#anti alexsander kallus

[antianakin]

I've got one from TBB actually and an addition point for the Ahsoka show. I'll put them under a cut as well.

TBB generally isn't in the category of "the fascists have a point actually" but the one moment that pissed me right off and got pretty close is in season 3 (spoilers for that if you haven't seen it and care) where Crosshair is interacting with another clone.

The other clone, Howzer, and some of his men defected from the Empire in season 1 while Crosshair was still actively working for the Empire. Howzer explains in season 3 that a lot of his men died or were hurt because of Crosshair after their defection. Crosshair is never once required to apologize to Howzer or even truly acknowledge the harm he did to Howzer and his men and, in fact, HOWZER is the one presented as being in the wrong for not trusting Crosshair (who has now defected from the Empire himself, but fairly recently) and has to change his mind and apologize for it. The narrative itself doesn't truly recognize Crosshair as even NEEDING to apologize for the things he did while working for the Empire. Keep in mind that while Crosshair was a clone whose chip did activate with Order 66, he later reveals that it stopped working or was removed or something and he continued to willingly work for the Empire and even went BACK to the Empire when he had the opportunity to leave with the rest of the Bad Batch at the end of season 1 (unlike the rest of the clones who were presumably all under the influence of the chip the entire time they worked for the Empire and never willingly chose to stay).

It's not ENTIRELY dissimilar from what happened in Rebels with Aleksander Kallus, either, who had his entire genocidal backstory retconned so he could be "redeemed" and defect from the Empire to become a rebel. His redemption involved Zeb having to apologize for treating all Imperials as an enemy and this getting compared to Kallus's literal racism against all Lasats. Zeb has to apologize to the person who, in season one, proudly claims to have LED THE GENOCIDE OF ZEB'S ENTIRE SPECIES and laughs in Zeb's face about it and uses a trophy he took from that genocide to try to kill Zeb in order to finish the job. The retcon pretends that Kallus lied about having led the genocide (instead he took part in it willingly but it wasn't his idea nor was he in charge) and that the weapon he took as a trophy was actually given to him by a Lasat he killed out of some sort of warrior's tradition so he "earned" it instead of stealing it. Kallus's genocide of the Lasat and his racism towards this entire species is never spoken of again after that episode in season 2 and by the end of the series, Zeb is literally leading Kallus to the secret homeworld he'd discovered with the last remaining survivors of his species.

And it falls in line with the Anakin apologia you mentioned coming out of the Ahsoka show, as well, lightening his crimes to just being "more dangerous than anyone knew" or being "intense" and claiming he was still a "good master" by the end of the season.

So it's not quite "the fascists are right actually" so much as it is a slightly different but kind-of related pattern of "being mean to a fascist is just as bad as the fascism actually" that leads very frustratingly into "the fascist didn't truly do anything wrong because they were Sad."

The other part of the Ahsoka show that actually falls more in line with the "fascists were right" theme is the New Republic storyline which seems to be trying to follow up on what we saw in Mando s3 kind-of implying the NR is just the Empire under another name. In particular, you have the Hera vs Xiono conflict where Hera is presented as the perfect do-gooder just trying to find her friend and Xiono's refusal to keep giving her resources is presented as villainous and similar to Thrawn (who Sabine accuses of not knowing how to love or not understanding love, I can't remember which one).

Xiono and the other Senators also seem to not really believe Hera about the threat Thrawn presents and Mon Mothma appears entirely incapable of doing anything at all, so Hera just does whatever she wants and then gets away with it because Leia chooses to lie to the Senate for her. The connection here between the Senate's refusal to act against the threat of Thrawn (which is VERY theoretical since no one can even prove he's alive let alone what kind of resources he'd have if he were) and the implication from some aspects of the Sequel Trilogy that they refused to act against the threat of the First Order (leading to their ultimate doom) is very clear.

The ultimate theme here seems to be that if you aren't doing literally everything possible to save your personal loved ones, no matter the consequences, then you are an emotionless villain. And. Well. That leads us back to the Anakin apologia again with the implied theme that Anakin's actions in the Prequel Trilogy were ALWAYS THE RIGHT THING TO DO because he did them For Love.

The Kenobi show deliberately chose to remain in line with the Prequel Trilogy in its themes and so pulls zero punches about how the fascists are Wrong. Even with Reva, who IS someone who ultimately has a sad backstory and changes her mind, they don't shy away from the fact that she is doing a lot of monstrous things and is on the same path as the person she seeks vengeance against. That's literally the whole point.

Andor similarly chooses to humanize its two primary Imperial villains, but pulls zero punches about how awful they are. Andor remembers that people can have sympathetic qualities and still be selfish evil assholes at the same time. Again, this is the POINT, that you can relate to these people in order to recognize the theme that anyone can be tempted into darkness under the right circumstances.

Visions isn't within canon continuity anyway by design, so even if it DID fall into that category it kind-of wouldn't matter, but it very much does NOT. 90% of its episodes deal with Imperial-era stuff or Sith and explicitly makes the Imperials and Sith villains or tragedies. A lot of the episodes dealing with the Empire, especially in season two, have VERY colonial themes to them. There's an entire episode about a woman who left the Sith and is a better person because of it.

Fallen Order and Survivor have a few of their own Jedi critical moments, but the overall theme of the stories are about taking out the Empire. Malicos is represented as an untrustworthy monster and Bode Akuna and Dagan Gera are hopeless tragedies. There isn't even any option for redemption for any of them.

High Republic is something I can't speak to SUPER well, I've read 3 of the adult novels in phase 1, but nothing else. What I have read doesn't seem to have any real "the fascists are right actually" moments, but it also has no real interaction with things like the Sith or the Empire (setting aside the Acolyte as its own thing for the moment). The Nihil generally aren't represented as anything more than pure villains to my memory, they BARELY have personality of their own beyond their greed and selfishness and ambition. It's possible some of that has changed in Phase 3, but it started getting more Jedi critical (and specifically Jedi COUNCIL critical) than I was comfortable with by the end of the third novel in Phase 1 so I haven't read any further yet. But from what I remember, nothing in it really seems like it'd lead down the road of "the fascists are right actually", particularly with the Nihil. The Nihil aren't out to help anyone and they're not attempting to pretend that they are, they're basically just very powerful pirates.

So yeah, there IS stuff out there that's come out somewhat recently that hasn't had the "the fascists were right" message to it, but there's WAY too much that's come out within the last year that HAS and it's so dispiriting and I can't wait for Andor season 2 to come along and finally give us a show that doesn't do that.

is it just me, or is anyone else sick of all the new SW shows being about how the space fascists have a point, actually? 😑

[antianakin]

I do, too, this is why I ended up shipping Zeb and Rex because if people want to ship Zeb with a traumatized human soldier character with a darker sense of humor, Rex is RIGHT THERE.

It started as kind-of a joke and then became a little more serious and I do genuinely ship Zeb and Rex now. You can find some of the posts I've made on it under the tag "gararex" or "rexeb" (I haven't picked a ship name).

Obikin and Kalluzeb are basically the same ship in terms of dynamics, even though the backstory for both is very different. But they're both, effectively, a genocidal fascist and one of the few survivors of said genocide.

No wonder I hate them both so much.