I find it really hilarious when I see various stans across fandoms get so aggro and make strawmen out of other people's criticism of their fav character in order to not engage with the actual argument. They act like it's a winning strategy, but it's just the final nail in the coffin for any critical thinking.
Ultimately, you can't, nor should you, try to 'morally' justify the optics of characters taking part in abuse or tolerating/promoting/enabling imperialism, fascism and slavery, and you don't even need to. You can just enjoy the characters, love every sassy one-liner or flashback sob story they have, but your favs are not just 'misunderstood good guys' to everyone when that's on their ticket. You can't erase the (pretty major Jupiter-size) flaws people find in your characters just because you're too weak to admit the characters you like would likely be pretty shitty people in real life based on their actions.