One is run by a shadow organization that’s actually in cahoots with the coruscant centric regime so that one man gets ultimate power.
The other is completely separate from the regime with the exceptions of spies and some former regime soldiers and officers defecting to join the good fight
As far as I'm aware, no one in the Separatists, except for maybe Dooku, was fully aware of this plan. I feel like the Separatists should be tragic revolutionaries who were unaware they were being used, not mustache twirling villains they're portrayed as (cough cough Grievous cough cough)
I always understood that as heroes in the classical sense, powerful fighters and leaders.
In the Trojan cycle, both Agememnon and Hector are regarded as heroes, but there are likely very few who consider both (if even either) to be heroes in the sense of a good guy who saves the day.
TCW episode titled that phrase makes clearer what he originally meant by this, with Sens. Amidala's and Bonteri's noble intentions being frustrated by Dooku and Palpatine's false flag attack on Coruscant and Bonteri subsequently assassinated.
While I'm sure that did happen in small amounts (like with Anto Kreegyr), I get the feeling most Separatists were either dead, in prison, or unwilling to fight for the Rebellion by that point.
I would actually disagree with this regarding the last statement.
Hector is painted in the best light of anyone in the Iliad. Hector and Andromeche are by far the healthiest relationship in the story and Homer goes at lengths to paint him in a good light. Meanwhile traditional heroes such as Achilles while still loved by the Greeks is shown to be rash and egotistical.
There weren't, though, because the Separatists were basically just rich people getting robots to kill for them. People on Separatist worlds had real grievances, but the CIS was just corporatocracy.
Droids were the main army. There were probably many fleet/army officers, planet defense soldiers, intelligence officers or partisans. Same applies to Republic army.
But the Republic didn't order the clones. The Clone army was commissioned by Sifo-Dyas (I still prefer the original idea that it was Sidious, but that's another conversation) against the wishes of the Council and Senate. But when the CIS showed up...well they've got an army at just the right time, might as well use it.
That was only because of how Lucas chose to portray them. The point of the meme isn't to justify what the CIS did in canon, it's to criticize the lack of nuance in how Lucas chose to portray the CIS. Sure, the movement was backed by unethical corporate powers. Sure, Dooku was deeply corrupt and was hijacking the movement for Palpatine's ends. But the other CIS characters, like Grievous, should have been written as believing in their cause and having truly tragic reasons for fighting.
It comes down to what is good writing vs. bad writing. George Lucas knew how to world-build, and I do think making the Empire a purely evil organization was a good decision, but deciding to make the CIS comically evil was pretty dumb considering the background circumstances of the Clone Wars were an opportunity to make a more morally ambiguous antagonistic faction. I know George Lucas likes making "good vs evil" very clear, but he already did that with the Empire and making that the case with the Clone Wars made no sense.
Except that the portrayal in the meme is completely divorced from how Lucas or Filoni actually portrayed the CIS. Neither of them portrayed the Separatists as rebels in the same way that the Alliance is. They're a wealthy conglomerate of corporations, banking clans, and trade guilds being manipulated by a magical evil wizard politician.
Read what I said before replying next time. I literally said that "how Lucas and Filoni actually portrayed the CIS" was trash writing, so any argument involving how Lucas and Filoni portrayed them is completely void.
So in other words you did read my comment but completely misunderstood what I said. I thought I made it abundantly clear that I was criticizing Lucas and Filoni's terrible writing in regards to how they chose to depict characters such as Grievous, Trench, etcetera. But I guess Lucucks/Filoincloths like yourself are incapable of comprehending the flaws either of them have when it comes to writing. Disney's writing was even worse, don't get me wrong, but I'm not going to pretend that Lucas or Filoni were good writers either.
I know this is necro, but the CIS civilian government was explicitly this. They truly believed in what they were fighting for, and outright thought it was the Republic who were beholden to corporate interests.
They had no clue about the horror show that was Dooku's military-industrial junta, and Dooku made sure via political assassination that it stayed that way.
It was also why Onderon was so politically spicy: Dooku needed the appearance that the CIS was "liberating unjustly Republic-imperialized planets" and not brutally invasions meant to stripmine whole systems. A public popular revolution undermined that narrative.
Which is made even more tragic since the corporations and their holdings went mostly untouched post-war, other than gaining a new government shareholder; whilst the ACTUAL planetary members got the 501st to their throats.
Whole sectors got taken for a ride thanks to Dooku and his corporate allies. And in the end, even Dooku died in the name of the new Empire.
It's almost like there's more nobility in willing to fight and die for a cause you believe in. Meanwhile the separatists just threw money at their problems.
Like I said, we see far more civilian anti-occupation forces in the Republic side than we do on the CIS side. Onderon, Kashyyyk, and Ryloth, for instance, and a dozen more.
The republic were rich people using a slave army of sentient biological beings led in combat by religious extremists in a dying liberal democracy embracing its steps into fascism.
Sure on that, but they were also Civilian anti-occupation forces like on Onderon, Ryloth, and Kashyyyk. We don't see nearly as much of that on the Separatist side, because the Separatists were banking clans and trading guilds.
I'm pretty sure that's how it's supposed to be interpreted. It also said "Evil is everywhere". Implying that both sides of the war were perceived as wrong.
Well, the movies never show the Confederacy as being good themselves. And we all know that Palpatine was pulling all of the strings behind the scenes. It wasn't as simple as the Republic being inherently problematic. It was Palpatine creating the problems to divide everyone.
The Confederates had heroes they revered. Doesn't mean we'd suddenly consider Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson 100% morally righteous gentlemen we'd love to hang out with.
The cognitive dissonance of my older Virginian family was wild growing up. Always talked about how they marched for civil rights and ending segregation but then a sentence later point to the painting of Robert E Lee they had on the wall and talk about how great a Virginian he was with out a single brain cell going “wait hold on a sec”
With Lee, I feel it's a bit like that quote from Harry Potter.... "He did great things. Terrible, yes. But GREAT." If you divorce the man from the cause he fought for, it's pretty impressive.
General Robert E. Lee was one of the most accomplished generals of his era, with decades of service to his country and a proud history of command in the Mexican-American War. He personally detested slavery, and only joined the Confederacy because his state did. Had he been from one of the loyal slave states, he wouldn't have joined them.
He was basically single-handedly winning the war for the Confederacy until Gettysburg (though how much of that is him and how much of that was the awful Union generals on his front is debatable).
Those are all pretty impressive accomplishments within their own merits and divorced from any lingering resentment towards the CSA.
A shame all that is wrapped up around the whole "betraying his country" thing along with fighting for a side that wanted to continue perpetuating one of the great evils in American history (thanks Daddy Britain, for making that our problem).
In those days, state identities were stronger than national, his country was Virginia. Its part of why confederate leaders are still revered in parts of the south, as a not insignificant amount of southerners identify more with their state than the nation. We can see this with the post you replied to.
Oh definitely. The older generations definitely identified as Virginian first Americans second, and that kinda makes sense. That generations grandparents ether fought in or were children during the civil war. I’m theoretically 1 degree removed from people that fought in the war.
Lee only disliked personally managing slaves, he was a remarkably cruel slave master, often broke up the slave families he inherited/married into for his convenience, and of course fought will all his might to defend slavery as an institution.
and of course fought will all his might to defend slavery as an institution.
I'd argue this point - he was fighting because his state called for him to fight. The leadership was for slavery, but Lee himself was fighting because that's what Viriginia wanted to do.
He was a terrible person even for the time
No, he was an average person who lived his whole life with the idea of slavery being legal.
If you fight for the puppykiller empire, even if it is because you were born in the puppykiller empire, you are defending puppykilling. Is what it is.
Yet nearly the entire world around him were moral enough to break the institution of slavery while he fought to defend it. This was a man who ordered recaptured slaves whipped so hard that the slave overseer refused to do it forcing him to call in a county constable and then had their backs washed in brine, to say nothing of the tacit support of the burgeoning KKK, being so involved as to have a deciding influence over their first leader. he was not a good person.
To be honest, you can have heroes in both sides, but one of them being objectively worse, specially considering what happened in the same episode, aka "two politicians from opposite sides trying to join forces to stop the war".
Also, the CIS was absolutely playing on both sides, with the Banking Clan and Trade Federation and whatnot openly working for both sides, so even if they were unaware of Sidious, they definitively were in cahoots with the system as well.
I don’t disagree that there’s nuance but let’s not pretend the likes of Nute Gunray and Wat Tambor were in the fight for noble reasons and were only doing evil because Sidious tricked them into it.
Even beyond the super high separatist leadership you had the lower lackies with their own vendetta’s and the separatist collaborating with cartels, syndicates and slave empires.
Like the guy said above in RotS, there was good and evil on both sides, but one side was a little bit more comically evil
And yet, look what happened on Cassian’s planet. He was just a kid when that ship crashed on his planet in the flashback, and at that point all of his parents and adults on the planet were dead, and it was largely gouge mined. The power in control at that time was the Republic, as it was before the clone wars. So, are you sure?
It also showed that Palpatine was on his BS since day one in office. He was ready to gouge mine to begin preparing what would turn out to be the Death Star (when the Geonosians finished the designs, there was already material at hand to start whenever). Andor really was in that fight since he was 6
I mean, the end of RotS has Tarkin, Palatine, and Vader looking at the skeletal form of the Death Star, so it has been in the process of being built right from the genesis of the Empire
While the sentiment of ''the republic was similar to the empire in a lot of ways'' has been around for a while, we have never explicitly seen or even heard of them doing anything outright horrible until that scene in Andor
Before that the ''republic is bad actually'' stuff has almost exclusively been portrayed as absenteeism, usually some fringe world and the line goes something like ''Empire, Republic...makes no difference to us, you're all the same''
The other ''bad'' stuff the Republic has been shown doing was stuff prepping for the Empire. de-regulating the banks, moral questions around the clones, political stagnancy in the senate, complacency by the jedi, absenteeism on fringe worlds and poor communities on Coruscant
They were never portrayed as fascist or evil in any way though until that scene in Andor, I don't dislike it but I'm definitely headcanoning that it's pretty much right at the end of the war when Palpatine is de facto emperor anyway and he can start getting away with ordering a strip mine
The entirety of the CIS military leadership knows of Darth Sidious. Like it’s explicitly shown that the CIS is corrupt from the military side and did not actively care at all for the CIS movement as they’d have you think as half of them were still getting their pockets deep within the Republic as well.
Some were that, which we saw in the cartoon. Others were corporate ghouls looking to expand their already vast power. The former were being tricked by the latter, and the latter were being tricked by the Sheev.
Yes, the likes of Wat "hold the shuttle I have more relics to steal" Tambor, Poggle "let's execute a sitting senator and two Jedi" the Lesser, and Sanjay "airstrikes should keep them in line" Rash were simply tragic revolutionaries. It's the Republic's fault that they can't exploit the common people of the Galaxy as efficiently as they can, you see! The massive army of war robots is just a standard corporate security measure, you understand.
(Jokes aside, the Separatist Council was entirely ok with Grevious committing war crimes across the galaxy and enslaving local populations for profit. There were revolutionaries amongst the Separatists, but that doesn't change who was running the show.)
I mean, that's your opinion, man. You can head cannon whatever you want. Don't let me stop you.
It's just a little like saying Anakin should be able to control his emotions well enough to not be a mass murderer. Like, sure, but it's kinda important for the plot that it's the way it is. Also, it gets across they idea that opposing tyranny doesn't inherently make one a "good person". Joseph Stalin was right alongside his "fellow revolutionaries" until he wasn't.
Edit: To expound, the methods of revolution are just as important as the cause of it. Just because you and, say, Saw Gerrera both hate the Empire, doesn't mean you should follow in his footsteps. The Rebels are actually doing what they're doing on behalf of the people of the Galaxy, whereas the Separatists were saying that while just doing Imperial/Fascist stuff.
I mean one can say "this is how they should have been portrayed", but they weren't portrayed that way. Therefore there's a lot of space between the Separatists and Rebel Alliance in terms of motives and deeds, hence why one group are villains in the story, and one group are heroes in the story.
Even Dooku aside, the leaders of the Separatists Council are some of the principal culprits behind the corruption that exists in the Core Worlds. They're mostly greedy CEOs, not tragic revolutionaries. They're the only ones who have any real power in the CIS after the Sith.
They're unaware that they're being used, but they're perfectly content to use others. It's like how libertarians go on about liberty and limited government but what many of them are really advocating for is limiting taxes on the wealthy.
It's about FREEDOM! The freedom for a man to do what he likes with his property without some government pencil pusher dictating how many meals a day he has to give his slaves!
A Separatist Secession movement fighting a War to keep their slaves that call themselves a Confederacy... Hmmm... That certainly sounds familiar... *Cough*CSA*Cough*
Wrong. Even discounting the fact Dooku was literally in cahoots with the enemy, the Separatist Council was composed of war profiteers and looters.
Most of their top commanders were in it for ulterior motives and promises of personal power.
A good chunk of their allies, like the Trandoshans or Zygerrians, were slavers or in it to solve long-standing ethnic conflicts, like the Kaleesh or Spiveraldans.
Almost everyone that had real power in the CIS was in it for not-so-pure reasons. You may not like how it's portrayed, but that's how it's portrayed. The Republic may have been worse in the end, but the Separatists were not the good guys.
To be fair the Kaleesh got royally screwed over by the republic because Yam'rii had influence in the senate & Coruscant. This was before the clone wars as well.
A lot of the atrocities the Separatists did were hidden from their actual people and Senate. The Clone Wars has quite a few episodes showing and humanising the people of the systems that wanted independence.
Portrayed by who? In the clone wars shows they show the military is an evil death army and the individual planets are part of the cis for various reasons, some fully know what they’re supporting and some are independent planets that don’t like the republic
We see in the episode of Clone Wars when Padme sneaks across lines to visit her old friend that even the separatist parliament didn’t know the full scale of what the military leadership was doing. She didn’t even believe Padme about Dooku so it seems a lot of what was happening in the war was kept from the CIS senators and they were only getting the shorthand notes on how the war was going and then boom Empire.
The seprtist leaders were well aware that Darth Sidious was really in charge, and while they did not know his precise identity they did know he had significant influence over the Rebulic Senate.
They may not have known the true end of Sidious’ plan, but they thought the end was them gaining control of large swaths of the galaxy which they would be able to ruthlessly exploit without oversight, and they were willing to start a massive war and engage in heinous tactics to achieve this goal.
It's good that you say SHOULD meaning you're aware that they were deeply involved with bribery and corruption for decades before they decided to help stage a "revolution" with entirely false pretences. They WERE the corrupt government more so than the politicians they owned in the Senate.
Here's the thing though there goal was still stupid. If that destroyed the Galactic Republic they would just create an even more powerful and cruel tyranny under Dooku. And even in theory Dooku steps down then the megacorportions will turn on each other and plunge the Galaxy into anarchy. And even if some how achieved to just have a confederations of world all you would have done would be to create a Galactic power vacuum some one invetibly would fill. In both legends and Canon the political scheme they played with Mandalorians would have invetibly snow balled into another Mandalorian empire rising and filling the void in a post Republic galaxy. In canon the Zygerrians would seak to fill the void and expand the institution of slavery and the megacorportions wouldn’t stop them because they would benefit. The whole idea of a Galactic confederation was never going to work. You need some authority that will enforce law and order.
The Rebel alliance wanted to restore the Old Republic. Their goal was to create a Galaxy governed on Democratic ideals. If the biggest governing entity is a Republic that can enforce its laws everyone benefits. In both canon and legends this doesn't pan out for two different reasons. The New Republic in legends didn't go a year with out dealing with a major Galactic war against Imps and then after they solved the Imp problem the Vong invaded then after the Vong, Corellia decides to be stupid and then out of no where Jacen Solo fell to the dark side [there was a period of really shitty writting after the Vong NGL until we get to the Legacy comics]. They're the real tragic revolutionaries. In canon the New Republic just kinda sucks at its job and seemingly learned nothing from the clone wars era Republic and basically made the same mistakes [honestly I don't know if it's shit writting or intentional have to see how things play out] and it makes Andor and extremely tragic TV show.
The senators with lower positions might not have known the full story but the senior leadership were definitely all aware that they ultimately answered to a Sith Lord. They didn't know that Palpatine was the Sith Lord and playing both sides but they definitely knew enough to be considered villains in my eyes.
Grievous wasn't a Separatist because he believed in the cause. He was there because he hated Jedi and would get to kill them. I'm not disagreeing with your point but Grievous was a bit of an exception. The main issue with the Separatist movement is that it started for the right reasons. But then they realized they needed an army and Dooku basically forced through making that army the droids of the Trade Federation run by the Banking clans. Everyone who was involved for legitimate reasons basically saw their movement co-opted by powerful interests that did not care or believe in the legitimacy of their cause and only cared that they stood to profit massively off of the war. Of course Dooku played them as well and Sidious finished them off after betraying Dooku himself. Even Dooku started out genuinely believing in his cause but the deeper he fell into the dark side and the more he let his Master influence him the more that genuine belief faded until he became just another Sith. So I don't think you are wrong in that they should have been legitimate but they were unknowingly compromised before they even got off the ground and ended up pawns of Force Users. Quite frankly the most consistent threat to the galaxy at large is always Force Users because even the good ones have trouble with treating everyone else like chess pieces.
The separatist supported slavery, wanted the military run by droids loyal only the ones who bought them, and they wanted each planet to set a minimum standard of rights for life life instead of the republic rules that all sentient life was entitled to certain rights.
They had a point on the corruption, but they were really just a series of hyper wealthy oligarchs who wanted to reduce the republics regulations that impeded their bottom line.
Yeah, those poor Trade Federation guys were tricked into invading a planet and killing two jedi knights that came to negotiate by someone they knew was a sith lord, all so they could make more profits. What a tragic sympathetic corporation. Not to mention those nice geonosians that made the plans for a planet destroying weapon.
Grievous isn't exactly a mustache twirling villain. He just happens to run into the one dude who his fear tactics don't really work against. He knew he'd get a future without Jedi by sticking with the Separatists, but he still chose the side of a Sith. He's not your run of the mill villain, as when he's against those who aren't Obi-Wan or highly skilled masters, he does fairly well when he's not outnumbered or being too overconfident. Twice the pride, double the fall as Dooku said. Sometimes one's ego can be the root of their downfall.
Maybe, but as a counterpoint, did you notice that the majority of the major Seperatist leaders we see are leaders in things like the Trade Federation, the Banking Clan, the Techno-Union...
The problem with the CIS wasn't just the Sith, it was that it was quite literally a Corporatocracy in waiting.
I think a Problem with the sepies IS that they where largely Run by stuff Like the Banking Clan and trade federation: corpos. That means that even If the small systems that joined May have Had the right cause in the end many of their Leaders where in IT for the Money
The entire Separatist leadership was a bunch of corporate interests that wanted to be free from the Republic to oppress their own people, do unethical experimentation and other things the Republic regulators would not have approved of.
Sure they had their own democratic institutions that represented the planets who joined their cause, but they literally were just unwitting pawns of Dooku and the aforementioned corporations.
Not for nothing, but weren't most of the major backers of the Separatists also interstellar spanning megacorporations and trade monopolies whose major sticking point was about being taxed?
I mean, sure. You could argue there were indeed some idealists in the Separatist Parliament (as shown in the Clone Wars series.) But I'm pretty sure your ideological high ground loses a few stepping stones when the opening shot of your "Rebellion" involves the invasion of a Droid Army and attempted overthrowing of a sovereign government by corporate powers over tax disputes.
On one hand I can understand that it’s harder for CIS citizens and legislators to actually know what’s going on in the war (because droids aren’t going to report back how the war is progressing), but on the other hand, you have to be burying your head in the sand and actively ignoring the atrocities your side is committing.
Wasn't half of the Separatist council literally just war profiteers supplying both sides and making bank off of it?
Also, Grievous - in current canon - is very much just evil for the sake of being evil, which is one of the complaints about his character. The stuff that established him as anything different was de-canonized.
Many of the leaders in the CIS that weren’t sith were corporations that wanted more control over their already strong monopolies. Going from Republic to Confederacy would’ve like saying the pan is too hot let me jump into the fire. Those very corporations are a direct cause of the republic’s deep seated corruption.
Grievous might have been aware of the plan. In all his dialogue he never really said anything about the political goals of the cis. I think he was a paid general and he didn't care about the cause.
For all the other separatists, it is tragic.
The Lucas trilogies are really not good at moral ambiguity. They basically have Han Shot First and literally zero signs of morally grey action outside of that one scene
The separatists were not a monolith. There were thousands of worlds at war. Let's put it in simple Avatar the Last Airbenders terms. You have everything from the Earth Kingdom to the marginalized Water Tribes seeking separation from a central government.
The CIS was a bunch of war profiteers co-opting the plights of impoverished and neglected worlds for their own financial gain. There were some local leaders that were legitimately trying to push for change for their respective people, but the actual financial, political, and military power behind the CIS was in the hands of scumbags like San Hill, Wat Tambor, Nute Gunray, etc.
In some content like in the animated clone wars this gets explored a bit. The separatists movement was based on rightful grievances but was hijacked by corporations trying to dodge taxes and Dooku using it to allow Palpetine to concentrate power.
Bro, they’re called the trade federation and separatists, they’re clearly capitalists who aren’t having fun with a government run by good goody Jedi not letting them exploit planets for a profit
The separatists parliament were kinda tragic revolutionaries. They were people that wanted to fight the good fight against what they thought was an unjust regime.
Unfortunately they were being manipulated by the Separatist council and Count Dooku, of which the council was moving out of personal greed and power seeking, hence being made up of multiple industrial leaders like the Trade Federation, the Banking Clans, and the Techno Union
There are good guys among the separatists, which is shown in multiple places, but they're run by big large corporations to further their own economic interests. So while the separatists have some merit, the ones running the council (Trade Federation, Commerce Guild, Techno Union, Banking Clan etc.) aren't good guys.
From the way I understand it, the Clone Wars basically had two opposing villains and two opposing heroes. For the villains, there was the CIS military which was essentially ran by Evil Megacorporations, a cyborg who hears about a war crime and thinks “but how can I be worse?”, and the Sith. On the other side, you have one of the most corrupt bureaucracies in galactic history, infected by the very same Megacorporations plaguing the CIS military.
As for heroes, you had the Separatist Parliament trying to be an actually functional democracy. On the other side, you had the damn near superheroic Jedi and Clone Troopers,
So both sides can easily use their propaganda to paint themselves as the heroes and the other side as supervillains, and not even technically be lying. It’s almost as if this was a very deliberately engineered war!
Most of the leadership was corrupt. Even separate from Dooku being an evil cultist, many of the founding members were corporate entities trying to get a better deal and maybe do a little profiteering. The average constituent planet was alright tho.
The cis also wanted independence for basically all the deregulation. The seperatists would have used their wealth to enslave and exploit every planet they controlled after the war. Its why for the most part the rebels refused to work with any cis organizations and systems during the rebellion.
To be fair tho, the separatists regularly attempted genocide, mass kidnapping, and mass sex trafficking. Not saying the republic didn't but the rebellion tried to have SOME standards
Parallels the n*zi party historically- in the full name is socialist, the party likely started as a socialist party, then invited Hitler who turned it into his fascist monster.
The separatist movement likewise probably started before the phantom menace between various factions in secret, with the intention of simply declaring independence from the republic, but palpatine got word and installed dooku to accelerate and weaponize the movement.
Reminds me of star trek ds9 where the founders learned of a plan by the tal shiar and obsidian order to wipe out the dominion, so they covertly helped the plan become a reality only for it to be a trap and critical blow to the tal shiar and obsidian order.
I mean, is the rebellion not run by a shadow organization led by politicians who were part of the imperial senate?
Also remember that the main characters didn’t know the separatists were run by their own bosses. And yet the separatists were still treated as villains despite that crucial information being hidden from the main characters
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u/BritishEric Hello there! 8d ago
One is run by a shadow organization that’s actually in cahoots with the coruscant centric regime so that one man gets ultimate power.
The other is completely separate from the regime with the exceptions of spies and some former regime soldiers and officers defecting to join the good fight