Death Star Whitewash

The power of the media is immense, especially when it comes to conflicts. It is not difficult to make your own side look like heroes, no matter what atrocities they commit. Consider, for example, the Death Star.

In the first Star Wars movie the rebels steal some plans and then destroy the Death Star space station. A quick web search reveals how many people were actually on the Death Star at the time:

• 265,675 Station crew
• 52,276 gunners
• 607,360 troops
• 25,984 Stormtroopers
• 42,782 ship support staff
• 167,216 pilots and support crew

That’s over a million people, and that’s only a conservative estimate. A million people. Excuse me, just how fucking cold-blooded are these rebels? They kill a million people and then fly back to their planet and then they give out medals?

What about the million mothers all over the Empire who lose their children, most of whom were probably conscripted? Not to mention the people who are just doing their jobs: the cleaners, and programmers, and dishwashers, and pizza chefs, and all the prisoners in the holding cells. All suddenly dead, because of upper-class twits like Princess Leia, and her lofty ideas about restoring the “old order” where her family and people like them were the ones in charge.

So the rebels think this is the way to win popular opinion – to kill a million people? Many of the Death Star military who died were probably soldiers during the old Republic and simply became the new military when the Emperor took over. And the cold-blooded bastards kill them too – thousands of their own ex-colleagues – and then they have a fucking party?

Luke Skywalker is a terrorist, guilty of massive crimes against humanity. And all of the rebels are terrorists, pure and simple, by any definition you care to use. These guys do not agree with the present democratically elected government as they are far too secular for their tastes, and so they go around recruiting farm boys like Skywalker and his buddies as X-wing cannon fodder to fight and restore the ancient theocracy and the “old ways”.

And is the Empire “evil”? Well from what we see in Epiosde 3, Palpatine appears to have been democratically elected. Sure, his regime has a fascist tinge to it, but all of the military we see in the original movies are efficient and honourable, and not at all corrupt. And just try and find a military without a fascist tinge to it.

And what did this “Evil Empire” displace? A society managed as some kind of new-age feudal system, where an accident of birth (in this case the ability to be a Jedi) guarantees you rights and privileges above all others, as well as full legal immunity. The Jedi seem to be above the law, answer to nobody and are only interested in having their religion replace all other ideologies and use it to “keep the peace”or, in other words, rule everybody forever.

It truly amazes me how these bellicose fundamentalists can be depicted as “good” and then everybody goes along with it and spends 3 movies clapping their adventures. Me included. Aren’t we all terribly terribly smart?

/ paddy