This is What Revolution Looks Like
Mike Towill
Partly seen through the eyes and interactions of its title character, Andor plots the evolution of a loose covert network of anti-imperialists, to the organised military of the Rebel Alliance, and the beginnings of the Galactic Civil War.
This movement, the proto-Rebellion of Andor's season 1, lacks the publicity, symbolism, and romantic call-to-arms that would later draw enthusiastic Luke Skywalkers or reluctant Han Solos into its fight. Andor shows how the preconditions for such a resistance are created - what causes vast numbers of ordinary people take up arms against a regime with the coercive power of the Empire?
This fostering of revolution is one of Andor's central themes and its believable portrayal helps make the show so compelling. In this chapter we will examine the characteristics of Andor’s revolution based on the modern study of revolution and social movements, identifying the parallels between Andor and revolutions in history. We’ll look how oppression, state actions, and ideology affect revolutions, and how they’re represented in Andor.
Andor’s Revolution in Context
We know that the acts of resistance in Andor Season 1 will culminate in the Rebel Alliance (along with splinter groups), and the Galactic Civil War. Eventually the power vacuum after the Battle of Endor will help the Alliance overthrow the Empire as the Galaxy’s dominant power and form the New Republic, a representative democracy.
In human history, revolutions that fit this template are non-existent. Violent, popular opposition to authoritarian rule, in the form of the Rebel Alliance’s guerrilla warfare strategy, have rarely, if ever, led to a successful democratic revolution. The most striking example is that of the FSLN and the 1979 Nicaraguan Revolution, which led, albeit after a subsequent decade of civil war with US-backed Contra rebels, to a Nicaraguan democracy – with peaceful transitions of power and a stronger civil society.127 In recent years Nicaragua has sadly fallen back towards increasing authoritarianism.128 129
Remarkably in recent history, successful democratic revolutions have been largely non-violent. The 1986 ‘People Power’ Revolution in the Philippines, 1989 ‘Autumn of Nations’ in the Soviet Eastern Bloc, and the successful 2011 Arab Spring Revolutions in Tunisia, and – initially – Egypt, are testament to the power of civil disobedience. Peaceful resistance is mentioned in Star Wars canon, such as the Ghorman Massacre. But such actions are apparently futile against the coercive power of the Empire and overall loyalty of its military. Most democratic revolutions in history have hinged on the military’s disobedience or defection. Partial defections of Syria’s military – with some commanders remaining loyal – resulted not in revolution but a brutal civil war. Democratic factions became only part of a vast ongoing conflict, involving foreign powers supporting numerous ethnic and religious groups with different aims and allegiances.
The eventual revolution in Star Wars is, to a degree, a social revolution as much as a democratic one – with societal changes such as the fundamental restructuring of Galactic administration and hierarchies, granting of political rights, and emancipation of enslaved species. The Rebellion’s strategy of guerilla warfare – and aspects such as retreating to space outside the Empire’s influence and continuing to struggle despite setbacks – are similar to Castro’s M-26-7 movement and the CCP’s decades long struggle in China.
Of course, the actions of the formal Rebel Alliance predate, by some years, the events of Andor. Andor portrays the beginnings of two characteristics common to all revolutions:130 131
- 1) Mass mobilisation, caused by frustration among large sections of the population. Frustration can be the result of economic deprivation, but also caused by brutal oppression, which we see in Andor.
- 2) A shared narrative of justified resistance, allying disaffected elites and others in positions of power with the suffering population. This can be a formal ideology, but most effective are narratives that are broad and inclusive – drawing on memories of a better past or a powerful indictment of the evils of the ruling regime.132
Oppression and the State
“Oppression breeds rebellion” as Luthen repeats so often. He’s right, oppression does breed rebellion – except when it doesn’t. Throughout history, regimes often held such coercive power that those oppressed recognised resistance to be hopeless – and their plight reinforced by cultural norms and religious justifications. As Trotsky put it – “the mere existence of privations is not enough to cause an insurrection; if it were, the masses would be always in revolt.”
Even in modern times, targeted persecution of minorities faced little opposition if the wider population tolerated it – or encouraged it. Liberal democracies are not immune – with the ‘Tyranny of the Majority’ a concern of Early Modern pioneers in democracy.133 But modern, established democracies with codified human rights usually have mechanisms to reduce state minority oppression, whether through legal action to enforce constitutional rights, or through social movements that influence, or become co-opted by, political parties.134 Studies have shown that for developed nations, this democratic ‘safety valve’ has led to significantly less internal violence than authoritarian regimes.135 136 However, despite this capacity for internal reform, liberal democracies have been complicit in supporting oppression abroad. Arms sales to oppressive regimes, and the use of torture in off-shore counter-terrorism efforts, are examples of democracies failing to uphold their domestic principles in foreign relations, and echo the atrocities committed by the Galactic Republic during the Clone Wars.137
But obviously, the Empire is not a constitutional democracy but a totalitarian regime. With its slowly increasing coercive power and largely compliant population, Luthen’s “The Empire is choking us so slowly we’re starting not to notice” shows his powerful conception of a process unfolding much like that of Nazi Germany. The post war reflections of a German philologist, recorded in Milton Mayer’s They Thought They Were Free, echoes the ‘choking us slowly’ process Luthen sees:
You see, one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move… Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow … you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, ‘It’s not so bad’ or ‘You’re seeing things’ or ‘You’re an alarmist.’ And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it … the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on...
And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jew swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all.
Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed … You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing).138
It's this incremental, internalised type of oppression Luthen is so wary of. Mayer never names the author, and recent work by historians suggests that the disclosure of atrocities wasn’t quite as subtle as the author describes.139 Still, the guilt is palpable, and it’s worth noting that the Empire’s High Human, speciesist ideology coexisted with xenophobic prejudice in the human majority population – more dark parallels with Nazi Germany.140
In contrast, in “Oppression breeds rebellion”, Luthen is referring to sudden, new forms of oppression, which is indiscriminate and far beyond what the population accepts as justified. Indiscriminate oppression may elicit sympathy with its victims in the broader populace, and when it punishes individuals regardless of their sentiment towards the regime, anti-regime sentiment can build across society, with hatred of the regime uniting social groups. Widespread anger over state oppression was a significant factor in collapse of Batista regime in Cuba, and the Shah’s rule in 1979 Iran.141 As Cassian observes in Narkina 5: “Power doesn’t panic”.
The process of sudden oppression unifying social divisions unfolds, on a micro-level, in the Narkina 5 arc. Kino, as a shift manager, has a stake in the prison regime continuing just long enough so that he can walk free – as he makes very clear when inducting Cassian:
“You’re mine now…productivity is encouraged, evaluation is constant…the point of this conversation is you understand one thing most clearly. I have 249 days left of my sentence. I have a free hand in how I run this room. I’m used to being in the top three. You will want to keep that happening. Losing hope, your mind, keep it to yourself. Don’t ever slow up my line.”
As the arc progresses, Kino refuses to even engage when Cassian asks about possibilities of escape. Until, of course, the terrible realization that no one in the prison complex will leave the building alive – unless the prisoners collectively overthrow the regime themselves.
Regimes that are seen to respond disproportionately to minor crimes or demonstrations may drive those with anti-regime sentiment into more radical actions. Accounts by IRA142 members cite the repressive actions against peaceful demonstrations from the late 1960s as the beginning of their disillusionment with the political process and moderate nationalist parties, instead turning towards the paramilitary IRA. We see a similar process of oppression driving radicalization on Ferrix.
The only Imperial seemingly aware of the danger posed by the sudden escalation of oppression is Dedra, but strangely only at the galactic level – she thoughtlessly allows Salman Paak to be publicly hanged in Ferrix Square, further fuelling Ferrix’s sense of injustice. The act was unnecessary, and in the end, counterproductive for the purpose of capturing Cassian, with Wilmon’s act of vengeance in the form of a pipe bomb escalating the chaos amid Maarva’s funeral riot, at the precise time when a calmer crowd would have made finding Cassian easier.
Maarva is another Ferrix character radicalised by Imperial oppression. Already haunted by the early Empire’s execution of her husband, she finds the mere presence of Imperial security on Ferrix detestable. She also becomes so emboldened by the Aldhani heist that she commits to staying in Ferrix “for the Rebellion” – in a heartbreaking moment for both her and Cassian. Her subsequent attempts at direct action are adorably naïve, but it’s her powerful funeral speech that hits the Empire hardest.
Symbolic acts of defiance have so often been a catalyst for resistance. Open challenges to the status quo have the effect of turning subconscious or accepted feelings of injustice into motivations to act. From Rosa Park’s refusal to give up her seat on a segregated bus, to Martin Luther nailing his ‘Ninety-five Theses’ on a Wurttemberg church door, such actions have snowballed into huge challenges to those authorities invested in maintaining the existing order.
Thematically, Maava’s speech is a call to arms. However, perhaps more overlooked is the confession, and warning, of the dangers of indifference and inaction towards evil: “I've been turning away from the truth I wanted not to face … We let it grow, and now it's here … I'll tell you this, if I could do it again, I'd wake up early and be fighting those bastards from the start.”. There’s a resemblance to Martin Niemöller's poignant confession:
First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out
– because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out
– because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out
– because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak ou
– because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me
– and there was no one left to speak for me.
Ideology
On the surface, Season 1 of Andor seems to downplay the role of ideology in revolution. The brief voiceover of an extract of Nemik’s manifesto that Cassian listens to in Rix Road largely emphasises the fight against oppression, but there is no mention of the kind of society he envisions after the Empire. We know there was much more to his manifesto, alluded to in the Aldhani arc:
Skeen: “I’d like to hear what Clem believes.”
Cassian: “I know what I’m against. Everything else will have to wait.”
Nemik: “You’re my ideal reader.”
It is difficult to establish Nemik’s political beliefs from own words. He is clearly anti-authoritarian, speaking of “freedom, independence, justice” but without further elaboration. He heavily emphasises ‘natural’ freedom, an idea central to Enlightenment thinkers such as Locke and Rousseau - “Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains” as Rousseau states. Some point towards Nemik’s distrust of Imperial technology, and his respect for the right of repair, as evidence of anti-capitalist thought, but I find this a stretch. He views the reliance on Imperial technology as a means of control and enforcing conformity, as he makes clear to Cassian when extolling the virtues of an old navigational device:
…once you’ve mastered it, you’re free. We’ve grown reliant on Imperial tech and we’ve made ourselves vulnerable. There’s a growing list of things […] they’ve pushed us to forget, things like freedom.
Nemik’s attitude here reflects resentment toward authoritarian states’ control on consumer technologies, a modern example being the restrictions on global internet access imposed by the PRC. Luthen is also aware of this, as he states to Cassian - “Rule number one, never carry anything you don't control.”.
Andor does include some historical parallels of capitalist exploitation. The Empire’s coercion of native Dhanis from the highlands to an ‘Enterprise Zone’ reflects the British Enclosure Acts, beginning in the 17th century, driving much of the rural population into industrial towns, with the subsequent increase in available labour driving the Industrial Revolution in Britain. The mining disaster on Kenari reflects the ecological damage caused by 20th century phosphate mining on the Pacific Islands of Banaba and Nauru. However, we see no specifically anti-capitalist sentiment expressed by any of the protagonists in Andor, and I think this is most likely a choice made by the writers. Most people can relate to Andor’s graphic and realistic depiction of authoritarian oppression, but an overt anti-capitalist framing may have been a turn off for some viewers – and Disney executives.
Aside from Cassian and the survivors of the Aldhani heist, it seems no one else knew of Nemik’s manifesto or its contents. A season 2 sub-plot, where Cassian disseminates the full manifesto under the radar of the Empire, could add some more realism to the development of the Rebellion, and would be comparable to how the circulation of dissident texts has undermined authoritarian regimes in history – for instance the influence of Solzhenitsyn’s writing had on dissident groups in the Soviet Union.143
However, the dissemination of formal ideology is not essential to revolutions, especially when the concept of liberty is already formed in the minds of the population. Revolutionaries have often connected their struggle to idealised versions of the past – French revolutionaries such as Maximilien Robespierre and Louis de Saint-Just often harked back to the virtues of the Roman Republic, and Castro invoked the legacy of Cuban independence hero José Martí in his own fight against the Batista regime and US influence in Cuba.144 145 One of the most symbolic acts during the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe was the ‘Baltic Way’, a 690-kilometre (430-mile) human chain of two million people joining hands between Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, to mark the 50th Anniversary of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the secret agreement between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany that permitted Soviet annexation of the Baltic states.146
It is interesting how the memory of a more liberal past is represented in Andor. In the flashback of Andor’s adoptive father execution by Clone Troopers, it was the first year of the Empire, yet there were shouts from the crowd of “Long live the Republic”, indicating that the population of Ferrix fully understood the reality of the political transformation of the Republic into the Empire. Maarva’s funeral speech briefly alludes to a better past – “There is a wound that won't heal at the center of the galaxy […] We let it grow, and now it's here.” – and we’ve already seen Nemik’s awareness of a past being forgotten. Luthen mentions “an equation I wrote 15 years ago”, which coincides with the date of the Empire’s formation, and Tay Kolma asserts to Mothma that he’d “done more than grow weary of the Empire”. It makes sense that the anti-Imperial sentiment of older characters in Mothma, Luthen, Kolma and Maarva would include more awareness of liberties lost, whereas the motivations of younger protagonists such as Cinta and Lieutenant Gorn result from injustices experienced first-hand.
Under Mothma’s leadership, we can see this evocation of a better past in the official title of the Rebel Alliance - ‘The Alliance to Restore the Republic’. But memory of the past is subjective. Given the Old Republic ended in the aftermath of a civil war, the restoration of the previous status quo would not have held universal appeal, so I think the Alliance’s formal title is a poor choice of words. Alas, this canonized title long predates the Prequel Trilogy, first appearing in a 1977 novelization written by George Lucas himself, so in this light we can forgive Mothma here.
It is perhaps the lack of formal ideology that keeps Andor – and the Rebel Alliance – true to history. Some of the most effective revolutionaries have kept their future intentions vague and downplayed aspects that would alienate different social groups. Before overthrowing the Batista regime, Castro was able to portray himself as a moderate nationalist with democratic ideals.147 148 Similarly, Ayatollah Khomeini downplayed the most divisive elements of his ideology – anti-communism and the creation of an Islamic State – before he took power.149 Instead, the Andor shows how shared oppression unites people in resistance, and the Rebel Alliance later used a symbolic phrase to invoke the memory of a “more civilized aged” worth fighting for:
“May the force be with you”
127. Jack A. Goldstone, Revolutions: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).
128. Cristina Awadalla, “Authoritarian Populism and Patriarchal Logics: Nicaragua’s Engendered Politics”, Social Politics, 30.2 (2023), pp. 701-723.
129. Freedom House, “Nicaragua: Freedom in the World 2023 Country Report”, Freedom House: freedomhouse.org/country/nicaragua/freedom-world/2023.
130. James DeFronzo, Revolutions and Revolutionary Movements (Boulder, CA: Westview Press, 2014).
131. Goldstone, Revolutions.
132. Jack A.Goldstone, “Toward A Fourth Generation”, Annual Review of Political Science, 4 (2001), pp. 139-187.
133. John Adams, James Madison, and Alexis de Tocqueville all wrote on the effect
134. ‘Tyranny of the Majority’ has often been an argument against Direct Democracy, but the problems run deeper when Direct Democracy takes the form of binding, binary choice referendums. Referendums affecting minority rights, requiring simple majorities, and suffering from low turnouts, enable radical minorities to oppress another minority.
The bizarre 2009 Swiss Minaret Referendum, proposing an amendment to the Swiss constitution that banned mosque minarets, passed with 31% of eligible voters. The rather unique, flawed nature of Swiss Direct Democracy gives primacy to these referendum results above all other institutions, and its federal judiciary has very limited powers. As such, attempts to repeal the law with the valid claim it violates freedom of religion have failed. Switzerland has stopped building minarets. See: Lorenz Langer, “Panacea or Pathetic Fallacy? The Swiss Ban on Minarets”, Vanderbilt Law Review, 43.4, (2010), pp. 863-951.
135. John O. Omachonu, “Safety Valve Theory”, Free Speech Center, MTSU, 2009: firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/safety-valve-theory.
136. Haavard Hegre and Martin Nome, “Democracy, Development, and Armed Conflict”, American Political Science Association 2010 Annual Meeting. Washington: APSA, 2010.
137. The Rogue One, “The Republic commiting warcrimes for 8:17”, YouTube, 2022: youtube.com/watch?v=Bcy6sSLblBM.
138. Anonymous, “But Then It Was Too Late”, In Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45 (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1955).
139. John Ezard, “Germans knew of Holocaust horror about death camps”, The Guardian, 2001, theguardian.com/uk/2001/feb/17/johnezard
140. As Eli says in Thrawn: “The Clone Wars killed a lot of people and devastated whole worlds. There’s still a lot of resentment about that, especially among humans […] On top of that, there’s a lot of contempt in the Core Worlds toward the people anywhere past the Mid Rim, humans and nonhumans alike.”, Timothy Zahn, Thrawn (New York: Penguin Random House, 2017).
141. Jack A. Goldstone, “Deterrence in Rebellions and Revolutions”, In Paul C. Stern, Robert. Axelrod, Robert Jervice and Roy Radner, Perspectives on Deterrence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 222-250.
142. Robert R. White, “From Peaceful Protest to Guerrilla War: Micromobilization of the Provisional Irish Republican Army” American Journal of Sociology, 94 (1989), pp.1277-1302.
143. Michael Scammell, “The Writer Who Destroyed an Empire”, The New York Times, 2018: nytimes.com/2018/12/11/opinion/solzhenitsyn-soviet-union-putin.html.
144. Beatrice da Vela and Benjamin Earley, “Senatus and Sénat: the reception of the Roman Senate during the Radical Stage of the French Revolution (1792–4)”, Classical Receptions Journal, 7.1 (2015), pp. 46–63.
145. Goldstone, Revolutions.
146. Liudas Dapkus, “Baltics mark 30th anniversary of anti-Soviet human chain”, Associated Press, 2019: apnews.com/general-news-d7644e0232f441f5aa94d5efdfd7da81.
147. David W. Dunlap, “1957 | ‘Fidel Castro Is Still Alive”, New York Times, 2014: archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/times-insider/2014/11/28/1957-fidel-castro-is-still-alive.
148. DeFronzo, Revolutions and Revolutionary Movements.
149. John Foran, “Discourses and Social Forces: The role of culture and cultural studies in understanding revolutions”, In John Foran, Theorizing Revolutions (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 197-220.