Why The Galaxy LOVED Palpatine Despite Him Being A Brutal Dictator

Why Did The Galaxy Love Emperor Palpatine Even Though He Was A Brutal Dictator?

The Galactic Empire was a brutal regime. One which suppressed its citizen's freedoms cracked down on dissenters, and liberally used weapons of mass destruction.

Despite this, however, Palpatine was extremely popular, in both the senate and with the wider galactic population.

So how did this happen? How could a brutal dictator have such a high approval rating? As we will explore in this video, there are in fact many reasons why a repulsive, war-mongering dictator such as Palpatine could have such widespread support.


However, dictators are never created in a vacuum. To truly understand how the Emperor was so popular we must first understand the context from which he rose to power.

The Sith knew that to truly take over the Galaxy, they had to attain Public support. The Sith had spent a long time trying to take over the Galaxy through military force. However, this pretty much always failed.

Darth Bane's rule of two changed all of this. The Sith transformed itself from a threatening Empire of warriors, dictators and. spies into an organization of bankers, oligarchs, and politicians that used the Republics' own democratic system to undermine it; allowing them to be perfectly poised to seize power when the time came. And indeed that time would come.


After spending many thousands of years locked in conflict either directly or in a cold war, the Republic eventually triumphed or so they thought. Over the millennium that followed, the Republic would slowly change into something unrecognizable. Without an enemy to fight, rally against, and remind them what not to be, they slowly lost their way.

The Democratic system that they once held as their founding principle was slowly eroded away. Large corporations such as the trade federation grew to enormous sizes, unparalleled in galactic history. Senators began receiving donations, gifts and outright bribes from these trans-galactic conglomerates and very soon they even had their own voting power within the senate.

The wheels of the Democratic system became clogged up and very soon it became clear that the politicians and beurocrats did not represent the people, but the oligarchal mega-corporations that paid their generous salaries.

Very soon, these oligarchs held significant power, enough to strip entire worlds of their freedom, as we saw during the Phantom Menace.


As we explored in this video on the tragic early life of general grievous, the Republics' war apparatus that had once served to protect the people against tyranny was used in the service of so-called free trade and security. Outer rim worlds leaders who refused to join the Republic or have their resources plundered by the various mega-corporations were deposed: often through secretive Coups or by stoking tensions with rival planets.



Many outer rim planets suffered greatly during this time. Many trillions of citizens worked for measly wages in harsh conditions to feed the insatiable desire for material possessions in the core worlds. Despite being outlawed, slavery was also commonplace on many worlds and sectors, and their inhabitants were treated as tradable commodities.


However, the Republic did very little to prevent these atrocities and rarely enforced its own laws in the outer-rim. Many of these mega-corporations as well as the immensely rich core worlds profited immensely from cheap labour and raw materials from these backwater outer-rim worlds. Many senators would not risk their positions by cracking down on these immortal practices.



The Republic had been gutted from the inside, corrupted by the greed brought on by its own economic success. Its lack of enemy caused many to abandon the democratic ideals of the past in favor of profit.


However, a society like this cannot last. Many were justly angry at the growing inequality, obvious corruption, and harsh lives that they lived. Many wanted change, but the Senate was now completely jammed up, paralyzed by the vast amount of corporate money that flowed through it. And into this power vaccume stepped the Sith.


Former Jedi and highly respected politician began stoking separatist tensions within the outer-rim using grievances with the Republic to rise to power.

Palpatine capitalized on the fears of the core worlds about the separatist threat. And as tensions rose, so too did his power and popularity. However, he also positioned himself as a populist politician who represented the people. Many saw him as one of the few politicians who were willing to take a tough stance against the corporations and their cronies in the senate. After all, Palpatine had risen to power standing up against the Trade Federation for his homeworld of Naboo. Many corporations, fearful of Palpatine's anti-corruption rhetoric, flocked to fund and arm the Separatist movement

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