I bet one could also synthesize that with things like the trend towards darker and edgier antihero stories that hit its stride in the 90s and how much liberal storytelling has leaned on vapid aesthetic tropes to delineate villains and heroes.

The Empire is the US, and it acts like the US, and to drive home to American audiences that despite the Empire acting like the US they were the bad guys Star Wars steeps them in Fascist aesthetics. Then you get another generation of Americans raised on darker and edgier media where the heroes are also villainous, and lazy stories where instead of making the villains villainous they just toss some allusions to Fascist aesthetics on them and call it a day, and just outright Fascist media like CoD, so when they look at Star Wars they just see America doing normalized things and looking powerful doing it.

Like I think it's not exclusively a problem with Star Wars but rather an entire media environment that helps socialize people towards making fascist conclusions, caused by the collaboration of liberals and fascists in Hollywood, in the comics industry, and in the games industry, as well as liberal creations tending to be vapid and aesthetics based things that can never really criticize the status quo (to which the whole darker and edgier trend was also a reaction). There's also a point to be made about how much American counter-culture has been reactionary and libertine instead of liberationist, and as those reactionary and libertine elements got mainstreamed they pivoted towards fascism as they started to perceive the left as a threat to their treats.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Empire Did Nothing Wrong memes and associated interpretations of Star Wars (cough palpatine was AKTUALLY preparing for the yuzang vong cough)

I hate that too because it's stupid nerd shit in books that are not even canon anymore. Empire are literally space nazis in these movies, you're rooting for fascists.

I always thought the whole Empire Did Nothing Wrong meme started out as an ironic attempt to deconstruct real world apologia by applying the same style of rhetoric to a case where the subject is inescapably evil because it's a fiction where that evil can simply be asserted. It's a testament to the propagandization of the West that even satire as blatant as 'Luke Skywalker was a terrorist who killed thousands of innocent stormtroopers stationed on the Freedom Star' is treated as a bridge towards decreasingly ironic expressions of support for cartoon fascism rather than criticism of the fascistic tendencies in America.

Then again I also thought for a while that the attack helicopter meme was supposed to be in support of the trans community and based on frustration at the otherkin phenomenon for appropriating and trivializing the language, experience and struggles of trans people.

There is definitely a correlation with people who like the prequels (just the movies I haven't watched the cartoons) and people who are drawn fascist ideology. I'm not sure if its because r/prequelmemes was frequented by fascists and it bled over, or if those are people who just like shitty media. Prequelmemes had its roots in Red Letter Media's Mr Plinkett reviews of the films. Almost all the original posts were aping quotes from their videos, but they were soon drowned out by people who thought they were in good company.