#facist

Get clickbaited baby. Okay, I was being extra harsh. Kind of.

Not really.

Like I said with the Sith ramble, it's totally okay to think Mandalorians are cool and roleplay Mandalorians and all of that, but just like with the Sith you NEED to recognize what these people are. People are internalizing some intensely fucked up beliefs with Mandalorians, and covering up the things they don't like with headcanons that align with their beliefs.

But guys, there is a REASON nearly every major appearance of Mandalorians cast them as villains, this includes Clone Wars and Rebels. There is REASON the Mandalorian character option in SWTOR is aligned with the Sith Empire. There is a REASON so many Mandalorian roleplayers turn out to be weirdo alt-right cryptofascists.

And the thing that blows my mind is that it's not even a fandom issue. Star Wars writers have had characters proudly stand tall and say "My culture was taken from me by the Mandalorians and that's a good thing", and then had other characters go "Wow, that's really made me think. Maybe your culture of genocide committing crusaders aren't that bad..." It's insane.

So what is a Mandalorian? Like, what is a Mandalorian really?

Out of universe, a Mandalorian is a Boba Fett. Someone in a cool iconic outfit to automatically signal to the view "This guy is tough". Knowing that Boba Fett's design had a certain je ne sais quoi they brought his design back for Jango Fett, and then mixed it with the design of Stormtroopers to make Clone Trooper Armour.

But this opened the door to a horrible, horrible mistake. The same mistake Star Wars makes time and time again. By implying that the armour was more than just a dude's outfit they gave a writer room to invent a culture based off one or two characters. And so just like Rodians and Gand, the entirety of Mandalorian culture was formed around the fact that Boba and Jango were bounty hunters with wrist weapons and jetpacks.

Their culture was developed by one Karen Traviss, someone who's a little "Controversial" in circles, she made a warrior culture based on the Celts and other general Warrior Culture vibes. And boy howdy did they go hard on it, Mandalorian lore expanded, they got a religion, a history of genocide, cool robots, tons of armour and weapons, mythologized as the greatest warriors in the galaxy. Jedi cut through metal? Well not MANDALORIAN metal, their metal is the BEST metal. They even get an entire language, and a tradition of adopting people into their culture.

I haven't read too much of these books, what I have read strikes me as a little... I don't want to say edgy, but it's got that "US Army propaganda permeates our entire understand of war" vibes. Military men are valorized and women are kind of treated like shit, and while researching these books a little I kept finding people point even more awful shit in them. They're pretty nasty. But one of the consistent things I've noticed from them is a kind of... I want to say, acknowledgement that this stuff is bad.

The main Mandalorian guy is a violent, drunken asshole who emotionally abuses "his boys", the things soldiers do are horrific and are treated as such. Mandalorians aren't exactly given a squeaky clean image here. It's presented as an ugly, violent culture with a lot of misogynistic undertones.

I've got issues with the presentation, but I don't have beef with them. I have beef with what came after.

The fandom perception of Mandalorians is "Distressing". The fandom perception of Mandalorians is that they're this perfectly accepting and welcoming culture of kind hearted warriors who will be so gentle and kind within their clan but absolutely destroy anyone who dares hurt their dear friends. They're this huge mishmash of different cultures all mixing together in a delicious soup, the Echani Mandalorian teaches everyone their cool martial arts tricks while the Devaronian Mandalorian cooks everyone a nice spice traditional Devaronian meal while the Rodian Mandalorian regales everyone with some opera how nice and wonderful true found family there.

They're also not at all sexist, there is no difference between men and women, Mandoa doesn't even have gender in it but also Mandalorian women are super respected as brutal warriors equally as much as the men.

I hope I'm getting across that this is absolutely fucking bullshit. Let's start with the language thing because it's kind of indicative of the entire problem with gender here.

Mandoa absolutely is not "Gender Neutral", it seems like it is, Karen Traviss even said it is, an attempt was made to make it Gender Neutral. But here's the thing, what do the abusive dad character in those books call the Troopers? "His Boys". What do they all call each other? "Brothers", what is the translation of Vode An, that song Mandalorians love so much? "Brothers All".

Mandoa is extremely gendered, it wasn't made to be gender neutral, it was made to be masculine and then they applied it to women too. It's about Brothers and Brotherhood and real Manly Men stuff. It is positively dripping with toxic masculinity.

And again, this is basically how all of the women Mandalorians are treated. One of the mentioned things in lore is that Mandalorian women are "even fiercer fighters than the men", and that you should never flirt with a Mandalorian woman unless "you intend to marry her". You never see any of this though, in fact you more often seen the female Mandalorians taking care of kids and working in the kitchen. Even if you did see it, it's not exactly female empowerment here, it's just more hyper machismo bullshit "The only kind of woman that could satisfy a strong mandalorian warrior is another strong mandalorian warrior" you know what I mean?

But let's get to the real juicy thing. The imperialism.

So like, these guys are Crusaders. You know, those things that have never been problematic ever.

These guys are nomadic warriors, attacking and conquering planets, and taking spoils into themselves. You see that big machine the central guy is riding? That's a Basilisk War Droid, or "Bes'uliik". They're pretty iconic for Mandalorians, they're mini Metal Gears that have animal-like personalities and guns for faces, they're pretty cool.

Mandalorians didn't make them. They took them from the race they wiped out and appropriated it into their culture. They do that a lot, there's a big list of races that the Mandalorians genocided. You can read it on Wookiepedia it's all aright there.

This is the truth of Warrior Cultures. This is what they do. This is what the cultures that the Mandalorians were based on do. They conquer people and then "assimilate" them into their culture. They don't respect people's old cultures, they erase them.

The kotor comics tried to put a positive spin on this and it's fucking insane

The Mandalorians are not a multicultural or diverse people. They have more in common with the "Schools" white people kidnapped the indigenous kids to in Australia and Canada.

Even the Foundling thing is rooted in that kind of stuff. Mandalorians find a lost child on the battleground (I wonder why there's a lost child on the same battleground as a Mandalorian hrm, thinking emoji) and then take it and force their culture on them. It's kind of fucked up innit?

And their culture too. Let's unpack it a bit. Specifically the Resol'nare, this thing is considered the core pillar of the Mandalorian culture. If you do not follow these things you are literally soulless and you are not going to heaven.

This stuff is kind of not great. It's kind of fascist. Or maybe religious fundamentalism. But crucially, that subtle kind of where it seems reasonable until you start analyzing what it actually means and what it does.

Because remember, if you do not do these things you are not a Mandalorian. More than that, you are Dar'manda, which again means you are literally soulless and you are not going to heaven.

If you don't dress the way they want, not going to heaven.

If you don't speak the way they want, not going to heaven.

If you don't put your family first, not going to heaven.

If you don't do what the absolute ruler says, not going to heaven.

And if you let your kids make their own choices you're also not going to heaven.

Except it's actually more than that, it's also if you don't follow the Resol'nare you don't have a soul, you're already less than a person.

The Resol'nare is othering and dehumanizing, it's defining who isn't within your mandated circle of people to care about, and then telling you that the people outside of that are less than you. Something that is real handy when you need to kill people outside of your circle.

The language gets in on that too. The word for non-Mandalorians is Aruetti. That's incidentally the same word they use for Traitor. Not being a Mandalorian is synonymous with being a scumbag.

A lot of this stuff is retconned and removed for Disney Era Star Wars. I have problems with that too but it's more of a "missed opportunity" thing so I'll save it for another post. But the core of the Mandalorian Culture is deeply rooted in some rancid stuff, and it's being sanitized and refluffed as progressive by people who really want their violent warrior culture to be morally okay.