It may be hard to believe, but recently, a growing handful of folks are taking up the cause of defending the politics and actions of none other than Darth Vader, Emperor Palpatine, and the Galactic Empire while casting doubt on the virtues of the Rebellion, whose ranks include Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Princess Leia. Yes, the most cartoonishly iconic villains in our culture, the bad guys from the Star Wars franchise apparently have their Earth-bound sympathizers.
It's hilarious because there is no analogy to help explain how over-the-top ridiculous this is, except by saying, "that's like being for Darth Vader and against Luke Skywalker." The argument on it's face is a metaphor of it's own ridiculousness.
Nonetheless, let's give these contrarians, who we can call the "New Empire Apologists," a little credit for using one of the most popular pieces of American culture as a platform for political discussion. Their arguments are certainly provocative. But, they suffer from one serious flaw: they're completely wrong.
In The Washington Post recently, Sonny Bunch regurgitates a decade-old argument that made by Jonathan V. Last in The Weekly Standard that the Galactic Empire represented a "more-or-less benevolent dictatorship" which maintained stability and supported intergalactic trade. Opposing these worthy aims, Bunch claims, were a "band of religious terrorists" who used Princess Leia's adopted home planet of Alderaan as their "financial and intellectual center." Joining Bunch's revisionism, just days ago, economist Zachary Weinstein released a paper concluding (although it is not explicitly stated), that the Rebels should not have destroyed either Death Star because of the galactic financial repercussions.
Given that we are not only Star Wars geeks but are in the middle of launching a real world Star Wars campaign called the US Rebel Alliance, we felt like we needed to respond.
Let's start with the New Empire Apologists: as fellow Star Wars nerds, we appreciate that Bunch and company are trying to be edgy, but their arguments are quite dubious. The Galactic Empire was not some benevolent hegemon, but rather a genocidal and totalitarian regime -- one that George Lucas explicitly modeled on European fascism, particularly Nazi Germany. Just as the Nazis won elections in Weimar Germany, so too did the Emperor employ democratic means to the extent that they were useful to him. And just like European fascists did, Palpatine consistently engaged in all sorts of extra-legal and immoral acts of sabotage and violence to advance his agenda. Examples of these crimes are numerous, but just take the fact that the Emperor, through his surrogate Count Dooku, ignited the Clone Wars (which killed millions) and then used the conflict to justify his assumption of absolute power, including orchestrating the genocidal mass murder of most Jedi. Sure, Palpatine maintained an illusion of democracy as Emperor by holding onto the Imperial Senate. That is until just before the Death Star destroys Alderaan in Episode IV, when, as Grand Moff Tarkin tells Darth Vader, the Emperor dissolves the Senate, sweeping away the last remnants of the Old Republic.
Given all this, it is hard to see the argument defending the annihilation of Alderaan in a sympathetic light. Even if, as some claim, the planet was not a harmless civilian target, but an armed epicenter of the rebellion, can the attack really be justified if it kills billions of people? By this logic, the U.S. should have dropped nuclear weapons on Baghdad during its 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Complementing these Imperial apologias have been articles calling into question the Rebel Alliance's actions. Zachary Feinstein for instance wonders whether destroying the Death Stars was counterproductive because of the financial ramifications. While some of his assumptions are questionable (the Banking Clan is the equivalent of the Fed? Han Solo is representative of the entire Rebel Alliance's worldview?), the problems with his piece more stem from a narrow worldview. First, the article places the onus for the potential financial calamity wrought by destroying a weapon of mass murder on the Rebels, which is as classically a "blame the victim" an argument as can be imagined. Would Feinstein assert that individual college students are 100% responsible for their educational debts, rather than the larger structural factors driving up costs? Second, from a political angle, Feinstein's piece is an argument against any big change. After all, financial collapses accompany revolutions, as the hit musical Hamilton reminds. Would the world be better off for not having the American Revolution or, as another example, the fall of the Soviet Union?
Weinstein at least does not actively boost the Empire. Not so for New Empire Apologists, who desperately seem to want the Rebel Alliance to be an ISIS-like religious cult based around the Jedi Order. Let's first stipulate that the Jedi Order could be an arrogant and even undemocratic force within the governing structures of the Old Republic. These facts actually have little bearing on the Rebel Alliance. Beyond Rebel officials occasionally uttering "May the Force Be With You," there is zero evidence that Jedi religion has any part in the Rebel Alliance's ideology. The Rebel Alliance, especially as depicted in The Return of the Jedi and in the canonical Star Wars: Rebels series, is a rag-tag, multi-species guerrilla army committed to helping people in need and fighting for democracy and self-determination.
In other words -- they're the good guys.
Having said all this, Bunch is correct that the Old Republic was, in fact, a "broken" government "held hostage by special interests." We know from the prequels and the (really excellent) Clone Wars animated series that the Old Republic was a sick polity. By the time of the Clone Wars, many of the Old Republic's citizens felt apathetic enough about their government so as to tolerate the breeding of a race of slaves (the clones) to fight and die for them. Meanwhile, the Galactic Senate often acted beholden to powerful economic interests, such as the Banking Clan (which as Feinstein points out, had grown "too big to fail") and the Trade Federation.
There were, however, those who strived to restore the democratic ideals and institutions of the Republic. Chief among them were Senators including Padmé Amidala, Bail Organa (Leia's adopted father), and future Rebel Alliance head Mon Mothma, who founded the Rebel Alliance. Their endorsement of armed struggle represented a last, desperate resort to preserve freedom. As seen in the Clone Wars series, during the last years of the Old Republic, this group tried to halt the slide to corruption and autocracy, fighting for measures such as regulation of the Banking Clan, while demanding that the voice of the common people (and aliens) be heard. They understood that a government dominated by monied interests and unreceptive to the needs of the people opens itself up to the dangerous allure of autocracy.
If there's a message for our times from the Star Wars franchise, it is this -- we need to strengthen democracy now in order to prevent an Empire later. If more people had supported the cause of democracy and not become inured to the Republic's slow decline then the challenges that Weinstein and Bunch identify would never have become issues in the first place. No Empire, no Death Star.
This story of democracy undermined by the power of a few may sound all too familiar to Americans living in the era of Citizens United. Let's hope that we can take the right inspiration from the Star Wars saga, and ensure our Republic is one where all voices count. And so, let's not contain this discussion to a mere article! Let us use it as nerd-fueled inspiration to light up a Republic who so many have lived for, who so many have died for, and maytheforcebewithUS!
Paul Adler is a Lecturer in the History & Literature concentration at Harvard University. Andrew Slack is creator of The Harry Potter Alliance and a Fellow at Civic Hall. Their new group, The US Rebel Alliance (@usrebelliance) aims to fight the corrosive influence of the Empire of Big Money on our American Republic.