I’ve just seen the TCW Season 7 and I’m already pissed at that girl who accused the Jedi of starting the Clone Wars. Who does she think she is?
I KNOW THAT FEELING, but it’s entirely fitting with the state of the galaxy at this point, that they blame the Jedi as part of the problem, rather than understanding who they actually are and how little say they actually had.This is why Star Wars: Propaganda is one of my favorite books, that it’s such a great in-universe look at the bigger picture of everything that happened and it shows so much of how the Jedi’s PR problem shaped so much of what happened.In the lead-up to the Clone Wars: “The Core Worlders became more enamored with the fleeting distractions of fame and fashion, transitory fascinations with sophistication that left little room for messages of faith or tradition that the Jedi exemplified. The lack of representation in the galactic mindshare undoubtedly fixed their future, as dark forces were on the rise that would poison the public sentiment toward the Jedi in the decades to come.” (Star Wars: Propaganda | by Pablo Hidalgo)The beginning of the Clone Wars: “Dooku had a commanding voice that demanded attention. He also had the authority inherited from his previous role, a former Jedi Master of the Order. Once again, the Jedi Order’s eschewing of the galactic spotlight allowed another to reshape the image of the Jedi, and for nearly a decade, the most famous Jedi in the galaxy was one who advocated for the dissolution of the Republic.” (Star Wars: Propaganda | by Pablo Hidalgo) “It was Chancellor Palpatine himself who recommended that images such as this poster not be used to bolster wartime support for the Republic, citing sympathy toward the Jedi discomfort. Very few examples exist of government-approved imagery that showcased the Jedi Knights in their capacity as military leaders.” (Star Wars: Propaganda | by Pablo Hidalgo) “The ancient eight-spoked sigil of the Republic found new application on freshly minted Republic war machinery as well as on snapping flags and military banners. These were the soldiers risking all for the sanctity of the Republic and the cherished freedoms of democracy—so went the stirring messages, ballads, and holographic short subjects. Absent from these portrayals was any lingering focus on the Jedi Order.” (Star Wars: Propaganda | by Pablo Hidalgo) “At the start of the Clone Wars, the Jedi were largely kept out of Republic propaganda, with the clone troopers becoming the face of patriotism during the conflict. This was the preference of the Order, which eschewed imagery of heroism or the romanticization of warfare.”(Star Wars: Propaganda | by Pablo Hidalgo)When saying why the Jedi weren’t enough and the Republic should vote for creating a galaxy-wide miliary, the Republic’s propaganda laid the seeds of “don’t trust the Jedi”: “Rather than detail the inevitable horrors of impending war, its singular lightsaber and well-chosen words instead demonstrate how undefended the Republic was. In crafting this message of vulnerability, the Commission for a Safe and Secure Republic (a nonprofit think tank based on Level 5121, Coruscant) also unwittingly seeded a secondary story that would grow during the Clone Wars—that no salvation lay in the direction of the Jedi Knights.”(Star Wars: Propaganda | by Pablo Hidalgo)Showing just how little choice the Jedi actually had: “In the blink of an eye, it seemed, the galaxy was embroiled in a full-scale galactic war. The Separatist Alliance congealed into the Confederacy of Independent Systems, a coalition of loosely aligned worlds united for war. It pooled its resources to purchase huge quantities of battle droids, creating a ready-to-deploy army. The Republic mobilized its newly activated clone forces and hurriedly brevetted the Knights of the Jedi Order into military commanders.”(Star Wars: Propaganda | by Pablo Hidalgo) “A lot of people say, ‘What good is a lightsaber against a tank?’ The Jedi weren’t meant to fight wars. That’s the big issue in the prequels. They got drafted into service, which is exactly what Palpatine wanted.” (George Lucas) “Absent from this hero-making were the Jedi Knights. Citizens who witnessed the Jedi in action were understandably in awe of their abilities, but it was the clone trooper who was the public face of the war effort. The mystic Jedi remained forever inscrutable to the Republic citizenry at large. To the Separatists, they were branded as hypocrites (thanks to firsthand criticism by Count Dooku). That they could so callously brandish a clone army—“slaves bred for war,” as Separatist propaganda proclaimed—did not speak well to their character, though few among the Separatists knew that the Jedi were given no choice in the matter.”(Star Wars: Propaganda | by Pablo Hidalgo)When pointing out uhhh the Jedi aren’t actually like that, it was once again that other people shaped their image for them: “After three long years of conflict, which included military strikes that reached the heart of the Core Worlds, public opinion soured on the war. More and more citizens saw the conflict as fruitless and demanded a negotiated settlement. It was during the height of this discontent that Chancellor Palpatine shocked the galaxy by exposing the Jedi Order as traitors. Despite some muted protests in the Senate, Palpatine easily spread this claim by reminding the galaxy that Dooku, the Republic’s greatest threat in a thousand years, was a former Jedi.“ (Star Wars: Propaganda | by Pablo Hidalgo)And the part that sums everything up the best of all: “Anti-Jedi sentiment was more a product of their cultural absence rather than a refutation of anything substantive. Separatist worlds that had experienced lawlessness attributed that to Jedi neglect, a failure of policing. Indeed, the war itself was a failure of the peacekeepers. To these disaffected worlds, the Jedi were just one more symptom of an inattentive Core World. They imagined the Jedi to be cultural elites, or in the case of this piece, a zealous sect of warmongers. “Had the Jedi made more of an effort to engage in the populace, such deadly misunderstandings could have been avoided.”(Star Wars: Propaganda | by Pablo Hidalgo)This book is the best example of showing how things got to where they were and it’s a really good example of showing why the Jedi chose the paths they did–for one thing, they were drafted into the war, both in-world and out-of-world sources have said so. We’ve seen them try to object to things like, THEY DID NOT WANT TO SEND ANAKIN TO TATOOINE, PALPATINE MADE THEM, they did not want to let Anakin hang around Palpatine, but had no evidence to object with and so Palpatine shut them down, they did not want to put Anakin on a Council he wasn’t ready for, but Palpatine made them, Mace wanted leniency for Boba Fett, but the Judiciary Branch ignored his plea, when Dooku was a Jedi, he talked to the Senate to ask for help for Outer Rim planets, they told him him that he was stepping out of line to address them this way, to stop trying to influence them (an implication of “don’t you dare use your weird and scary mind powers on us, you weirdo Jedi!”, I think) AND how they eschewed getting deeper into the propaganda because it romanticized war, as well as they believed their traditions and faith would speak for itself, BUT that allowed over and over and over again to have OTHERS shape the Jedi’s image.By the time they would have realize it was a problem, so many of them were already dead and they had thirty tire fires to put out and they were exhausted and still had more to do and nobody really wanted to listen.The above shows an incredibly consistent pattern of the Jedi were drafted into this war, they weren’t given a choice about the clones, their image was spun by people who had an incredibly vested interest in painting them as the bad guys for their own manipulations, and they eschewed public imagery because they didn’t want to become known as warriors, they didn’t want to romanticize this war.So when the people of the GFFA are like, “Yeah, the Jedi are just part of the Core World Elites! They never come down here with us lowly folks!” that’s playing into the propaganda that was spun about them (look how it also conveniently ignores how many “lowly” worlds they’re visiting and working with), it’s playing into what Palpatine was selling, what the Separatists were selling, and ignoring what the Jedi were actually doing and saying, what they actually had feasible options for.When people accuse the Jedi of starting the wars, it’s supposed to be contrasted against the audience knowing the truth–that Palpatine started that war, but that we know he was a master of propaganda and manipulative lies. That girl accusing them of starting the war isn’t meant as truth, the idea that the Jedi were Core World Elites isn’t meant as truth, it’s meant as part of the political landscape that they weren’t prepared to navigate (because they’re not meant to be politicians!), but that people painted them that way because Palpatine wanted to make sure they were to blame for everything wrong in the galaxy so that when he murdered their children and burned their home, people would just stand by and watch.That girl saying it was the fault of the Jedi is a huge part of the story, how the galaxy believed the lies about them. She’s wrong, but she was fed a steady diet of GFFA FOX News and we know exactly what’s going to happen because of it.
