I would assume that the majority of the Separatist believe their government is ruled first and foremost by the people. When the Commerce Guild representative in that one episode where Amidala tries to convince her friend in the Parliament to open up peace negations, tries to speak over the other Parliament members, he is put in his place and told that the commercial interests do not control the Confederacy. This indicates to me, that while the guilds are seen as important in financing the war, they are not seen as the primary entities of the Separatist movement. The people are. This is in contrast to how the corporate guilds were originally portrayed in the Legends-verse Clone Wars material and now provides us with a more simpler and "logical" reason for the Separatist movement: it's seen by the majority its partisans as a movement of the people to break away from the criminally inept and increasingly authoritarian Republic which, is though to be in the hands of corporate interests. The Clone Wars cartoon realigned the entire prequels with the portrayal of the Republic and peoples views of the corporate interests and their relationship with the Republic as it was established in The Phantom Menace, thereby erasing the early Legends-verse Clone Wars portrayal of a very obvious corporate leadership for the CIS. .

Interestingly enough though, by American political standards, both portrayals of the Separatist movement, original Legends or canon, make it an extremist right ring movement but for different reasons. Oversimplified analysis: In one, the CIS is like," Privatization makes everything better!" in the other "Liberty and freedom from centralized authority!"

In both continuities, the corporate interests themselves were ever going to get one thing: Free trade and more power and money.

(And I was comparing Pre-Clone Wars cartoon Legends CIS with canon CIS, not post Clone Wars cartoon Legends CIS which might result in a third version of the CIS and its reasons for being )

 

Just wanted to clarify: I don't believe that in either versions of the Clone Wars, the people joining the CIS necessarily belong to more culturally shady side, ie those that support slavery and rely piracy and smuggling. I think there were plenty of planets that would join for legitimate reasons, in either version of the CIS that I presented. In any political movement, there will always be a shady element: in right ring groups, there will be the anarchist types that would support chaos and opportunistic warlordism if allowed to, and in left wing groups, those who would support collectivism to the extremes of eliminating every culture and way of life in opposition to unity. Those elements are not necessarily reflective of the entire movement or its core.

 

This talk about non-sith CIS goals is intriguing, I wish we got to see more stories from their perspective. Since we didn't see much of that in TCW, It would be nice if eventually a book was released that presents a CIS perspective (we could also see buildup to the war). Or if we ever get more animated content from that era, an arc from their point of view.

 

This is all not very contradictory nor particularly complicated.

Go back to the opening crawl of AOTC. That states that several star system have declared their intention to leave the Republic. That means the Confederacy of Independent Systems is made up by individual planetary governments (most of) which are former membership worlds of the Galactic Republic.

On Naboo Padmé talks with Sio Bibble and the new Queen about the Separatist crisis. There it is established that the Separatists feeling threatened by the Republic's Military Creation Act might feel compelled to turn to the Trade Federation or the Commerce Guild for help - help that would be of a military nature, presumably.

The problem of AOTC is that we never see any of those actual Separatists. We only see Dooku, Jango Fett, and the representatives of the megacorporations Count Dooku is making a deal with behind closed doors.

The treaties and contracts Dooku discusses with Gunray, Shu Mai, San Hill, and Wat Tambor do not include them becoming membership worlds of the CIS. It is about them backing the coming war effort of the CIS against the Republic which at this point is supposed to be a quick and easy thing because it is thought that droid armies the CIS is about to buy from the Techno Union only stand against the Jedi, not the Jedi and a mysterious clone army.

Gunray and Passel Argente sort of give the impression that they join the CIS, but all they actually do is give the CIS the means to fight the Republic (i.e. either contingents of battle droids and battle ships or the funds to buy such things). Shu Mai only agrees to support the CIS in secret and the IBC demands a non-exclusive arrangement with the CIS (meaning that the Muuns would be able to continue working with the Republic).

This sort of means that we never see 'the true Separatists/CIS members' but rather their corrupt leader, Count Dooku, and his corrupt cronies (the corrupt Senators Toonbuck Toora, Po Nudo, and Tessek) making his shady deals with the capitalists.

Dooku's 'political program' of absolute capitalism (lower taxes, no tariffs, etc.) is just the carrot he throws to the representatives of the corporations on Geonosis to get their help in bringing the Clone War about. That isn't the official policy of the Confederacy of Independent Systems just as it isn't the Galactic Republic's official policy to transform it into a dictatorship. The CIS needs the help of the corporations to have the funds fight a full-scale war.

We should imagine the 'real Separatists' (people we never meet aside from, perhaps, Mina Bonteri) as idealists like Padmé Naberrie, Bail Organa, Mon Mothma, and so on who were somewhat more militant and radical enough to fight for what they believed rather than remain inside the system.

The Empire is created via a 'divide and conquer' stratagem. Without a civil war which forced the idealists who believed in the democratic ideals the Republic was founded upon to fight on different sides the Sith could never have taken over the galaxy.

For the sake of continuity we have to assume that most of the actual separatists aren't actually involved in the war business. Dooku controls everything through his cronies, which he apparently can do because the CIS Parliament granted him similar emergency powers as the Senate granted Palpatine. The nature of the CIS army (mostly droids) makes this even more easy.

Some of the power brokers among the corporations know they are working with and for the Sith (San Hill, Poggle the Lesser, Nute Gunray...) but not all of them. And even those who knew the ultimate endgame they are quite mistaken about their share (or rather: role) in it. Those who knew the war was a ruse probably thought they were going to be the new elite in the Sith-controlled Empire, wielding more power than they could ever have had in the Republic. Some others might have been powerful enough political entities in their own right which had to be either discredited or brought low to establish the Empire.

I'm also inclined to believe that TCW story of Raxus and the CIS Parliament as well as the neutrality of the major corporations (Trade Federation, Commerce Guild, Techno Union) would eventually have to be dealt with. By the time of ROTS what remains of the CIS is definitely in the hands of the megacorporations - a development that could have come about after Palpatine threw the collaborator senators out of the Republic and Dooku granting them amnesty in the CIS, or something of that sort. One also assumes that Raxus would have been either attacked or conquered by the Republic before the end of the war, sort of explaining how it came to be that the corporation guys directly controlled the CIS military in ROTS. We could also imagine some sort of violent coup behind the scenes with Darth Tyranus finally showing his true face. We see how he treats the speaker of his own Parliament in the Clovis arc and earlier on there is no doubt that he has Mina Bonteri murdered.

Presumably Dooku as the head of the CIS government - lacking Jedi oversight - could commit much more severe crimes in plain sight than Palpatine could in the Republic. He had to play the role of the benign chancellor or fear that the Jedi would move against him. Dooku had to play a similar role to draw people to his cause (or rather: to establish himself as the figurehead/leader of the idealists who were leaving the Republic) but unlike Palpatine he might have been able the show his true face somewhat sooner. Or rather could use go-betweens to do his dirty work behind the scenes since the war had begun.

The big problem with that is that GL completely failed to give 'the good/real Separatists' a face in the movies. He should have introduced the Separatist Movement in Episode I and have had main characters who were (more or less) close in TPM fight on different sides in the Clone Wars. That could have helped establish how the Sith were fooling everyone. The character of Dooku would have been especially important for that. By having him in the first movie already both the characters and the audience could have been fooled by his idealism (which could only have been revealed as being fake in the second movie).

 

That would all be great. They really should get themselves together and continue/finish TCW.

The other option would be to have Luceno write a novel - or a series of novels - about Dooku and the origin of Separatist Movement/CIS.

 

Fantastic post!

I agree that I wish we had more faces/voices to represent the "normal" and idealistic Separatists.

But with the massacre of the Separatist Council leading to the end of the war, and the council being composed of the heads of the megacorporations, their formal "takeover" needs to be covered at some point.

 

This is why I made a distinction between how the CIS was eventually portrayed in canon via the Clone Wars cartoon and how it was initially portrayed and should be understood in the early Clone Wars multimedia stories. The portrayal in the early Clone Wars media was the portrayal that depicted a bunch of planets following the open leadership of corporations despite the fact that TPM had implied that corporations were seen as part of the problem.

We have no evidence either way of what the Separatist Council is by the time of RotS. In early Pre-Clone Wars cartoon stories, it was presented with the understanding that it had always been the official and public face of the CIS government. The cartoon changed that.

Canon-wise,because the Clone Wars cartoon ended before it could finish various story lines, we don't know if Separatist parliament was dissolved, leaving the Council as the governing body or if the Council we see in RotS is merely intended to be a gathering of conspirators, the Separatist Council being the true shadow government of CIS but not necessarily the official public government of the CIS.

I would agree with that sentiment. I also don't see the Clone Wars as a true civil war. I think many, if not most, of the separatists would have been happy doing what the name of their movement implied...separating from the Republic and being a rival galactic government doing its own thing.

The reason I feel it's good to over two interpretations of the Separatist movement is because some future story could establish that the Separatist Council was some official, public upper governing body of the CIS. I doubt that will happen but it could since the relationship between the Council and the Parliament was never defined.

 

That is basically due to the writers of this stuff being lazy. The way AOTC (in the novel and the script, not in the cut-down movie) set things up was as I laid out above. The 'Clone Wars' cartoon had San Hill as a real Separatist bad guy and some of the novels might have made similar mistakes but the comics never really focused on the corporation heads being the leaders of the CIS. They had their own villains who basically were people working for Dooku. And Dooku really was allowed to play out his idealist facade in those comics, too.

We have the so-called Separatist Council - consisting of the extras Vader kills on Mustafar in ROTS - set up as the leaders of the Separatists in both LOE and ROTS. You cannot really retcon that because then Grievous should have protected the Raxus Parliament not so much the shadowy schemers behind the official government. The impression you get in ROTS is that Gunray really is the third in line and taking command after Dooku and Grievous are both dead. He even controls the droid armies of the CIS.

I agree that we don't know what happened to the people on Raxus but we can reasonably assume that the Parliament was either dissolved/destroyed or otherwise swept aside. If it would have still existed by ROTS then somebody should have mentioned Raxus and the government there instead of the corporation guys. I mean, if they were calling the shots behind the scenes only Sidious, Tyranus, and Grievous would know about that. The Jedi and the Senate would have no idea about that and thus not really care what happened to those people, right? Not to mention that Sidious would not refer to those goons as 'the Separatist leaders' when talking to Grievous. He would talk about 'our friends' or 'our sponsors' or something of that sort but not give the impression that they were the official rulers of the CIS government.

Well, I guess Dooku's nice guy propaganda machine truly worked insofar as the need for a war was concerned. The Republic did attack the CIS member world of Geonosis effectively more or less unprovoked. The Republic fired the first bullet, and if we assume that the average CIS member had some very severe grievances with the Republic it is entirely believable that Dooku was allowed to retaliate in kind, setting the stage for a full scale war. One assumes that he sold whatever deals he had made with Argente, Gunray, Tambor, and Hill on Geonosis as the lesser evil. Yes, they had to use droid armies bought from the corporations and accept loans from the IBC and so forth but that was all done for the greater good. Once the Republic was defeated they would rebuild everything without those corrupt elements, etc. At that point the CIS either had the chance to surrender to the corrupt Republic or to fight a war.

You have to keep in mind that Palpatine made it perfectly clear that he had no intention of allow the Separatists to (permanently) leave the Republic. It is not flashed out why they want to go but presumably because a lot of the worlds founding the CIS had enough of Republic-sanctioned megacorporation exploitation of their worlds and assets. Palpatine wants an Empire and the war is a ruse so it is never about anything but in the eye of the public it was about something. The fact that the wealthy coreworlds could no longer exploit the Rim worlds as they used to is a pretty good reason why the Separatist should be forced to remain in the Republic. Not to mention that we also have no idea about the financial framework of the Galactic Republic. One assumes that systems are paying taxes and stuff when they are membership worlds. With thousands of systems leaving the Republic we can reasonably assume that galactic government itself was in great trouble, perhaps even threatening to collapse. If you just lose half of your tax payers you are really in trouble.

The idea that the Separatist Council and the Separatist Parliament existed at the same time as different ruling bodies makes no sense at all. Not with the Corporate Alliance being not exactly well-liked by the overwhelming majority of the CIS Parliament in TCW. If Dooku had made Gunray, Argente, Hill, etc. part of his government - say, with the 'Separatist Council' being some sort of executive branch of the CIS government - then his Parliament clearly wouldn't have liked that all that much. I think it is much better if we basically imagine Gunray, Tambor, and Argente as privateers joining the CIS with their vast assets who were granted permission by Dooku to conquer (and exploit) worlds in the name of the CIS. Later on they might have acquired more and more power in comparison to the Parliament. That whole story of both the Republic and Confederacy ordering new soldiers can be imagined as the corporations providing the battle droids gaining more and more influence in the CIS until they were calling the shots openly.

 

I agree with your last point about the Council and the Parliament...however, with Star Wars, I never take anything for granted...even if it's the most sensible choice.

My impression is that the Separatist Council has always been the true power but it is not the officia; governing power for the CIS known to the public. The Parliament is the official and legal governing body while the Council is the true power.

Like I said though, until it's confirmed it's just speculation.

 

Yeah. My impression was always that the Separatist Parliament was equivalent to people like Bail Organa or Padme Amidala on the Republic's side, nice people who might embody the best of their government/movement/side, but really don't have any control over things at the end of the day. Never wondered about whether the Council was public/private - being that the bulk of the Separatist armies was megacorporate battle droids, I always assumed that it was widely known that they were where the real power was.

 

the Parliament represented the interests of their planets. the Council of bad guys weren't running the government, they were running the war.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

You know I wish we had seen human foot soldiers in the CIS-not simply as RPG fodder but I would have been genuinely interested in seeing some fight for the confederacy. I wonder what the uniforms would have looked like?

 

Honestly, I think there's a lot of Separatist apologetia here and that's a shame. While it's easy to say the Separatist movement wasn't "right" and I go with the idea the megacorporations weren't actually the parties heading up the political side of the Separatist cause, I also point out the Separatist political side is powerless. It's the equivalent of the Imperial Senate in the time of Palpatine in that it exists as nothing more than a rubber stamp on Dooku's dictatorship.

He controls the Separatist economy and the Separatist military.

There's a reason the Separatist Parliament isn't seen much.

It's the Queen of England, there to wave and wear hats.

 

Shouldn't the Parliament be at least somewhat aware of the Separatist war crimes?

 

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In the pre Clone Wars cartoon Legends stuff, we did see that. We also saw a little of it in the cartoon with Separatist planets like Umbara.
The uniforms for separatists, like the faction on Brentaal, looked like the standard uniforms worn by a lot of the other Planetary Security Forces in the galaxy...big brim hats, limited armor. Like Naboo security, like Alderaani troopers, like later Naval Troopers of the Empire. In the old Legends, it was established that planets and their security forces were supplied by a few corporations so all the equipment tended to look similar. Whenever organic separatist troops or non Clone troopers showed up in the books, I just imagined them wearing variations on the Imperial Army Trooper armor. Made sense to me considering the fact about the security forces being supplied by a few corporations and how the films themselves kept showing us a variation on that style:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Imperial_Army_trooper?file=Imperial_Army_Trooper_(Field_Armor).jpg

You can see Brentaal troopers dying here: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Battle_of_Brentaal_IV_(Clone_Wars)?file=Brentaal.JPG

Not the best shots. Better scenes are in the comic.

 

Define "war crimes"

Then meditate on what you "truly" know and are aware of even in this age of mass communication.

Then see if you still need to ask that question.

 

I too want to see the "human" face of the CIS in star wars more.

Would make a good comic idea.

Star Wars: Confederacy

I wish Marvel focused more on that era instead of having the majority of their comic stories set in the OT era. They should mix it up a bit.

Comics on things TCW didn't do much delving into.

Star Wars: Republic Commando

With a CIS based comic series, while we could see the typical scum bags involved in the movement, it could also present people who have some morals.....they believe the CIS cause is just.

A way to put the "good rebel" concept that is often used in the OT era into the Clone Wars period.

The stories don't have to be just CIS vs Republic forces. We could see a CIS group protect civilians from pirates, etc. Forces taking advantage of the war. While we often get the picture of droids destroying freedom in occupied areas because of the corruption within the CIS, it would be refreshing to get a different scene of CIS forces (preferably people) helping civilians out.

 

My assumption is the Separatist Parliament is probably aware of the Separatist's military effort but any actual war crimes are going to have the best possible spin placed upon on it. Also, while the Separatist Parliament is aware of the REPUBLIC'S war crimes as well. Remember their elected leader is Count Dooku, who is a smooth talker even without being a Sith Lord and can easily spin any situation as Republic propaganda or war mongering. The fact the Republic's war crimes are as real as the Separatists is certainly going to be fuel for the fire.

One thing we should also know is we also SEE what happens to Separatist parliament members who accuse Dooku of war crimes.

They're summarily arrested and set for execution.

Troublesome ones assassinated by the "Republic" or actually just the Republic.

 

I'm bias in favour of Legends like always, but I always saw it as the Republic under Sheev slowly getting closely centralized and more power being given to the government than corporations. Even without an army (yet), security starts doing its job again, the corrupt deals of the big corporate guilds don't make it far. Then these corporations, not satisfied that the power they've had all over after the Ruusan Reformation (we know the Trade Fed's been around for awhile) being taken from them, decide to secede. The Separatist Council then IS the representation of the CIS, for better or worse. They represented the total capitalism, libertarian parts of the Galaxy who actually like what these big guilds have done of them. Yeah, they've exploited the poor but we also know that the Trade Federation had a very humane (sentiente?) defense force and it was a multi-species organisation, Gunray only recently took it over. Then the Separatist Parliament is the 'lower house', the guys that do the menial laws that in libertarianism would be made a lot less important as full deregulation is made. Think of the Council like the House of Lords in the UK, but with the power it used to have, and the Parliament as House of Commons.

 

Well, perhaps there was such a body. But I still see no reason why those guys should be the corporation heads rather than the more corrupt elements among the heads of the worlds/senators who founded the Confederacy. The way TCW put it is quite clear that the corporations do not, in fact, rule the CIS. Behind the scenes they are as influential in the CIS as they are in the Republic and thus they have no reason to ever openly take over the CIS unless they are forced to (say, because they are thrown out of the Republic).

It is unlikely that anything was 'well known' in all of that. It wasn't well known that Palpatine was transforming the Republic into the Empire throughout the Clone Wars despite the signs pointing towards something like that. Vice versa, it might not have been obvious to the member worlds of the CIS that Dooku was only feigning his idealism. I'm pretty sure the people in the CIS knew about the ties their government had to the corporations. But just as the good guys in the Republic aren't aware how deep the corruption goes the CIS people might not have thought it possible that Dooku would sell them out to them.

Keep in mind that the choice among the Separatists would have been to either yield to the Republic's clone army or to buy the droid armies the corporations were offering. Essentially the Clone War begins with a Republic attack on the CIS membership world Geonosis. Geonosis already had its own droid armies to defend it being also a world where the Techno Union was building battle droids. Presumably being a member of the CIS is akin to being a member of NATO or another military alliance. An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us. I'm pretty sure there were people in the CIS who realized that war was a very bad idea but once Geonosis was attacked the hawks necessarily prevailed. And one should assume that Dooku sold the whole war to his people with the promise of quick victory thanks to the advantage in numbers the droid armies gave them.

The running of the war would have been in the hands of the Sith on both sides, basically. Presumably a lot of this war was scripted with Sidious and Tyranus deciding which sectors/systems/planets would be attacked next, who should win this or that battle, and so on. The Jedi were managing the war on the Republic side but as far as we know they did not make the political/strategic decisions shaping the war. Palpatine and his government did that.

What war crimes, exactly? Wars are always ugly. Even if Dooku would be actually telling the truth to his people - which is pretty unlikely - things have to be seen in context. If you are fighting against corrupt Jedi and a rather powerful clone army you have to fight dirty to win. Not to mention that both clones and droids are just tools in the war. Actual war crimes would be committed against the civilian population and we don't really see the CIS ever committing major war crimes against innocents.

 

Interestingly, Star Wars THE ROLEPLAYING GAME had a region called "The Expansion Region" which was an experiment in Corporate Rule.

It was a steaming pit 16,000 years later.

 

I spent half a second thinking "war crimes" and came up with the mass enslavement of the Togruta on Kiros, the use of the Blue Shadow virus, the torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners and civilians, and the (attempted) experimental weapons testing on the Lurmen (which was prevented), all in TCW.

I'm sure there are many more examples. In Legends, Grievous was known for such crimes, such as bombarding Humbarine into slag and killing off its population, and wiping out the population of the Weemell sector with the brainrot plague.

 

I forgot about the Togruta thing. That was really bad. But whether this was essentially a part of the 'the official war effort' of the CIS or something Dooku pulled off because he could isn't really clear. There was the so-called Clone War between the Republic and the CIS and then there were people acting in the name of the CIS invading/threatening neutral and non-aligned worlds simply because they could. Presumably the whole enslavement thing of the Togruta wasn't part of the official policy. The same would go for the Blue Shadow Virus incident (set up by Darth Sidious and Gunray about a decade before the war actually began), testing the Defoliator on the Lurmen, etc.

Grievous is depicted as a ruthless warlord in the EU stuff (especially the Holonet News) but that is never actually depicted anywhere. The Republic seems to have somewhat cleaner hands at least where the Jedi are concerned. Unfortunately we don't see much of what's happening where clones are fighting under the command of non-Jedi officers. But then, one definitely could consider the entire Clone War a huge war crime considering that the Republic and the Jedi were fighting a war with clones they had bred to fight and die in a war that (more or less) meant nothing at all. Throwing living beings against robots in a fight for life and death is a very disgusting thing in any scenario in which is not artificially twisted to appear to be 'funny'.

 

I forgot about Ryloth. Starving the Twi'lek people, bombing their inhabited villages, and mass looting done by Wat Tambor himself.

Dooku orders Tambor to steal what he can and destroy everything else to demonstrate the cost of Republic victory.

"Not part of the official war effort or official policy" is a meaningless distinction.

 

(Catalyst spoilers)

Spoiler

In the Catalyst preview, Krennic destroys an entire village of civilians. I'd have to imagine that all the "evil" Imperials that were fighting for the Republicl during the Clone War didn't just suddenly become that way when they put on their new uniforms.