In 2009, when much of my thinking and reading dealt with psychology and human nature, I wrote a page on psychological insights in “Star Wars” ([1]). We now have 2025 and politics have dominated my writings since before the COVID-countermeasure era. How, then, about the political insights of “Star Wars”?
Well, that is an extremely wide topic—the more so, as I have had some interim exposure to books, comics, whatnot with non-movie material from the “Star Wars” universe. All in all, there is an enormous amount to draw upon, but much is speculative and/or reflects the opinions of the respective author or might be insight that exists only in my own interpretation of the respective author.
Looking at the movies, episodes I–III contain a fair amount of interesting observations, if possibly somewhat hyperbolic, metaphoric, or otherwise not entirely realistic.
I do not consider the post-Lucas movies to be true “Star Wars” movies. (Note e.g. [2] and the longer texts linked from there.) Correspondingly, I limit myself to the first two trilogies. Of these, episodes IV–VI contain a fair bit of warfare, intriguing, and other politics-related topics, but not much in terms of politics in the sense that I wish to discuss here.
Even with episodes I–III, I will not attempt a complete list, as my last watching is a few years back. (My more immediate motivation is some recent readings.)
A central point includes the rise of Darth Sidious through mostly democratic means, combined with manipulation of both events and opinions. While this was likely mapped on the rise of Hitler and/or some similar past figures, I was struck by an almost eerie resemblance with the rise of Biden in 2020. (I mention Biden repeatedly in the continuation for such reasons, but also for recency. All in all, Biden is mostly a good representative example.) While I do not believe that Biden moved on the level of Darth Sidious in terms of brains and ability, and certainly not that he, say, used the Force to create COVID for the purpose of dethroning Trump, there was a great amount of shenanigans, as has subsequently been revealed, and Biden certainly benefited from COVID in terms of election chances. (But what shenanigans go back to Biden or his inner circle, what arose independently from other Trump hostiles, what was carried over from Hillary Clinton, etc., I leave unstated.) Also note great similarities with other Leftist leaders, notably in Venezuela under Maduro, and great abuse of governmental power to go after strong and significant non-Leftists in a number of countries, including in (modern) Germany (limited success) and the aforementioned Venezuela (great success).
Of course, like Hitler and Biden, he promptly began to demolish civil rights and democracy, and tried to exterminate his political enemies with non-democratic means. Biden was not successful, but it was touch-and-go at times (imagine, e.g. if Trump had been locked up and/or disqualified from running again) and I did actually (mis-)quote “Star Wars”/Amidala in describing the situation and my justified fears (cf. words on fear further down) in December 2020:
So this is how democracy dies—to thundering applause!
(Correct: So this is how liberty dies—with thunderous applause!)
Darth Sidious made a great point (as do many real life politicians, Leftists especially) of painting himself as a force of good, as working for the greater good, and similar, while being centered on his own advantage and/or his own agenda throughout. He was not uncovered until it was too late and those who raised warnings in advance were not taken sufficiently seriously. With e.g. Biden, it was clear in advance that he would be a disaster to many (including yours truly), but our warnings went unheeded and disaster ensued. Tellingly, Darth Sidious made claims like “I love democracy”, while attempting to demolish it, while Biden presented himself as a unifier, while he and/or his supporters tried hard to increase societal divisions, e.g. between Republicans and Democrats, Whites and Blacks.
That evil-pretending-to-be-good is a recurrent theme in fiction (note e.g. large parts of the history of Sauron) is not a coincidence but reflects real-life situations. In some cases, as with many politicians, this is somewhat literal; in others, as with e.g. pleasant-but-destructive activities, it is more metaphorical.
In this, he drew on many “useful idiots”, those tricked into supporting evil for the sake of good—a Leftist staple. A truly tragic case is that of Jar Jar Binks, who tried to step into the shoes of Amidala, to do what he believed what she would have done (viz. to suggest “emergency powers” for Darth Sidious in his guise as Palpatine; note the parallel with the excess use of governmental power during the COVID-countermeasure era), while actually doing the exact opposite. Another major case was Anakin. Indeed, a critical point of the events is when he chooses to intervene in favor of Darth Sidious against Mace Windu, in what borders on misguided humanitarianism, which allows Darth Sidious to survive and become emperor, while Windu (apparently...) falls to his death.
I do not think that I have encountered any telling of Windu surviving, but I would suspect that one exists or, barring that, ultimately will be added. Note e.g. how both Darth Maul (“Clone Wars”) and Darth Sidious (some book or other that I have not read) came back in later works.
In the transition from movies to books, it is notable how Darth Sidious gained power as “the enemy within”, while prior attempts by the Sith to defeat the Republic had mostly been unsuccessful, even when aided by large armies and armadas of spaceships. So it is in real-life politics—it is very often the enemy from within that brings the greatest danger. Certainly, there is a strong parallel with the real world in that Marxism in the guise of the Soviet Union failed to defeat the U.S. and the rest of the free world, while the “internal” Marxism, perverting science and education, performing the “long march through the institutions”, and similar, actually might remove the “free” from the “free world”.
Looking more at books, a recurrent theme (spelled out more clearly than in the movies, but also present in the movies) is the use of negative emotions to gain power. If we look at e.g. the current U.S., Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, and many other cases, we can see a Leftist approach of deliberately instilling fear, anger, and hate in the gullible masses so that the masses serve Leftist purposes and give the Left power. (To a lesser degree the same applies more generally, at least with fear.) An interesting difference is that a Sith or other user of the Dark Side tries to grow hate and anger in himself, while the Left does so in others. Similarly, a Sith might strive to make others fear him, while the Left tries to make others fear e.g. climate change, White supremacists, the “Patriarchy”, or whatever enemy figure(s) the specific sub-grouping of the Left has. This, likely, in part to distract from real problems (e.g. government mismanagement), in part to cause irrational actions (especially with the climate, in the “we cannot afford to take the risk that [whatnot]” family), in part to set off the “fear leads to anger; anger leads to hate [; hate leads to suffering]” chain. (I have bracketed the suffering part, because I strongly suspect that far fewer Leftist politicians/propagandists/whatnot try to cause suffering than try to cause hate. The more so, as the worst effects of suffering tend fall on others than the haters, should the haters gain power—and the point of the game is, of course, to gain power for the Left.)
However, some care must be taken to differ between, on the one hand, unwarranted or exaggerated fears and, on the other, fears based on actual danger resp. fears that are proportional to the danger at hand. (Contrast e.g. the great climate hysteria of recent years with more reasoned concerns for what might happen, or fears about government censorship, amply demonstrated in recent years, with unfounded claims that free speech would lead hate/violence/racism/whatnot.)
Likewise, while anger is hardly ever helpful, there is a great difference between being angry because of something real (e.g. that a dissenter is per-/prosecuted for no other reason than dissent) and because of some propagandist making loose claims in e.g. the “you must be angry because [Whites/Capitalists/men/whatnot] are evil” family. Ditto when contrasting anger for a cause and anger strictly as a consequence of fear.
An interesting twist is how the clones of the Clone Wars can be seen as matching a common Leftist view of humans, as drones working for a collective with few allowances for individuality, as “tabula rasa” entities to be “written” by the right indoctrination, etc. (More generally, the heroes in the movies tend to be both individuals and individualistic, while most of the villains, be they clones, droids, storm troopers, whatnot, lack individuality. Note that “individualistic” and “egoistic”, contrary to common Leftist depictions, are not the same. It is very, very possible to be both individualistic and altruistic/heroic/self-sacrificing/whatnot. The key is whether someone does something out of his own free will or whether he is forced to do so by a collective, the government, or similar.)
A particularly interesting scene (Episode II, during the picnic) plays between Anakin and Amidala, with both characters displaying both idealism and naiveté—including that Anakin seems willing to force others into agreement on a for-their-own-good or for-the-good-of-society basis (very much in the spirit of Leftism). One exchange sticks out, where Anakin makes a statement that (in a rough paraphrase) the politicians should sit down, agree on what is the best for everyone, and then just do it—and Amidala almost angrily protests that this is what they already do. (Or “we”, from her point of view.) Here we see a naive take on what politicians do by a politician, a naive take of what state of politics is possible with an eye at human nature by a non-politician, and the hyper-naive take that things are best put in the hands of politicians and/or the government by both (or so I speculate—this point is more implicit than the previous).
I speak of human nature, because that is the most relevant to the real world. The situation with various non-humans, of which the franchise is filled, might be different. However, frankly, I have seen precious few signs of this in the media that I have encountered so far. There might be individual non-human species that are different in a positive manner, but the majority of non-humans might actually do worse than humans on relevant counts. From that point of view, “human” can also be read somewhat metaphorically.
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