Chapter Text
A curriculum.
He took that to mean a way of life.
That was what Brendol Hux had been tasked to create all those years ago: a pipeline that winnowed away the chaff and distilled the best qualities of the Empire into an efficient, capable core. If it were small, so much the better. The Empire had grown too ponderously large, the bureaucracy even after dissolution of the Senate remained too prolific of itself—
Too much a hulk in the way the Republic had been: layers on layers of uninspired functionaries tottering along on the precious notion that they were necessary. In very simple terms the Emperor had not gone far enough, fast enough, to ensure lasting order. He had allowed the Senate to go on mired in its own swampy morass, been too indulgent in appeasing the trappings of decentralized authority, those relics of the time before Senator Palpatine had been Emperor Palpatine.
Better to rip the bandage away fast. Let there be growing pains rather than the protracted easement Palpatine had taken great pains to mount when remaking the galaxy.
When he had been chosen, Brendol had known it was for what he brought to the table: his vision, his proven ability. While Commandant at Arkanis Academy he had created the Commandant’s Cadets, a group whose purpose had been to sow seeds of a tree whose roots would support an Empire that stood forever.
Asked to apply what he had pioneered on Arkanis on a larger scale, asked to be the fundamental impetus behind a great, lasting renascence—how could he possibly refuse?
Brendol had applied everything he knew of military conditioning to the task: it had to be firm, it had to have a solid ideological and rhetorical foundation, and it had to be consistent. The earlier the better, and if some did not make it, well, they were to be weeded out as undesirable. On Jakku, he had trained local orphans as bodyguards to Fleet Admiral Gallius Rax to prove this point.
Children were so malleable, they were ideal. The recruits on Arkanis came to him with identities, with parents, with names. Even the orphans had been someone before he trained them; in the days of the Emperor’s reign, his superior officers had, foolishly in Brendol's opinion, rejected the notion of raising Stormtroopers from birth in a similar fashion as the clone troopers had been, even though this had arguably produced the best-trained soldiers seen in millennia.
The First Order had no such qualms and quickly accepted his ideas.
It was absolutely key, after all, to lay foundational constants, to be the first source of comfort—and of punishment, and to be the very last word in both. Repetitive uniformity in ideological lockstep: the very keystone of truly effective conditioning, constantly reinforced.
Brendol had always been amused at the similarities between what was called brainwashing and the means by which breaking them down and building them up at military academies was achieved: the basic idea was to isolate an individual, imbalance them, deprive them of sleep, make them doubt what they know or feel aside from what you want them to know, and keep them on their toes. Into that void, train certain behaviors that produce a calm in the storm. He supposed that the difference boiled down to whether or not it was perceived that whatever one was being built back into was desirable.
The actual mechanism of tearing down-building up was more relevant with the older recruits he had trained on Arkanis. Isolation in a group of like-minded individuals, loud, dissonant, constant pressure; endless days and fleeting nights, but—
Brendol had noticed such techniques worked best on willing recruits. There were always boys and girls in Arkanis who threw themselves into their training, body and soul, who wanted to be remade, believing in the Empire and the New Order, and believing that in so doing they turned themselves into the best kind of Imperial citizen.
So, obviously, it was important to foster as much willing vigorous support and spirit as possible in as many recruits as possible through whatever means available.
For the ones who would become Stormtroopers, a harsh training regimen in a strictly controlled environment from the earliest moment possible would produce obedient, effective soldiers.
For the other members of the First Order, a life raised in an environment where classroom curriculum and social landscape could be carefully managed was ideal. The flight to the Unknown Regions produced a more or less homogeneous and predisposed field for him to sow, and he had little trouble setting standard narrative rhetoric. Brendol had also encouraged the promulgation of and active engagement in First Order youth groups and athletic clubs, to reinforce the same, and in fact had gone so far as to ask that a branch of the home guard dedicate an office to investigating the political reliability of these organizations to ensure ideological uniformity.
All this to say, as far as the outcome, Brendol considered his efforts to be a rousing success.
As he watched the vaporizing remains of the Hosnian system fade in his holo, Brendol smiled to himself in triumph, proud that, regardless of the actual hands behind it, he had made this happen. It was his ideas put into practice which enabled the obliteration of the heart of the hated Republic.