Why would the Empire need to wipe out knowledge of the Jedi's existence, the whole reason they claimed to need to form an Empire was that the Jedi engineered a conspiracy to control the Senate and were going to assassinate the "Chancellor" and take over the Republic. Simply, the Jedi were the bad guys in the Emperor's narrative and nobody else even seemed to know the Sith were alive and well. Though I suppose it would be in character to outlaw talking about the Jedi, which would diminish knowledge of them.
But that doesn't explain why the New Republic 20 years later would want such knowledge a secret Why would they conceal such information from the public now? A Jedi helped bring about the fall of the Empire. Leia, who I'm guessing at this time is a huge political figure head, is also force sensitive. Why would they keep knowledge of the force out of public mind? And it's not like you're going to try to keep this information out of the imperial remnants hands, they know already by now due to being stragglers from the Empire
Maybe it's because the Empire convinced the population at large that the Jedi were the bad guys, might be easier this way? At first everyone went along with it, maybe it's easier for the new republic to function and retain credibility if they keep up the front that the Empire became totalitarian so they stepped in to fix that. We need to think of this on a social political level of the general population. For it to make any sense in the overall story. But of course the prequels are filled with pointless exposition and the originals only hinted at and barely touched on the overarching social political issues of the day. In fact a lot of the exposition that was to be in the first 3 films was intentionally cut, a good 30 minutes worth of from each, so a good hour and a half of story was left out intentionally to make the films retain better pacing and focus. Things which were not removed from the prequels simply because all Lucas cares about is spectacle and story, the guy has absolutely no clue how to construct a good film. Ever wondered why he was kicked out of film school? Ever wonder why he never finished his courses? Ever wonder why he was kicked out of the directors guild? Pretty sure it had to do with more than his obsession for that awful title text scroll, even though it is iconic of Star Wars, even though over the years we've grown to love it, but looking at it from a film construction perspective it is awful and is still awful even today. Anyway, I digress ... getting off topic. The only reason the first 3 films were any good was because of the other people in charge of the project convincing him to stay on track. Not to mention thankfully due to the technology at the time not being able to "achieve his vision" it made the films better because a lot of that crap he was forced to leave out. But if you watch all the cut content from the originals, a lot of which is made up of the things we disliked in the prequels, along with the stupid comedy Lucas likes, a lot of it contained a generous amount of exposition that hinted in detail of the social political climate in Star Wars. It's also strikingly apparent that when they were made, Lucas was writing the story as he went along, they all were. Nothing was set in stone from day one nor did he have a grand plan to make a franchise let alone a massive fictional universe. At the time he just wanted to make a cool cowboy western in space with a master student good verse evil thing. They never expected how big it would become. Just like with every other overnight sensation, like Halo for example or Stargate. Anything he said about there being a grand plan didn't occur till after the fact, he didn't even start thinking about the prequels till they were working on Empire and figured they had something magical they created. A lot of which later on made it into the expanded universe content, such as Shadows of the Empire and yes even Rogue Squadron, a lot of the video games in the 90s touched on it. But since a lot of that has been retconned, who's to say. I know this much though, Shadows of the Empire can not be retconned even if they wanted to, thanks to a nod to it introduced during the 90s "remasters" and the characters and story are embedded partially into the cannon materials.
considering that they have powers capable of manipulate the mind of people is not that hard to create distrust and suspect against a jedi.
I guess that is how Palpatine sort of turned the republic on its head and instituted the Empire so easily There had to be some intense distrust towards the Jedi before the whole "assassination" attempt in order to sway so many people so fast Otherwise there would have been alot more confusion and initial opposition toward declaring all Jedi as enemies of the state
It didn't help that the general public knew nothing about the distinction between Jedi & Sith. To the public Dooku was just a fallen Jedi. The facts were manipulated to make it appear that Dooku and the Order were still friendly.
Gonna quote myself here regarding the flag I was talking about (Pentastar alignment Flag) (New flag for the empire?? Or for JJ's fukbois or whatever they are called at this point)
Well I can actually think of a good reason or two that the New Republic would distrust the Jedi despite being freed by them. First, Darth Vader was one of their greatest students and look what he became. Now while I personally don't support such preventative measures I can see why a young regime would fear training a new tyrant. And 2, the Jedi are able to use mind control, which is distinctly undemocratic. They might be afraid the Jedi would subvert their republic by sectetly controlling the Senate, making them a sort of shadow government. Whether they'd actually do this is irrelevant, what matters is if people think they would. Is it confirmed that the Jedi Order isn't being reestablished in the New Republic? I mean with only 1 true Jedi around and the training taking a long time (I mean Anikin was like 13 or something and they said he was too old to start) it could just be that there's so few around that they can barely be considered an Order.
What makes you think there is even a New Republic in the story these new films are following? As for the Sith/Jedi thing, you must remember that even in A New Hope you had a senior Imperial Officer refering to it as a hokey religion to Darth Vader's face. (He's the guy Vader force choked.)
