An Imperial Officer in the Star Wars: TIE Fighter comic miniseries shows how effective the Galactic Empire’s propaganda and historical revisionism truly is. Colonel Shakara Nuress notably conflates the Rebel Alliance with the Separatist Alliance, which leads some TIE Fighter pilots to mock her behind her back. Despite this, her sentiment falls in line with the Empire’s framing of early Rebel cells and eventually the Rebellion itself, so her failure to see a difference between the two factions (despite their incompatible ideologies) is precisely what the Empire wants from its citizens and military personnel.
The Galactic Republic, a well-intentioned yet highly corrupt democracy, gradually transitioned into a totalitarian regime during the Separatist Crisis and the Clone Wars. In the Republic’s war against the Separatist Alliance, Supreme Chancellor Palpatine gradually gained emergency powers until he unleashed his coup, wiping out the Jedi in a galaxy-wide pogrom and finalizing the Republic’s decay into the fascist Galactic Empire. Rebel cells and political movements from concerned Republic politicians formed almost immediately, eventually coalescing into the Rebel Alliance.
The 2019 comic miniseries Star Wars: TIE Fighter by Jody Houser, Rogê Antônio, and Michael Dowling takes place at roughly the same time as Return of the Jedi. Shakara Nuress was a naval officer in the Galactic Republic, fighting the Separatists in the Clone Wars and simply continuing her military career as an Imperial Colonel in the Galactic Civil War. In the first issue of Star Wars: TIE Fighter, Colonel Nuress not only refers to the Rebels as “Separatists” but also briefly explains her rationale by expressing her belief that the Separatists simply changed their name, just as the Republic did, as though the Clone Wars never really ended for her. Unsurprisingly, as a totalitarian regime, the Empire revised history immediately upon its establishment, labeling insurgency groups like Saw Gerrera’s Partisans as “Separatists,” despite the cells and eventual Rebellion having drastically different goals than the Separatists.
The Separatist Alliance divided the Star Wars galaxy under Count Dooku’s leadership. While they existed under the pretense of affording worlds more freedom and better representation than the Republic, they were secretly far more corrupt than the government they broke away from. The true power behind the Separatist Alliance was not only the Sith Order but also a council of the most unethical and greedy corporate leaders in the galaxy, making the Separatists a corrupt corporate oligarchy of comparable malice to the Galactic Empire.
The Rebellion’s ideology is fundamentally incompatible with that of the Separatists since the former wishes to restore the Galactic Republic, albeit without its corporate corruption or susceptibility to a fascist coup. The Empire discouraged sympathy and support for the Rebellion, however, by making it difficult to distinguish the two factions. Colonel Shakara Nuress’ inability to see a difference between the Rebels and Separatists in Star Wars: TIE Fighter proves that the Galactic Empire’s sinister propaganda was successful against even the best and brightest beings.
