"So anyway, I orchestrated that apprentice's death and built an empire fuelled by greed and corruption."
- Darth Sidious
this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2025
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A french YouTuber (Bolchegeek) calls that the Magneto syndrome : the writers make the bad guys make actually good points when criticizing the supposed "good guys", but then proceed to completely discredit their character by making them do something obviously evil. He argued that it's a way to pretend like you're making a progressive movie that questions society, while still reinforcing the status quo, and to basically say "Don't be fooled by those radicals, they may seem convincing but they're actually just out for blood"
“Don’t be fooled by those radicals, they may seem convincing but they’re actually just out for blood”
I think this is the entire underlying propoganda in Batman villains and that only the rich good guy by choice can save us!
#PoisonIvyDidNothingWrong
Capeshit in general is inherently right wing, though, if you stop to think about it. The foundational premise is the notion that if only this Great Man™ steps up to punch problems away the world will be a better place for it.
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Those true evils often hide their motivation behind a "justifiable evil". It's basically modern politics. Most often in display in the US, but infects many, if not most, governments around the world.
Just because someone presents a supposedly logical and rational argument, doesn't necessarily mean either that they believe it, or that the argument is actually based in factual analysis.
Pop-Culture detective also has a good video essay about this too: Marvel: Defenders of the Status Quo (based on work by David Graeber, I believe)
xmen97 played this well. Magneto was angry but otherwise good. And then he snapped. But it wasn't a long con, he was reformed. And then someone tried to genocide his adopted nation and he snapped. Can't really blame him for that.
Yeah, this has always felt like propaganda to me. Present really solid arguments and then attach it to the character that murders toddlers or something to discredit the concept.
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Let's not forget the empire vaporizing multiple inhabited planets
There were rebels there using the rest of the population as human shields.
But the Republic was also fueled by greed and corruption ... so just new management?
(... not even that new actually?)
Didn't know we had a CIS apologist in the comments.
(It's super funny to me when I say something about the other side & immediately get folk arguing I'm simping for the side I didn't even mention. No sides are ever just good or bad, my friend. Not to mention it's fiction in this case.)
Hehe, you telling me you liked Palpatine before he was cool, when he was still Supreme Chancellor of the Republic?
The leader that Lucas said was inspired my Nixon?
(it's a joke my dude)
My allegiance is to the Republic; to democracy!
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So, you know, maybe institute term limits instead of going full fascism. Star Wars is so unrealis...oh.
The Jedi council are unelected folk (from a religious sect) just doing things bcs they can. Like kidnapping all force-sensitive children.
They are like the Church in the middle ages with a private army, public funding, more powerful than most state officials, not subject to state laws, and not disclosing their affairs or motives publicly.
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But Dooku didn't help the slaves...
Not uncommon for sith to get into it for theoretically noble reasons they fail to live up to; it's easy to talk about the good you'd do with that power when you don't have it
Username checks out.
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Some propaganda:
Tho OPs pic's point remains - SW is a space western & can't give us the full picture of how the average world lived under either of systems, but going from widespread and generational corruption (not just the Jedi, but starting there) to a single point of power (dictatorship) initially lowers the corruption & dethrones (or recruits in diminished way) various mini-powers/leaders/mobsters bcs if nothing else they are simply a threat to the image.
At any rate, never be ok being governed by a 900 year old unelected frog that can't spot a Sith Lord if they shared a urinal at his visit to the senate (and the frogs religious zealotism is centred around genociding said Siths).
Billions of beings? China and India are not far off of billions. It should at least(!) be trillions.
There's 8 billion humans on earth, and if you assume that's the average planet population in the empire, you're only maybe a trillion of there's over 100 planetary civilizations under imperial rule.
I'm not a big enough nerd to know how many there really are, but thinking back to how many reps were in the republic senate scenes, it's probably around a trillion (they generally rep a planet, right?). But that's being generous, plenty of those planets are noticably smaller than Earth and I don't think they all end up imperial.
From what we've seen in the movies, there's six planets, maybe ten, in the empire. The others are most likely imperial propaganda.
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hE sUpPoRtS gEnOcIdE! I aM vOtInG fOr PaLpAtInE…
Does the Republic have any actual power in the Outer Rim where the slavery was happening? I thought that was Hutt space and the Hutts are not part of the Republic. It's why Mos Eisley is a haven for pirates and other criminals looking to evade the law; the Republic has no authority or jurisdiction there. It's why Republic credits are no good there.
Star Wars government makes a lot more sense if you've read Foundation. The Republic was not in good health when Palps took over (very much according to his designs.)
Unless using Republic credits gets you shot, there should at least be a privately run currency exchange somewhere, even if the rates are terrible. It doesn't make sense that there's no currency exchange anywhere on the planet.
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you mean like what they did to the Gungans?
When were the Gungans shown to be slaves? Nobody even seemed to know they existed except Amidala.
I'm not famiar with any EU content tho, so maybe I'm jist ignorant of some details found outside the movies.
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Reboot Star Wars but the Sith are anti-slavery freedom fighters against the Jedi liberal empire
“We came here to chew bubblegum and free slaves. And we are all out of bubblegum.”
Darth John Brown
And keep religion from state, especially ones that take children from their parents to indoctrinate at a young age.
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This has to be peak Lemmy.
Relating to the sith and thinking they are the "good guys".
This has to be peak Lemmy.
"It's just me and my world of enemies..."
Before it was hurr hurr reddit, now it's hurr hurr lemmy.
When are you not in the attacked righteous minority?
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Lol I like villains, always have
ACAB includes Jedi 🤓☝️
I’ve heard this take before, but my head canon includes this as why Yoda went into exile. He knew he fucked up, and couldn’t really face it for a while.
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Wanna hear what it sounds like when the blood pressure of 1000 nerds spikes all at once?
Ahem, "Grey Jedi are how you fix Star Wars"
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