Insurrectionists are Blatantly Evil

Community Halo Universe
1

I just feel the need to point this out. The Insurrectionists are blatantly evil. I know, I know, this is obvious to basically everyone.

However, I’ve seen threads with people supporting the insurrectionists or saying the UNSC/UEG/ONI is evil or something. But, really, does anyone have any reason to think that way? If I asked you “Why do you think that?” you’d either say “Because they made child soldiers” (75 lives in exchange for saving billions from nuclear apocalypse, oh how terrible) or you’ll say something like “Because they’re bad” as though saying it makes it magically true.

I see people often saying the Insurrection had honest grievances. Like what? No, seriously, we’re never given any. Or rather, we are but Halo’s own lore contradicts those grievances.

If they do have canonical grievances (that aren’t a terrorist claiming something or the like, because terrorists aren’t exactly paragons of sanity and trustworthiness) then say so and I’d love to learn about it. I want the Insurrection to be an interesting and important part of the UNSC’s history, but it isn’t. It’s important, but not interesting as so far as I can tell it’s just an enormous ball of nonsensical stupidity beyond even human capability (e.g. beyond infinity).

We hear they’re fight for independence, but every colony is completely self-governed, so the innies fighting for independence from the UEG is impossible. It’s like the USA fighting for independence from the European Union and sounds just as dumb. The UEG has less authority than the USA federal government does over its own States as seen by how the UEG never applies its authority on the worlds. You could say the UNSC does that for the UEG, but those worlds in question were shooting at them and so that doesn’t count at all.

People say that the Outer Colonies didn’t have fair representation. How did you ever come up with that? Made it up instead of researching? The Outer Colonies had one UEG Senate seat as a kindness they didn’t legally deserve. Their combined population was high enough for one seat, so the UEG kindly gave them one combined vote. The Outers complained, so the UEG gave them an addional Outer Colony SENATE. That’s right, the Outer Colonies have their own Senate! In addition to a UEG Senate seat and being basically autonomous. They kept screaming about more power. So, the UEG gave them the CMA (Colonial Military Administration). So, at this point the Outer Colonies have their own UEG Senate seat, their own Senate, and their own military. The Outer Colonists in the CMA proceed to launch pirate attacks against their own worlds and the UNSC steps in and saves everyone. The Outer Colonists hate them for it. The CMA remains in existence, though, and under complete control of the Outer Colonists. The Outer Colonists claim the CMA was taken over by the UNSC, anyway. Even the Outer Colonists in control of the CMA.

Then, the Outer Colonies basically rebel via the Insurrection in a war for independence from the “oppressive” UNSC.

Keep in mind the UNSC still isn’t a government and doesn’t control anyone or pass any laws. The UEG does.

So, on top of rebelling for independence despite basically being their own independent country already, they rebel against the wrong organization. An organization that is INCAPABLE of fulfilling their demands even if they wanted to (or even if they weren’t demanding things they already had and then getting pissed when they didn’t double get it or whatever).

So, they nuke a city. Not just any city. No, they nuke a city on a planet that was home to three insurrections and many other insurrection activities. Because nuking the people you claim to be fighting for is a sure way of showing your the good guy.

As of 343i getting their hands on Halo, the Insurrection has gotten not only more evil, but more ridiculous. The people joining them make no sense (such as Spartan-IVs and victims of the Covenant…saved by the UNSC) and even entire worlds going independent or joining the Insurrectionists complaining about the UNSC not protecting them (strange, considering they still exist so clearly the UNSC did a pretty darn good job of protecting them) and even allowing co-habitation with the species that had just been trying to glass them. And all of this while Covenant Remnant and even just normal Kig-Yar pirates are still running around glassing human planets!

I get the distinct impression they’re trying to enslave the rest of humanity and “take back what was stolen from us” or something so the handful of Outer Colonists will live like kings while enjoying everyone else’s suffering and saying things like “you deserve it for oppressing and robbing us” as though they were some sort of sacked advanced civilization or something. Geez.

Speaking of glassing, the Innies also accidentally/on-purpose lead the Covenant to a number of worlds they then glassed. Other insurrection groups continued to attack and disrupt UNSC operations during the war against the Covenant (though I admit they never interfered with any operations against the Covenant). Some people grasping at straws may claim that some Innie groups helped fight the Covenant. Yes, but really no. One group did. The rebels in the novel First Strike were, if I remember correctly, the same ones who came to Admiral Cole’s aid. But this was after remaining neutral throughout the war. They also all ended up dead when the Covenant greased them near the end of the book but to be fair they died buying time for the NOVA Bomb to be delivered to save the Earth, so I guess they redeemed themselves (even though they would’ve gone back to terrorist attacks right after the war ended).

My main problem with the Insurrection/Independents is that there is NO REASON AT ALL FOR THEM TO BE LIKE THAT. They have NO grievances, NOTHING to complain about, they are NOT oppressed, and they have more self-governance than anyone else in human space!

It would be great if there were something deeper to them, but to my knowledge there isn’t. Heck, so far as I can tell the insurrectionists who joined the UNSCDF to fight the Covenant (and many did, credit where it’s due) ended up becoming genuinely loyal to the UNSC, which implies they’re like cultists being submerged in the truth and coming to realize how messed up their beliefs were.

2

I’d like to start by saying that I agree with you. The Innies made some very obvious missteps in their campaign for the hearts and minds of the UEG citizenry. But from an objective standpoint, absent their ridiculous tactics, I’d like to point out why the Innies were on the right side of history (you could call this the devil’s advocate. I’ll add the opposite after):

  • They were asking for honest and fair representation within the UEG. You may consider a single seat in the senate fair, but many would feel exactly opposite. Saying their population level equals one seat ignores their value to the UEG. It’s why the USA has an electoral college. While each individual farmer in the "flyover: states is not all that valuable to a politician in DC, their combined voting block is incredibly powerful, which gives them a voice they would never have had otherwise. The outer colonies, especially Harvest, were considered the bread basket of the UEG. Without them, the inner colonies would have starved. - The UNSC actively targeted dissenting opinions. It can’t be denied that the UEG is a fascist government. There are some real positives to that. They are efficient and strong, meaning they have the ability to coordinate a galaxy-wide defense against an alien menace. But they also trample civil liberties as a matter of fact. If you remove the alien threat from the equation, the Innies make sense. They were fighting against an overreaching federal government. Without an existential threat like the Covenant, no one would have seen the UEG as the heroes who saved them. - At the end of the day, the Innies identify most closely with the Libertarians of present day USA. The basic mantra is “don’t spend my money and don’t tell me what to do.” Without an alien menace trying to destroy all things human, the Innies might have actually succeeded in their toppling of the UEG. A fascistic government might be ideal for a galactic empire, and I’ll admit that. But from a civil liberties standpoint, the UEG and UNSC would likely receive and F or D- rating.Okay, as for the opposite… I will offer one argument that I feel is very powerful:

  • The UEG was facing a genocidal race of aliens. They said so themselves in their first contact with humanity: “your destruction is the will of the gods”. If there was ever a statement with the capability to galvanize humanity… that was it. So I would say, suck it up Innies. We got a war to fight.

3

Just to clarify something, the group that came to Cole’s aid was the Insurrectionist controlled Bellicose commandeered by Lyrenne Castilla, Cole’s second wife. The group that was sought out by Danforth Whitcomb at the behest of the Master Chief was Robert Watts’s United Rebel Front. At the time of Operation TALON it was under the command of Watts. By 2552 someone else by the name of Jacob Jiles was the leader. In regards to Castilla, she’s most definitely a highly unscrupulous character who agreed with mutual insurrectionist factions to aid the Covenant in Silent Storm by leaking important strategic information about Task Force Yama’s activities. In the process, members of her makeshift confederation had gone so far as to provide MJOLNIR schematics and a nuclear bomb to the Covenant. What they did later on is a small gesture of penance in comparison to what all those previous actions might have entailed had the schematics not been lost and the collaboration allowed to continue.

I think many of the Insurrectionists stand atop a platform of hollow ideological talking points when in reality a lot of their actionable character is checkered and illicit. Much of the settler population who first travelled out to those territories were described as being illegal conscripts for civilisational contractors, criminals hoping to be pardoned for previous offences, under-the-radar interlopers looking to strike out on their own, and so on. The whole process of human structuralisation was only possible in the first place through the resources and toils of Earth and her close-knit colonies. At a first glance, they don’t seem to have much of leg to stand on.

Having said all that, not all of the outer colonists can be painted with this brush. Many of them did set roots down through respectable, legal means. Staffan Sentzke comes to mind as he’s someone that hoped he and his family’s privacy would be respected if they paid their taxes and refrained from criminal activity; obviously this is all before the fiasco with the Spartan II program and his submersion into the seedy underbelly of human occupied space. His resentment towards the UEG is grounded with more understandable merit than a lot of the characters we’ve seen in the insurrection.

The collective societies of the outer colonies aren’t completely without validity in their arguments neither. Contact Harvest provides a brief listing of some disputes held by the outer colonists, pre-determined vocational pursuits and regulation of the amount of children they are allowed to have. The Impossible Life and the Possible Death of Preston J. Cole further details how ever proliferating levies, tariffs, and overreaching trade regulations factored into the culmination of the insurrection. In addition, you have the post-war challenges with joint occupation zones. Carrow is the most glaring example as it was a former human colony before being glassed by the Covenant. You had Sangheili refugees from Glyke root themselves in the fertile lands of the planet and the UEG, for the sake of political expediency, refusing to address this issue as the humans returned to reclaim the colony. I can’t fault them for their distrust and anger because they’re essentially having to co-habitate with former enemies who were zealous in the mass extermination of their species just a few years ago. Thars 'Sarov’s crusade to expunge these returning settlers and the domino effect it had with the planetary war and the involvement of Hekabe with his whole secret ambitions were far from reconciliatory in the whole situation.

Some colonies such as Venezia may be accepting of cross-species interaction and residence but many retain scars from the war and are understandably resentful towards any and all of the Covenant species. In Carrow’s case, I think they have one of the strongest arguments for wanting to remain separate from the UNSC. They’re described as desiring independence but are non-hostile with no intention of fully committing to action against the UEG. The worse crime they’ve perpetrated was accept munitions, vessels, and vehicles from the New Colonial Alliance. Given their new planetary living arrangements and the subsequent conflict that devastated their capital, I can’t fault them. The NCA abandoned them anyway when Suraka opened itself to negotiations with the Sangheili and allowed the UEG to act as their mediator.

In my opinion, the sordid activities of the insurrectionists have rendered many of them as glorified rabble-rousers and anarchists hoping to stick it to the government. After the first attempts at negotiation, they shot their collective selves in the foot by resorting to guerrilla warfare and indiscriminate killing. What’s ironic is that when the Covenant finally appears in order to glass their worlds into oblivion, they harp on on the UNSC’s seeming lack of willingness to protect them. Didn’t they want to be independent? Independence entails them being responsible for their own security. You can’t have it both ways.

One other thing - the concept of Spartans or augmented soldiers in general defecting to the insurrection wasn’t just a Spartan-IV shortcoming. Some of the ORION candidates were described as having repressed insurgent sympathies and needed to be incarcerated afterwards, according to Halsey’s Journal. Contrary to what Parangosky eulogised during her interrogation of Halsey, consenting adult candidates with fully developed minds and beliefs do come with their share of risks. Mind you, this is not an endorsement of child soldiering. I’m just pointing out the challenges faced with this new generation of Spartans.

4

Spoken like a true believer.

5

I don’t think the Insurrectionists were any better or worse then the UNSC, when you consider the UNSC used torture when interrogating human rebels and deployed nuclear weapons against a civilian population centre at Far Isle.

We don’t know exactly what form of government the UNSC props up (we all assume it’s some form of parliamentary democracy) however Preston Cole’s biography’s tells us that while in theory colonies had local autonomy over their own affairs, in practice the UNSC frequently meddled in colonial affairs for their own benefit. These colonies were therefore not independent, and when you consider we have proof that the UNSC would resort to mass murdering civilian populations to maintain their control over these colonies it’s difficult to see the rebels as the bad guys. You also can’t tar all insurrectionists with the same brush for the actions of a few, anymore then you can tar every member of a particular religion based on the actions of a few fantastics. The Insurrectionists were not evil. They were just doing what pro-independence people have done on Earth since the dawn of time.

6

Halo is basically like GoT.

No faction good. All factions bad. Good and just people in the single digits.

7

> 2535435902217648;2:
> I’d like to start by saying that I agree with you. The Innies made some very obvious missteps in their campaign for the hearts and minds of the UEG citizenry. But from an objective standpoint, absent their ridiculous tactics, I’d like to point out why the Innies were on the right side of history (you could call this the devil’s advocate. I’ll add the opposite after):
> - They were asking for honest and fair representation within the UEG. You may consider a single seat in the senate fair, but many would feel exactly opposite. Saying their population level equals one seat ignores their value to the UEG. It’s why the USA has an electoral college. While each individual farmer in the "flyover: states is not all that valuable to a politician in DC, their combined voting block is incredibly powerful, which gives them a voice they would never have had otherwise. The outer colonies, especially Harvest, were considered the bread basket of the UEG. Without them, the inner colonies would have starved. - The UNSC actively targeted dissenting opinions. It can’t be denied that the UEG is a fascist government. There are some real positives to that. They are efficient and strong, meaning they have the ability to coordinate a galaxy-wide defense against an alien menace. But they also trample civil liberties as a matter of fact. If you remove the alien threat from the equation, the Innies make sense. They were fighting against an overreaching federal government. Without an existential threat like the Covenant, no one would have seen the UEG as the heroes who saved them. - At the end of the day, the Innies identify most closely with the Libertarians of present day USA. The basic mantra is “don’t spend my money and don’t tell me what to do.” Without an alien menace trying to destroy all things human, the Innies might have actually succeeded in their toppling of the UEG. A fascistic government might be ideal for a galactic empire, and I’ll admit that. But from a civil liberties standpoint, the UEG and UNSC would likely receive and F or D- rating.Okay, as for the opposite… I will offer one argument that I feel is very powerful:
> - The UEG was facing a genocidal race of aliens. They said so themselves in their first contact with humanity: “your destruction is the will of the gods”. If there was ever a statement with the capability to galvanize humanity… that was it. So I would say, suck it up Innies. We got a war to fight.

I think I understand what you’re saying here but maybe not. I think that what you’re saying is that the number of seats/votes granted based on population should have been increased and the population minimum decreased (or perhaps made a percentage of the total UEG population for ease of use) so that the Outer Colonies would have each had their own Senators in the UEG Senate but through the increases they wouldn’t unfairly have voting above their population level. They would each still have their own voice in the UEG Senate, but the Inner Colonies’ voices would be increased to compensate. This also would enable them to combine their votes to have much more of an effect than just one seat. And they could far more easily leverage their economic importance in the Senate to get favorable votes from the Inner Colonies if they really needed something enough to risk backlash for that kind of pressure. I can agree to this, if it’s what you meant then you’re totally right and I fully support this. This right here is a good enough reason for secession in my opinion. And since the Insurrection is varied enough, it wouldn’t be wrong to say

The UEG is not fascist. It’s basically the US government just before the south seceded (which I doubt was unintended by Bungie).

There is no instance I’m aware of in which the UEG stepped on anyone’s civil liberties. In fact, one of ONI’s biggest difficulties in fighting the Insurrection was the communication used by them was a type of public communication (chatter or something I don’t remember the name) that was defended by law as off-limits to any government spying and, given ONI’s difficulty, the UEG honestly enforced that law. So, we don’t have liberties being stepped on but we do have liberties being defended. Is this about the public surveillance? A government, I believe, has a responsibility to perform surveillance in public areas so has to provide evidence in court and to quickly find guilty persons as well as quickly identify emergencies and dispatch help quickly and accurately.

Terrorism never makes sense, especially terrorism and invasions of the people you claim to be fighting for. And don’t forget the worlds that “rebelled” were told they were rebelling on pain of death. When you have to conquer the people you are “liberating” you’re not making sense or liberating anyone.

“They were fighting against an overreaching federal government.” That literally created a government for the Outer Colonies to govern themselves with as an almost separate nation. So, the opposite of over-reaching. That said, the UEG did still levy taxes and its laws

“At the end of the day, the Innies identify most closely with the Libertarians of present day USA.” They establish blatant military dictatorships on their worlds, “free” other worlds at gunpoint, and from the books we see that the worlds under their control are not pleasant places to live and the governments there have tight control. That doesn’t sound very Libertarian.

“Without an alien menace trying to destroy all things human, the Innies might have actually succeeded in their toppling of the UEG.” Tens of billions of people supporting the UEG versus a few million dissidents. Yes, the Innies were totally going to win. No. And on top of that, they wouldn’t replace the UEG with something better. They’re mass-murder and “you owe us” methods make it clear they would simply have enslaved everyone on pain of WMD so that the Outer Colonists would live like kings (and thereby bribe said colonists to support the Innie governmet) and talk about how everyone else “deserved it” even long after those people were dead. They were just as willing to use WMDs they had as the UNSC, except the UNSC was horrified by its own actions whereas the Innies thought “hey, that’s a great idea”.

At the end of the day, the Innies even as genuine freedom fighters would be worse since they’re the ones whose agenda is basically “take power and get what we’re ‘owed’ from the Inner Colonies and Earth” so they’d just make a dystopian hellhole. They may have started out with the best intentions and in the books it looks like the original Insurrectionists were honorable and rather compassionate for their defeated enemies, but that went down the drain eventually.

It seems to me, especially with the dystopian undertones of Innie control, that the Insurrection and its supporters is a case of controlling information in an almost cult-like fashion. Like to the point they see they’re effective enslavement to the insurrectionists as “freedom” and the UEG citizens as “enslaved”. They have a basis but are honestly just full of their own juice by now. They began with good intentions and were probably justified at first, but their tactics and their frustration that their own worlds largely rejected them (and even made militia forces to fight against them) lead to the Insurrection’s general radicalization.

8

> 2533274821734005;6:
> Halo is basically like GoT.
>
> No faction good. All factions bad. Good and just people in the single digits.

Agreed, and the bad as usual is thanks to politicians tugging everyone’s leash.

> 2533274853837831;5:
> I don’t think the Insurrectionists were any better or worse then the UNSC, when you consider the UNSC used torture when interrogating human rebels and deployed nuclear weapons against a civilian population centre at Far Isle.
>
> We don’t know exactly what form of government the UNSC props up (we all assume it’s some form of parliamentary democracy) however Preston Cole’s biography’s tells us that while in theory colonies had local autonomy over their own affairs, in practice the UNSC frequently meddled in colonial affairs for their own benefit. These colonies were therefore not independent, and when you consider we have proof that the UNSC would resort to mass murdering civilian populations to maintain their control over these colonies it’s difficult to see the rebels as the bad guys. You also can’t tar all insurrectionists with the same brush for the actions of a few, anymore then you can tar every member of a particular religion based on the actions of a few fantastics. The Insurrectionists were not evil. They were just doing what pro-independence people have done on Earth since the dawn of time.

I agree but the problem is the freedom fighters in the Insurrection were massively outnumbered by the terrorists. Most of their campaigns were terrorism, often against the worlds they claimed to be liberating. Worlds that “sided” with them usually did so at gunpoint, too. So, I’m not painting them all with the same brush, they painted themselves with it and a handful didn’t get covered in paint.

> 2533274808716317;3:
> Just to clarify something, the group that came to Cole’s aid was the Insurrectionist controlled Bellicose commandeered by Lyrenne Castilla, Cole’s second wife. The group that was sought out by Danforth Whitcomb at the behest of the Master Chief was Robert Watts’s United Rebel Front. At the time of Operation TALON it was under the command of Watts. By 2552 someone else by the name of Jacob Jiles was the leader. In regards to Castilla, she’s most definitely a highly unscrupulous character who agreed with mutual insurrectionist factions to aid the Covenant in Silent Storm by leaking important strategic information about Task Force Yama’s activities. In the process, members of her makeshift confederation had gone so far as to provide MJOLNIR schematics and a nuclear bomb to the Covenant. What they did later on is a small gesture of penance in comparison to what all those previous actions might have entailed had the schematics not been lost and the collaboration allowed to continue.
>
> I think many of the Insurrectionists stand atop a platform of hollow ideological talking points when in reality a lot of their actionable character is checkered and illicit. Much of the settler population who first travelled out to those territories were described as being illegal conscripts for civilisational contractors, criminals hoping to be pardoned for previous offences, under-the-radar interlopers looking to strike out on their own, and so on. The whole process of human structuralisation was only possible in the first place through the resources and toils of Earth and her close-knit colonies. At a first glance, they don’t seem to have much of leg to stand on.
>
> Having said all that, not all of the outer colonists can be painted with this brush. Many of them did set roots down through respectable, legal means. Staffan Sentzke comes to mind as he’s someone that hoped he and his family’s privacy would be respected if they paid their taxes and refrained from criminal activity; obviously this is all before the fiasco with the Spartan II program and his submersion into the seedy underbelly of human occupied space. His resentment towards the UEG is grounded with more understandable merit than a lot of the characters we’ve seen in the insurrection.
>
> The collective societies of the outer colonies aren’t completely without validity in their arguments neither. Contact Harvest provides a brief listing of some disputes held by the outer colonists, pre-determined vocational pursuits and regulation of the amount of children they are allowed to have. The Impossible Life and the Possible Death of Preston J. Cole further details how ever proliferating levies, tariffs, and overreaching trade regulations factored into the culmination of the insurrection. In addition, you have the post-war challenges with joint occupation zones. Carrow is the most glaring example as it was a former human colony before being glassed by the Covenant. You had Sangheili refugees from Glyke root themselves in the fertile lands of the planet and the UEG, for the sake of political expediency, refusing to address this issue as the humans returned to reclaim the colony. I can’t fault them for their distrust and anger because they’re essentially having to co-habitate with former enemies who were zealous in the mass extermination of their species just a few years ago. Thars 'Sarov’s crusade to expunge these returning settlers and the domino effect it had with the planetary war and the involvement of Hekabe with his whole secret ambitions were far from reconciliatory in the whole situation.
>
> Some colonies such as Venezia may be accepting of cross-species interaction and residence but many retain scars from the war and are understandably resentful towards any and all of the Covenant species. In Carrow’s case, I think they have one of the strongest arguments for wanting to remain separate from the UNSC. They’re described as desiring independence but are non-hostile with no intention of fully committing to action against the UEG. The worse crime they’ve perpetrated was accept munitions, vessels, and vehicles from the New Colonial Alliance. Given their new planetary living arrangements and the subsequent conflict that devastated their capital, I can’t fault them. The NCA abandoned them anyway when Suraka opened itself to negotiations with the Sangheili and allowed the UEG to act as their mediator.
>
> In my opinion, the sordid activities of the insurrectionists have rendered many of them as glorified rabble-rousers and anarchists hoping to stick it to the government. After the first attempts at negotiation, they shot their collective selves in the foot by resorting to guerrilla warfare and indiscriminate killing. What’s ironic is that when the Covenant finally appears in order to glass their worlds into oblivion, they harp on on the UNSC’s seeming lack of willingness to protect them. Didn’t they want to be independent? Independence entails them being responsible for their own security. You can’t have it both ways.
>
> One other thing - the concept of Spartans or augmented soldiers in general defecting to the insurrection wasn’t just a Spartan-IV shortcoming. Some of the ORION candidates were described as having repressed insurgent sympathies and needed to be incarcerated afterwards, according to Halsey’s Journal. Contrary to what Parangosky eulogised during her interrogation of Halsey, consenting adult candidates with fully developed minds and beliefs do come with their share of risks. Mind you, this is not an endorsement of child soldiering. I’m just pointing out the challenges faced with this new generation of Spartans.

Yours is best post and answered all of my questions. Thank you!

> 2533274821734005;4:
> Spoken like a true believer.

Big Brother is my friend!

9

So we’re brainwashing kids, and sending them to exterminate a bunch of overtaxed farmers?

10

> 2533274871621050;7:
> > 2535435902217648;2:
> > -
>
> I think I understand what you’re saying here but maybe not. I think that what you’re saying is that the number of seats/votes granted based on population should have been increased and the population minimum decreased (or perhaps made a percentage of the total UEG population for ease of use) so that the Outer Colonies would have each had their own Senators in the UEG Senate but through the increases they wouldn’t unfairly have voting above their population level. They would each still have their own voice in the UEG Senate, but the Inner Colonies’ voices would be increased to compensate. This also would enable them to combine their votes to have much more of an effect than just one seat. And they could far more easily leverage their economic importance in the Senate to get favorable votes from the Inner Colonies if they really needed something enough to risk backlash for that kind of pressure. I can agree to this, if it’s what you meant then you’re totally right and I fully support this. This right here is a good enough reason for secession in my opinion. And since the Insurrection is varied enough, it wouldn’t be wrong to say
>
> The UEG is not fascist. It’s basically the US government just before the south seceded (which I doubt was unintended by Bungie).
>
> There is no instance I’m aware of in which the UEG stepped on anyone’s civil liberties. In fact, one of ONI’s biggest difficulties in fighting the Insurrection was the communication used by them was a type of public communication (chatter or something I don’t remember the name) that was defended by law as off-limits to any government spying and, given ONI’s difficulty, the UEG honestly enforced that law. So, we don’t have liberties being stepped on but we do have liberties being defended. Is this about the public surveillance? A government, I believe, has a responsibility to perform surveillance in public areas so has to provide evidence in court and to quickly find guilty persons as well as quickly identify emergencies and dispatch help quickly and accurately.
>
> Terrorism never makes sense, especially terrorism and invasions of the people you claim to be fighting for. And don’t forget the worlds that “rebelled” were told they were rebelling on pain of death. When you have to conquer the people you are “liberating” you’re not making sense or liberating anyone.
>
> “They were fighting against an overreaching federal government.” That literally created a government for the Outer Colonies to govern themselves with as an almost separate nation. So, the opposite of over-reaching. That said, the UEG did still levy taxes and its laws
>
> “At the end of the day, the Innies identify most closely with the Libertarians of present day USA.” They establish blatant military dictatorships on their worlds, “free” other worlds at gunpoint, and from the books we see that the worlds under their control are not pleasant places to live and the governments there have tight control. That doesn’t sound very Libertarian.
>
> “Without an alien menace trying to destroy all things human, the Innies might have actually succeeded in their toppling of the UEG.” Tens of billions of people supporting the UEG versus a few million dissidents. Yes, the Innies were totally going to win. No. And on top of that, they wouldn’t replace the UEG with something better. They’re mass-murder and “you owe us” methods make it clear they would simply have enslaved everyone on pain of WMD so that the Outer Colonists would live like kings (and thereby bribe said colonists to support the Innie governmet) and talk about how everyone else “deserved it” even long after those people were dead. They were just as willing to use WMDs they had as the UNSC, except the UNSC was horrified by its own actions whereas the Innies thought “hey, that’s a great idea”.
>
> At the end of the day, the Innies even as genuine freedom fighters would be worse since they’re the ones whose agenda is basically “take power and get what we’re ‘owed’ from the Inner Colonies and Earth” so they’d just make a dystopian hellhole. They may have started out with the best intentions and in the books it looks like the original Insurrectionists were honorable and rather compassionate for their defeated enemies, but that went down the drain eventually.
>
> It seems to me, especially with the dystopian undertones of Innie control, that the Insurrection and its supporters is a case of controlling information in an almost cult-like fashion. Like to the point they see they’re effective enslavement to the insurrectionists as “freedom” and the UEG citizens as “enslaved”. They have a basis but are honestly just full of their own juice by now. They began with good intentions and were probably justified at first, but their tactics and their frustration that their own worlds largely rejected them (and even made militia forces to fight against them) lead to the Insurrection’s general radicalization.

Yeah on the first point that is essentially what I meant. They were underrepresented in the UEG when you consider their value added to the UEG.

As for the rest, the UEG is highly fascistic. One could argue that a fascist government is necessary when governing billions of people across hundreds of worlds, but it’s still fascistic in nature. They routinely trample on civil rights we deem commonplace today. They use mainstream media to push their political views, and they jail dissenters in the Midnight Facility curated by ONI (that’s if they don’t outright kill them first). There are numerous examples of the UEG and UNSC being fascist. The Hunt the Truth series demonstrated that pretty clearly.

I absolutely agree on the terrorism. That’s where the Innies made a critical mistake. Hearts and minds are far more effective than bombs and bullets. The only reason I can think why the Innies made that call was that fact that Bungie needed a clear reason to root for the Master Chief despite the fact he serves an all powerful fascist government.

If you are referring to the CMA as a separate government, the CMA was completely under the thumb of the UNSC, and was in fact dissolved during the Covenant War to consolidate resources and manpower.

The innies are definitely libertarian in principle. They live by the mantra of “don’t touch my stuff, and don’t tell me what to do”. That’s basic libertarian-ism. As for their militaristic rule… it was hardly as militaristic as the UNSC and UEG. Places like Venezia were lawless to the point of anarchy, which is the purest form of libertian-ism. Places like Gao had a strong military, but didn’t use that military to subjugate their own people.

Regarding the billions vs millions: I’d like to point to just about any military engagement in world history where an occupying force was fighting a small guerrilla insurgency. The American Revolution, the Vietnam War, the War in Afghanistan and the War in Iraq (I’m American, so my examples all come from that). These were all examples of an overwhelming and highly advanced military getting beaten by a small group of insurgents. It’s absolutely possible. Furthermore, the entire reason for the Spartan-II program in the first place was the fact that the Innies were only a decade or two away from completely fragmenting the entire human empire.

As I said before, I agree with much of what you said in your OP. I just want to point out that they aren’t evil. They’re too fragmented and decentralized to have a singular evil purpose.

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> 2533274821734005;9:
> So we’re brainwashing kids, and sending them to exterminate a bunch of overtaxed farmers?

I highly suspect the Librarian’s own brainwashing through our genetics had a lot to do with it. Especially since she outright admits that the Master Chief and Cortana was entirely just as planned.

12

I will say I would love to see some more Halo lore that delves deep, deep into exact, specific reasons why the Innies felt so oppressed and what their grievances were. If there has been such lore, I missed it, but I’ve read most of the books and while they dabble in that just a bit, it’s usually a pretty cursory, surface, token attempt. Again, unless I missed something.

And now that the galaxy is on Created lockdown, we may not get said lore for a long time, if ever.

13

> 2533274961806222;12:
> I will say I would love to see some more Halo lore that delves deep, deep into exact, specific reasons why the Innies felt so oppressed and what their grievances were. If there has been such lore, I missed it, but I’ve read most of the books and while they dabble in that just a bit, it’s usually a pretty cursory, surface, token attempt. Again, unless I missed something.
>
> And now that the galaxy is on Created lockdown, we may not get said lore for a long time, if ever.

Yeah, especially since what little we know actually seems to justify both the UNSC and the non-terrorists Insurrectionists. Like the nuking of Far Isle. Sure, the UNSC nuked a colony out of existence. However, it sounded like they were in a similar position of the US towards Japan at the end of WWII. So, nuke the colony to end a planet-wide massive rebellion before it could create a civil war that would probably kill far more people, or send so many forces down that the number of dead are basically the number of colonists and probably end up having to kill just about everyone anyway plus you’re own millions of dead soldiers. Or nuke them, preventing a devastating war by scaring the rest of the rebels UEG-wide into covert action instead of entire worlds rebelling and save your own soldiers at the same time.

Perhaps the greatest tragedy in what I read up on it is that it worked. The rebellious colonies turned to insurrection actions instead of open warfare, thereby saving countless lives that a war would have ended. This is tragic because it sets a precedent that yes, nuking your own people to prevent revolution does save far more lives than it takes and therefore it’s a-okay. Then there is the other tragic aspect that the insurrection grew large enough and stole enough ships that it was on the verge of open warfare anyway when the Spartan-IIs were deployed. Which also prevented war.

The UNSC seems to be an organization devoted to doing literally anything to prevent war. Whether or not the rebels were justified is irrelevant to the UNSC as they aren’t a law-making body or a governing body. They’re exploration, research, and military.

Then there is, as I said before, the problems with insurrectionists actually succeeding and shows that the Innies are as bad or even worse than being ruled by the UEG. At least the UEG went out of its way not to antagonize the Outer Colonies beyond what they already had. In 343i novels, Innie ruled independent colonies seem to be pretty…controlled. Like military dictatorships controlled and quite trigger happy and extremely paranoid.

So, either stay loyal to the UEG and have no right to vote, tariffs imposed on you despite the fact you can’t even compete with Inner Colonies anyway, heavy taxes you have zero say in, government structures that although filled by your own colonists are built and monitored by the UEG, and might get erased from existence if you turn to violent actions when diplomacy fails to get what you’re probably Constitutionally permitted to have in the first place.

Or, live under Innie rule and have no right to vote (or it’s “vote for this guy or take bullet to head”), no tariffs because you have little or no trade anyway and so your economy is complete trash, have a government structure that is little more than military officers telling you what to do or else they’ll shoot you, have taxes levied on you that you have no say in, and if you speak out you and your family could be killed in the street instead of simply being ignored and probably an inability to arm yourself. Oh, and your planet likely hosts a large number of heavily armed super aliens who less than a decade ago killed most of the rest of the Outer Colonies and who have raiders still going around glassing more colonies even now. You also have zero ability to defend yourself from any alien or UEG threat of any kind. You have access to no scientists, no engineers, no advanced knowledge or advanced education, no shipyards, no mines, and little to no industry and so growth as a civilization would have to start over pretty much from scratch.

No wonder most Innie sympathizing worlds chose to stay with the UEG after the war and even tolerated the UEG forcing them to become co-habitat colonies with former Covenant species. Better that than the alternative. There’s good reasons why the independent colonies we know of tend to be full of mouth-foaming fanatics and appear to be very rare.

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> 2535435902217648;10:
> > 2533274871621050;7:
> > > 2535435902217648;2:
> > > -
> >
> > Regarding the billions vs millions: I’d like to point to just about any military engagement in world history where an occupying force was fighting a small guerrilla insurgency. The American Revolution, the Vietnam War, the War in Afghanistan and the War in Iraq (I’m American, so my examples all come from that). These were all examples of an overwhelming and highly advanced military getting beaten by a small group of insurgents. It’s absolutely possible. Furthermore, the entire reason for the Spartan-II program in the first place was the fact that the Innies were only a decade or two away from completely fragmenting the entire human empire.

“The American Revolution, the Vietnam War, the War in Afghanistan and the War in Iraq (I’m American, so my examples all come from that). These were all examples of an overwhelming and highly advanced military getting beaten by a small group of insurgents. It’s absolutely possible. Furthermore, the entire reason for the Spartan-II program in the first place was the fact that the In”

That is incorrect. First, the American Revolution involved little guerilla warfare and was mostly conventional armies vs conventional armies. Second, the US won the war in Vietnam got the treaty signed and everything then left. A second war broke out two years later when the north invaded the south again and the few military advisers and the embassy that was still in the country were given twenty-four hours to leave by the southern president or else the southern military would attack them. So, they left, which is the famous picture of a helicopter and a baby. The US won the Vietnam War, left, and then two years later a second war happened that the US did not participate in. The US very much won the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq. People like to think that there’s still heavy fighting there and that US forces pulled out due to frustration but no, the fighting was almost non-existent by the time pulling out started and the local militaries were trained up and taking over the military actions of the US forces as was planned from the beginning.

In other words, your examples are examples of an overwhelming, highly advanced military either matching a similarly advanced and sized military (revolution) or curbstomping a small group of insurgents.

And the Spartan-II program was not launched out of fear that the UEG would fragment and be overwhelmed by the Insurgency, it was created out of fear of a war. The UNSC would very easily win, but at the massive cost of life all wars cost and that ruining the lies of a few dozen children could prevent. So, that is what they did.

Insurgencies have never succeeded against a military. They always end up either getting logistically cut off and withering on the vine while their loses mount with each strike they make and their enemy simply absorbs the blows until the insurgents run out of steam and slowly die out, or the military ends up pinning down their locations piece by piece and eradicating them.

15

One man’s terrorist, is another man’s freedom fighter.

16

> 2533274871621050;14:
> > 2535435902217648;10:
> > > 2533274871621050;7:
> > > > 2535435902217648;2:
> > > > -
> > >
> > > Regarding the billions vs millions: I’d like to point to just about any military engagement in world history where an occupying force was fighting a small guerrilla insurgency. The American Revolution, the Vietnam War, the War in Afghanistan and the War in Iraq (I’m American, so my examples all come from that). These were all examples of an overwhelming and highly advanced military getting beaten by a small group of insurgents. It’s absolutely possible. Furthermore, the entire reason for the Spartan-II program in the first place was the fact that the Innies were only a decade or two away from completely fragmenting the entire human empire.
>
> “The American Revolution, the Vietnam War, the War in Afghanistan and the War in Iraq (I’m American, so my examples all come from that). These were all examples of an overwhelming and highly advanced military getting beaten by a small group of insurgents. It’s absolutely possible. Furthermore, the entire reason for the Spartan-II program in the first place was the fact that the In”
>
> That is incorrect. First, the American Revolution involved little guerilla warfare and was mostly conventional armies vs conventional armies. Second, the US won the war in Vietnam got the treaty signed and everything then left. A second war broke out two years later when the north invaded the south again and the few military advisers and the embassy that was still in the country were given twenty-four hours to leave by the southern president or else the southern military would attack them. So, they left, which is the famous picture of a helicopter and a baby. The US won the Vietnam War, left, and then two years later a second war happened that the US did not participate in. The US very much won the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq. People like to think that there’s still heavy fighting there and that US forces pulled out due to frustration but no, the fighting was almost non-existent by the time pulling out started and the local militaries were trained up and taking over the military actions of the US forces as was planned from the beginning.
>
> In other words, your examples are examples of an overwhelming, highly advanced military either matching a similarly advanced and sized military (revolution) or curbstomping a small group of insurgents.
>
> And the Spartan-II program was not launched out of fear that the UEG would fragment and be overwhelmed by the Insurgency, it was created out of fear of a war. The UNSC would very easily win, but at the massive cost of life all wars cost and that ruining the lies of a few dozen children could prevent. So, that is what they did.
>
> Insurgencies have never succeeded against a military. They always end up either getting logistically cut off and withering on the vine while their loses mount with each strike they make and their enemy simply absorbs the blows until the insurgents run out of steam and slowly die out, or the military ends up pinning down their locations piece by piece and eradicating them.

We may just have to agree to disagree here my friend… I’m not going to get in a geopolitical argument, because that’ll get this thread locked. But moving on to the Halo side of things: Halsey specifically discusses the fact that the UEG would fracture if the Insurrection continued on its course without drastic changes being made. Go back and read the Fall of Reach again. I think the time frame was 20 years before the collapse of the UEG and the UNSC.

As for insurgencies never succeeding… I’m trying really hard not to jump head first into the realm of real life geopolitics, but I can site a half dozen examples off the top of my head where an insurgency outlasted the overwhelming occupying force.

17

> 2535435902217648;16:
> > 2533274871621050;14:
> > > 2535435902217648;10:
> > > > 2533274871621050;7:
> > > > > 2535435902217648;2:
> > > > > -
> > > >
> > > > Regarding the billions vs millions: I’d like to point to just about any military engagement in world history where an occupying force was fighting a small guerrilla insurgency. The American Revolution, the Vietnam War, the War in Afghanistan and the War in Iraq (I’m American, so my examples all come from that). These were all examples of an overwhelming and highly advanced military getting beaten by a small group of insurgents. It’s absolutely possible. Furthermore, the entire reason for the Spartan-II program in the first place was the fact that the Innies were only a decade or two away from completely fragmenting the entire human empire.
>
> We may just have to agree to disagree here my friend… I’m not going to get in a geopolitical argument, because that’ll get this thread locked. But moving on to the Halo side of things: Halsey specifically discusses the fact that the UEG would fracture if the Insurrection continued on its course without drastic changes being made. Go back and read the Fall of Reach again. I think the time frame was 20 years before the collapse of the UEG and the UNSC.
>
> As for insurgencies never succeeding… I’m trying really hard not to jump head first into the realm of real life geopolitics, but I can site a half dozen examples off the top of my head where an insurgency outlasted the overwhelming occupying force.

Sure, we can disagree. But I also have a long-winded comment to make. Because I like hearing myself (or reading myself) talk and I don’t get many opportunities to just gush it all out instead of keeping it all in my head. So bear with me, please. :slight_smile:

Outlasting and succeeding are different. First, just because the overwhelming force leaves doesn’t mean the insurgency succeeded. The Vietnam War being an example in which the insurgency’s leadership signed a peace treaty and then the force left because the war was over. There was the USSR in the Middle East, but even if there was no insurgency that would have ended no differently because, as with all “successful” insurgencies, the insurgency itself was irrelevant to the power’s choices. Heck, “successful” insurgencies in general haven’t even succeeded or outlasted anyone. If insurgencies never happened, nothing at all would have changed. Because leaving an area with an insurgency never has anything to do with the insurgency.

This isn’t some geopolitical debate and doesn’t need to be. Both because the things I mentioned before are historic fact that just a moment of research reveals and not political and because the UNSC is fighting an insurgency and so it’s quite relevant.

Anyway, it isn’t “outlasting” an occupying force when the force leaves due to matters unrelated to the insurgency. It would only count as outlasting if the insurgency succeeded in straining logistics, politics, and manpower to the point occupation became unfeasible. This has never happened. The closest to it off the top of my head is the French occupation of Vietnam, but the French people were already opposed to imperialism there in the first place and so French soldiers being involved at all was a political gimmick that failed. Resistance was irrelevant because the pressure came from the public not wanting to be involved, not due to insurgency. This is an example of how a foreign power occupying an area is not going to be influenced by an insurgency unless its occupation was political in the first place.

In the case of the UNSC occupying an area, the UNSC would be fighting to prevent the insurgents from becoming a major war so as to save as many lives as possible. That isn’t something that becomes unpopular politically or something soldiers would get tired of because they’re all very aware that a full blown war would cost far more lives and would be devastating. So, the UNSC cannot be outlasted. Another reason is because the UNSC is fighting on its home territory, not occupying a foreign region. The insurgents are domestic, not foreign. Heck, for all the talk about Outer Colonists supporting the insurgency, most did not. Most of them didn’t have anything to do with the insurgency and even joined military organizations to fight the insurgents such as the CMA and the UNSC and local militias trained by the UNSC. The colonists pretty much ignored UEG law, but had not desire to provoke the UEG into bringing the hammer down on them for supporting rebellion or terrorism.

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> 2533274870762420;15:
> One man’s terrorist, is another man’s freedom fighter.

Sure, but like I said the difference is terrorists specifically target civilians, freedom fighters specifically target military and avoid harming civilians. The Insurrectionists by and large target civilians and avoid engaging military targets. Those that do fit the mold of freedom fighters conquer planets and then tell everyone they’re free and will obey the insurrection or else be killed. They’re freedom fighters to their fellow terrorists, in other words, but not to the people they claim to be fighting to free.

19

> 2533274871621050;18:
> > 2533274870762420;15:
> > One man’s terrorist, is another man’s freedom fighter.
>
> Sure, but like I said the difference is terrorists specifically target civilians, freedom fighters specifically target military and avoid harming civilians. The Insurrectionists by and large target civilians and avoid engaging military targets. Those that do fit the mold of freedom fighters conquer planets and then tell everyone they’re free and will obey the insurrection or else be killed. They’re freedom fighters to their fellow terrorists, in other words, but not to the people they claim to be fighting to free.

It depends entirely on the point of view of the individual. I’m sure these insurgents believe that they are fighting for a good cause, and the civilians are aiding their enemies.

20

They are very evil…