The Galactic Empire in Star Wars is an oppressive state that tramples on the freedom of its citizens to preserve its power. However, there are many types of oppressive states, from those that existed in the ancient world, such as Athens under the Thirty Tyrants, to modern oppressive states like Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
The philosopher Hannah Arendt studied oppressive states. She was a Jew who fled Nazi Germany and wrote extensively on the Nazis, but she also studied Joseph Stalin’s Russia and other countries. She distinguished between authoritarian, tyrannical and totalitarian regimes.
Why the Empire is totalitarian
Arendt said there were three types of oppressive governments. There are authoritarian governments – which are structured like a pyramid with the king at the top, aristocrats in the middle and the people at the bottom – tyranny – which is a pyramid without the middle bit, i.e. one person at the top and everyone else below them – and totalitarian – which are like onions; they have layers of authority that shield deeper more powerful layers. For a totalitarian regime, the outer layers are the public face of authority, and the inner layers are where the power is hidden away.
This description of totalitarianism is akin to Nazi Germany or Russia under Stalin. It also describes the Empire in Star Wars. Much like totalitarian regimes in our world, the Empire has layers of authority, with the Emperor at the centre and those closest to him, Darth Vader for example, having real authority due to their proximity to the Emperor.
As well as conforming to Arendt’s description of totalitarianism, The Empire conforms to what most people who haven’t read Arendt’s political philosophy would think of as totalitarian. It’s controlling, violent and tolerates no opposition. It seeks to control its subjects’ behaviours to prevent resistance.
Arendt’s most detailed description of a totalitarian regime comes from her book, The Origins of Totalitarianism. This is an epic work of political philosophy that draws on many years of research into Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. It traces the story of totalitarianism back into history and brings it up to 1951, when it was written, showing the evolution in politics that led to the uniquely modern horror of totalitarianism.
The society and politics that Arendt describes in The Origins of Totalitarianism, also aligns with how the Empire is shown in Star Wars. The Empire has what Arendt described as a “leader”, the centre of the totalitarian onion, proximity to whom is the source of all authority. This is Emperor Palpatine in most of Star Wars, or the Supreme Leader in the case of the First Order.
The leader and the totalitarian state also have absolute power over their subjects, as the Emperor does. The leader continues to expand their power by conquering more people and making them subjects. The Empire in Star Wars does exactly this as it conquers more worlds and seeks to terrify its citizens into obedience with weapons of oppression, such as the Death Star.
Arendt also wrote that with totalitarian societies the leader is identified with every action of his followers, as they act on his behalf. In Star Wars we see the Emperor’s actions through the apparatus of the Empire, from his Stormtroopers to his Dark Jedi enforcers.
Government with civil society
The most obvious overlap between the Galactic Empire and the system that Arendt describes is that the Empire is, well, an Empire. In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt writes at length about how Imperialism was a necessary step on the road to totalitarianism. The Empire is constantly expanding, annexing new worlds, which is a key tenant of Imperialism. Arendt wrote that Imperialists want the expansion of political power without a body politic.
An empire keeps expanding but none of the civil institutions we could expect from a modern society emerge; such as trade unions, civil associations, an independent press, societies of commerce, etc. Arendt wrote that Imperialism was the rule of bureaucracy without civil society. Modern bureaucracy and modern civil society grew together, beginning in the Italian Renaissance and spreading through Europe, then developing in the English Civil War, the French Revolution, the Age of Enlightenment, The Great Reform Act, the Civil Rights Act and so on until we have the modern civil society that exists hand-in-hand with the modern state.
As the state grew into what it is today, so did the civil and political institutions that protect citizen’s rights and hold states in check. In the colonies created by empires there was the bureaucracy of government but no civil society. This is a modern government without modern representation. Not a mediaeval monarchy, which was authoritarian but didn’t have a modern government behind it, but something new. These colonial governments were a key step on the road to totalitarianism.
The Empire has the components of a modern state, from police to tax authorities, but it has no civil society. There are no trade unions, free newspapers or commerce societies. This is imperialism, as Arendt saw it. Arendt also argued that empire was a step on the way to totalitarianism.
Beyond the security and military apparatus of the Empire, the structure of the Empire’s institutions are vague. It’s not particularly touched on in the Star Wars films, TV shows and videogames and it is unclear which aspects of the Empire’s government are the important ones. This is partly because this is not the conflict that the stories in the Star Wars universe focus on.
This vagueness is also another aspect of totalitarianism Arendt identified. She wrote about the shifting pattern of power between institutions within a totalitarian government. This is similar to the onion structure described above, where the outer or visible layers of the government are there to hide the inner layers that have the power. Arendt said that the more visible an institution in a totalitarian government, the less power it will have. The more shadowy it is, the more power it will have.
A shifting pattern of power
Arendt also identified a shifting pattern of power between the different institutions within a totalitarian government as a sign of totalitarianism. This is to confuse citizens about the exact location of power within the state. Institutions with similarly innocuous names can have vastly different amounts of power and significance within the regime. Those in the know can follow the subtle clues about where power lies, but most people are unsure about who is making key decisions over their lives, beyond large nebulous organisations such as “the state” or “the party”. Totalitarian subjects had to develop a sixth sense of what institution’s orders should be obeyed in any moment.
Arendt also wrote that there is no hierarchy to these institutions, only authority. In the Empire we see no clear hierarchy between the institutions of the Empire – the army, the police, etc. – but we do know where authority comes from – i.e. the Emperor – and it is clear who has authority in any given circumstance – i.e. those closest to the Emperor. Darth Vader has no specific position in the Imperial state, beyond being “Lord Vader,” but the fact that he is the right hand of the Emperor is the source of his authority. As Arendt wrote, all power comes from the leader.
One key aspect of these vague and overlapping institutions is that power is held by the secret police. In Star Wars, the Empire has a secret police service, something Arendt describes in detail in The Origins of Totalitarianism because it is a quintessential feature of a totalitarian state.
The Empire appears to have several secret police and security services, with a shifting pattern of power between them, which reflects the nature of totalitarian institutions described above. Arendt said that the task of the secret police in an authoritarian regime is not to discover crimes but to be on hand when the leader wants to arrest a certain segment of the population. The security services serving the leader are closer to him and thus have a great amount of power.
Vader and the Sith members of the inquisitorius serve the Emperor directly and are amongst the most powerful of the Empire’s secret police. As we see in the TV show Obi-Wan-Kenobi, they report to Darth Vader, the right hand of the Emperor. They are also tasked with the Emperor’s most important project: hunting down and disappearing Jedi.
The political power of Darth Vader
Darth Vader is an interesting case in point. There is little indication that Darth Vader is the public face of the Empire. We mainly see people interact with the Empire through more traditional branches of the state, such as police or military, than someone who is both a spiritual figure and an authoritarian enforcer like Vader.
Vader’s title is only Lord (no other Lords are mentioned, there is no House of Lords like in the UK government) and he has no official position in the military or government (he is not a general or a senator) but he clearly has influence over even senior military figures such as Admiral Ozzel, as seen in The Empire Strikes Back.
Vader and the inquisitorius are the equivalent of the secret police, who were incredibly powerful in Nazi Germany or in Stalinist Russia. The names of the offices they hid behind were vague and didn’t portray the true nature of their power. Attention was directed elsewhere. Vader and the other Sith who work for him, such as the Inquisitor and Reva Sevander, operate in the shadows but have immense power. They are the enforcers of the Empire’s totalitarian state.
There are also other important aspects of the Empire’s secret police. In the show Andor, we meet the ISB (Imperial Security Bureau) who are responsible for crushing rebellion against the Empire. They act in secret, gathering intelligence, but also have authority over the military and other police services – having the power to claim resources from the traditional branches of the state where needed – and their head reports directly to the Emperor. Their role is to make rebels disappear.
Arendt wrote that criminals are punished but under totalitarianism undesirables disappear. They vanish altogether when the secret police come for them. They have never existed. They disappear and are gone forever and have always been gone. This brings us onto another aspect of totalitarianism, where those who disappear go: concentration camps.
Concentration camps
When the secret police disappear someone in a totalitarian regime they are sent to a concentration camp, which is different to a regular prison or jail. Arendt described these as the laboratory of totalitarianism, where the regime conducts experiments on changing humans. These experiments attempt to crush spontaneity and turn humans into perverted animals that are governed not by animal instincts, but by the commands of authority.
Arendt also wrote that concentration camps were designed to draw out punishment as long as possible to degrade and dehumanise the individual in an entirely cold and emotionless way. She wrote that the largest group of people in a concentration camp are the innocent, who are there for no good reason. There is no reasoning as to why people end up in concentration camps, as they are not rational or normal places.
This aspect of the Empire is explored in the TV show Andor where the protagonist, Cassian Andor, is arrested on a thin premise and sent to the prison on the moon Narkina 5. Andor discovers that there is no escape from the factory/prisons on this world and no one is ever released. The prisoners are made to perform seemingly arbitrary manufacturing tasks and manual work that appears repetitive and pointless.
At night the floors are electrified so that anyone who attempts to escape is killed. The people sent to the factory/prisons have committed minor offences against the Empire; they aren’t Hut crime lords or bounty hunters. Their punishment is arbitrary and dehumanising. In one episode it is revealed that an entire floor of prisoners were killed by the authorities. These factories/prisons are the concentration camps of the Empire.
Terror and violence
Terror is how totalitarian governments keep control of their entire population, through the fear of being disappeared to a concentration camp. As I said above, who gets sent to a concentration camp is arbitrary and doesn’t follow the rule of law. The rules that concentration camp victims are supposed to have broken are a vague and shifting mass of law that is hard to understand. This creates the terror that can control a population.
If there are rules – even very strict ones – the population will learn them and then learn what is acceptable outside these rules. To crush an individual the rules need to be ever changing and enforced arbitrarily. This keeps people afraid and destroys any initiative. This is the purpose of the Empire’s brutal system of repression, which is very similar to the idea behind both Nazi and Stalinist systems of control.
Related to this is how violent the Empire is. Arendt wrote extensively on violence, which she described as the opposite of political power. Power uses speech to come to a decision, whereas violence uses force to create obedience. Through political power we invest our individual power in those who represent us, and we allow them to make decisions on our behalf. Through violence we are forced to obey against our will.
Arendt also wrote that violence can destroy power, which is what happens under totalitarian regimes. The state loses the power to convince people to follow its decisions and relies only on violence and terror to make people follow its will. The idea of the rule of law breaks down in a tide of arbitrary violence directed against citizens.
Arendt described totalitarianism as “lawfulness without legality” which is the idea of a state power enforcing the will of the state without reference to laws or political processes. Arendt said that the law of history or nature replaces the laws of the country and people are swept along with the power of nature or history through terror.
This terror makes the people feel that they are the pawns of history or nature, by undermining their capacity for action. People think they are being swept along by these huge forces and you can be on the top or the bottom of them.
The destruction of Alderaan as an instrument of terror
The most obvious use of terror in Star Wars is when Grand Moff Tarkin orders the destruction of Alderaan, presumably with some level of permission from the Emperor. This is the needless destruction of millions, possibly billions, of lives purely to terrify other subjects into obedience. It appears to be decided on a whim by Tarkin, mainly to demonstrate the destructive power of the Death Star.
More than showing that the Empire can now destroy whole planets, the destruction of Alderaan shows that the Empire will destroy whole planets. If this was not scary enough, it shows that the Empire can and will destroy planets on a whim without the need to go through any kind of legal process. The Empire system of control lashes out in unexpected ways and causes mass death on an unimaginable scale.
As much as this is aimed to terrify the citizens of the Empire, it is designed to confuse them. What are the criteria for destroying a planet? Alderaan didn’t harbour a rebel base or commit some other great act of resistance to the Empire. Destruction can come at any moment for any reason. Your only hope is total obedience.
Ultimately the Empire is evil, and evil is something that Arendt wrote about extensively. Yes, they are evil in that they are the baddies of a Hollywood film franchise, but they are evil in a specific sense that Arendt described in the definitive text on human evil, her book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.
The banality of evil was a specific type of evil that Arendt identified in Adolf Eichmann, during his trial in Jerusalem for his role in the Holocaust. Eichmann was mid-tier amongst the senior ranks of the Nazi regime and was responsible for organising the transportation of millions of people, predominantly Jews, to the gas chambers. Eichmann participated in this great act of evil indirectly, by being a bureaucrat and working in a government department.
What’s crucial is that Eichmann didn’t kill anyone directly, but he did play a crucial role in what could be the worst act in human history. This is not the evil of war, sacking cities or killing many people directly, but a cold evil that in a modern society can be massively more deadly.
Everyday evil
There is something everyday about the evil that was needed for the Holocaust. It required reports, timetables and conferences. The Holocaust needed paperwork to happen. Banal is the only word to describe it. This is evil made lawful and everyday. Evil no longer looks like evil.
This is the same for the Galactic Empire. There must be millions of jobs across the Empire that are connected to the violence, terror and oppression of the regime that are very banal. Arranging the troop transports, purchasing blasters, constructing Star Destroyers. As far as I know, in the Star Wars universe this is not done entirely by machines or AIs that enact the Emperor’s will. This work is done by people.
The Empire is one vast banal evil system. All those faceless people seen in the background of the scenes that take place on the bridges of Star Destroyers – working away, performing admin, planning troop deployments – are working to arrange the destruction of cities and the oppression of whole planets.
How many people worked planning and building the Death Star? They didn’t directly destroy Alderaan, where millions or even billions died, but their work was necessary for it to happen. There must have been many Imperial Eichmanns, organising the transport for the weapon that kills whole planets.
The closest parallel to Eichman in the Star Wars universe is Syril Karn in the Andor TV series. Like Eichman, he is an unremarkable person who is committed to doing the bureaucratic management work of an authoritarian state. Also like Eichman, he takes great pride in his work and finds it personally fulfilling. Both Eichman and Karn work hard to implement the monstrous requirements of the totalitarian state they live in, happy to be a small cog in a big evil machine.
Eichmann found personal fulfilment in being a Nazi, so he followed orders. So does Karn. He wasn’t forced to do what he did out of fear for himself or his loved ones. The Holocaust couldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for ordinary people doing ordinary work, like running trains and filing paperwork. It was the entire totalitarian society that made it possible.
Turning people into machines
Arendt identified that it was this process by which totalitarian societies turn people into machines, so that it is possible for people to do the boring jobs needed for industrial mass murder. This is what makes totalitarianism different from other societies. We can see this in the Empire; in the faceless mechanical stormtroopers, who are more machine than the droids. These are people turned into mindless cogs in the Empire’s terror machine.
Eichman is a prime example of a human machine. He was a normal bureaucrat, but he participated in a great evil. The everyday work of genocide is the same as the everyday work of normal bureaucracy, but only under totalitarianism is this transformation of bureaucracy into evil possible.
According to previous thinkers, from Plato to Niccolo Machiavelli, tyranny came about through the greed of a tyrant or tyrannical class. Arendt argued that totalitarian regimes are something different and new. In the past there were tyrants and oligarchies, but only in the modern Industrial Age was the control of every aspect of life in a whole society possible. It needs modern bureaucracy, modern political organisations and modern technology. Arendt is the definitive scholar of this new and much worse type of tyranny: totalitarianism.
Overall, we can see many aspects of what Arendt identified as totalitarian in the Galactic Empire. From concentration camps on Narkina 5, to Sith secret police, to vague power structures and institutions, to the use of terror in the destruction of Alderaan, to the banality of evil in characters like Syril Karn.
The Empire in Star Wars is Hollywood villain evil, but behind the simplistic morality of the story, there are lessons about what evil in our world has looked like that we should take to heart. By looking at Star Wars we can more easily see what evil looks like in our world and be vigilant for the future.
