Star Wars: Emperor Palpatine as Hitler - Three Disturbing Parallels

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

The alien racism thing never really came into Star Wars in a big way with the narrative in regards to the films but I've definitely seen the Hitler in Palpatine for quite some time.

 

[Zeljkia the Orc]

I never understood the racist thing, it seems very tacted on for the sake of being evil. I mean it seems in the prequels that some of his most power supporters were Alien.

Also are the "humans" in star wars even the same race? It isn't really mentioned.

I can say with 100% scientific accuracy that the answer is "kind-of". If you are using a generalization of race, then yes, just like all Wookies are....wookian? Twi'lek's are the same race. If we use races from different planets, it gets incredibly complex.

Mandalorians had possibly the widest ranging "racial" stuff, since it was actually a way of life instead of through genetics and stuff.

This is only going by my knowledge of Star Wars and could of been changed since Disney deep six'ed the Expanded Universe.

 

[camazotz]

Hm...I never put together the second apart, about how all the Seps in the prequel trilogy were non-humans, and thus that would probably help push the pro-human mindset. I give you major bonus points for that one, because I am a HUGE Star Wars fan and I've heard this discussion many times.

Off Topic a bit: Does anyone else HATE how Order 66 went down? Because I do. I get it. I know the Jedi had to lose, and I know that numbers can overwhelm, but damn. Out of all these Jedi warriors, only Ki-Adi is able to fight back, and he only manages to take out two Clones.
This should have been a blood bath. Okay, Plo in the fighter and not-Adi on the speeder, they were toast. But the others? Especially the ones at the Temple? There should have been bodies of Clone Troopers, especially in the doorway and leading up to the steps. The Jedi were supposed to be these great warriors, able to sense danger coming. After all, they can block laser bolts. Anakin's good, but he can't be everywhere. The Clones should have been climbing over the bodies of their fallen comrades if the skill on that little kid was any indication. Instead, there are more dead Jedi than Clones, which has always bothered me.

So, the deal with Order 66 was that it was just an order: a conditional clause that basically said, "In the event of an attempted coup on the Chancellor by the Jedi, execute the Jedi." It was so devious because Palpatine got the clone troopers in place, got them to earn the trust of the jedi, and then insured that an entire clone army bred from a race of cold, methodical killers with a legacy history of killing jedi efficiently were in a position to do so...without remorse, and without betraying their feelings because they were bred to essentially not have any feelings about this at all...it was just war. Even the cartoon series demonstrates that only a very few clones had grown beyond their breeding to question what happened (and I loved in Ep. III how Commander Cody had no problem with adding Obi-Wan to his kill list when the time came to it).

So...surprised by the "allies" in their midst, the vast majority of the combat-effective jedi spread throughout the galaxy, isolated from one another, it was easy for the jedi temple to fall. Also, they faced clone troopers, who were basically demonstrably more efficient and practical in their military acumen then later generations of recruited storm troopers.

 

[camazotz]

The alien racism thing never really came into Star Wars in a big way with the narrative in regards to the films but I've definitely seen the Hitler in Palpatine for quite some time.

There's a lot in Star Wars that is implied but not spelled out or demonstrated overtly except when it can be alleviated with a bit of comic humor, mostly because the series is aimed squarely at a PG crowd. The underlying racism (speciesism?) along with many, many other themes that are essentially adult and what make the films and universe have lasting appeal to adults are there, they just aren't as overt as you'll see in films that deliberately seek to play off on those themes.

As a side comment to the original article, fun read, nice to see something talk about stuff in Ep. I to III without it turning into a film-hate-fest, and Sidious is spelled with two I's and not an E.

 

[Megalodon]

The underlying racism (speciesism?) along with many, many other themes that are essentially adult and what make the films and universe have lasting appeal to adults are there,

Where? Beyond 'all the bad guys are human' (as are the vast majority of the rebels), where in the films does the Empire do anything racist?

Frankly, all three points raised in this article are deeply flawed. Beyond 'secret purge' Order 66 and The Night of the Long Knives have very little in common. One was the assassination of the only group within the military with the potential to seriously oppose Palpatine's ascent to power (the Jedi). The other was the removal of a mostly loyal, but unreliable militia (the SA) to earn the favour of the real army.

The racism, again I just don't see the Empire in the films doing anything particularly 'racist'. Evil, yes. Racist, no. Palpatine's only ideology seems to be 'get power, get control, eliminate opposition'.

The 'superweapons' idea is the best of the three. But here the difference is a bit simpler. The Death Stars worked. Yes they had their 'movie flaws', but both Stars essentially did the jobs for which they were designed, and would've led to an Imperial victory without protagonist shenanigans. Whereas the Nazi wonder weapons were a joke. Impressive tech yes, but were never going to be war winners, and the resources devoted to them would've been better used on other things.