star wars - Why was the Empire anti-alien?

I don't think of Palpatine as being rabidly insane. If we allow for Legends material, Thrawn shows that he was willing to be to some extent pragmatic with aliens. Anyway, his master was a Muun.

If it wasn't a personal bias, he must have thought that the anti-alien sentiment would enhance his power. But telling the majority of the galaxy that they suck seems a poor way to gain power.

Unless all the resources he took advantage of came from people who were already anti-alien, and it was easiest to just go along?

Answer

Every good dictator likes a convenient scapegoat, with the demise of the separatist who could Palpatine blame when things go wrong? That's right those nasty aliens!

It has happened in the real world plenty of times Hitler and the Jews or Stalin and the Gypsies.

Also a good way for a dictatorship to keep its opponents separated is to sew seeds of distrust, hatred and differences amongst the populace.

If humans get all the high powered jobs and the aliens are treated as scum the humans are going to be happy and want to keep their privileges so will do what they can to keep the aliens down.

The Emperor's almost secret use of aliens that can be of use to him, such as Grand Admiral Thrawn, will allow this perceived superiority of humans within the Empire to continue, without Palpatine being totally surrounded by incompetent people.

If the aliens are kept down they are going to have less resources and chances to effectively rise up.

The xenophobia may even extend to other species, for example the Quarren and the Mon Calamari, stopping them from uniting against the empire.

Obviously in the end this didn't work with the inclusive Rebel Alliance (Sullustans, Mon Calamari, Wookiees and Humans with a little bit of Bothan help) eventually defeating the Humanocentric Empire.

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harry potter - Do the Kwikspell courses work?

In Harry Potter we are introduced to Kwikspell course in The Chamber of Secrets (and never hear about it again). We see Filch taking courses, presumably by mail. The descriptions of Kwikspell make me think it is for people who are weak in magic (kind of like how Neville was supposed to be when he was younger), but had magic in them nonetheless. However, Ron's comments later in the chapter make it sound like it is mainly for Squibs to learn magic. However, it is strongly implied through out all the books that Squibs are essentially Muggles, and will never be able to do magic. How then is a Kwikspell course supposed to work? Do we have any information to know if it works at all? Is it a scam? An answer from any level of canon is welcome. Answer Kwikspell courses are (probably) useful to some wizards, but not to squibs. The Kwikspell course literature comes with two testimonials. Madam Z. Nettles of Topsham writes: ‘I had no memory for incantations and my potions were a family joke...

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In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.

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When I saw the original Star Wars saga as a kid, the concept of the Dark Side imprinted in me was quite simple. You did a bad thing, so you're a bad person so you go to the Dark Side and keep doing bad things. Now, obviously this doesn't hold true in reality. In my mind it is perfectly reasonable for Luke to kill the Emperor and Vader and then just flee the Death Star and rejoin the Alliance. After all they are at war, those are enemy officers that have captured him and are taunting him by threatening with death of all loved ones and the whole operation was intended to kill the Emperor anyway. The same would hold true for Anakin. He could have killed Mace Windu to save the Chancellor and Padme but that doesn't mean he's going to then go mad and kill all Jedis including children. It doesn't add up from a merely psychological point of view. He had a set of objectives and that made him want to keep the Chancellor alive (quite valid by the way, Mace Windu is quite clums...

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