I imagine within a few hours a brand new gif will exist to sum up the 'saviors' logic.

Simon, from tonight......

 

You aren't thinking from Negans perspective. You are thinking from Ricks perspective. However, Simon has lost his noodle.

 

That logic has always been BS. What the hell have the Saviors provided the communities with other than not killing them all? In the comics, they promise to kill walkers around the town borders. But they go and send walkers into the Hilltop? Everything they do is to breed fear into the communities and keep them under Negan's heels. They're not saving any lives.

 

My take is, Negan believes his system works. He unites communities in a very feudalistic way. He's the government who protects these communities and in turn they provide for the government. They show up once a week and collect the taxes and provide protection.

He uses the message of killing one person as a way of showing these communities that the rules are to be followed or their will be consequences. Kill one, the rest follow the rules.

Obviously this isn't the way things end up working and it sure isn't the "right" way to do things. But in his mind, he's doing the right thing.

 

We haven't seen em protect a community since they are the antagonist and our main focus is the good guys. But we seen a few Saviours that seemingly is not all apeshit insane, like Gavin or the camp with the fem-fatale leader, same outpost that had a baby kiddo.

Negan is a classic warlord or a feudal lord. Or even a "pay for protection" kind of mobster leader.

 

I think Negan believes he's "saving people" by giving the communities a purpose, jobs,structure, but most of all, rules. He told Gabe in the trailer that "a whole lot of people are going to die in there, because I'm not there to stop it". Outside of Alexandria's gates when he was speaking to Carl about having to kill his own mother, Negan says something like.. that's why I'm here, to make sure shit like that doesn't happen" Much like Joe the Claimer believed his rules kept things from "going Darwin every couple of hours", Negan believes his system pretty much does the same. Sometimes he just needs to "teach them all the way" lol.

Edit: Even Rick contemplated at one time how many Alexandrians he would need to kill to "save" the place, and was ready to take Alexandria over, albeit Rick wanted safety for his people and not subservience from the Alexandrians. But I don't think even in that mindset Rick would have killed anyone to set an example, only if he thought they posed a danger to the group.

 

I think Simon has only lost his fear of Negan. I like that he is fed up. His action makes sense only if he plans to take Negan out, and that would make Simon a welcome relief from the crazy psychopathy of Negan's rule. I'm fascinated to see how this plays out.

 

I agree that he’s definitely a mobster-like leader... we just re-watched The Godfather Part I and II and the parallels of Vito/Micheal Corleone and Negan are kind of spot on. Even the line of main “family members” in Sonny, Tom Hagen, Clemenza, etc. are a tight-knit group who do all the decision making. Here you have (or had) Simon, Dwight, Arat, Gavin...

Negan’s essential philosophy:
“I’m going to make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

 

I'm thinking his philosophy stems from what he experienced as the world collapsed. It was touched on in Here's Negan, and I assume we'll get that adapted to TV at some point.

Basically he saw the same things we have seen with Rick and the group. They dealt with other groups who were, by in large, out for themselves. Randall's group, even though we never actually met more than 3 of them. The governor, terminus, Grady, and the wolves. All groups that had their own rules and saw other groups as a threat and treated them as such.

Negan probably experienced the same thing. Instead of continuing to deal with these threats and have these battles, he decided to set rules for everybody. So instead of coming across these groups, fighting them, and ultimately killing all of them and taking their supplies. He came up with a new world order. Use a show of superior strength, kill one of them to show they mean business, and set the rules. Supply the saviors and they won't kill you. It's feudalism at it's core.

This stopped the killing and started the foundation of a society....in his eyes. No more groups fighting one another. They all work for the saviors and in turn, everybody lives. Well except that one person.

Negan believes he is saving people by doing this. In his mind there is no chaos like the earlier stages of the fall, now there is peace and order.

 

Im pretty sure Negan has said before that they make people stronger, right? He really believes that.

 

Negan is a psychopath. Charlie Manson had clearer ideas about how to create a little society that worked well by its leader's rules.

 

It’s the same logic evil warlords used to enslave populations throughout history. You work for me and I protect you. Or you don’t and I kill you.

 

Yeah and most times protecting you just means not killing you anyway.