#Palpatine and Watto weren’t Anakin’s only abusers and oppressors

[gch1995]

If you seriously think Anakin was a victim of anybody other than Watto and fucking PALPATINE, then you can't be trusted to have any kind of accurate gauge on Star Wars. Hava a nice day.

Palpatine and Watto weren’t Anakin’s only abusers and oppressors, nonny.

I’ve already gone into detail about how Obi-Wan and the Jedi Council were abusive to Anakin, Luke, and their other recruits here. I’ve also talked about how they displayed a lot of traits of a cult in the prequels here.

However, even if you take away all the emotional/psychological abuse, conditioning, and oppression they put him and their other recruits through in the prequels, how is it healthy good parenting to be training and using children as soldiers? Children should not be allowed to handle weapons, work for law enforcement, or work for the military. They deserve the chance to just be normal kids with happy, healthy, normal, and safe family, friends, home lives, and freedom to be themselves. Being a Jedi deprived them of that chance to have a normal childhood that would have allowed for them to have healthy development into adulthood. Instead, they’re all emotionally/morally/psychologically fucked up and stunted adults in one way or another in the prequels, even if they didn’t go dark.

Anakin wasn’t an innocent, far from it, but he also clearly learned how to be a very fearsome and ruthless galactic war criminal for the Sidious for 23 years from the examples set by the adults with power over him in both the Jedi and the Sith. Darth Vader’s not just a product of the Sith, though. If he was, he’d be out there committing war crimes and spreading misery for shits and giggles, rather than feeling convinced it was this “duty for the greater good” that he “must obey.” He’d feel far more confident taking the risk to overthrow the Emperor himself, even with his compromised physical strength in that suit after his burns and injuries on Mustafar, but he’s not. He’d be far more chaotic if he were just another Sith like Darth Maul, but he’s not.

He’s also a manifestation of the arrogance, the abuse of power, the the “greater good” ends justify the means mentality for enabling and committing crimes for security of community and self, the stoicism, and the toxic conformity under the corrupt authority and laws that he repeatedly got taught to enable and perpetuate under the the adults in the Jedi Order and Republic Senate he served and trained under. Those adults took in a slave boy, separated from his only good parent, and reinforced that slave mindset to be subservient to corrupt authority that only his mother really taught him was wrong. They taught him to completely deny and feel ashamed of close attachments, individuality, personal moral integrity, and human emotional expression to sacrifice it for their “greater good.” They encouraged him to enable and perpetuate whatever abuse, suspicious activity, and violence kept him and his community safe and in control under the pressure of the corrupt and oppressive authority figures, expectations, and laws they served.

Anakin’s not an innocent, far from it, but as his guardians and mentors who raised him and taught him terribly, Obi-Wan, Yoda, and the Council are responsible for playing a role in helping turn this sweet little boy into their enemy in the first place, even if it was unintentionally. They also contributed to inspiring the mindset that allowed for Anakin to become Darth Vader, too. It wasn’t just Palpatine.