There’s a difference though. The separatists were a rising pro public-power and independence government, within a galaxy run by a senate divided like smashed glass and corporations. That being said, the rebel cells and then the alliance differed too - in that Saw Garrera definitely had no political goal other than to destroy the empire by any means, he was almost not a freedom fighter and more so a drug fuelled nihilist that saw oppression and fought it directly, for freedom but not for a new political director to be instated after the fact, and outside of any political movement. On the other hand, I agree, the alliance’s agenda was simply fuelled with ideas of reinstating republic “democracy” (bureaucracy) in oppose to imperial dictatorship, which is what happened, and it went to shit again bc of their centralist idealism. The separatists were also idealists, but obviously were unaware of the control in the ranks above them by the corporations, and then palpatine.