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Star Wars’ 'Andor' Season 2 Depicts the Banality of American Fascism

The franchise’s Disney era has been defined by toothless politics, but “Andor” Season 2 is a vivid metaphor for America’s descent into authoritarianism.

In the first three episodes of Andor Season 2, which started streaming on Disney+ on April 22, one of the show’s many interlocking plotlines takes us to Mina-Rau, an agricultural planet on the outer rim of the Star Wars galaxy, where a group of rebel soldiers are posing as freelance mechanics. Released in 1999, a full year before George W. Bush became president, Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace is an allegory for how democracies collapse into dictatorship and willingly cede power to a strongman, with parallels to everyone from Julius Caesar to Napoleon Bonaparte. Near the end of the movie, a corrupted Anakin Skywalker turns to his old friend Obi-Wan Kenobi and shouts, “If you’re not with me, you’re my enemy,” an unsubtle reference to the Iraq War that instantly drew comparisons to Bush’s post-9/11 threat: “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.”

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