Andor Has a Message for the Left: Act Now
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The Star Wars series shows a rebel movement struggling to be born, but has a clear lesson for fighting rising fascism. Photo illustration: Fei Liu / Photos: Michael Siluk/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images; Walt Disney Studios
Star Wars has always been political, no matter what the MAGA types who cosplay as Imperial agents and scream about Disney shoving diversity into 'their Star Wars' say.
The original trilogy showed a band of anti-imperialist fighters going up against a vicious pan-galactic state — based, according to its creator George Lucas, on the Vietnam War, with the Viet Cong 'rebels' going up against the United States 'Empire.'
The prequels showed the transformation of the Galactic Republic into the Galactic Empire of the original trilogy. In 2018, during Donald Trump's first administration, James Cameron interviewed Lucas about Star Wars' anti-authoritarian messaging, highlighting a line spoken by Senator Padmé Amidala as Emperor Palpatine declares that the Republic is now an Empire: 'So this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause.'
'We're in the middle of it right now,' Lucas replies.
Lucas sold Star Wars to Disney in 2012 and hasn't been involved in production since then, but Andor, the new series set in the universe, doubles down on its anti-authoritarian roots, focusing on the creation of the revolutionary Rebel Alliance. In the process, it gives us a glimpse into the messiness and conflict that often accompanies building a movement on the left, as activists fight over which political philosophies and strategies work best.
And season two couldn't have come at a more opportune time as Trump and his second administration carry out Project 2025 and Democrats do… well, not much.
Caution: spoilers ahead.
'All doubts aside, there is one glaring certainty. If we do not stand together, we will be crushed.'
Like the U.S. Congress – and especially the Democrats – members of the Imperial Senate in the show have little actual power under Emperor Palpatine's unitary executive. Senators Mon Mothma and Bail Organa use parliamentary procedure and political dealmaking to fight against the Emperor's fascistic rule, but it becomes apparent that this strategy is futile.
In Andor season two, Mothma tries to rally support against an extension of the Public Order Resentencing Directive (P.O.R.D.), an emergency directive from Emperor Palpatine that imposes harsher sentences on people for supposed crimes against the Empire. Senator Dasi Oran of Ghorman won't support the bill because he 'can't risk chafing the Emperor,' who is already singling out his planet for unknown reasons (the audience later learns that Ghorman contains a mineral critical to completing the Death Star). Other senators assert that security concerns are more important than civil liberties, or that the crime numbers can be manipulated and they 'believe what [they] feel.'
'All doubts aside, there is one glaring certainty. If we do not stand together, we will be crushed,' Mothma tells Oran, but his decision has been made.
After season one, Gilroy said in an interview that he sees Mothma as 'sort of a Nancy Pelosi character… a powerful presence in the Senate but she's facing defeat after defeat after defeat as the Empire is taking over.'
But in the background, Mothma is secretly using her family's money to fund a burgeoning insurgency, including Luthen Rael, a spymaster leading a covert Rebel network whose heist of 80 million credits from an Imperial garrison inspired the creation of the repressive P.O.R.D. law in the first place. Unfortunately, Pelosi's family fortune and ice cream freezer probably aren't being put to similar use right now.
At first, Mothma is committed to keeping the Rebellion from breaking into open violence against the powers that be, despite pressure from more radical actors in her orbit.
Saw Gerrera, who heads another rebel cell known as the Partisans, is willing to fight the Empire 'by any means necessary,' including through violence, as he says in the Star Wars book 'Reign of Empire: Mask of Fear.'
Gerrera and his Partisans have appeared throughout the Star Wars timeline, and are the most far-left revolutionary characters in the Age of Rebellion. Gerrera is frequently used as a foil for Senators Mothma and Bail Organa (father of Leia), who prefer to work peacefully from inside the system to fight the Empire. While the senators came to rebel from a place of immense wealth and privilege, fighting more on philosophical grounds, Gerrera has had to fight for the freedom of his people since he was young.
In a meeting among the three to discuss strategy in 'Mask of Fear,' Gerrera tells his counterparts, 'Democracy is a principle and people don't fight for principles, no matter what they say. They fight for land, for resources, for their lives… A democratic genocide isn't any more agreeable to its victims.'
But a brutal massacre on Ghorman eventually pushes Mothma to armed resistance.
On Ghorman, an underground movement known as the Ghorman Front has been percolating since the gruesome killing of hundreds of peaceful protesters in the planet's capital over a decade earlier.
Over the course of the season, the show reveals that the Ghorman Front has been secretly sanctioned by agents within the Imperial Security Bureau, which allowed the rebels to steal Imperial weapons and put up a fight in order to manufacture consent across the galaxy for military crackdowns and the extraction of Ghorman's mineral resources.
When the Empire moves mining equipment onto the planet, the people of Ghorman gather in the capital to protest. A local leader, Carro Rylanz, sees the Empire's provocation as the ruse it is, and urges his daughter Enza and the rest of the Ghorman Front to continue peaceful resistance. They ignore him and prep weapons for the demonstration anyway, with Enza Rylanz telling him, 'You can't keep screaming the same ideas expecting change!'
But the empire takes matters out of the Front's hands. While the people chant, 'We are the Ghor! The galaxy is watching!' and sing their national anthem, Imperial soldiers barricade them inside the plaza. An Imperial sniper perched on the roof sets off the violence with a false flag, purposefully killing an Imperial grunt and provoking an imperial attack, which forces the Ghorman Front to defend their people with arms. They are massacred.
As news of the massacre makes its way to the Imperial Senate, Ghorman Senator Oran is arrested without charges. Mothma realizes the time to fight peacefully from the inside has passed; the Rebellion must escalate its tactics with military action.
In a speech on the Imperial Senate floor about the death of objective reality that wouldn't be out of place on the U.S. Senate floor today, Mothma condemns the Ghorman Massacre as an 'unprovoked genocide.'
'When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest,' Mothma says. 'And the monster screaming the loudest? The monster we've helped create? The monster who will come for us all soon enough is Emperor Palpatine!'
After her speech, Mothma flees to Yavin 4 where she will become the leader of the Rebel Alliance. Senator Organa stays behind to stall until the Rebellion is ready to go up against the Empire's military might.
The parallels of the world of Andor to the United States' political reality in 2025 under Trump's second administration are clear.
Rightwing think tanks and news have spewed propaganda for decades to make us question objective truth, leaving us vulnerable to the monster screaming the loudest. People speaking up against Israel's genocide in Gaza are being imprisoned without evidence or due process. Even politicians who dare go against Trump are targets for arrest now. What is it going to take for Democrats to do more than break floor speech records over things that don't matter and fight for the people they represent?
Our democracy is giving way to authoritarianism, and we can't just wait for a Jedi to save us. We have to fight now.
Or as Karis Nemik, one of the rebellion's freedom fighters, put it in a manifesto in the show's first season: 'The day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empire's authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege. Remember this. Try.' Join The Conversation
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