he tells it like it is

"So anyway, I orchestrated that apprentice's death and built an empire fuelled by greed and corruption."

Darth Sidious

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!
- 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.
- I think I heard of a similar cirque of Avatar's Amon.
- 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.
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.
I think that makes this even more accurate. Authoritarians can only take over a democracy due to just how angry people are with the current establishment. MAGA is the same way, it's fueled by people who can FEEL that something is terribly wrong with the world, but aren't smart enough to know why. Hate and anger is a large part of it, but the weakness and complacency of the current establishment isn't making it any harder for them. I remember a lot of people voted for trump in 2024 just cause he sounded a lot different than the usual guys. More disruptive and up-front about his thoughts. In actuality that's because he has no respect love for anything except money, but they were too delusional to know that.
All they needed to say was "We are different and we will govern stronger" and people were tricked into thinking that meant they were better.

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.
- I think the word kidnapping is doing some heavy lifting here. Aren't the kids there by choice?

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.
- Or, hear me out: He's a liar and manipulator

hE sUpPoRtS gEnOcIdE! I aM vOtInG fOr PaLpAtInE…

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).

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

Yoda is like an establishment neoliberal

I mean, it's pretty on the nose. Blue lightsabers vs red lightsabers. Meanwhile the more esoteric, wiser jedi wield green lightsabers.
Yoda is Chuck'e'Cheese.

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.

When accountability knocks, flee...

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"

Interesting that you have willingly opted out of the social contracts known as human rights over this but okay
Technically something similar already exists in EU. Aing-Tii monks do not see the force as black or white, but as a rainbow. They mostly stayed to themselves except to fuck up some slavers from time to time, but they have taught at least 1 human their method of using the force.
Malgus did nothing wrong.
Star Wars needs more Jolee Bindos

Just another point on the laundry list of reasons the prequels fucked everything up.

I mean they certainly fuck up a lot, but I think they, in larger narative strokes, do a good job of touching on how the failures of neoliberalism decay into fascism as complacent systems fail.
- I'm just not sure Lucas meant to do it
In a good way. The prequels felt like they are a part of a different era of history. While the sequels where just the originals but more.

I'm not a fan of when writers let the baddies point out plot holes and inconsistencies brought about by other writers. At that point it's really just the writers undermining each other.

Isn't this the kind of thinking that got Trump elected? Kamala ignored the war in Gaza, so the other side is better? Doesn't say the dark side isn't exactly the same.. so it must not be?