This short article contains some spoilers for the Disney Plus series Andor.
“The axe forgets, but the tree remembers — ”
This is the quote that introduces the manifesto that shapes and informs the politics in Disney+’s Andor, and in doing so, sets the revolutionary tone the series aims for. The manifesto, written and spoken by the character Nemik, is what elevates this Star Wars series from just a strong piece of television to something beyond that, something hopeful and powerful and deeply political.
The show is a searing critique of imperialism and colonialism, and broadly, of fascism. However, it is not just a criticism of fascism as a historical or fictionalised idea, but a critique of the situations that we see developing in the US, Palestine, Europe, and many other places.
It is optimistic and perhaps hopeful to think that we are, collectively, slowly moving towards broader and generalised political consciousness, but mainstream media like Andor is certainly an important force in this necessary movement.
It is a show about more than just rebellion; it is a show that looks to give shape and form to revolution — a distinct but important difference, the flip sides of the same coin. Its characters and narrative focus do not merely look to fight back against the never-ending imperialism but to identify its weapons, its tools, to disarm them by unravelling its self-made mythos. It looks to create a collective movement and to mobilise its people into a cohesive pushback. And how can this inform us, the viewer, on how to shape the world we live in?
Art, and fiction, have a long and powerful history of espousing radical politics — dystopian fiction, for example, has often made tangible the more invisible inequalities and restraints imposed on populations (the glass rooms in Zamyatin’s We, the Thought Police in Orwell’s 1984, the socially engineered literal fight for survival in Takami’s Battle Royale, and so on). And Andor, thankfully within a landscape of politically-bereft television, follows this tradition by providing a searing critique of imperialism and colonialism. Even further than that, it provides thought and blueprints on how to resist and underpins the importance of “resist” as a verb — it is something to be done (or at the very least, tried), not merely a concept.
It is also a show about pain. Of the erasure of histories, the ending of life, the dehumanisation of an empire’s subjects — and here, Andor becomes most pointed in its call-to-action. As bell hooks reminded us, “true resistance begins with people confronting pain…and wanting to do something to change it.” And this underpins the driving narrative force of Andor. Do its characters just survive, in constant motion, to avoid the pain and potential obliteration, or do they strive for something better, for something that might not better their own lives but provide a hopeful future for generations to come?
There are, of course, limitations to art like this. It is naturally heavy-handed and doesn’t always reflect the shape and permeability of colonialism in the 21st century. Imperialism is something, that despite the claims we are in the post-era, shapes the very structure and shape of the 21st century. The ever-growing emphasis on how the Internet and colonialism are interlinked; the solidifying of borders and their impermeability; the consistent dehumanising of countries and peoples within Africa and the Middle East. And yet, we live in a time where such heavy-handed imperial tactics remain. The genocide in Palestine, the literal caging of humans along the Southern border of the United States, the continued efforts in destroying the indigenous peoples of the Amazon, and so on, are examples of direct, brutal, ongoing imperialism.
So what can we take from fiction like Andor? To take an active role in resisting, even if the battles don’t occur in our backyards. The scene where Cassian Andor and his fellow inmates halt production in a factory-like prison where they are forced to work (a parallel to America’s prison-for-profit model) mirrors many aspects of real life.
For example, when British activists occupied and then shut down a weapons factory in Oldham, England, owned and run by a company that supplied the Israeli-engineered genocide in Palestine, they did not do it because they wanted to save their own lives. They did it because they understood the importance of resistance that spans beyond their own sphere — that the Palestinian people need help, and also that allowing it to happen to someone else will eventually open the door to it happening closer to home. They acted, simply put, because they knew it to be the right thing, and to protect their Palestinian brothers and sisters. When you ignore the gun pointed at them, it is only a matter of time until it is aimed at you — and then who is left to come to your aid?
Many of the tactics on display in Andor are seen across the globe, including the UK. The willing relinquishing of personal privacy in the name of “public safety”; the viciousness of Capitalism, trapping its subjects in a constant cycle of owing money above them, creating dependents; the ransacking of natural resources to reduce areas to shells; the pace of oppression being so rapid that it becomes impossible to even acknowledge the pain, let alone act on it. Even the politics of provocation: inciting provocation that leads to the state over-extending itself, and becoming too aggressive, which in turn makes it easier to stoke rebellion and revolution, is taken from the continuing struggles across the globe.
Andor, of course, is not only limited to its politics. It is visually gorgeous, well-written, generally well-acted, and has a gritty, real-life feeling for a show based on a hyperrealistic alternative where space travel and aliens exist. But the show really distinguishes itself from some of the more drab recent instalments in the Star Wars universe due to its fierce and nuanced critique of imperialism, and its directness in addressing its tools and methods.
I’ve quoted the whole passage of Nemik’s manifesto that we are given towards the end of the series, with good reason:
“There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy. Remember this. Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they’ve already enlisted in the cause. Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward. And then remember this. The Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear. And know this, 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.”
The quality of Andor’s writing is clear here. The directness of its politics is demonstrated. And the series underpins one thing: only through sacrifice, collective action, and the long slog of inches gained, will true revolution come.
