Human High Culture

"The Empire justified its actions through Human superiority&mdash;it was our duty to preserve order to prevent the exploitation of lesser species. Any action in the pursuit of that goal was justified."

- Soontir Fel

Human High Culture was the Galactic Empire's codified policy of Humanocentric speciesism. It centered around the belief (long, if privately, held by many in the Human-dominated Core) that Humans were inherently superior to other species.

History
There were also several other undertones that carried over into anti-droid sentiments and anti-female chauvinism, which also manifested against Human females who were, with few exceptions, barred from the higher echelons of power in the Empire's military and government. Examples of these include Admiral Daala of the Imperial Navy (promoted in secret by Grand Moff Tarkin), Admiral Betl Oxtroe, and Intelligence director Ysanne Isard.

Those not meeting the standards of Human High Culture were marked as being Non-huMan.

At the time of the foundation of the Galactic Empire, there were several active, large populist groups on Coruscant that advocated concepts of Human supremacy. These were quickly assimilated into the nascent COMPNOR. Their views were then coalesced into a coherent vision primarily by Crueya Vandron, Ishin-Il-Raz, and Sate Pestage.

The chief tenet of Human High Culture was that Humans were the only truly intelligent and productive members of any society. They cited that it was almost exclusively Humans who had formed and led the Old Republic and the Human worlds of the Core were some of the oldest, richest, and most advanced in the Galaxy.

As such, through the repealing of such laws as the Rights of Sentience and the creation of new acts, all nonhumans were made second-class citizens (if citizens at all). Non-Human slavery was re-legalized. Only 'pure' (i.e., those made exclusively by Humans and with no help from nonhumans) works of art (such as operas, holovids, books, etc) were allowed to be produced, viewed, and spread, since only Human culture was worthy enough to be allowed to prosper in the New Order. Non-Humans were 'actively discouraged' to participate in government or join the Imperial military, and Human governors and moffs were placed in command of nonhuman worlds and sectors.

However, there were small loopholes: if nonhumans were devoted enough to Emperor Palpatine, and focused solely upon serving his Empire, then they would be left unmolested (although this seems to have been applied only to aliens who were close to Humans in appearance). Examples of such tolerance were Grand Admiral Thrawn and Grand Moff Bertroff Hissa. It could be argued that the roots of Palpatine's bigotry could be traced to the traditional animosity that dominated relations between the Humans of Naboo (Palpatine's home planet) and the Gungans who cohabited that world. However, there is also evidence to suggest that Palpatine was not a speciesist. Palpatine freely consorted with nonhumans such as Mas Amedda and Sly Moore, as well as taking Darth Maul as an apprentice. From this viewpoint, it is conceivable that Palpatine (Sidious) simply used anti-alien sentiments as a way to divide the beings of the galaxy and help consolidate his rule. After all, one of the worst atrocities Palpatine committed was the destruction the Human-dominated world of Alderaan.

Another possibility, though, is that Palpatine set many aliens up for a fall, orchestrating in his typical manipulative ways their eventual and humbling demises. Support for this could come from a number of Palpatine's actions, one of the most notable of them being the execution of the Trade Federation Directorate's Human majority at Eriadu, setting the Neimoidian board members up to lead the Trade Federation - the shadowy, both-ends-against-the-middle vilification of which prompted his own rise to the office of the Supreme Chancellor and set the stage for the Clone Wars, which in turn culminated in the rise of the Empire. In this reversal, he established aliens - the Separatist Council was also entirely comprised of aliens if one does not count Dooku - as the enemy and turned the Humans he seems to have held superior against them. Again, this could either be a deliberately divisive political tactic or could have been the elaborate exaction of a personal vendetta.

Darth Sidious' earlier apprentice, Count Dooku (Darth Tyranus) was apparently also a Human supremacist who desired to see the Republic transformed into an Empire of Man, with the Sith as its army. However, it is possible he developed Humanocentric opinions late in life from his association with Sidious, as in his youth he had alien friends and it is difficult to believe that any anti-alien sentiment on his part could have been hidden from the Jedi for seventy years. Many of his hand-picked Dark Acolytes were nonhuman, and he also seemed to personally respect Geonosian Archduke Poggle the Lesser.

Human High Culture were enforced and imprinted upon the Empire's citizenry by the Coalition for Progress, Imperial Board of Culture, and the Sub-Adult Groups.

The views of Human High Culture would be kept alive in the New Republic for years after the Empire's defeat by fringe groups such as the Human League. At the same time, Admiral Daala strongly weakened this concept within the Imperial Remnant by allowing aliens of all kinds to join the Imperial military.

Behind the scenes
One theory of the concept of "Human High Culture" was probably included to give the Empire another parallel to Nazi Germany. Palpatine/Sidious's willingness to work with nonhumans as needed is comparable to how a member of the Nazi hierarchy need not have been a virulent bigot but was instead apathetic towards non-Germans, content to use anti-German sentiment to curry favor&mdash;though in some ways that is even worse. The Sub-Adult Groups bear a resemblance to the real world Nazi Youth. Another, more popular idea is that this is the explanation given to the obvious fact that all politicians and military strategists in the original trilogy were Human, due to financial limits and lack of creativity regarding alien governments, whereas they are numerous in the prequels, due to the fact that Lucas had the finances and special effects to pull it off.