Aside from the recent Disney Incorporations, was the OG Empire racist? Obviously against aliens, was it also against anyone who wasn't a straight guy?
Also, Vader was a slave, but he still slayeed all those Tusken Raiders, plus, sided with the Fascist Regime. I always thought of him as an "opressed gypsy", but I guess the gypsies were the Raiders, Vader was the Slav and the Empire were the Nazis? Dumb analogies, but just to use some real-world stuff.
the empire was meant to be russians, not nazis
Anakin is the quintessential 'fuck you, got mine' story. like a gay nazi that cares more about wealth and power than love or sex so just stays in the closet his whole life while doing whatever The Regime asks of him
Explain?
Good analogy. He was pretty racist himself though. He did hate the Tusken Raiders. And I mean HATE.
Either way, was the Empire truly racist? And if it was, would you prefer that, or the current "we have black female officers" version?
>was the OG Empire racist?
No. Despite the imperial military being 99.80% Human, the vast majority of imperial citizens were not Human.
>was it also against anyone who wasn't a straight guy?
No. The Empire didn't give a shit enough to persecute gays. Enough to such the extent that one of their Moffs was an drugged out, obese faggot.
Some of the imperial military may have been speciesist/racist, but the Empire on the whole was not. And this is because the Emperor was not racist/speciesist. And why he wasn't was because ALL lifeforms were beneath him, and were his to use and dispose of as he saw fit. He couldn't care what they were. Only so long as they were of use to him.
I remember readin somewhere (I think that Darth Plagueis EU book) that Palpatine grew up to be very speciest, due to his family's and Plagueis influence. I don't remember it that well though.
In the EU? Yes. In the movies? No.
But Plagueis wasn't human.
The fact that Plagueis isn't Human in that book also may have something to do with that. But alas, that's an EU book, and thus doesn't have any bearing on Palpatine's character.
As far as actual Star Wars goes, Palpatine isn't discriminatory based on species, race/ethnicity, gender or sexuality. His only concern is if someone is useful to him. If they serve no purpose to him, he won't bother with them.
The military only allowed humans, so yeah.
I don't think it was ever said that they discriminated against non-humans, but they objectively saw them as better than saw, twileks
>The military only allowed humans, so yeah.
Unless by decree of the Emperor. See Thrawn and Inquisitors.
>the empire was meant to be russians, not nazis
kek, and that's why they have nazi aeshtetics and british accents, right?
Nah, we've been seeing way more non-white Imperials and woman officers than ever existed in the Old canon. The First Order is highly multiracial too, and they're even more radical than the Empire ever was.
As for the tuskens, they're not people. Vader killing them wad no worse than someone gassing a nest of cockroaches.
I don't see how you can overlook the genocide of the Jedi and pretend they aren't the Nazis
fucking racist Sithlords
Sith is a religion of peace.
Eh, it's not like the Jedi are better. Well, they are more tolerant, but you get the idea... The roles changed between the eras.
But the Sith = Muslims never made any sense for me. I prefer the Sith = Orthodox & Jedi = Catholics version.
>Emperor was not racist/speciesist. And why he wasn't was because ALL lifeforms were beneath him, and were his to use and dispose of as he saw fit. He couldn't care what they were. Only so long as they were of use to him.
how progressive!
LOL what about the Geonosians, they were gassed into extinction with massive bug bombs.
The republic were the racist ones using a slave POC army
>The republic were the racist ones using a slave POC army
Circumstances didn't exactly give them any alternatives. An Entire new galactic government openly declared war against them.
Beggars can't be choosers.
>Sith = Orthodox & Jedi = Ctholics
How? If anything, wouldn't it make more sense for Sith = Protestant?
The empire's military strategy of "throw a shit load of soilders at our enemy until we completely destroy every spec of their sorry asses" is pretty reminiscent of the ussr.
>OG star wars is based almost entirely on the second world war
>Down to the weapons each side uses being based on real life equivalents and the stormtroopers are called stormtroopers
>Each sides lasers are colour coordinated to be the same colour as their real life tracers
Nah, totes the russians
>OG racist
the implication was there, all officers are humans, all stormtroopers are human sounding, etc. while the rebels got more and more diverse with every movie
they dont outright state it, but it is obvious that the empire was a "humans-only" club
Plagueis was a Muun, who are known to be Japanese-levels of xenophobic. He always had a soft hatred for humans because he saw the potential in a clearly dominant species that always wanted to be the equal of other, 'lesser' species. Plagueis himself was no more racist than any other Muun, but Muuns on the whole were pretty damned racist by galactic standards.
Truth be told, if you want to talk about their insularity, skill with lawyering and finance, and odd nose shape compared to the 'human' normal, Muun are a closer stereotypical analog to Jews than any other ethnicity.
The Empire was "meant" to be a quintessential representation of imperialism. There are the Nazi uniforms, the Stormtroopers, the British accents, some Soviet history analogues, the Rise of the Empire is almost one-for-one repeat of the stories of Caesar Augustus and Napoleon, and Lucas admitted that there is some Vietnam War influence on the story of OT.
It's not a specific "space nazis" analogue, but an amalgamation of imperial symbols.
>MAKE CORUSCANT GREAT AGAIN!
>DEPORT ALL NON-HUMANS!
Do you think there was a human pride movement that supported the Empire from start and beyond the finish?
Wookies were enslaved
If you look at Palpatine's inner circle, it's mostly aliens, and of different races. He was a meritocrat above all else.
HOWEVER, in EU he specifically noticed the rise of human racism after the Clone Wars (which was mostly humans vs all different alien races and robots) and sought to use it as a tool to strengthen the loyalty of the war-hardened military, now turned into politicians as Moffs. De-facto, he divided the galaxy into mostly autonomous sectors, and it depended on a Moff's personal liking whether the local regime was racist or not.
Also in EU, Empire declared certain races, like the Wookies, to be non-sapient animals, and treated those as such. With the Calamari, who mostly supported the Republic for quite some time, there was some serious damage control and rewritten history to present them as a "newfound animal kind" instead of an old race... Somehow!
There you go, OP. Disney Empire was evil enough to genocide at least one entire race. I don't think anything in EU, or, heck, amongst the Nazis, comes close.
In-universe. nobody cared since everyone hated the CIS races after the Clone Wars.
>Empire was evil enough to genocide at least one entire race.
And besides that, they used the same weapon to wipe out three planets, though one of those planets was completely destroyed.
The Geonosians were exterminated because they were a source of labor for the construction of the Death Star. If we take into the consideration the extreme measures taken on Jedda and Scarif, the overall trend points towards an Empire that's indiscriminately ruthless when it came to tying up loose ends regarding the Death Star.
Maybe?
It depends on the source, so let's concentrate on the movies and what they're trying to convey.
In Ep IV, we see one alien empire operator (the Tatooine spy) and one alien rebel (Chewie). You could say it's because costumes are expensive, but we see a lot of aliens in the cantina.
And that's because Tatooine is supposed to be some place of wonder, a frontier town, an exotic setting on the fringe of civilisation.
The wierd looking guys are here because it serves the movie.
The empire is uniformed because it's a galaxy-spanning autoritarian bureaucracy. Including aliens (and custom uniforms) would have lessened that feel. Sure, they could have face painted a few guys, but it would have added nothing to the narrative.
Now, for all we know, you could have some duros under those stormtrooper helmets.
And if anything, the movies themselves are racist: Have you seen the alien ratio in seedy bars and crimelord palaces compared to the empire, rebel alliance or cloud city?
Another similar matter, the Empire is supposed to be anti-droids, while using them a lot in the movies.
>Vader was a slave, but he still slayeed all those Tusken Raiders, plus, sided with the Fascist Regime
Yes and? Watto refused republic credits, Tatooine isn't exactly under the central autority. Amidala was probably his first contact with an offical from the Republic.
>Tatooine isn't exactly under the central autority.
Not any official authority. But Tatooine is in Hutt-space and is the HQ of Jabba. Well outside of the Republic's borders.
weren't aliens sorta treated like shit ?
>weren't aliens sorta treated like shit ?
Not most, since they made the majority of the Empire's population. It's no good to have the majority of your people up and openly have cause to want to overthrow you. Hence why he kept his true identity a secret. Palpatine was an image he had to maintain. The citizens of the Empire saw him as hero. It wouldn't have served his rule well to let them know that he was actually something right out of galactic legend/myth.
This, hell even says in the book no non Muun may step foot on their homeworld . If I remember correctly Plagueis saw this as a strength and weakness of his people and admired the tenacity of humans to fling themselves into every corner of the galaxy.
The official RPG book state Palapaien as actually being Racist and favouring humans whenever he could so yes.
but it wasn't absolute either and he did make exception, for Admiral thwarn, for exemple.
I don't remember any gay Imperials from the old EU but I also don't remember any Imperial homophobia.
I do remember a number of female officers from the old EU. Natasi Daala was shit but Ysanne Isard was pretty neat.
>The official RPG book
What RPG book?
Two, actually. One plot point that was brought up in season 1 and 2 was how the Empire wiped out most of the Lasat race using T-7 Ion Disruptors, which apparently make for a particularly horrible death.
A handful survived and managed to find their original homeworld in wild space, so there's that.
by which I mean season 1 and 2 of Rebels
Empire/Palpatine racism was not stated in movies and only EU invention. Movies only had things what could used as proof of them being racist (like all those mentions of how human only were in military) but same evidence could be used to show how Rebelion/Republic was also racist to lesser degree.
EU added clear racism because there this cliche of human supremacist evil empire in SF and it please HFY fags and it also easy way to make your villain less sympathetic and more nazi like.
New Disney canon appear (unless it was shown somewhere) like in movies were empire don't show any clear racism toward non humans.
All cases of racism are specific, individual cases toward some particular races only.
Some bigger examples are planet related cases where specific planet population can be hated or discriminated or be victim, regardless if its human population or alien.
There are examples of 2 groups of people from same planet hating each other or having some bad relations (like Naboo and Gungans or people on that planet in Lost Stars).
Human supremacy is the white supremacy of sci-fi and fantasy. It's called analogy.