potboy | And another from drafts - on the evil of the First Order

K, let’s examine how evil the First Order are:

What have we seen them do, on screen, that looks pretty evil?

They used a superweapon to blow up a massive civilian target
They tortured an enemy combatant
They massacred a non-combatant village
Their army is composed of soldiers who were taken as infants and trained to combat from childhood onward.

Yeah, that does sound pretty bad. But

Who else has done these things?

The US/allies used a superweapon in WWII to blow up two massive civilian targets
Guantanamo Bay: *exists*
During the Vietnam war, US troops operated on a “kill anything that moves” policy, resulting in many massacres of which The Mai Lai massacre is most well known.
Who else raised children to combat from infancy? The Jedi - who we are supposed to believe are the good guys. (Also in the Real World, what other empire used a child tax to fill its armies and civil service? The Ottoman Empire, also a grey area when it comes to villainy)

What moral grounds have we got to say that any of this is justified when we do it - or when the heroes do it - but pure evil when the villains do it? Before we start throwing around the idea that empathizing with the villains automatically makes a person a fascist themself, maybe we should take a look at our own history and remember that all too often our nations have been the villains.

Would we ourselves want to be judged with the kind of simplistic good v evil duality with which we talk about SW characters? How well do you think we would stand up under that?

Now obviously, I’m not saying that torture and mass murder are good things. I’m just saying that it’s hypocritical of us to claim that we could never be citizens of a regime like that. We already are.

When our own nations desperately need to learn how to do better, it’s kind of offensive of us, tbh, to keep insisting we could only be the hero, and that we can’t even make art about the villains without sullying our moral purity.

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I mean, I find it difficult to say that it's wrong to judge those actions for their immorality as long as you cop to the fact that the actions your country has taken in the past are also evil. Moving forward, and all that.

Man, I don't even object to the fact that people like the Jedi despite the child soldiers thing - lord knows I engage in wish fulfillment about being trained to be a badass while I was still a child - but the active justifications in meta bother me. Especially when they come from people who are so unforgiving about other aspects of Star Wars morality. Even if you assume the apprentices are treated fantastically and raised well in most ways... The Clone Wars kind of erases those good intentions, and so does attachment doctrine, and so does the removal of children from their families unnecessarily.

I quite agree that you can and should judge all those actions as evil actions and I'm against them in real life, and realize that they are fully villainous things to do in fiction. This post was really a reaction against the kind of fandom antis who feel that having any kind of sympathy for the bad guys makes you bad yourself. The moment you started to speculate on the motives of the bad guys in a way that had nuance and regarded them as complex human beings trying to live in their own society, you tended to come in for criticisms that you were a Nazi sympathizer. And that struck me as ridiculous, since the UK (where I'm from) and the US (where a lot of the rest of the fandom are from) have so often been the evil empire ourselves. The more we put evil at a distance and say we could never have done anyhing like that, the more we fail to understand both it and ourselves.

Which still doesn't make it good! I totally agree with that. I'm fully convinced that the FO is a terrible organization even for the most highly ranking people in it, but that's the kind of thing you say when you know you're having a conversation with some shades of grey :)

Also, yeah, I would have loved to train as a Jedi, and I think that young Hux (for example) is a good example of a child who would have benefitted enormously from being taken from his parent at an early age. So not even that is all black and white.

OH THIS IS ABOUT ANTIS!! I spent a few years out of fandom and have only been back for a few months and keep forgetting that the whole anti thing has and is happening. I have a hard time recognizing real meta vs social justice wank sometimes because of it. I've managed to insulate myself juuuust enough lmaoooo I'm not excited to have direct contact with them :') it's only a matter of time...

*G* I'm hoping that there will be fewer antis on Dreamwidth than there were on Tumblr. Something about the way it's set up encourages more in-depth conversations, I think. Also it's easier just to not see them on here.

But yeah, this bit of meta was a result of being called a Nazi too many times because I happened to be a fan of fictional villains :) Then I never actually posted it over there because I didn't think the fallout would be worth it.

Wow, I admit I never thought about it like that.

I really, really like writing about Hux but I have always seen the First Order (and him) as evil. I mean, of course I don't think that they'll send regular reminders to stormtroopers going "Heyy!! Just checking: do you still remember we are evil villains? Please commit at least three war crimes per week or we'll disqualify you from getting a promotion." - I just have trouble seeing more than superficial redeeming qualities in them, you know?

The comparison you draw between the First Order and a real-life, non-nazi!Germany military organization is pretty interesting. I'll have to think about this a bit more.

Thank you for writing that meta! <3

My problem is that saying "he's evil" doesn't really tell you much, and doesn't invite you to understand the person's character. In what ways is he evil? Why is he evil like that and how did he become so? You know? And if you're going to be writing about someone, then you really need to understand their character in a more nuanced way than just 'he's bad.'

I fully agree that the First Order is a terrible fascist organization that hurts everyone, those outside itself especially, but also even those inside the order. But that's where I start to find some sympathy for the people in it.

What about the people who were born in the order? How are they to know that it's bad? How are they to know that there's another way? By the time they're old enough to be exposed to other cultures, they've had a lifetime's conditioning and indoctrination.

Someone like Hux, going through the officer core, learned in his infancy that the basic nature of humans is a savagery in which it's kill or be killed and eaten. The places the FO has been hanging out in throughout his youth are terrifying - the people are starving, fighting tooth and nail, cannibalizing each other.

At least in the FO everyone has enough food, and clothes on their backs, and an education of sorts. Of course someone who was raised in the places and by the people Hux was raised by is going to see strength and order as the only thing that can hold back the natural tides of human savagery. They're going to see the First Order as a good thing.

I mean, they'll be wrong, but they'll still be right that it's better than the alternatives they've been exposed to. And the view from where a person lives is the only one you can really judge them from.

They have to be fought and they have to be defeated, but they're still human, so they deserve the respect of being understood.

Also thanks! :)

Sorry for getting back to this so late! You make excellent points (although admittedly I also managed to completely miss this being in reaction to antis, since I joined tumblr only a couple of months before the purge - I have always such a great timing! - and luckily didn't have time to run into them, even if I did hear horror stories from acquitances).

I pretty much agree with everything you have said. I'm also really glad that you have written this meta: it has really given me a lot to think. I really like your point about Hux having very limited undertsanding of what the world is likely as a child and his impression on human nature and the consequent belief that only order will bring good to the galaxy being caused by that.

No problem! I've been out of contact for over a week now over Christmas anyway :) Also, ugh, you were probably lucky to be out of the worst of the Tumblr anti business. There was a point where a genuinely large amount of people were arguing that if you were a fan of Hux it could only be because you were a Nazi (because he was far too minor a character and too unattractive to have gained fans for any other reason.)

I'm glad you enjoyed this take on him. I personally think he hasn't shown an awful lot of genuine villainy in what we've seen of him. Given that he's the child of a child-brainwasher, I feel free to continue to think of him as someone who is trying very hard to be exactly what his society is asking for from him. He really is the opposite and foil for Ren in so many ways :)

And another from drafts - on the evil of the First Order

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