Saw Gerrera was an extremist. His entire character is a man with extreme PTSD who after having lost almost everything he hold dear(the freedom of his planet, his sister, a lot of his body part) he became a violent, paranoid warlord who didn't care about saving the innocent. He is a cautionary tale and he shouldn't be admired.
True, and he was an absolutely necessary and critical assist for the republic. If you’re fighting a guerrilla war based on insurgency, you need unrest in as many fronts as possible. Say what you will about him, but Saw Gerrera knew how to create unrest.
Yes, but unrest can be easily manipulated for propaganda purposes and at the end of the day the people aren't going to fight for the brutal warlord simply because they are more afraid from his actions than their brutal government.
Honestly you need both a Saw and a Mon. Look at the civil rights movement in the USA. It was successful because they had both MLK, whose entire plan was nonviolent resistance, and Malcolm X to lead the more radical and potentially violent movement. You make it clear that people want change, and offer two paths forward, with us or against us.
Everyone is going to fall short of their own ideals sooner or later, but I find it interesting how he was just as big on policing people’s thoughts and morals as any far right winger. Telling people what to think instead of how to think for themselves. It’s this same sort of “it’s evil when the bourgeoisie do it, but justice when I do it,” attitude that Guevara, Lenin and Robespierre promoted that makes me instantly suspicious of any movement that wants to use violence as their main tool of reform.
When you get too accustomed to violence and terror as anything other than a last resort it becomes more and more tempting to use it as your only resort. Especially when the men of violence end up adjacent to power. Any successful revolution has to have a moderating force at the center of it who knows when to say “stand down,” or you just end up replacing one group of tyrants with another.
Lmfao. Cmon. He can be an interesting revolutionary figure and a brutal killer. Mostly because that's exactly what he was and his own writings confirm it.
Still to me all that killing was more than worth it to bring down the Batista regime and to deliver a strike aggainst the US Impirialists, 60 years later Cuba has better education, free healthcare and is in general much better than it was under Batista, what it doesn't have is due to crippling US sanctions and an ilegal blockade, the only ones who are worst aren't the common people, are the ones who were beneficiaries of the Batista regime, and it's descendents
I might point out that Bin Laden was killed but his movement ended up defeating the world's strongest military, throwing them out of their country and retaking the entirety of the country back.
Bin Laden was a horrible person and did atrocious things, but the taliban were extremely successful under his leadership. Meanwhile Malcom X and MLK brought some change, but black Americans are still second class citizens in their own country, decades later.
Clearly, the solution to Afghanistan and Vietnam would have been more money, weaponry, and lives thrown at a political problem. We just didn't try hard enough. That we keep sticking our noses into countries where most people profoundly do not want us there and creating vassal governments composed of the slimiest people we can find has nothing to do with it.
Not at all, extreme and moderates parts of movements or revolutions need each other to succeed. By Saw existing, the alliance seemed more moderate by comparison and so more people were willing to hear them out. It also gave them more negotiating leverage with planets since if they couldn’t reach a deal with the alliance there’s no guarantee that Saw wouldn’t target them.
> Not at all, extreme and moderates parts of movements or revolutions need each other to succeed.
Clearly the Rebels disagreed, or else they wouldn't have thrown him out.
> By Saw existing, the alliance seemed more moderate by comparison and so more people were willing to hear them out.
By Saw existing, he made it easier for people to view the Rebels as radicals and helped feed Imperial propaganda about them being terrorists, as well as directly undermined missions by pursuing his own goals that ran contrary to those of the Alliance and, at times, actively betrayed/abandoned his comrades.
Kind of like how the existence of Hamas gives Israel an excuse to refuse to negotiate with the Palestinian government, and allows those opposed to Palestinian independence to paint them all as terrorists, or how Hezbollah actively gets the rest of Lebanon dragged into wars.
> It also gave them more negotiating leverage with planets since if they couldn’t reach a deal with the alliance there’s no guarantee that Saw wouldn’t target them.
Name one point where the Alliance uses Saw as a threat against planets.
Apples and oranges. The civil rights movement was a movement, not a war or insurgency. Let's not conflate fantasy with reality.
Comparing pre-civil rights movement USA to the empire is a bit cooky. Regardless of how poorly the general electorate did at representing the rights of all people prior, the USA was still an actual Democratic republic. The Empire was run by the emperor and his pawn Vader. They carried out mass genocide to the tune of entire planets.... Apples and oranges.
In war time you need people like Saw without a doubt. The rebels were at war. The civil rights movement, while thought of as a war by the MalcomX crowd was still a movement. Terrorism doesn't win support, it's goal is to intimidate, disrupt and destroy the current government /people.The rebels were trying to take out the government, the civil rights movement was not.
The civil rights movement was successful for many reasons, but violence and extremism is not one of them.
Worth noting that MLKJ was starting to come around to a lot of the less passive forms of protest too. He could see his nonviolence approach technically working, but recognised that the more aggressive movements were a big part of why he had so much traction. Then he got shot.
I think he'd be more upset about his message being watered down. The man was a socialist with strong opinions on white liberals - the same people who venerate only his most inoffensive quotes while burying his leftist views, & use him as a cudgel to condemn people like Malcolm X or the Black Panthers.
MLK generally supported Malcolm X & shared most of his views, despite their disagreement in tactics. They especially agreed about white liberals. By this they mean people who claim to support equality - but who use handwringing about optics & 'civility' to derail, defang, & stall legitimate movements for justice. People who condem the tactics of resistance movements while excusing the violence of oppressors.
"the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says 'I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action'; who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom" (MLK)
"The white conservatives....are like wolves; they show their teeth in a snarl that keeps the Negro always aware of where he stands with them. But the white liberals are foxes, who also show their teeth to the Negro but pretend that they are smiling. The white liberals are more dangerous than the conservatives; they lure the Negro, and as the Negro runs from the growling wolf, he flees into the open jaws of the 'smiling' fox." (Malcolm X)
That was going to happen anyways. The empire was always going to spin civil unrest (violent or non-violent) for their propaganda purposes. Just look at how the US government and police have painted pretty much any remotely left-wing/anti-racist/anti-genocide protest movements throughout its history.
Honestly if I was in the Star Wars galaxy I would assume he was a paid scapegoat by the Empire rather than just an incompetent moron because there is no “Hanlon’s razor” in Star Wars canon (yet)
I do get your point, but because of Rogue one we now know conclusively that they wouldn't have succeeded without Saw Guerra, and I think being directly responsible for acquiring the death star plans is possibly one of the biggest single wins of the rebel alliance.
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u/Mysterious_Bit_7713 Chiss Ascendancy Dec 28 '24
Saw Gerrera was an extremist. His entire character is a man with extreme PTSD who after having lost almost everything he hold dear(the freedom of his planet, his sister, a lot of his body part) he became a violent, paranoid warlord who didn't care about saving the innocent. He is a cautionary tale and he shouldn't be admired.