The Declaration of The First Galactic Empire (Credit: Star Wars Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, Lucasfilm)
“What I remember about the rise of the empire is, is how quiet it was.”
– Journal of a member of the 501st Legion.
Last Monday’s inauguration of Donald Trump for his second term as President of the United States has brought with it chilling parallels to history, though many in America cannot see it. Many others simply choose not to care.
Media literacy is at an all time low in the United States. Art is a reflection of the time in which it is created. Science fiction often seems prescient or clairvoyant in predicting the future because it looks at what is happening while it is being created and takes those behaviors to their logical extremes. Which means the parallels to modern events which can be found in the Star Wars saga are products of the series’ original influences, and the unfortunate cyclical nature of history.
Despite popular belief, the Star Wars franchise has always been explicitly political. George Lucas wrote the original trilogy as a story of hope and resilience, but its overall messaging runs far deeper than just that. Star Wars openly wears its influences on its sleeves, being equal parts love letters to the films of Japanese legend Akira Kurosawa, classic Westerns, and old-school sci-fi serials like Flash Gordon. Reality, however, was also not far from Lucas’ mind when penning the original trilogy. The Vietnam War had ended only a few years before the first Star Wars film appeared in theaters. Lucas has gone on the record multiple times stating how, in addition to the Empire’s obvious influence from Nazi Germany, that America’s imperialism had been a crucial influence, and explicitly likened the Empire to America and the Rebel Alliance to the Viet Cong. In this way, Star Wars was written not only as a fantastical adventure, but as a condemnation of imperialism and fascism.
Which means it’s the perfect metaphor for dictatorial leaders and how they rise to power.
The Prequel Trilogy, including The Clone Wars series, detailed how the eventual Emperor Palpatine took over the galaxy and formed the Galactic Empire. The brilliance of the story was how Palpatine led both sides of the war, as the kindly Supreme Chancellor of the Republic in his public guise, and the Sith Lord Darth Sidious as the man behind the public leader of the Separatist movement’s Confederacy of Independent Systems. Palpatine would create a crisis through the Separatists’ droid army or the corporations which made up significant amounts of its ruling bodies, before solving it with the Republic’s might.
The Clone Wars especially used its seven seasons to show numerous examples of how Palpatine would create a problem, say with the banks supporting the Separatists, and then have the Republic “reluctantly” take over the banking and the banks’ resources. This type of consolidation of power is characteristic of fascists. Palpatine then disposed of anyone who could become a threat to him, through political maneuvering, social discreditation, imprisonment, or outright murder. His most nefarious act was to corrupt one of the most famous Jedi, Anakin Skywalker, into becoming his Sith Apprentice under the name Darth Vader. Palpatine’s corruption of Anakin was a long-running, detailed plot which relied on building a close relationship with the young Jedi, serious emotional manipulation, and putting Anakin in situations throughout the course of the war which would test his belief in the Jedi Code.
Amidst the manipulation of Anakin Skywalker, Palpatine also engineered the creation of the Grand Army of the Republic and forcing the Jedi Order to act as its generals before ordering the army to turn on and exterminate the Jedi. During the Clone Wars, Palpatine used the Jedi as a scapegoat for many of the Republic’s less savory actions and implicitly blamed them for the hardships being faced by the Republic’s citizens. Thus, despite the Jedi Order coming to its violent end because they discovered that the dutiful Supreme Chancellor was also an acolyte of evil, the public believed in Palpatine’s version of events over any naysayers. His swift destruction of the Jedi Order which had supposedly plotted to overthrow the Galactic Senate and claim power for themselves was met with little resistance. His declaration that the Republic would be reorganized into the Galactic Empire to ensure stability and security was met with resounding support, leading to one of the most infamous lines of the prequel trilogy delivered by Senator Padmé Amidala.
“So this is how liberty dies. With thunderous applause.”
America’s Abusive Relationship
Star Wars is a work of fiction, but it was written following the playbook which fascists used to take over nations in the real world. Strip out the fantastical elements, change a few names, de-composite some characters, and the chain of events just described which took place a long time ago in a galaxy far far away could just as easily be a recounting of history of Weimar Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s. The tactics practiced by fascists to come to power are not much different than the average emotionally abusive person on an individual level, and Donald Trump has used the entire playbook and then some.
Fascists are abusers, plain and simple. They are the type of people to start an argument, hit their partner in the middle of it, and then ask, “Why did you make me hurt you?” The emotional manipulation it takes to create a problem and then solve it to look like a hero is a trademark of abusive relationships. As is the pressure and making the abused feel hated and depressed to keep them subservient. Similarly, the willingness to do something good extremely rarely so, coupled with the complete twisting of reality, the abuser can make the argument that they are doing good and do care about those they are abusing.
Donald Trump is an expert in all of these skills.
The recent saga of the TikTok ban which immediately reversed itself thanks to intervention from Donald Trump tracks with his history of using abusive tactics. The ban on TikTok was a bipartisan effort kickstarted by Trump’s insistence that the company’s Chinese ownership and relationship with the Chinese government made it a threat due to its access to the data of its American users. Trump stated that the application should be banned in the United States. Bipartisan legislation was passed to ban the application from appearing on app stores in America, a certain number of days after the law was signed, which just so happened to be on January 19th, the day before Donald Trump took office for his second term. President Biden stated that he would not be enforcing the ban since it would be up to the new administration to decide how to proceed a day later. TikTok then voluntarily shut off services entirely in the United States on the evening of the 18th only to reactivate the following morning and show a message to all users stating how President Trump (an inaccurate title since he had yet to take the oath of office) restored access to the application after he had decided to grant TikTok an extension before the ban was enacted.
TikTok deciding on their own to deactivate services on the evening of the 18th and then reactivate them less than 24 hours later with a message praising “President” Trump (despite not officially being president yet) for his work in restoring the app as though his comments weren’t what kickstarted the process to begin with feels incredibly manipulative. Especially when coupled with the fact that Trump’s political supporters with the capital to purchase the platform all started making inquiries. This would put Donald Trump in favorable position to have criticism of him suppressed, and his opponents’ reach curtailed. The domestic Chinese version of TikTok does have some differences, which fall around suppressing dissenting opinions under Chinese law.
The sensible argument for a ban in the United States would have been to state that the Chinese government’s financial and managerial stake in TikTok means it would serve as an avenue for increased influence with the American users, much in the same way other social media sites were manipulated by Russia during the 2016, 2020, and 2024 elections. Nobody made that argument. Ironically enough, that argument holds even more weight after TikTok meddled in internal American affairs and cast the United States as the bad guys for the ban, despite China having a ban on all western social media platforms themselves because they do not wish to have the West’s “corrupting influence” accessible to their citizens.
TikTok isn’t the only issue which Donald Trump created so he could solve and look like a hero. Just this week, he issued an order which pulled funding from almost all programs receiving federal grants. In addition to a ‘conveniently’ timed shutdown of the Medicaid online portal, this decision would have hit hospitals, aid organizations, and countless businesses. Programs such as PEPFAR which helped fight AIDS in Africa with massive success would have had their financial wells dry up overnight. Additionally, it hurt aid going to places currently in dire need of it, such as Ukraine. It would have been an economic catastrophe. A federal judge halted the order temporarily, but this could only be a mere stay of execution. In the meantime, people across America responded with outrage and made their opposition public knowledge. Then, earlier today, Trump rescinded the decision. Perhaps it was all theater, a way to make himself look better since the public would remember the part where he ended the problem, forgetting he lit the fire in the first place. Perhaps it was a way to test the public’s willingness to accept what would have been a catastrophic bomb set off at the heart of the American economy. Or perhaps the memorandum was rescinded but the plans to refuse to disburse those funds – despite being legally obligated to do so – are still in play.
He has used inflammatory rhetoric towards immigrants and America’s supposed lack of border security which permits scores of illegal immigrants to flood over. In actuality, most illegal immigrants arrive in the United States on legitimate visas which they then overstay. However, Donald Trump is not one to let facts get in the way of a good fear campaign. Last year, a border security bill was all but assured, with compromises to make the Republicans happy, until Trump ordered the Republican members of congress to refuse to support the bill, which torpedoed the whole thing. This bill would have saw the policies he has been supporting for years implemented, but Trump could not bear to see Joe Biden get the credit. Vanity is another trait of narcissistic abusers.
Vanity is why Trump can never backtrack on something he decides or declares, even if he is absolutely incorrect. Such behavior results in absurd moments such as the President of the United States altering the projected path of a hurricane on a diagram with a permanent marker so that he wouldn’t be wrong about which states he claimed it would impact. Obviously, vanity and an unwillingness to appear fallible are a common theme throughout Trump’s decisions over the years he has been in power. The media tends to not hold him to account for any of the backtracking, lying, or doubling down to refuse admitting his fault anywhere.
There has been a longstanding argument that the fourth estate has abdicated its responsibility to the American people and it’s not without merit. American news media has been showing a bias towards normalizing the extremist actions being undertaken by the Trump administration. Countless similar examples can be found throughout the entire MAGA era of politics. From incessantly casting doubt about Joe Biden’s age in the last election while dropping all mention of age as an issue once Biden dropped out despite Trump being of similar age to using the phrase “weird gesture” and attributing Elon Musk’s Nazi salute to autism, it’s not hard to see double standards in play from the media.
The Nazi comparisons are not hyperbole either. The abusive nature of the MAGA movement is on full display over Elon Musk’s Nazi salute and the ensuing efforts to manipulate the American people into believing it was anything but. Compared side by side to the salutes given by Hitler, they are almost identical. The fact that publications are writing articles about it by calling it “weird” or “strange” and allowing the “he’s autistic” argument to carry water when psychologists and members of the autistic community alike will say these actions cannot be explained away by autism.
Another common tactic of abusers and fascists alike is the suppression of knowledge. By keeping knowledge out of the hands of their victims, and tightly controlling the information which does get through, abusers and fascists get to warp reality for their victims. Social media companies, such as TikTok after its reactivation as well as Meta’s platforms censored information on the Democrats while pushing those on the Republicans, as reported by multiple users. Additionally, Donald Trump has scrubbed federal sites of information about the January 6th insurrection. The lack of accountability by mainstream media, the threats of retaliation should anyone be disparaging, and so on are all tactics to ensure the population only receives the officially approved chronicle of events, and the appropriate perspectives.
By normalizing smaller and smaller crimes, it primes people to willingly accept the outcome when major events happen.
The Wake of Order 66
Donald Trump likes to manufacture problems so he can solve them. For the ones he doesn’t solve or cannot solve, he blames others. He uses pawns and others to push forward his plans, only to dispose of them once they are no longer useful. Another parallel to Star Wars can be found here. Immediately after the execution of Order 66, when the Grand Army of the Republic turned on its Jedi Generals to destroy the Jedi Order once and for all, Palpatine ordered his new apprentice to destroy the Separatist Council to end the war. The pawns were ready to be disposed of once the Jedi were painted as traitors to the Republic and destroyed, and the GAR was stationed on almost every world. With the Separatist leaders killed and their droid army shut down, Palpatine won the war he masterminded, and had people willing to accept an iron fist everywhere across the galaxy.
Trump has a similar habit of doing away with his followers, acolytes, and allies once they are no longer useful to him. Vivek Ramaswamy was ousted as the co-chair of the dubious Department of Government Efficiency before Trump was even inaugurated. Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, Rudy Giuliani, and so many more names fall onto the list of Trump toadies who were abandoned by their master once their usefulness had run out.
In comparison, whereas Star Wars showed this playbook twenty years before Trump ran it, its origins lie with the Nazi Regime in the 1930s. Once Hitler had acquired the power of the Chancellor’s office, and President Paul von Hindenburg was close to death, he purged the Party and its associated organizations of those he considered untrustworthy or a threat to his power. Organizations such as the Sturmabteilung or “storm battalion,” which was the paramilitary brownshirts who answered directly to the Nazi Party and not the government. Their leaders were imprisoned or killed, and potentially harmful members were purged. Now that Hitler had the ultimate power of a parliament which would rubber stamp his every decree, he could consolidate power to save himself. The infamous Schutzstaffel, commonly known just as the SS, then became the main arm of the party, and many members of the SS helped perform the purges that night in 1934. It was known as The Night of Long Knives.
The best way to destroy something is from the top and within. This week, Donald Trump’s administration put out an invitation to resign to almost the entire federal workforce. The email has borne remarkable similarities to an email Elon Musk sent to the employees of Twitter once he assumed control of the company in 2022, down to the same subject line. This leads to concerns that Elon Musk, who was not elected, is calling the shots on federal personnel. The Office of Personnel Management is already under new management, most of whom are former tech-sector employees woefully unqualified for their positions, and with ties to Elon Musk and his peers. The civil service and associated bureaucracy are vitally necessary to the continued operation of the United States as a functioning society. The federal government is the largest employer in the nation, especially when factoring in all of the contractors which exist solely to execute work for the federal government. To tear out the employment so dramatically would destroy the foundations of American society and plunge us into a crisis the likes of which this country has never seen.
Fortunately, many within the government are preparing to resist. Many are refusing Trump’s buyout as advised by unions, and plan to dedicate themselves to continuing to serve in their positions and daring Trump to fire them on a large scale, which he cannot do. Even people in higher positions are getting in on the actions, such as Chair of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell refusing to step down before the end of his term. The federal workforce and civil servants truly to feel their call to serve the nation. The pay is atrocious even if the benefits like retirement and leave time are good. These people navigate tricky bureaucracy and tons of restrictions, protocols, and legislatively mandated requirements to keep everything from farms and hospitals to aircraft carriers and intelligence networks up and running.
This is not the only instance of Trump attempting to destroy the civil service as we know it. He dismissed several inspectors general last week in an unprecedented and illegal move. Coupled with his plan to purge the military, these moves would strip oversight and resistance to Trump’s upcoming moves from within. With only loyalists in the military, there would be nobody to prevent orders which would see lethal force used on American citizens or unjustifiable wars of conquest being launched by the very forces which swore an oath to protect the nation against all enemies foreign and domestic. It brings the very frightening possibility of a crisis occurring, Trump declaring martial law, and doing away with the last remnants of American democracy and reigning as a king.
His habit of backstabbing due to ego and paranoia are matched only by the sheer amount of cruelty he pushes to the world. The cruelty is the point. Between rounding up immigrants en masse for deportation and proudly bragging about it, to planning on cancelling student visas for pro-Palestinian protestors, or deporting American criminals to overseas prisons, his actions oscillate between petty spite and heinous cruelty. More to that, the sheer volume serves to keep people distracted, unfocused, and wear down their abilities to put up measurable resistance. The cruelty is designed to beat the population into resigned submission.
Right now is the time to be vocal, be earnest, speak truth to power, look out for your neighbors, and take care of yourself. It will be a long, hard several years. It is intimidating and exhausting to have to keep up with the levels of unprecedented insanity streaming out of the White House. But, keeping informed is the first step in keeping disaster at bay.
To appropriate a phrase the Washington Post cowardly abandoned, “Democracy dies in darkness.”
Ark of the Lost Angels 
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