Are the rebels from 'Star Wars' actually terrorists? | The Tylt

In his famous piece "The Case for the Empire,"Jonathan V. Last argues that "Everything you think you know about Star Wars is wrong:"

The truth is that from the beginning, Lucas confused the good guys with the bad. The deep lesson of Star Wars is that the Empire is good.

Make no mistake, as emperor, Palpatine is a dictator--but a relatively benign one, like Pinochet. It's a dictatorship people can do business with. They collect taxes and patrol the skies. They try to stop organized crime (in the form of the smuggling rings run by the Hutts).

The Decider flips the dominant narrative of Luke Skywalker as an awakening hero with a kindly mentor, calling Obi-Wan Kenobi "a religious fanatic with a history of looking for young boys to recruit and teach an extreme interpretation of the Force."

Luke didn’t become a space terrorist overnight, but he did exhibit signs that would make him a prime candidate for terrorist recruiters:Come from families where the father is absent (check)
Have difficulty forming relationships outside the home (check)
Be attracted to groups offering acceptance and comradeship (checkmate)

But Lyman Stone is appalled by this "Imperial apologism." The Empire is clearly evil and the Alliance's cause is a noble one. Just look at the destruction of Alderaan for God's sake!

"Somehow, over the last ten years, it’s become vogue for conservatives to advertise their affection for the Galactic Empire [when] the Death Star killed two billion almost entirely civilian Alderaanians."

And at Giant Bomb, commenters point out the obvious evils of the Empire: 

"They're very clearly space nazis. They blew up a heavily populated planet, killing everyone on it and they didn't even need to get like a manager's signature or anything. They sorta genocided all the Jedi. That's bad."

What if you'd been a stormtrooper just doing your job the day the Alliance blew up the Death Star? #NeverForget

Think of the innocent contractors who died in "Return of the Jedi"—casualties of a war with left-wing militants they had nothing to do with.