Was Count Dooku Actually RIGHT? - The Philosophy of Star Wars' Most Classy Sith

Count Dooku is hands-down the most underrated  character in the Star Wars franchise. Of the Sith we see in the movies, he’s  the “middle apprentice,” of sorts, stuck between the iconic Darth Maul and the  legendary Darth Vader. He didn’t quite have the striking aesthetics of either of his fellow  apprentices, though his preference for capes shows that he certainly had style. But Dooku made up  for this lack of a cool factor with character, especially in The Clone Wars and the Expanded  Universe.

His political ideals are central to his character, being what drove him away from  the Jedi and, eventually, the Republic. Dooku’s professed ideals are generally seen in a positive  light by most fans; after all, his criticisms of the Republic were strikingly accurate. But were  those ideals something he truly believed in, or were they just a façade? What did Dooku  really believe - and were his convictions right? This quote from Dooku has been making the rounds  lately. It’s from the Legends n

ovel Yoda: Dark Rendezvous, and it’s gained traction because it’s  accurate to a degree. There are a few flaws with this assessment, which we’ll talk about later, but  in a general sense, it’s a very astute analysis of the problems with the Jedi Order. If you clicked  on this video thinking the answer to our title question was yes, it’s probably because of this  quote and the ideological outlook it represents. At his heart, Dooku was an idealist, and always  had been. At the core of his ideals w

as a fierce dislike for the Republic, of which he  was a harsh critic even during his time as a Jedi Master. Dooku saw the Republic as  hopelessly corrupt and relentlessly exploitative, a tool the wealthy Core Worlds used as a  bludgeon against the poorer worlds of the Rim. As he grew older, he began to believe that  the Republic was unfixable and that the galaxy needed a restart, a seismic civilizational shift.  Dooku was also highly critical of the Jedi Order. Though his criticisms of the Repu

blic were  initially divorced from his criticisms of the Jedi, he eventually saw the two  as part of the same problem. The Jedi, he believed, were too deeply  involved with the Republic. They were unable and unwilling, he thought,  to stop the evils that plagued the galaxy. These ideals became the basis of the  Confederacy of Independent Systems. Dooku’s words inspired Separatists the galaxy  over, giving them common ideals to rally around. As Head of State for the CIS, Dooku constantly  decried

the moral failings of the Republic and vowed to stand for the oppressed peoples of the  galaxy. He claimed to be building a better galaxy, one without tyrannical central governments and  the mass exploitation the Republic had tolerated. All of that’s well and good, but if  you’re at all familiar with politics, you know full well that there’s usually  a difference between what politicians say and what they believe. Dooku is no exception. When  considering his ideals, people tend to forget or lea

ve out the fact that he was a Sith Lord.  That makes a difference. The Sith had their own set of ideals, after all, and the fact that  Dooku was a secret Sith means it’s possible, or maybe even probable, that he had other beliefs  he kept under wraps as well. But we don’t have to speculate about that. The Revenge of the Sith  novelization features several scenes from Dooku’s perspective, which give us a detailed look at  what the man actually believed. Here’s a snippet: For the most part, Dooku’

s criticisms of the  Republic and the Jedi were genuine beliefs of his, but his professed solution was a lie.  What Dooku actually wanted the galaxy to look like was much, much different  from what the other Separatists wanted: Dooku knew full well that his master was  building a Galactic Empire, and he was completely on board. More than that, actually - he  believed in the Empire far more than Sidious did, and wanted it to be far more extreme, far  more repressive, and far more speciesist than

Sidious ever intended for it to be. His talk of  corruption in the Republic had been doublespeak; sure, he detested the inefficiencies of the  Senate and the loathsome decadence of the Core, but he also hated nonhumans, and saw  their very existence as corruption of another sort. He was a totalitarian, bent  on bringing the entire galaxy under a rigid, brutal hierarchy - a hierarchy he would be at  the top of. Despite all he criticized the Jedi Order for not doing enough to fight slavery,  he wa

nted to enslave pretty much everyone. Speaking of the Jedi Order, he had a vision  for them as well. Dooku knew that Sidious planned to wipe out the Jedi Order, but also  that there would likely be survivors. Dooku didn’t want to have these survivors hunted down  and destroyed - he wanted them converted. Out of the ashes of the Jedi Order, he sought to build a  Sith Army, which, he believed, would be led by a fallen Anakin Skywalker, who would serve as his  underling in the New Order. He envisio

ned this army as the Fist of the Empire, a brutal force  that would destroy anything and everything that threatened the immutable order he envisioned for  the galaxy. Like the Jedi Order, this Sith Army would have recruited Force-sensitives from around  the galaxy, but with one small difference. Where the Jedi allowed the parents of Force-sensitives  to refuse to give up their children, the Sith Army would not have. All the Force-sensitives  in the galaxy were to be conscripted into the Empire’s

red right hand, and forced to act  according to the will of the Sith Lords. As you can probably tell by now, there was a  hell of a contrast between what Dooku preached and what he really believed. But there was a  common constant - he believed the Republic was hopelessly corrupt. That, of course, was correct;  it’s a no-brainer, honestly, for anyone familiar with the events of the Prequels. A lot of what  he criticized the Republic and the Jedi for was also fairly accurate. The Republic was in

deed  relentlessly exploitative and mired in corruption, while the Jedi were far too close to it, and  their ability to do good was hampered by that. However, his solution was beyond awful. His  vision of a New Order wasn’t just wrong, it wasn’t just evil, it was monstrous. To state the  obvious,  enslaving every nonhuman in the galaxy and installing a fascist state would make the  Republic's problems worse, not better. Even if that plan could somehow fix problems with  the Republic, it’s still

morally unacceptable. Dooku didn’t really believe that the Republic was  too oppressive; he believed it wasn’t oppressive enough. And while many of his observations about  flaws of the Republic and the Jedi were accurate, others were less so. He didn’t just hate the  Republic for its corruption, but also because it didn’t brutalize nonhumans enough for his  liking. He didn’t just hate the Jedi for failing to solve the galaxy’s problems, but also because  he thought the Jedi weren’t authoritarian

enough. We mentioned earlier that his analysis of the  Jedi Order had a flaw. This was that Dooku’s implication that the Jedi weren’t fighting  slavery or any of the Republic’s faults at all wasn’t true - and Dooku knew that, too. When he  claimed that the Jedi weren’t fighting against the problems with the Republic, what he really meant  was they weren’t fighting those problems properly. He believed the Jedi Order should  have forced its will on the galaxy, that it should have broken from the 

Republic and ruled the galaxy directly. This wasn’t just something he had come to  believe as a Sith Lord - it was his reason for leaving the Jedi Order, a belief he  held before he fell to the Dark Side. You might be scratching your head right now and  wondering why there was such a contrast between what Dooku believed and what he advocated  for. The answer was simple - he was acting as controlled opposition. The Separatists were  a boogeyman, composed of nearly every group that the Sith saw a

s a threat. Dooku’s goal in  forming the CIS was to destroy those factions, to destroy Separatist causes before  they could threaten the Empire. By and large, the ideals Dooku championed  were actually ideals that he despised. He may once have believed in them, but those days  were long over by the time of the Clone Wars. As we’ve discussed in prior videos,  the cause of the Separatists was just. The Republic was corrupt, the Jedi were too caught  up in it, and the Outer Rim was badly exploited.

But the Separatists’ cause was not  Dooku’s cause. His cause was, in fact, antithetical to the Separatist cause. His was  the cause of slavery, of exploitation, and of ruthless totalitarianism. His was the cause of the  Sith - and it was most definitely not righteous. So, that’s our look at whether  or not Count Dooku was right. But what do you think? Would you like  us to take a look at the views of other major Star Wars characters? Feel free to  post your thoughts in the comments below.