Intro
Imagine yourself living in a society that has fallen apart. Close your eyes and really try to picture it. Shouldn’t be hard. The place you call home, once rich and powerful, a supposed bastion of freedom and plurality, with institutions dedicated to the advancement of science and technology, falls to fascist who find cracks in the foundation and exploit them to wisk themselves into power. With their new found power they use fear and intimidation to dismantle those flawed institutions that were supposed to protect everyone with checks and balances and rules and precedent and decorum. Half of the people in this nation you’re imagining are in shock and are terrified, but the other half cheer. What’s a little less freedom after all if it keeps us safe from “the other”? There are still elections and voting and pickets but you can just feel it in the air. It’s all for show. It goes nowhere. The old world’s power has eroded too far. It’s too late. The fascist have taken over.
Fear not though, there’s still hope. A new hope, if you will. Little pockets of resistance. Ordinary people are defying orders, committing sabotage, fighting back, helping those most vulnerable. The more they fight back, the harder the state clamps down. But the more they are oppressed, the more people start fighting back. A feedback loop. A spiral or an arms race. Yes momentum is building. You can feel that in the air too. That the fascist days are numbered.
This momentum builds and builds and more and more people start fighting back. They give speeches about a new world without oppression, without inequalities. That sounds like something worth fighting for. People are dying for it. And just as the wave is about to crest and crush the fascist, some people from before the fascist takeover join up and take charge. They want to get things organized properly. They want change, of course, but not too much. These people want to go back to the systems whose contradictions led to the oppression you’re currently fighting against. Remember how good things used to be? We can go back and learn from our mistakes. These people, known as liberals, will say, this time will be different, but it never is.
Part 1: What MAkles a Rebel? A Review of Andor.
The second and final season of Andor just finished airing and for me and a lot of other folks, it might just be the best thing to come from Star Wars in its entire existence. Over two seasons and a movie, we explore in detail the life, radicalizing, deeds, sacrifices and ultimately (spoilers) death of a man named Cassian Andor, rebel leader. We watch in horror as tragedy befalls him and his loved ones as they struggle to bring disparate resistance fighters together into a full rebellion. It’s an unflinching look at the dirty work that is done on the ground to set the stage for the mythic figures we already know about to swoop in and win the day. We see just what we will have to risk and loose in a fight against fascism and for a better world. It was really fucking good is what I’m saying.
Aside from every aspect of this show, from set design to writing to acting, firing on all cylinders, this show draws on a lot of real world examples of successful revolutions in history that can teach the budding revolutionary a lot about what it takes to shape things and drag them, often kicking and screaming, towards a more egalitarian society. These sacrifices often are not a choice between saving yourself or giving something up from the greater good. But instead a choice between a sacrifice for the rebellion or a sacrifice of your freedom to stay “safe”. A choice between others and consent to power.
We can see this in Cassians story. From his childhood on, he has been at the whim of systems that see him as a nuisance. This start with the Old Republic, not the Empire, strip mining his planet and taking him away from his family. It is made very clear early on in season one that Andor has no interest in fighting the Empire. He, like a lot of folks, just wants to get his and escape. But with a system like capitalism and its inevitable final form, fascism, it is so all encompassing that there is no escape. You either fight or become consumed. Cassian, eventually chooses to fight, unlike others in this show who we will touch on later.
Before Cassian meets Luthen, he only fights for and by himself. And while he is able to pull off small victories, this is nothing but an annoyance to the Empire. At most, his schemes are a line item in a report on Coruscant. This a revolution, does not make. In the recent killing of the UnitedHealth CEO by an unknown assassin, we can see the effectiveness of this lone wolf tactic. While I think propaganda of the deed as it’s called occasionally, is not without its merits, without some organizing force behind it, it amounts to nothing. It’s a headline for a week and then people move on. At worst, it gives the State an excuse. It’s like candy. Feels good but has no substance and eventually, it’ll hurt you.
That said, when it comes to these acts, it does highlight just how much potential for revolution is out there. Again look to the killer known as The Claims Adjuster or more accurately the reaction to this deed of propaganda. The internet flooded with love and memes for the unknown man. Then once a snitch tipped the feds to the current suspect, Luigi Mangione, his legal gofundme overflowed, letters flooded in, and fan cams were made. Aside from being very funny, this just shows how much potential for revolution is out there. The appetite for change (and in this case, blood) is palpable. If this killer had been attached to a group or organization, it may have ended up as more of a threat to the status quo instead of just a stand alone incident. A lot of young anarchist I know come up against this problem. There is no brick I can throw or CEO I can merk that will end capitalism outright. Systemic problems will take collective solutions.
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BRAVE KNIGHT: I will slay the beast!
*slices at hydra with Brian Thompson face.*
BRAVE KNIGHT: HA HA! The foe is vagus-
*Two heads grow with the faces of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos*
BRAVE KNIGHT: Spoke too soon I see. No matter!
*Slices off both heads*
BRAVE KNIGHT: There. That takes care of th-
*Four heads grow with the faces of Trump, Theil, Altman, and Mike Johnson*
BRAVE KNIGHT: I’m sensing a pattern here. So I’ll do this!
*Stabs the heart of the hydra*
BRAVE KNIGHT: Take that!
*The beast pulls the sword out to wield it against the knight*
BRAVE KNIGHT: Shit. I guess I should have brought backup.
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Cassian eventually learns this and starts to realize, the stronger the collective, the better chance he has at being free. In order to get out from under an empirical boot, Andor needs someone like Luthen to take him into the fold of rebel cells and sympathizers. What this show does really well is highlight just how many different types of fighting there can be. Revolution is not all building bombs, assassinations and covert ops. It takes a vast network of supporters who can pass as “upright citizens” to do the leg work. These unsung heroes gather intel, provided material assistance like food and money, and when the heat is on, hide and help those on the front lines. They also keep you grounded and remind you what exactly it is your fighting for aside from revenge as we see on planets like Gorman and Mina-Rau. All the rebel cells that are without this kind of support fall into infighting and disillusionment. Saw Gerrera may have valid criticisms of what becomes the rebellion but without the support of the people he was fighting for, his cell collapses to suspicion and bad jacketing, as it’s known. The Gorman may have been infiltrated but, as we saw in their meetings, the massacre was happening no matter what. So at least they went down swinging.
Saw and his partisans are one of the most relatable factions in this show for me personally. There is a conversation between him and Luthen in season one that I have had dozens of times, in which Saw is outraged at the idea of working with other groups he sees as less politically pure than him and his band. Replace his “Separatist” and “Neo-Republicans” with MLMs and tankies, and you have a glimpse into some of the most frustrating conversations I’ve had in my life. To be clear, Saw is right. They have ultimately conflicting views of society than the other cells. But in this fight we are having, it is a war on all fronts. It will not be over in one battle and no change will happen if everyone loses. It’s called a struggle for a reason. Often as an anarchist like myself, you are choosing your allies based on who will bring about favorable conditions to organize under with the understanding that, if all goes well, you’ll still have work to do. An anarchistic society is the utopia we are aiming for and it is unfortunately a long way off. I personally believe everyone is an anarchist, they just don’t know it yet. What they lack is education and the detoxification of the capitalist propaganda they were literally born submerged in. But it is much harder to give them that education when everyone is constantly struggling to feed themselves or under threat from secret police. Our mission is to fight for what we can, while we can, with the knowledge that someone after us will pick up the baton after we’re gone.
Another lesson for the would be rebel this show has to offer is that over the course of fighting, there will be a cost and you will lose people. Sacrifices will have to be made for the greater good and no character understood that more than Luthen. Those in power will never give that power up willingly, which is why systems are so rarely, if ever, changed “from the inside”. It will always protect itself above all else, by force if it sees fit. Andor lost everyone close to him in the end, from his sister to his adopted mother, to Bix and a future with a child he never knew about. Importantly, as Cassian suffers these losses, he comes to see Luthens point of view. They may not win. They may never see the better world they so desperately crave. But if there is even a chance they must fight so someone in the future doesn’t have to. An if that means sacrifice, so be it. Just make it worth it.
As these scattered pockets of resistance start to come together and get organized is where trouble starts to seep in. With any sort of structure of resistance based on a hierarchy comes concentrated power, and with that power comes those that will abuse or misuse it. Which brings us to the end of Andor season two and Rogue One. It’s time to talk about space liberals.
Part 2: Everything Old Is New Again: Obi-Wan & Mon Mothma are the Liberals of Star Wars
The Star Wars universe is full of tragic stories like Cassian Andor. From the galaxy itself falling into the rein of a Sith Emperor, to the disposable lives of the clone army that mirrors how we treat our veterans today, to the more personal story of Anakin Skywalker being manipulated into a fall from grace as The Chosen One down to simply a fascist enforcer. And that’s just the prequels. But above all else, there is one tragic life that I think is at the heart of all the conflict in the Star Wars universe, that also mirrors our own problems back in the real world. And that’s the life of one Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Obi-Wan Kenobi was a Jedi Knight who dedicated his life to the service of the Jedi Order and the protection of the Old Republic. He spent the prime of his life fighting in a war to preserve the Old Republic from the threat of “separatist” and the return of the Sith, only to watch it fall into a dictatorship with a Sith Lord as ruler. He placed his trust in a Jedi Council of elders, not because he thought they always made the right choice but because the system he was in gave those elders power and he must respect the office and tradition, even shunning the potential love of his life and watching her die in his arms for the cause. All of it only to watch that system of power fail his brother in arms and fall to its own hubris. Even then, he spends his golden years, in hiding, protecting the person he thought would bring back the glory of a “more civilized” time. Until his dying day (and even after as a Force ghost) he trusted time and again that the rules based order and the decorum it required would win the day and bring life back to how it was. Sound like any particular political parties you know?
The Skywalker Saga films are ostensibly about the Skywalker family and the fallout of their rise and fall. From the fall of Anakin to the rise (and fall and rise again) of Luke, there are a lot of heart breaking characters in Star Wars. But this refusal to accept that the galaxy has changed and the avoidance of any attempt to change things and instead trusting that the status quo will always be, for me makes Obi-Wan Kenobi one of the most tragic characters in Star Wars. He is what we know on this planet as a liberal. Someone who looks to protect the status quo with the insidious use of civility and middle managers. Someone who believes all change should be incremental and done through “proper” channels and means. He is someone who wants to manage the revolution. In these dark times as things look more and more like that galaxy far, far away and we fall deeper into fascism, his life can be a cautionary tale of how not to fight back.
When fascism eventually does come knocking, liberals like Obi-wan have enough blind faith in the bureaucracy they are so steeped in, they rather smugly think they cannot be defeated in the “marketplace of ideas”. Their system is too complex to be upended. The ship is too large and complicated to do any real damage. But as with any system, no matter how complex and guarded the levers of power, it is vulnerable to manipulation. All it takes, in the Star Wars universe and ours, is one emergency and freedoms will be freely handed over in the name of safety. Both Palpatine and Trump were voted in. The violence happens afterwards, before anyone within the system realizes what is going on. The storming of the Capitol on January 6th didn’t give Trump his second term. The Dems lack of an alternative vision did.
To bring this back to Andor, let’s take a look at one of the stand out characters, Mon Mothma. Mon is a Senator and future Chancellor who grew up on the wealthy planet of Chandrilla. Despite all evidence to the contrary, she believes her ideals and speeches will win the day. She is the living embodiment of “when they go low, we go high”. And much like Obi-Wan learned, the high ground may give you a temporary moral victory, but it paves the way for a far worse monster to take your enemies place. For people like Obi-Wan, Bail Organa and Mon Mothma, they remember how things were and want to bring them back but conveniently forget that it is precisely because of how things were before that allowed things to become how things are now. For Obi and Mon, politics is life on Coruscant, with meetings, debates, petitions and voting. It’s the will of the Force or prophecy. But for the Cassian and the rest of us, politics is the difference between oppression, starvation, destitution and freedom. So we know we must be willing to fight by any means to save ourselves.
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PROTESTERS: OUR RENT IS TOO HIGH, GROCERIES ARE TOO EXPENSIVE, HEALTHCARE IS UNAFFORDABLE. It feels like I have no future. What are you gonna do about it?
HARRIS: *Pull string* *nonsense*
PROTESTERS: What the fuck was that. What about Israel? What are you gonna do to stop the genocide?
HARRIS: *Pull String* *more nonsense*
PROTESTERS: Why won’t you DO SOMETHING?!
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Mon Mothma keeps herself shielded from the dirty work of revolution, instead using her family wealth to essentially buy her way in. Several times throughout the show she is seen to be willfully ignorant and unwilling to make those sacrifices for the cause that we discussed before. The biggest sacrifices she seems to be willing to make are having an audience with goons or going to parties with people she finds beneath her. But whether you’re willing or not, the bill will come due. For Mon, that mostly means giving up her privileged lifestyle. The few times the violence of revolution seeps into her life, she’s disgusted by it. So when she eventually becomes the de facto head of the Resistance, she works to undermine it as soon as she can.
Fast forward to after the defeat of the Empire, their forces scattered to the wind and the Emperor dead, Mon Mothma becomes the leader of the New Republic and Obi-Wan trains the young Jedi Luke Skywalker as he did with his father before him, from beyond the grave. Chancellor Mothma immediately goes out and begins to handicap the more radical, militant rebel alliance that won the war in order to recreate the power structures that started this whole mess. She demilitarizes the Republic and tries to rehabilitate former imperials in the Star Wars version of Operation Paperclip. Because of this, in the short space between trilogies, the New Republic is unprepared for yet another fall to the resurgence of fascism under the guise of the First Order.
Meanwhile, the new Jedi Order had barely begun before it too fails under the direction of Luke and Obi-Wans teachings. There is a reason Obi-Wan is not the one to appear to Luke in exile in The Last Jedi and instead Yoda is the one to tell him to learn from the mistakes of the past and burn the ancient text. Despite the Jedi teachings, that Obi-Wan is so fond of, being against attachment of any kind, he would never be able to tell Luke to let go of the old Order. Both of these characters are clear examples of how liberal elitism, the sense they they know best how to run the galaxy and that the average being in the galaxy needs to be guided, either by The Force or just force, will always fall in it’s own hubris. They are not interested in freedom for all, just power for themselves.
If you listen to people on the right, a liberal is anyone to the left of…well, them. If you think queer folks deserve any sort of respect and dignity, liberal. Think there should be an easier time getting into this country? Liberal. Think there shouldn’t be borders at all? Liberal. It’s all the same to them. From Barack Obama to Bernie Sanders, from Hillary Clinton to Howard Zinn, From AOC, Nancy Pelosi, and Mark Cuban to Murray Bookchin, Noam Chomsky, and David Graeber, it’s all liberal to the rabid fascist. In a lot of ways I envy this simple view of the world. It must be nice to know so clearly who your enemy is, everyone. If left alone, they will eat themselves, as we see by the end of Andor, but we will get to that in the next section. The frustrating thing, or at least one of the frustrating things, about being a leftist is knowing that, liberal, conservative, fascist, doesn’t matter. They all serve the same master in their own unique ways in the end, capital.
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PROTESTERS: I JUST WANT HEALTHCARE!
HARRIS: *Pull string* *Nonsense*
PROTESTERS: Why are you like this?!
*Looks Up to see capitalist pulling the strings*
PROTESTERS: That’s it. I’m burning the whole thing down.
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Any and all systems need maintenance. Most everything in life takes maintenance, but capitalism especially, due to its inherit contradictions, needs constant upkeep and coercion, and even then it inevitably collapses into crisis. Liberals look to manage this downward spiral with slight reforms and empty platitudes while fascist look to accelerate and exploit it, but both have a vested interest in capitalism continuing. That is the way to tell a liberal from a leftist or a rebel. The rebel seeks to change everything in society and decentralize power. This makes liberals uncomfortable because they want that power but believe they are the good guys. In the end, when finally it becomes impossible to not pick a side, liberals will run to the right, betray their promises and become what they once claimed to fight against. Scratch a liberal, a fascist bleeds, as the saying goes.
Fascist will always see everyone else as an enemy, no matter how much you pander to them. Several supposedly opposition parties across the globe, from the Democrats here in the US to the Labour Party in the UK, see an electoral threat to their power from the right and instead of offering voters an alternative vision for the world, pander to those to the right of them hoping to appease them. It never works, no matter what red meat you throw their way. Just ask Neville Chamberlain. Fascist will always see everyone as an enemy because fascism needs an enemy to exist. Without someone to blame for society’s failures, they have no solutions.
While liberal politicians may be unsalvageable as allies in our fight, that’s not to say their liberal base isn’t. Yes, there are plenty of “blue no matter who” woke scolds that are to be avoided and shunned but, there many more people who are liberal simply by default. They were born just like you into this hellish neoliberal society but for whatever reason, have never stopped to think about how things are run and if they need to change. That’s our job. We must educate them and radicalize them. As I’ve said in previous videos, to have a mass movement, you’re gonna need the masses. Wilmon, Brassa, Marva, and even Cassian all start as people uninterested in political struggle. But they all had empathy for others and that can’t survive under a boot. Vel is Mon Mothmas cousin and theoretically would have grown up in similar circumstances. Yet she, maybe because of some inner convictions or maybe because in their seemingly patriarchal, heteronormative society, possibly homosexuality wasn’t accepted, so she was willing to go where Mon Mothma would never and become a true rebel. It will be hard and frustrating trying to undo decades of neoliberal propaganda, I know. But there are millions of people out there waiting for someone to explain to them why things are so bad and what they can do about it. We have those answers and the fascist simply do not. At least none that I’ve heard.
Part 3: What Do The Fascist Even Want? A tangent about the endgame of fascism. (They build their own prison)
This brings me to a bit of a side tangent, so bear with me. I wanna talk to any outright fascist who might have clicked this video, that for some reason are still watching. Maybe you forgot to click away after calling me “meth mouth” in the comments or something. Who knows? Anything is possible I guess.
So if you’re any kind of right wing person out there, I have a question for you. What do you actually want? And I don’t just mean in the short term, like forced deportation and prayer in schools or whatever. I mean, what does your ideal world look like? If you won, you get your way and you’ve made the world in your image, what does that world look like?
You see, if you were to ask me, I’d be able to tell you broadly the kind of world I want to create. One without hierarchy and coercive power. There’d still be power structures, because where there’s people, there’s power, but it’d be bottom up, limited and temporary. Decisions would be made by consent and with the aim of eliminating human suffering and maximizing human leisure. If you wanted to get specific, I’m for worker control of the world economy, and horizontal control of the commons. In the short term this looks like worker owned businesses and taxes going to free college and healthcare and in the long term, workers councils that steer the world and assemblies that make decisions for the collective good with all basic needs (food, water, shelter, etc.) provided without any cost, monetary or otherwise. That may sound like a pipe dream to some but at least I’m aiming for something.
I’ve yet to hear a right wing vision for the future other than some idealized return to a romanticized and fictional glorious past. I just don’t think you’ve got one. The right seems to be seeking to trade the future for total power today. It’s a race to rule over a wasteland. But what I’m saying to you is, chances are that power is not making its way to you. Fascism is a death cult. It always needs an enemy. As I was saying before, it’s a meat grinder that needs people to blame, exploit and eliminate, and eventually you’re gonna be on the menu.
Let’s just look at the fascist characters in Andor as an example. We can start at the bottom with Syril Karn. This slimy toad of a man-child was eager to find a boot to lick. He is a true believer in the cause and goes above and beyond for the Empire. Not until his final days living as a spy among the Gorman, which I’ll come back to, does he start to see the Empires lies about the rebels. By then it’s far too late and he dies a nobody. A statistical error. Just like the dead cops that started the whole show.
Dedra Meero spent seemingly her whole life helping build the Empire, climbing the ranks of the ISB agency through intelligence gathering and torture and for what? To land her in a prison of her own making. Major Partagaz ends up dying of self inflicted lead poisoning because he sees the writing on the wall. People will never stop rebelling, so the Empire will always need someone to blame for that rebellion. And he is next on the chopping block. Time and again, fascism is a beast that eats its own. Its continued existence is predicated on constant blood and death. Why be a part of that?
Back to my original question though. Let’s say none of that was true. Let’s say, keeping in the Star Wars universe, the Rebellion loses and is completely annihilated. What then? The Emperor has unlimited power to do what exactly? Sit on a big chair and look creepy? To weep for there were no more worlds to conquer? Is that all power is? Some nihilistic ego project? Sounds boring as hell. WHAT DO YOU WANT?! I’m pretty into existentialism, so I don’t believe life has an inherent or supernatural meaning. That’s bleak to some but I see it as freeing. We create the meaning. So why not create something better?
It seems so obvious to me that the right is such a dead end that it sometimes boggles me that anyone falls into it in the year 2025. But, and this may shock you, I blame the left. We also have a problem with our vision of the future in that we do not communicate it well at all. The problem seems to be that we are all mired in the discourse of the day. Spending all our time trying to score political points in the present and paying no mind to what we might be building. It doesn’t help that the left is very divided on how we build the better world we want, but that’s a whole other video. Both sides are too busy in their tit for tat discourse that we never have time to imagine what we want from the world. This the only reason I can see that allows centrist to exist at all. They see the chaos of a changing world and an uncertain future and cling to the status quo as the devil they know, I assume.
I think a lot of these views, from the center to the right, come from a place of fear. Fear of change. Fear of the other. Fear after all, as Master Yoda said, is the first step towards the dark side. You must conquer your fear using empathy. This system we are drowning in is a place that has us fighting over scraps, has convinced us it’s a zero sum game. If we even get a whiff of anyone else getting more, we assume it means we must get less. But that’s just a distraction from the people hoarding more than they could ever use. What I’m saying is, we are fighting over who gets a slice of the pie while we are living in a bakery. This isn’t meant to say that your fear isn’t valid. It’s a scary world out there. But I think you should use that fear of what could be and work to make a world without fear, instead of trying to be what people are scared of.
Some people think there are others out there coming for them or their way of life. Some great horde crossing the border or shadowy cabal pulling the strings. If this is you and you hate everything I talk about at least try this. Travel. Travel somewhere that you assume is hostile to you. Take a day to go somewhere within your means and just hang around. Don’t try and start a fight, you will get your ass kicked. Just get lunch, walk around and people watch. You’ll start to realize, if you’re open to it, that difference is nothing to be scared of or to fight against. In fact, most folks all want basically the same thing you do. To eat, stay comfy, have some fun, get laid occasionally, and not suffer needlessly. Why not work to create a world that maximizes that?
Anyway, I guess that’s all I had to say to anyone on the other side of the political spectrum who for some reason is hate watching my Andor video. Leave a comment telling me your vision for the world. Or just leave death threats as usual, I don’t care. We will settle it in the streets. Now, what was I talking about before all this?
Part 4: Meanwhile, Back Home: Comparing Star Wars to Dems
I was in 8th grade when 9/11 happened. I remember getting to Spanish class and the teacher (shoutout Mr. Marchi) wheeling in a TV so we could all watch the news as the second plane hit. Aye caramba. By this point in my life I was already reading (but not quite understanding) writers like Emma Goldman. (No. I didn’t have a lot of friends. How’d you guess?) So I was already on the path to being a little revolutionary. A few years earlier, a little film had come out called The Phantom Menace about the beginning of a manufactured conflict that brought about the end of democracy and the rise of fascism in a far off galaxy. The parallels are eerie.
After 9/11, the right swooped in to enact a plan decades in the making to push this country towards authoritarianism. Using a crisis this country created, they worked to centralize power in the executive branch and crush opposition. Even when Obama was President, they used their limited power and constant contrarianism to water down and halt any whiff of progress and succeeded. Not because they are particularly adapt statesmen and women, but because liberals were playing by rules that no longer applied. Like Obi-Wan, they were reliant on past political norms and didn’t recognize that the environment had changed around them. They simply refused to accept that the neoliberal apparatus they had constructed could ever be manipulated. Even today, as masked feds snatch people off the streets and send them to foreign prisons, Dems seemed more worried about poll numbers and rowdy protests.
In America, and I assume most of the “western” world, politics is treated like sports. There are two teams that are bitter rivals, each with their star players. They spend a lot of effort racking up points, in this case votes. Both these teams are fighting over the same prize, to rule. And just like sports, you can comment, cheer, jeer, and watch from the sidelines, but unless you’re on the field, you can’t affect the score. I’m not a sports guy so I hope this analogy holds up. The problem becomes then that no one knows what they’re fighting for, only who they’re fighting against, the other team.
In the 90s, neoliberals kind of declared victory over the 20th century and declared their “end of history”. This is the best system we got so we will never change, they told us. But another way to describe something that never changes is dead and if something refuses to change it might as well be a suicide. As I said before, everything in life needs maintenance. What neoliberals did was say, what if we made the maintenance the main feature? What if we can convince people that, you can’t actually change the system, only who maintains it. You can elect your HR rep, but you can’t change the run the business. As far as they are concerned, we’re all on this ship, and there are no others, so it doesn’t matter if it’s sinking.
Now if you have eyes and a brain, you may have noticed that history did not in fact end in the 90’s. The system they said would last forever is unraveling from both internal contradictions and external pressure on all sides. The managers of this exploitation machine never conceived that someone would intentionally mismanage it. At a certain point in the last 30 years, the right stopped playing by the decency rules that neoliberals had constructed and now the whole system is falling apart. The liberals, as they always do, set the stage and the far right stole the spotlight.
Some liberals out there might be thinking, what do you mean they set the stage? Surely my favorite Democrats have been fighting Republican power grabs this whole time. Who became tough on crime and exploded the prison population with black men on trumped up drug charges and led the fight against “welfare queens” in the 90’s? Clinton. Who carried out extrajudicial drone strikes across the world and refused to close Gitmo? Obama. Who expanded the budget for ICE, kept kids in cages and deported more people than Trump in his first term? You guessed it, Biden. The optics of the Democrats may be softer but the nature of the capitalist machine remains the same. It needs constant war, an out group to persecute and cheap prison labor. Capitalism doesn’t care who’s in charge. Different teams, same game.
Let’s bring it back to Star Wars. When The Old Republic strip mined Cassians home, I’m sure it was all above board. I imagine it went along the lines of a vote in the Senate, after a feasibility study was done, to have a private/public partnership with the Trade Federation and Mining Guilds, to harvest much needed minerals that would be a boost to the Galactic economy. Compare that to Gohrman, when the Empire wanted the minerals buried under them, it lied in the media about an uprising and slaughtered the population before taking what they wanted. Same result, just different ways of manufacturing consent.
But let’s say liberals were actually in fact interested in fighting the forces of fascism. We can even keep it in the Star Wars universe and say they are fighting the Empire, even though the Empire in Star Wars is based on the US. What kind of tactics have they used and what would they have us do as a movement.
As I’ve already discussed, liberals are all about optics. So naturally they love an empty gesture. Liberals are experts at watering down a radical message. As an example, let’s take the call by Black Lives Matter protesters to abolish the police. This admittedly radical demand was quickly sanded down to defund the police, a much more reasonable demand that works within the framework of capital. We are paying for a service we do not want and would like to cancel it. But even this was too much for Democrats. Instead they donned kente cloth and took a knee at the Capitol and painted ‘Black Lives Matter’ on a few streets across the country. Just to turn around and run on calls to give the cops more money. They had all the right words and symbols but it was all done just to take the wind out of the radical sails.
This is one of capitalism's greatest strengths. It can take any resistance to it, break it down into a few phrases and symbols, strip it of its call to action and sell it back to you. It’s able to do this because it has convinced you and everyone else, that you are not a worker who creates value and makes the world run, but a consumer who expresses their values with what they buy and passively takes what the world gives them. Everything for liberals must work within this framework. For every problem there is a solution they want to sell you. Should we eradicate billionaires and their over polluting private jets and companies to solve climate change? No. Instead you should buy an electric car and recycle more. A society with a collapsing safety net have you stressed and depressed? We got some pills just for you if you sign up for Better Help today. A bad diet causing your body to fall apart? Well just eat better stupid! Yea, it’s twice as expensive, twice as time consuming, and twice as inconvenient but can you really put a price on health? For liberals there will always be a product or service that you can get to buy your way to freedom. But if there’s a profit to be made off suffering and society is run in the name of profit, then there will always be more suffering.
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*Three graphs labeled “Private Prisons”, “AI Data Centers”, and “Arms Deals” show steady growth*
SUIT: As you can see it’s been a profitable quarter this year. You guys should be excited!
NORMAL PERSON: Why?
SUIT: Well…because…we made money. Look at the graphs.
NORMAL PERSON: I see that but we made it by locking innocent people up, poisoning the water, stealing peoples jobs and creative work, and arming mass murder. Why would that excite me?
SUIT: Because…well…I mean.. because line go up.
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When you link a person's morals to how they spend their money, suddenly you can convince them that the only way to fight the ills of capitalism is a different flavor of capitalism. You want to be a good person? Buy your Coexist sticker from the local queer black owned sweatshop. The boot of exploitation will still be on your neck but it’ll be much more stylish and worn by someone cooler. In as much as what you buy is what you are, what you choose to not buy is equally a mirror for your values. Instead of using your voice as your voice, liberals would have you use your money as your voice. Vote with your dollar, as they say. There are several problems with that, not least of which is it implies that, the more dollars you have, they more of a voice you have, and we have seen how that pans out in the world of lobbying. Also, this convinces people that their only avenue for protest is a boycott. Unfortunately, that is no longer enough.
The problem is we no longer live in the world of the 60’s where a large organized boycott could do significant damage to a business. We are unlucky enough to live in the hypermonopolized ubercapitalist world of the 21st century. There are just some companies you cannot avoid (and boy I’ve tried). Wal-Mart and Amazon have eaten away almost all competitors so much that in-person, brick and mortar stores are almost a thing of the past and they are just the most obvious examples. On the shelves of these stores, you’re overwhelmed with the illusion of choice when in reality all those options are owned by a handful of companies who all use one or two sources for the actual substance of what you’re buying. None of it ethical or local. Capitalism has simply spread itself too deep into our lives and become too complex to simply not participate in it.
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SHOPPER: Well I can’t buy that. They fund genocide. Ugh and they have a racist owner. And these guys tweeted Nazi shit last week. Fuck it.
*Pushes cart away*
SHOPPER: I’m just gonna go live in the woods. I don’t need anyone else. I’m just gonna drive in a car I didn’t build on roads I didn’t lay and grow my own food in a house I’ll build.
*Later in the woods as a blizzard blows*
SHOPPER: I miss indoor plumbing.
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That isn’t to say that boycotts are completely useless. It just can’t be done in isolation. Look at the BDS movement for Palestine. It’s boycott and divestment and sanctions. It’s hitting at the Israeli economy angle on three separate fronts, in addition to other methods of fighting against the genocidal ethnostate. Liberals would have you believe that you can just buy the product with the best politics and that will change the world. But unless you decide to stop eating and go live off grid, someone, somewhere is being exploited because that is the nature of the system.
Another way neoliberalism convinces you that you have power while simultaneously taking your power away is with our representative government as a whole. It sounds like a crazy thing to say but politicians use the ever churning election cycle to keep you from doing anything yourself. To go way back to our sports metaphor, we lost this game but we will get ‘em next time. Let’s think about what voting actually is though. Where does a politician get their power? From some supernatural being? A magic sword? Their gene pool? No.In modern times at least they govern from the consent of the governed. When we vote, we are individually handing over our collective power to people we don’t know, who have let’s say have compromised motivations, and do not give a single shit about our lives. You go in and pull the lever of the narrow options of the person you think most aligns with your personal politics. Or, more accurately, the person who least offends your personal politics out of a small batch of bad options. If instead, all the people who begrudgingly vote Democrat got together and organized to get done what they are waiting for Democrats to do, it would get done. The power has been there all along but we’ve just been handing it away. The dirty little secret is, WE DON’T NEED THEM. Think of all the time, money and energy spent on the next campaign, midterm, or presidential election that could instead be used for mutual aid, local projects, community defense, labor organizing. It’s a waste.
But just like boycotting, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t vote. That’s up to you. What I am saying is to be suspicious of any answer to oppression that’s given to you by your oppressor. The masters tools will never dismantle the master's house, as the saying goes. In Andor, they did the most to dismantle the Empire when they were destroying infrastructure, disrupting arrest & investigations, and stealing critical plans. Not when they were refusing o buy Empire made groceries or calling Palpatine Emperor Diaperface on space Twitter or whatever. It was direct action that made the gains before liberals like Mon Mothma reined them in.
The real reason liberals would never be able to defeat the Empire is of course because they are the Empire. They have the same monied interests in expanding the American empire as conservatives, the only difference being their justifications. Instead of an “America first. Might Makes right” message, they go for the obfuscated “Beacon of democracy. Protecting American interest” angle. Democrats don’t want to bomb a bunch of poor countries, but we have to protect our interest in the region, that region being the entirety of the Earth if the number of military bases is any indication. But people here and elsewhere have finally started to see through that and have realized that both “sides” are bad options. It doesn’t matter how you frame your message if the message sucks. So people have started to look outside of their two shitty options for something, anything, different.
This of course scares the powerful more than any threat from the political right. If the people you govern stop believing in the story that puts you in power, things will start to crumble fast. It’s not long after you realize the Emperor has no clothes that you realize you don’t need an Emperor at all. So they have started to over react and erode the values they once swore that they were the only ones who could protect them. This is most apparent in the clamp down on Pro Palestinian protest. The uniparty line for 60 years on Israel is that we have to support them so Jews have a safe place in the world. That they are our closest ally in the Middle East and the only true democracy in the region. On top of that, it’s the Holy Land, promised to them by God a few thousand years ago. All this seemed to work despite how transparent it is until the last few years when Israel started unleashing a full genocide on the people of Gaza. When a new narrative started streaming to us over our little black pocket screens directly from the source, without the spin of the American media, people started to question that story. Why can’t we just make the whole world safe for Jews? Why do they need a special ethnostate? If it’s a democracy, why can’t Palestinian people vote? And who the fuck cares what your imaginary friend says? We live in the real world after all. It’s not long before you realize that maybe the story you were fed was bullshit and, aside from some religious nuts who think if enough Jews move to Israel their sky daddy will come down and spank the rest of us, America supports Israel because it is an extension of the American empire. A loaded gun pointed at the oil producing countries of the region. A rabid attack dog we keep threatening to let off the leash if those countries don’t play ball with American interest. Maybe we’re the baddies.
That kind of erosion of trust in the institutions of power is what has caused this backlash to groups critical of Israel. From America to the UK and even Germany, all three countries responsible in their own ways for the whole situation, have stated to suppress anyone critical of Israel in anyway, stripping people of one of the pillars of the so called “free worlds” basic rights, free speech. They first went to their same old bag of tricks and tried to spin a story about Israels right to defend itself and labeling any resistance as terrorist or antisemitism. But as soon as it became clear that wasn’t working (because there’s nothing that can justify systematically killing women and children, bombing hospitals and kindergartens, etc.) they immediately went to work cutting off the very avenues of protest they once championed. States have signed into law anti-BDS legislation that bans on coordinated boycotts of Israel. They spent millions running against candidates in their own party if they dared to speak out against genocide. It’s also illegal to support any organization that might in some way have something to do with any group they deem to be a terrorist organization. So much for voting with your dollar I guess. Keep in mind, in the galaxy far, far away, the whole of the Resistance is deemed by the Empire to be terrorist, which justifies their use of lethal force. Are you starting to get a sense of what side of that divide the American government might be on?
Liberals seek only to water down the message until it is empty. They want to take the demand for a ceasefire now (a demand already watered down from the anti-zionist call to end Israels apartheid state, which is further watered down from the anarchist call for the irradiation of borders and the free movement of people and ideas, not just capital, but I digress) to brokering a return to an uneven two state solution and maybe we won’t sell as many weapons to them anymore, for awhile. We have to compromise with the other side after all if we want to get anything done. The problem of course is the other side are a bunch of genocidal lunatics who will never be satisfied. Besides the fact that it’s morally repugnant and cowardly, it also just won’t work. It’s like if the Rebel Alliance decided, ok Palpatine, as long as you put up a nice plaque for Alderaan and let Tatooine govern itself, we will let you have a mini Deathstar that can only blow up small moons as long as you pinky swear not to use it. Liberals want you to use their preferred methods of protest exactly because they know that of they can’t ignore it or leech the energy out of the movement and divert it into meaningless market solutions, then they can’t just outright shut it down. Why would they ever give you the tools you need to take away their power? The people that line their pockets make too much money to let something as meaningless as public opinion get in the way of them hold on to their power. And if they gotta fund a little genocide to do it, so be it.
I don’t mean to leave you here feeling powerless. I’m not saying these tactics don’t have their place. But they must be backed up by more militant direct action organizing. Otherwise, any smooth talking liberal can come along, peddling hope and change, just to suck the energy out of the revolution and back into the hands of the system that is causing the problem in the first place. Mon Mothmas money may be useful and she may know how to throw a rager, but it doesn’t mean she knows how to lead a revolution.
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Luke: I’m going to beat you Palpatine. I will restore The Republic!
Palpatine: Silly child. I was voted into power by the Senate itself.
Luke: Oh. In that case, I am going to bring back the Senate. And we are gonna take you down. We will open a commission on the effects of your policy and vote to impeach!
Palpatine: What?
Luke: Then we will have a committee decide how big of a fine you’ll pay for Alderon.
Palpatine: Um, ok.
Luke: I’ll sentence you to a life of a best selling tell all author. Rotating between the Sunday news shows and toxic manosphere podcasts until you land a consulting lobbyist job.
Palpatine: Ugh. You’re pathetic. Vader, get him.
Vader: Gladly.
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Conclusion: Which Side Are You On?
I have gotten WAY OFF the topic of Andor here and I do apologize. But liberals just fucking annoying me, here or in fiction, so I had a lot to get off my chest. Whenever a conservative hurtles the liberal or commie accusation my way I have to tell them not to insult me. It’s much worse than that. I’m an anarchist.
To get back to the point and wrap this thing up, Andor is a fantastic show that we can glean lessons from about how to fight fascism, the cost of fighting and ultimately, the dangers of liberalism in revolutionary times. The acting is incredible, the sets and costumes immaculate, writing flawless. It is a show firing on all cylinders. It may in fact be the best Star Wars thing that has ever Star Warsed. And they did it all without a single lightsaber and merely a mention of The Force. It is a foot soldiers view of a galaxy of myths and legends. How it got made under the Mickey sized boot of Disney is a true mystery.
In the end though, it is still just a show, made by a giant corporation, to satisfy shareholders and make a profit. In and of itself, it is not revolutionary. Honestly, it fits more in line with the neoliberal trick of giving you a product or service that saps you of your own revolutionary potential. If you watched this show and think to yourself ‘Well I liked it, so I must be one of the good guys’ you’re falling for it. This show is only helpful if it inspires you to get out there and start organizing against the fascism that’s here, in this galaxy, today. As I finish writing this, the American government is building camps to hold undocumented folks and potentially sell them off as free labor. They are legislating justifications for their oppression of the marginalized, like non-white folks or trans folks. They are dismantling what little of a social safety net we had left to transfer billions to the rich and powerful. They are disappearing people off the street in broad daylight and sending them places where we can not hear them dissent. The Empire is here. The Sith have taken over and Storm Troopers are in the streets, your streets. Much like Cassian Andor in the beginning of the show, the walls are closing in. The problem has become impossible to ignore. So what are you gonna do about it?
There are really only three things you need to decide right now. First, and most importantly, which side are you on? If you’re chomping at the bit to be a Stormtrooper, well I don’t know how you made it this far in the video. Fuck off.
Second, once you decide what side you’re on, what are you gonna do about it? Will you be a liberal, hoping to give the old ways one more shot. If only we did it right this time, surely it will work. We just need a more diverse capitalism. The boot isn’t so bad if someone else is wearing it. If so, you’re probably waiting for someone to come save us. A Luke Skywalker or a Bernie Sanders or AOC or Mon Mothma, to swoop in reestablish the glory days of the Old Republic. But there are no solutions in the old systems that set the stage for fascism's rise. Andor shows us a new world doesn’t come from big mythical figures, but in all of us coming together in solidarity, fighting and sacrificing for the world we want. Taking back the power that has been there all along, that we have traded away in voting booths. Kylo Ren was wrong about most things, but he was right about letting the past go, advice he obviously never took as he tried to recreate the Empire. You learn from it and make something new. Counterintuitively, to be a liberal is to be conservative. It’s calls to be patient and change will happen slowly. A desperate clinging to institutions that no longer serve the people. Liberalism sits revolution out, chastising from the sidelines, until it’s time to take credit for the change. This is ultimately picking a side, you’re just not on the side you think you’re on.
If not a liberal, maybe you will you be an opportunist? Just making sure in all the chaos the next decades bring that get yours by any means. An accelerationist? A bystander? Or will you be a rebel who spends all their waking hours fighting against oppression and for a better world? You then have to consider just how far you’ll go and how much you’re willing to risk for the cause. Would the cause even benefit from you burning away your life like Luthen did or is it better served with you in a support role? One thing we can learn from Andor is that it will take al types to fight fascism. From the Libiest of Libs to the most violent of revolutionaries. Once the fight is over, we must look at those who see victory as returning to the past that created the conditions for its own downfall as a threat to a better world.
Lastly, and most overlooked, what kind of world do you want to build? Do you really want to fight and possibly die to reinstate the very systems that led us down the path we are on now? Or do you want to think bigger, bolder, and build a society without coercion and oppression. Cause I know, if I’m gonna go down, I want it to be worth it. In a world where the center cannot hold, why would you want to be a centrist? Things are changing, one way or the other. So pick a side, or get out of the way. As always, death to empire, death to fascism, and death to the algorithm.
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