From just watching the movies alone, it seems that the Jedi as a whole are widely supported
and respected by the people of the galaxy they claim to protect and wish to bring peace
to.
However, that’s far from reality and this notion that everyone loved the Jedi is actually
quite false.
So why were the Jedi disliked so much and what caused them to become the most hated
group of people following their destruction after order 66?
Although this anti-Jedi sentiment really began to pick up nearing the start of the clone
wars, there was always a dislike towards them throughout their entire history, especially
the more they got involved within galactic affairs.
To put it simply, the Jedi were pretty much always involved in massive conflicts that
caused the destruction of countless lives.
And many of these conflicts were fought against the Sith, whom the Jedi claimed to be an absolute
evil and a force that needed to be eliminated even at the cost of millions of innocent lives.
The issue with that was most people in the galaxy had no idea what the Sith were or why
they needed to be eliminated.
To many of them, it really seemed the Jedi were just wiping out competition.
The public didn’t really understand the force or the many complications of what the
light and dark side were.
Or what made them different from each other.
To them the force was just magic that some beings could use, and in their eyes, abuse
for their own benefit.
Actually it was quite common for beings to view the Jedi and the Sith as the same, just
two organizations with magical powers that sought power in the galaxy and believed they
had the right to dictate how things should be.
The vast population of the galaxy was so ignorant of what the Jedi were, that many of them even
confused reemerging Sith to be Jedi nearing the last days of the Republic.
We see this with Darth Maul, who gets called a Jedi after igniting his red lightsaber.
And even Darth Plagueis was believed to have been a Jedi, after he used his lightsaber
and force abilities to kill an entire crew of smugglers, later being told that he brought
shame to the Jedi Order by one of the smugglers right before they died.
And it’s no surprise that people were ignorant of what the Sith were and what made them different
from the Jedi.
Any texts that went over the history of the Sith were forbidden on most worlds, especially
those ruled by the Republic.
Some distant planets in the outer rim had people that didn’t even believe the Jedi
were real.
With them usually hearing more bad than good about them, like how they kidnap babies and
supposedly cut down women with their laser swords.
Anyway, this dislike of the Jedi increased the more corrupt the Republic got.
Since the Republic didn’t have a centralized military force, the Jedi were instead relied
upon to enforce their policies, even those that were completely unjust.
For example the Trade Federation and the Huk manipulated the senate to send the Jedi to
wipe out the advancing Kaleesh back to their home world and to later impose crippling sanctions
onto their economy.
Even though the Kaleesh were literally fighting for their very freedom against enslavement
from the Huk, the senate decided to side with the Trade Federation because they had a far
greater presence and influence within the senate than the Kaleesh did.
And since the Jedi were the ones who did the dirty work, most of the blame was placed on
them by the people affected by their enforcement of the senate’s decision.
Also even when the Jedi were sent to worlds to settle conflicts through peaceful means
among two sides, they still received backlash, either by the people or the leaders of the
planet.
People generally don’t like having things decided for them by off worlders.
They liked having the power to decide for themselves how things should be, not have
a group of out of touch monks come in and tell them how things will be.
And that’s really what it came down to and one of the reasons the Jedi Order failed to
appease to the masses.
They were too out of touch with the public they preached they were serving.
Most of the time they only discussed the issues with the elite class of the planet’s societies,
not with the common people who were being directly affected by said issues.
This gave the perception of the Jedi as glorified police of the elite whose sole purpose was
to keep the wealthy in power.
Glorified police that kidnapped babies to brainwash them so they would serve their cult
like order.
This became such a pressing problem that mercenaries were hired to steal back the babies from the
Jedi and to bring them back to their biological parents.
Later on, the People’s Inquest was created, which was a group of concerned citizens who
kept an eye on the Jedi and protested their increased involvement in galactic affairs.
This isn’t to say that the Jedi didn’t do any good, they did a lot of it actualy,
from bringing medical supplies to worlds that have been devastated from natural disasters
to resolving conflicts where everyone was satisfied.
But they also did a ton of bad as well as mentioned earlier, and typically the public
pays far more attention to the bad than the good.
Also this slow rise of anti-Jedi sentiment was actually propagated by the Sith throughout
the millennia leading up to the clone wars.
They purposely set the seeds of chaos and conflict to arise throughout the galaxy, as
a means of undermining the Jedi’s authority.
The more problems that arose, the more likely the galaxy would start blaming the people
in charge, who so happened to be the Jedi at the time.
And the Jedi didn’t actually ever go out of their way to actually change anything.
They just went out to resolve conflicts on the surface level.
They mainly went out to make sure there wouldn’t be any fighting among opposing sides, but
they typically didn’t ever stay long enough to get to the root of the problem and resolve
it long term.
As a consequence these problems would usually reappear again and just build up overtime,
which painted the Jedi as ineffective at creating and maintaining long term peace.
Once the separatist crisis started and their leader was Count Dooku, the citizens of the
republic became even more angered at the Jedi, as the leader of the separatists was a former
Jedi.
To republic citizens Dooku was traitor in their eyes, and him once being a Jedi didn’t
help the Order’s public image.
For the first time in history the idea that a Jedi could betray the republic became widespread
across the galaxy, which was hardened even more once it became public that other Jedi
were joining Dooku’s crusade against the Republic.
Then the clone wars started which was publicized as the fault of the Jedi, from senators who
disliked them to even Palpatine who subtly legitimized the idea that the Jedi created
the war in order to gain more power by mentioning these claims in his speeches.
Even though he publicly denounced these claims to be foolish, the mere fact of bringing them
up frequently in his speeches made the public more suspicious of whether or not they were
true.
Which was all apart of his plan.
The clone wars not only caused the deaths of hundreds of millions, if not billions of
beings, but it also made every citizen of the republic’s life far more difficult.
Even those who lived on planets that were never invaded by the Separatists had to sacrifice
a lot for the war effort.
Hundreds of billions of beings had to give up basic essentials like electricity or even
clean water as the Republic diverted funds from public services to the war machine.
A vast majority of these funds went to funding the clone army, which itself alone was bankrupting
the republic.
And guess who brought in the clone army, the Jedi.
And the public was reminded of this fact too.
Not only was the use of the clone army, which was basically a slave army, immoral, but it
also was the main cause of why billions of families had their power and water shut off.
Sure Palpatine authorized the creation of a grand army, but it was the Jedi who forced
the clone army to be the grand army’s backbone.
Although it's true that had they not done so the Republic would have lost a ton of territory
before creating a grand army out of recruitments, the public wouldn’t have known this.
The average person doesn’t care or understand what could have been, they only care and know
what's happening and affecting them at the current moment.
And at the climax of the war they know that their lives are far worse now because of the
the war and the use of the clone army, which they believed were both the fault of the Jedi.
There’s a reason why the anti-war protests were at the Jedi temple and not at the senate
or executive buildings.
Palpatine expertly manipulated the entire public to believe that the war and all of
their immediate problems were solely caused by the Jedi and them alone.
As the Jedi’s approval ratings tanked, Palpatine’s approval ratings went through the roof.
He portrayed himself as a strong leader who felt the same frustrations and anger that
the citizens had over the war.
Propaganda portrayed him in positive light and as the sole reason why the separatist
haven’t taken over the republic.
Which is kind of ironic, as the Jedi were literally the ones fighting and dying in the
war, while Palpatine was taking all the credit.
Whats even more ironic was that Palpatine was the one who secretly orchestrated the
war himself, while the Jedi were being blamed for it all.
Finally the time came when the Jedi were told of Palpatine’s true identity and his real
agenda.
Arrogant and rash with their decision, Mace Windu and 3 other Jedi Masters believed it
was best to confront Palpatine alone and to force him out of his democratically elected
office.
But Palpatine was able to use this to his own advantage, using this forceful act from
the Jedi as evidence of their true intentions on trying to take over the republic and to
blame them for the clone wars as just a diversion for trying to take control.
Justifying his use of Order 66 and the creation of the empire.
In his new order he proclaimed that the power would go back to the people.
Instead of the hypocritical and corrupt Jedi enforcing order, that responsibility will
go to the people who will make up the backbone of the new Imperial military as they phased
out the clones over the course of the next few years.
Of course this was all a sham to boost Palpatine’s hold on the galaxy while he slowly gained
a direct grip on the galaxy as his new military built itself up and spread across the galaxy.
So in the end the galaxy initially had mixed opinions on the Jedi, with some viewing them
as peacekeepers while others viewed them as enforcers of a corrupt government.
But as time went on, these opinions got more negative as the media and opponents of the
Jedi made it loud and clear that the clone wars and all the hardships the people were
going through were the fault of the Jedi.
This distrust and hatred of the Jedi got to the point where the people were able to accept
that the Jedi had fallen so far that they would try to seize power for themselves and
that they needed to be destroyed.