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 Gert wrote:
Individuals can still do good within the system but the system is bad.

That I can agree with. Though I'll note that I personally haven't heard of it being referenced to being Fascist until very recent time. Prior to... I want to say 2014-15? Sometime around that, the close we got were calling the uniforms of the officers Nazi-like.

Edit: And to be cheeky.

 Gert wrote:
The Empire is bad and more specifically fascist though. Objectively.
Blatantly authoritarian, militaristic, massive reliance on state-run propaganda, literally making up enemies in the form of the Jedi's "betrayal" of the Republic, the fact that in ANH Palpatine just dissolves the Senate

Could apply to the USSR, too. I cut down the human supremacist part, but I think there could be wiggle room for it, too.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Hence I found the Sullustan truck driver quite interesting in Obi-Wan, as he only had positive opinions of The Empire.

Ahem, he was Condluran, not Sullustan.
You dare besmirch the great Nien Nunb by confusing his people with this Empire lover?

Any authoritarian regime will be reflected in The Empire. But as written, it remains a reflection of the German Nazi party.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gert wrote:
Ahem, he was Condluran, not Sullustan.
You dare besmirch the great Nien Nunb by confusing his people with this Empire lover?

Because my memory is playing tricks on me?

And for the first time in a long time, I’m four pints deep! Yes long time Doc Bothered, I have recently got a proper handle on my drinking.

I jest of course. There's so many SW races that all come very close to being similar names and or descriptions.

 LunarSol wrote:
I really enjoy Kallus on this front. The episode with him and Zeb is extremely well done.

At the same time you often run into a lot of criticism around these stories always going this way. Iden being a prime example.

Iden should have a particularly hard time since she's a particular kind of video game character. While the single player games pretty much follow the usual approach of Rebels as protagonists (or equivalent designated good guys outside the Galactic Civil War era), multiplayer games by their nature have to put Rebels and Imperials on equal footing for balancing reasons. People simply get the impression that they can play either side in peace without the creators telling them they're wrong. That's just the nature of PVP games and not specific to Star Wars.

If you buy Battlefront 2 you'll likely have that mindset as it's primarily a multiplayer game and would expect that if you get a single player campaign featuring an Imperial protagonist, you actually get to play an Imperial character. Because why wouldn't you? Instead you get the same old thing you get in every other single player Star Wars game. That's a decision on part of the developers that's bound to find its critics.

 Bobthehero wrote:

 Gert wrote:
Individuals can still do good within the system but the system is bad.

That I can agree with. Though I'll note that I personally haven't heard of it being referenced to being Fascist until very recent time. Prior to... I want to say 2014-15? Sometime around that, the close we got were calling the uniforms of the officers Nazi-like.

Yes, I find it unhelpful to label the Empire a fascist state. George Lucas was hardly subtle about showing the transition of the Republic that should have been a functional democracy but was factually a plutocracy, to a constitutional monarchy after Order 66 that retained a form of representation and a foundation of Republic laws that then steadily developed towards an absolute monarchy with the dissolution of the senate in Episode IV as the culmination, which ushered in the unrestrained reign of terror we get to watch in the original trilogy.

The Empire is blatantly authoritarian. It isn't and doesn't need to be the popular perception of fascist for that.

The Empire is a characterisation of Nazi Germany but without the demeaning of women bit. Everything else is there. Not sure it can't be fascist when it hits all but one of the markers and is a literal copy of the biggest real-life fascists of all time.

The Empire as portrayed in the moving pictures does not institutionally champion the fight against opposing ideologies (communism first and foremost for Nazis) or repress and exterminate minorities. Unity through antagonism is a pretty significant part of Nazi Germany and is entirely absent in the Empire after its formation. Considering that the Empire does not control the the entire galaxy before its fall and could plausibly make use of that tool during its expansion, I'd say that's a difference worth noting.

We could probably find more stuff that doesn't match, but there is a reason why I find "Space Nazis, duh!" so pointless and I'm just going to go with stating it. Fascism is one form of authoritarianism and hardly innovative. There are only so many building blocks to authoritarianism and one form won't look much different from another. If you want to see fascism in the portrayal of the Empire, you will. Because same building blocks. Because it's close enough. But that way you insert preconceived notions of your flavor of authoritarianism into the Empire which may objectively not be there. Or not intended. Or not conclusively explored. You stop discussing the thing and start discussing an interpretation of the thing. Which, as I said, I find unhelpful.

 Geifer wrote:
The Empire as portrayed in the moving pictures does not institutionally champion the fight against opposing ideologies (communism first and foremost for Nazis) or repress and exterminate minorities. Unity through antagonism is a pretty significant part of Nazi Germany and is entirely absent in the Empire after its formation. Considering that the Empire does not control the the entire galaxy before its fall and could plausibly make use of that tool during its expansion, I'd say that's a difference worth noting.

The Empire isn't just the Original Trilogy anymore though and refusing to acknowledge other sources of media to suit your argument is a pretty bad way to go about it. But let's analyse your points:
1 - The Empire makes it clear that the Rebellion (The Alliance to Restore the Republic) is an ideological enemy that is a threat to a safe and secure galaxy. Officers make clear their contempt for the Rebellion and the need to destroy it. Ironically the majority of Imperial officers underestimate the Rebellion, just as the Germans did the USSR. So not so dissimilar on that front.
2 - One of the founding goals of the Empire is to hunt down any Jedi, a goal that extends well into the Galactic Civil War period. When dissidents start to pop up there is another enemy to target in those who try to "destroy" the Empire.
3 - Nazi Germany didn't control the whole world and many officials and officers escaped to nations that remained neutral during WW2, particularly in South America. Just like in Star Wars when many Imperial groups fled to the Outer Rim and Unknown Regions.
I also never said the Empire was a perfect copy of Nazi Germany and due to the nature of the setting not every single thing will be the exact same, which again, I never claimed it would be.

We could probably find more stuff that doesn't match, but there is a reason why I find "Space Nazis, duh!" so pointless and I'm just going to go with stating it. Fascism is one form of authoritarianism and hardly innovative. There are only so many building blocks to authoritarianism and one form won't look much different from another. If you want to see fascism in the portrayal of the Empire, you will. Because same building blocks. Because it's close enough. But that way you insert preconceived notions of your flavor of authoritarianism into the Empire which may objectively not be there. Or not intended. Or not conclusively explored. You stop discussing the thing and start discussing an interpretation of the thing. Which, as I said, I find unhelpful.

The thing is though, I'm not just saying "Empire bad therefore fascism". I've taken actual examples and made comparisons between them, as have others. Hell, the uniforms of the Imperial officers are supposed to invoke the imagery of fascism (more specifically Nazi Germany). It was literally the intent behind the Empire to show that fascism is bad and that freedom (i.e. democracy) is good.

The reason the Empire loses so often is that Star Wars is a franchise for kids.
Kids don't want to see the bad guys win in the big movies, they want the heroes to win. In TV shows we get a better view of the Empire being the immense juggernaut of power that it is. Rebels has loads of losses for the Rebellion for example but again because its a kids show, the baddies lose in the end.

Honestly most adult films the heroes also tend to win in the end too. Heck having films or TV shows where the bad guy wins or you get a grey victory or no victory at all are actually on the rare side. By and large in most things good, or at least the protagonist, tends to win.


There's one or two genres where this isn't the case, eg horror/gore and anime can be more wild with who wins and loses.



I get your meaning, but at the same time good people winning is generally the norm for adult to kids stuff.






The real difference is that the original films only really show us life in the Rebel Alliance and the Imperial Army. We see very little of life outside of those two settings. Broadly speaking we never really see life as an Imperial citizen and what little we do see isn't all that bad. Lets not forget Luke was looking to join up for flight to get off his rock and it seemed that the Imperium did bring a general level of peace/stability to his world (not a vast amount but perhaps more than when the Republic was around and didn't control anything on his world).


So broadly speaking we see the military end doing horrible things ;but we don't see the social end. Heck even blowing up a planet we see very little if no actual interaction with people outside of the rebellion. We don't see peoples being enslaved or see worlds losing rights and such.
We get a very clear idea that the military forces are evil and that the Sith are "evil", but we don't really see a bad life living within the Imperium

Its worth noting that exactly what the Empire is standing in for differs depending on who you ask and what material you take in for the comparison. George Lucas famously said the Empire represented America, and proactively drew parallels between the Emperor and Nixon, this comparison comes from his 1973 treatment, where he also explicitly says they're at a crossroads between revolution and fascism. The American parallel is even more blatant in the original lore that appeared in the Star Wars novelization that was defuncted by Empire and Jedi, where the Emperor was explicitly stated to be a puppet ruler with Tarkin and other members of the military industrial complex in actual control of the affairs of state. That said, he had them marching around in jack boots and black uniforms and the actors and audiences of the time understood what imagery they were trying to evoke there.

The Empire as Nazi parallels becomes exceedingly clear in the old EU, where we start to see more of the Imperial perspective and for lack of direct instruction from Lucas would frequently default to Nazi parallels. It's here we see aliens sequestered off into undesirable sections of Coruscant and walled off, captured and held in high concentration areas where Imperial scientists conduct experiments on them, the extreme preference for core worlders, the unpersoning of alien species, the beginnings of a movement to reclassify certain races of humanity as species of alien, rampant sexism - and that's just in the Rogue Squadron books they've recently been re-releasing! Ironically, they lean so hard into direct Nazi imagery in these books, that the Rebellion ends up becoming the allegorical Americans - and you'd better believe there's no end to different alien species thanking them profusely for riding in and saving them.

The Empire as a more generalized fascist organization is something that took shape (at least among the EU authors) as the prequels took shape, but a combination of things (the fact that new novels were either being set years and years and years after Jedi at this point, or in Prequel times, 9/11...) meant they weren't really examining the movie-era Empire at the moment so it wasn't extremely prominent until you start getting towards the tail end of the aughts and then you start seeing stories about Imperial spies or idealistic stormtroopers defecting and stuff, and by this time its clear the story group is looking at other fascist regimes and trying to mould the Empire into something that's a little less explicitly Nazis in Space.

The Disney acquisition then allows them to dispense with the old EU and its baggage (and, most definitely first in their minds, screw their authors out of royalties) and they're able to apply this philosophy to Empire with more room to breathe, as it were. That doesn't mean the movies are going to sit you down and have an Imperial guy tell you his government's twisted philosophy, of course. Not just because that would be boring, but also because Star Wars is a multimedia juggernaut and if you get too out in the open about it it's going to hurt merchandising opportunities (Lindsay Ellis makes a great breakdown about that problem here)

That doesn't mean you can't have complicated Empire stories, in fact there are a lot of them out there. But at the end of the day you do need to reconcile the fact that the Empire is an authoritarian, autocratic police state that serves a cackling, black-robed wizard who's powered by hate.

And I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but the Alphabet Squadron trillogy is exactly what you're looking for if you want complicated Imperial characters who present complicated, relatable (if very sad) reasons for serving the Empire even as it falls apart. But even beyond that, if you're looking for characters that present a very morally grey facet of the Star Wars universe you need to be looking through the books.

 Gert wrote:

 Geifer wrote:
The Empire as portrayed in the moving pictures does not institutionally champion the fight against opposing ideologies (communism first and foremost for Nazis) or repress and exterminate minorities. Unity through antagonism is a pretty significant part of Nazi Germany and is entirely absent in the Empire after its formation. Considering that the Empire does not control the the entire galaxy before its fall and could plausibly make use of that tool during its expansion, I'd say that's a difference worth noting.

The Empire isn't just the Original Trilogy anymore though and refusing to acknowledge other sources of media to suit your argument is a pretty bad way to go about it. But let's analyse your points:
1 - The Empire makes it clear that the Rebellion (The Alliance to Restore the Republic) is an ideological enemy that is a threat to a safe and secure galaxy. Officers make clear their contempt for the Rebellion and the need to destroy it. Ironically the majority of Imperial officers underestimate the Rebellion, just as the Germans did the USSR. So not so dissimilar on that front.
2 - One of the founding goals of the Empire is to hunt down any Jedi, a goal that extends well into the Galactic Civil War period. When dissidents start to pop up there is another enemy to target in those who try to "destroy" the Empire.
3 - Nazi Germany didn't control the whole world and many officials and officers escaped to nations that remained neutral during WW2, particularly in South America. Just like in Star Wars when many Imperial groups fled to the Outer Rim and Unknown Regions.
I also never said the Empire was a perfect copy of Nazi Germany and due to the nature of the setting not every single thing will be the exact same, which again, I never claimed it would be.

I said moving pictures, not original trilogy. As in movies and shows.

On point 1, I'd challenge the idea that the Rebellion is publicly acknowledged as an enemy ideology. In Rebels, which actually shows us civilian life, per Imperial Network broadcasts rebels are misguided individuals and common criminals that should be reported to law enforcement. Rebel movements are downplayed to the public and there is no call to arms specifically because of any rebel threat. Recruitment propaganda is based on working for the Empire, not against another force. Any threat from which soldiers are supposed to the Empire safe is kept hazy rather than concrete.

As Overread points out, the original trilogy shows military versus military with hardly any civilian life to speak of. The opinion of Imperial officers about the rebellion is irrelevant to how propaganda spins that rebellion to the populace.

On point 2, while Palpi makes the Jedi hunt a goal as part of religious conflict between Sith and Jedi, his motivation is personal and remains hidden from the general public. The Jedi are designated a criminal organization. Political motivation is implied in his founding speech, but afterwards the endeavor is to let the public forget that the Jedi even existed and let the Empire's extra specialized secret police take care of the matter silently.

Thus my argument that the Empire does not actually try to sway the general public by presenting a tangible threat to unite against. Instead it propagates its benefits and upsides while remaining silent on the their cost and suppressing dissent where necessary to keep up the illusion it's all sunshine and lollipops.

With regard to the rest of your post, I don't see how any of that even addresses anything I wrote, but feel free to expand on it if you think it does.

Another important point we can't overlook is scale. The Empire and the Republic were different things to different worlds. Those in the core and those on the fringe experience both very differently.

As a result even if we follow a series on one planet or a group of linked worlds; their experiences might be vastly different from other worlds. There clearly are worlds where the Empire likely improves quality of life; improves stability and order and might generally be seen as overall beneficial. Meanwhile other worlds might feel the pinch in terms of leaders changing, but the average person might find little difference.

Then you've worlds that suffer and the general view is that under the Empire more worlds suffer than under the Republic and that the suffering continues to generally escalate the longer the Empire is in control.






The Empire most certainly works to suppress opposition and relies heavily on its military power. It's a military state of control, which explains why the Death Star is an attractive system of governing and control for them. It's a projection of ultimate power If your world doesn't conform you get blasted and the Empire generally has the biggest, most well equipped and growing fleet of warships.





On the subject of Jedi don't forget that even by the Clone Wars time the Jedi were considered rare. Rare enough that by the time we hit A New Hope Jedi are considered a myth (although we've often said elsewhere the time passing feels off in this regard). So Jedi aren't even all that much of a viable thing; even the Military forces of the Empire consider the Jedi a done and dusted affair. Something that they've either killed off or have died off.

 Geifer wrote:
I said moving pictures, not original trilogy. As in movies and shows.

Why not just say that? Why be weird about it?

On point 1, I'd challenge the idea that the Rebellion is publicly acknowledged as an enemy ideology. In Rebels, which actually shows us civilian life, per Imperial Network broadcasts rebels are misguided individuals and common criminals that should be reported to law enforcement. Rebel movements are downplayed to the public and there is no call to arms specifically because of any rebel threat. Recruitment propaganda is based on working for the Empire, not against another force. Any threat from which soldiers are supposed to the Empire safe is kept hazy rather than concrete.

As Overread points out, the original trilogy shows military versus military with hardly any civilian life to speak of. The opinion of Imperial officers about the rebellion is irrelevant to how propaganda spins that rebellion to the populace.

Propaganda broadcasts routinely end with messages telling people to report Rebel activity and to be vigilant of Rebels. I'd say that's pretty public about the acknowledgment of Rebels as an enemy ideology, if not explicitly the Alliance to Restore the Republic which TBF only came into existence in 2BBY. Prior to that planets were given specific news on Rebels on their turf such as those on Lothal or Onderon.
The opinions of the officers do matter IMO because they still live within the Empire and still have thoughts of their own. They also get that extra view on Rebel cells with the actual capabilities of each group so when officers say things like "These Rebels aren't a problem" you get to see that extra level of propaganda influence.

On point 2, while Palpi makes the Jedi hunt a goal as part of religious conflict between Sith and Jedi, his motivation is personal and remains hidden from the general public. The Jedi are designated a criminal organization. Political motivation is implied in his founding speech, but afterwards the endeavor is to let the public forget that the Jedi even existed and let the Empire's extra specialized secret police take care of the matter silently.

My guy:

The start of the Empire is about crushing two Rebellions, the CIS and the supposed Jedi rebellion. When a Jedi does pop up it's reinforced by the propaganda that they are dangerous and need to be destroyed to the point where while people view it as an "ancient" religion, it's still a dangerous one. The Empire goes "Remember how we killed the Jedi?" every single year on Empire Day to reinforce the public memory that Jedi are dangerous. When Kanan Jarrus is killed in Rebels, Governor Pryce throws a parade (mostly to hide her failure) but it's also a genuine celebration for the Empire that a hidden Jedi has been found and destroyed.
Yeah, the Inquisitorius or ISB are the ones that deal with any Jedi but people are still taught to be vigilant and report suspected Jedi to the authorities which draws certain parallels with IRL things.

Thus my argument that the Empire does not actually try to sway the general public by presenting a tangible threat to unite against. Instead it propagates its benefits and upsides while remaining silent on the their cost and suppressing dissent where necessary to keep up the illusion it's all sunshine and lollipops.

It takes the ideological concept of rebelling against the Empire and makes that the enemy. Rebellion is seen as dangerous and deviant compared to the safety of Imperial rule. Rebels are demonised with propaganda and those who support them are publically named and shamed.
So in terms of having an ideological enemy, it's there just not in the explict form of a nation in the exact same way as Nazi Germany and the USSR, at least not until the Declaration of Rebellion by Mon Mothma.

 Geifer wrote:

If you buy Battlefront 2 you'll likely have that mindset as it's primarily a multiplayer game and would expect that if you get a single player campaign featuring an Imperial protagonist, you actually get to play an Imperial character. Because why wouldn't you? Instead you get the same old thing you get in every other single player Star Wars game. That's a decision on part of the developers that's bound to find its critics.
.

Being old I played the original Colony Wars game where you could play from either the perspective of the "evil" Empire or the rebels, same with Command and Conquer and others - I was really disapointed I could not do this in Battlefront and had to become a rebel. Same in Cyberpunk - can I play a morally duibious corp - nope just a streetkid rebel - thats all we wrote....sad really.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
That The Empire is a fascist dictatorship doesn’t automatically preclude interesting stories.

In the land of Disney it does. Can't have an Empire story without someone switching sides almost immediately.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
That The Empire is a fascist dictatorship doesn’t automatically preclude interesting stories.

In the land of Disney it does. Can't have an Empire story without someone switching sides almost immediately.

Pretty much this. The fact that we have this happen not once, not twice, but at least three times over the course of games, shows, and movies is tiring. You can show someone living in the life of the Empire and their perspective of rebel attacks, consider that the destruction of the first Death Star could be seen as the Empire's version of 911, especially with Imperial propaganda and the very real loss of at least millions of lives on there, which likely included the family of some of those on board. Or if that seems too sympathetic, consider those targeted by extremists on the rebel side like Saw Guerra's Partisans, with collateral damage from them maybe inspiring Imperial citizens to join the Stormtrooper Corps to protect their people against whom they consider terrorists. It doesn't have to be completely whitewashing the Empire's actions but one of the greatest lessons we've learned from history is the banality of evil, where not every person in even fundamentally corrupt or evil organizations is a mustache twirling villain or a "misunderstood" antagonist that just needs to see the light and convert to the Rebellion. If anything, it would be much more interesting seeing someone who rejects both the Rebellion as too unstable and similar to the original Separatists and the existing power groups in the Empire by instead creating a new subfaction within the Empire.

Frankly, having even a comic perspective of a stormtrooper like Gary from Robot Chicken where he just happens to survive through the original trilogy's sagas events and having his perspective as a mook on the ground on things would be preferable to what we have now.

Lets face it we really need Star Wars: 'Allo Allo complete with Michelle of the Resistance!

If we get an Yvette and a Maria, I’m in,

Let’s just say they left quite the impression on a young me!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
If we get an Yvette and a Maria, I’m in,

Let’s just say they left quite the impression on a young me!

And Helga.......

It could be quite fun.

 Mr Morden wrote:
Lets face it we really need Star Wars: 'Allo Allo complete with Michelle of the Resistance!

Didn't Hera have a French-ism accent when talking to others of her kind ?

And add a Protocol Droid that struggles with Basic/Common, good moaning meet-sexs

 Turnip Jedi wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
Lets face it we really need Star Wars: 'Allo Allo complete with Michelle of the Resistance!

Didn't Hera have a French-ism accent when talking to others of her kind ?

And add a Protocol Droid that struggles with Basic/Common, good moaning meet-sexs

We have a plan coming together......

co-incidentally enough, i was just assembling a 28mm scale Skfz 222, or, as you people might better know it, Lt. Grubers "little tank".......

xerxeskingofking wrote:
co-incidentally enough, i was just assembling a 28mm scale Skfz 222, or, as you people might better know it, Lt. Grubers "little tank".......

Nice But I imagine he will have his "little Walker"?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Well…given The Empire was always presented as a Fascist Dictatorship, I’m not sure what you’re loling at.

Complete with many of the props and armor for the Empire in the OT taking notes from Germany! Just look at Vader's head!

 Grimskul wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
That The Empire is a fascist dictatorship doesn’t automatically preclude interesting stories.

In the land of Disney it does. Can't have an Empire story without someone switching sides almost immediately.

Pretty much this. The fact that we have this happen not once, not twice, but at least three times over the course of games, shows, and movies is tiring. You can show someone living in the life of the Empire and their perspective of rebel attacks, consider that the destruction of the first Death Star could be seen as the Empire's version of 911, especially with Imperial propaganda and the very real loss of at least millions of lives on there, which likely included the family of some of those on board. Or if that seems too sympathetic, consider those targeted by extremists on the rebel side like Saw Guerra's Partisans, with collateral damage from them maybe inspiring Imperial citizens to join the Stormtrooper Corps to protect their people against whom they consider terrorists. It doesn't have to be completely whitewashing the Empire's actions but one of the greatest lessons we've learned from history is the banality of evil, where not every person in even fundamentally corrupt or evil organizations is a mustache twirling villain or a "misunderstood" antagonist that just needs to see the light and convert to the Rebellion. If anything, it would be much more interesting seeing someone who rejects both the Rebellion as too unstable and similar to the original Separatists and the existing power groups in the Empire by instead creating a new subfaction within the Empire.

Frankly, having even a comic perspective of a stormtrooper like Gary from Robot Chicken where he just happens to survive through the original trilogy's sagas events and having his perspective as a mook on the ground on things would be preferable to what we have now.

Again, these perspectives exist - but its limited to the books (lit all of the things you're asking for exist in a specific book series that I'm not going to name again, for the millionth time in the same thread) because thats the kind of stuff you can get away with when its just a book. Once it's a movie or a tv series and it has a billion dollars of script doctoring and effects budgets and marketing behind it, every corner of the story group and the Lucasfilm executive board is going to start dipping their fingers in, and they are not going to risk it.

Video games are a grey area here, everyone complains about BF2 featuring an Imperial waking up to justice and all that, but in Squadrons you play a perfectly loyal imperial for that entire half of the campaign, and hunting down a former commander who defected is a major part of your unit's motivation.

 Captain Joystick wrote:
Video games are a grey area here, everyone complains about BF2 featuring an Imperial waking up to justice and all that, but in Squadrons you play a perfectly loyal imperial for that entire half of the campaign, and hunting down a former commander who defected is a major part of your unit's motivation.

Yeah, but flyboys suck, so that doesn't count.

Good to know, though. I never got far into Squadrons. I couldn't make the controls work for me.

Squadrons is best experienced with a HOTAS.

 Captain Joystick wrote:
... but in Squadrons you play a perfectly loyal imperial for that entire half of the campaign, and hunting down a former commander who defected is a major part of your unit's motivation.

Your squadron leader (IIRC) defects to the Rebels after the first mission.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Captain Joystick wrote:
... but in Squadrons you play a perfectly loyal imperial for that entire half of the campaign, and hunting down a former commander who defected is a major part of your unit's motivation.

Your squadron leader (IIRC) defects to the Rebels after the first mission.

He defects during the first mission, and you spend the rest of the game hunting him down.

That doesn't do anything but strengthen what I said.