How can any decent person be a SW stormtrooper fan?

[cooleddie74]

Remember what Luke once said to Obi-Wan:

"I can't get involved. I've got work to do.

It's not that I like the Empire...I hate it...it's just...there's nothing I can do about it right now!"

Yet he wanted to fly off and join the Imperial Academy. In short: the Empire royally sucks but it's a paycheck and way off a dusty desert rock with no prospects.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Um...I just thought their armor and helmets looked cool.

 

[Retu]

Majority of Wehrmacht soldiers were conscripted, so they had to serve whether they were fanatical, genocidal fascists or not. Were stormtroopers an all volunteer force or were some or all of them drafted?

Even if they were volunteers, so what? The Empire controlled all media in the galaxy. The Emporer could easily portray himself as the defender of individual rights and secular humanism against the Taliban, sorry, Jedi, and 99.99999999% of the population would believe him, especially the younger people who would remember no other government.

And even the older ones would remember civil war, corruption, chaos and how the supposedly saintly Jedi countenanced the manufacture of clones as cannon fodder.

Plus, we don't know what economic conditions were like on any given world. Maybe people really did hate the Empire but the military paid well and family members were depending on that paycheck.

Exactly: "The Empire is on the verge of success. Soon, peace and order will be restored throughout the galaxy. Even now, our capable forces, lead by Darth Vader, are striking back at the rebel insurgents." The official truth was probably very different. The TIE fighter game gave an interesting picture how things were on the other side.

 

[cooleddie74]

The Imperial HoloNet during the reign of Palpatine was nothing but feel-good, chest-thumping propaganda about law, order and squelching the msguided or even wicked resistance to the "safe and secure society" that the new Emperor declared at the end of the Clone Wars.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

The TIE fighter game gave an interesting picture how things were on the other side.

Which raises an interesting point. Since I think that Tie Fighter is a better game than X-Wing, does that make me—heh, heh, heh—evil?

Good. Shooting. Alpha. One.
Primary mission objectives completed.
The Emperor will be pleased!

 

[cooleddie74]

I love playing as Darth Vader in the first Force Unleashed game for the 360. I guess I'm somebody who endorses massacring kids and standing by while an entire planet is blown up...the mass murder of almost 2 billion innocent people.

Lock me up before I destroy civilization.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Hell, Star Wars fans like a movie with "Wars" in the title. Nanny better come and put us to bed, it's not good to like movies about wars.

 

[sojourner]

In that universe they did what the Nazis did here on a galactic scale.

That universe is fiction. It didn't happen. No one died, got hurt, born or ever lived. Fiction. No one gets hurt by dressing up as a character from that fictional setting, unless you count potential chaffing.

 

[Kegg]

In that universe they did what the Nazis did here on a galactic scale.

That universe is fiction. It didn't happen. No one died, got hurt, born or ever lived. Fiction.

In other words, if a privileged teenager in the New Republic post-ROTJ dressed up as a Stormtrooper and was photographed as such, outrage from New Republican media and the commentariat would make sense.

Just as in the real world, Prince Harry of England dressing up as a Nazi was considered a little tasteless by people who, again, exist in the real world.

Stormtroopers are make believe, the mooks of an action adventure movie series from the late 1970s and early 1980s. Used as an easy shorthand for evil totalitarianism with a few nods to Nazism, because every other franchise has done that at one point or another.

When Alderaan blew up it was just a cool effect in a feature. It was not the actual genocide of a few billion real people.

 

[cooleddie74]

"He was once a cosplayer buddy of mine until he turned to evil...

He betrayed and murdered human decency."

 

[Klaus]

When Alderaan blew up it was just a cool effect in a feature. It was not the actual genocide of a few billion real people.

I recall telling my friends that Star Wars was the bloodiest movie of all time because of that scene. Put Peckinpah to shame.

Funny, no one stopped watching because of it.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

"He was once a cosplayer buddy of mine until he turned to evil...

He betrayed and murdered human decency."

The villainy of this post—it knows no bounds.

 

[JarodRussell]

When Alderaan blew up it was just a cool effect in a feature. It was not the actual genocide of a few billion real people.

I recall telling my friends that Star Wars was the bloodiest movie of all time because of that scene. Put Peckinpah to shame.

Funny, no one stopped watching because of it.

Why funny, it's not bloody at all.

 

[Sindatur]

"He was once a cosplayer buddy of mine until he turned to evil...

He betrayed and murdered human decency."

OK, now That is truly evil

 

[Starbreaker]

April Fools!!!!

No?

What?

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=BhUZmvAEIN4#t=5s[/yt]

 

[Hound of UIster]

Next time you see one of these fools at a con, ask them if they really understand the statement they are making by parading around as Space Nazis.

But you yourself are using the symbol of a group of galactic war criminals as your personal avatar. The crimes committed by the Autobots are even worse than anything done by the 501st. The Autobots after all waged a genocidal 6.5 Million Year War against their own race all to defend an injust caste system where they ruled. I don't think the 501st's crimes are comparable to blowing up multiple worlds, the deaths of billions if not trillions of individuals or a incarceration system where punishment by the removal of the offenders soul is considered routine and just.

The Autobots are a symbol slavery, repression, genocide and war. Do your support these ideals?

 

[PsychoPere]

Even if they were volunteers, so what? The Empire controlled all media in the galaxy. The Emporer could easily portray himself as the defender of individual rights and secular humanism against the Taliban, sorry, Jedi, and 99.99999999% of the population would believe him, especially the younger people who would remember no other government.

The majority of Michael Stackpole's second X-Wing novel, Wedge's Gamble, takes place on Coruscant prior to the New Republic taking control of the planet away from the Empire. There are numerous occasions in the novel where Imperial propaganda is mentioned. The Galactic History Museum, for example, has numerous displays that glorify the Emperor and the Empire; the Emperor is said to have sacrificed his life during a negotiation attempt at Endor, destroying a Rebel Death Star in the process; and so on.

 

[cooleddie74]

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X2YLFncy6M&feature=related[/yt]

Still want to call them ignorant or stupid?

 

[SeerSGB]

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X2YLFncy6M&feature=related[/yt]

Still want to call them ignorant or stupid?

Good vid. Let's remember: to these kids, Vader, Fette, the Troopers are all characters from their favorite movies or a video game or a cartoon. These kids, the ones they help, don't know from real world history or fictional political history, they just know that it's cool to get to spend a few minutes with Capt. Rex or play with Darth Vader. I've got nothing but respect for what these guys do.

 

[The Wormhole]

Thing is, in Star Wars the Empire is the legitimate government and the Rebel Alliance are outlaws fighting it. The Rebel Alliance is essentially space Al-Qaida.