Here at the Faustus Institute for the Study of Terror (FISTer) we are very interested in the way that insurrections, insurgencies, rebellions and political resistance are depicted in popular media. There are many movies and TV shows in which political resistance plays a major role, with various degrees of realism and political sophistication. V for Vendetta, Fight Club, and the Joker are examples of movies that depict resistance to the established order as nihilistic and aimless, often centered around a single anonymous leader with an often incoherent but appealing message. In contrast in television shows like The Handmaid’s Tale the resistance is fragmented, confused and dissolute, individuals desperate to connect and find solidarity in a political system that prevents organization. Sometimes the movement is still forming or has small aims, as in the case of the Twelve Monkeys television show, and often an organized political movement is presented as antagonist, as in the case of the stevedores’ union in The Wire. Since usually the people who write, direct and act in these shows have no historical experience of or relationship to political movements of any kind, it is not surprising that many of these organizations are depicted with a fair degree of political naivete and with incoherent or inconsistent aims and methods. That’s not necessarily bad in itself, especially when our interest is the plot tension arising from the struggle rather than the struggle itself, but sometimes the movement is key to the story, and then I think it is of some value to understand what kind of movement it is, and what we can learn about our own society, the writers or the industry from the way it depicts them.
Star Wars and The Expanse are examples of science fiction stories in which a resistance movement is fundamental to the story. Star Wars opens with the capture of a rebel vessel and the revelation that the main character is a rebel spy and a traitor, smuggling secret plans that will undermine the system that rules galactic society. All three of the first movies are about this rebellion’s struggles and ultimately its victory. The Expanse opens with one of the main characters, for whom we will ultimately feel some sympathy, torturing a member of a movement called the Outer Planets Alliance (OPA) that will ultimately play a key role and with which the lead characters will be loosely aligned. It’s instructive that in both the opening stanzas of The Expanse and the key Star Wars drama series about the rebellion itself, Andor, these resistance movements are openly described as terrorists and wreckers by their political opponents, and in both shows we are exposed to the daily work and inner life of the people who work for mainstream society to hunt down and destroy these movements. It is impossible to watch Andor or The Expanse without engaging directly with the heroism and ideology of these movements. So, let’s compare them! What is the political framework of these movements, and what does it tell us about the society in which they’re embedded and the society that developed these shows and wrote these protagonists?
Star Wars and Bourgeois Revolution
I am watching Andor now, and I have been struck immediately by the way in which the rebellion is organized and financed, and by the questions the show does not answer about what its goals are. The rebellion is run by a fabulously rich aristocrat in collaboration with a wealthy antiques dealer, both of whom are old enough to have been adults with political and economic power during the Republican era. Later in the show, as the action moves to the planet of Ghorman, this leadership clique seems to be expanding to include a local businessman and his children. These people use their money to organize local rebel activities, though it is made very clear almost from the beginning of the show that these rebels operate on a shoe string and are required to finance and supply their operations primarily through high-risk raids on Imperial supply depots. The leadership talks a lot about sacrifice, but they aren’t putting much of their own money into the struggle, and sometimes the disparity between the conditions of the mercenaries they pay (like Andor himself at the beginning of the show) and the committed cadres is openly commented on.
I have spoken before about the intense inequality in the Star Wars universe, and how visible and widespread poverty and underdevelopment is in Andor itself. It is important to recognize that the widespread poverty of the Star Wars universe, which is also visible in the original movies, predates the ascension of the Empire itself, and is primarily a consequence of the Republic’s mismanagement of galactic resources. The people who were partly involved in the mismanagement of those resources – and perhaps, in the case of the antiques dealer, in looting the historical legacy of many of these underdeveloped communities – are now responsible for coordinating resistance against the Empire that has supplanted (but not notably oppressed) them.
In addition to the legacy of poverty and inequality that is implicitly the responsibility of the now-extinct Republic, in Andor we are also provided with some evidence of how they treated inconvenient or troublesome communities within their polity. Cassian Andor was rescued by his adopted mother from a jungle planet just before Republican soldiers massacred his entire village. These events took place, it seems, just before the Empire formed. The crime for which this violence was enacted on Cassian’s family and everyone he ever knew was to have killed a Republican soldier in self defense, using poisoned darts against a man armed with a blaster. When Cassian’s mother Maarva rescues him she discusses the fate of his village in matter-of-fact terms with her partner, making clear to the viewer that the indiscriminate slaughter unleashed on Andor’s village was the norm in the Republic’s galaxy. This is a striking revelation, since this series of flashbacks tells us clearly that the Republic oversaw remote communities that lived in abject poverty, responded to any infractions by these communities with extreme violence, and saw the extirpation of these poverty-stricken hamlets as an unexceptional part of routine military activity. There is no reason to suppose, based on this story, that the Republic would have behaved any differently to the Empire if it were in possession of a Death Star. This undermines one of the fundamental differences between the Empire and the Republic that was pretty clearly implied in Episode IV: A New Hope, which seemed to suggest that the Empire had evil-doers like Grand Moff Tarkin and Darth Vader, and the Republic would not do the things that they did. Now we have to ask: would not? Or more simply, could not?
In my review of The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire I noted that many of the political leaders of the Republic retained their positions of power, wealth and influence in the early years of the Empire, accepting the leadership and continuing business with few interruptions. In Andor we see that the Empire has begun to interfere in the rights of this class. Mon Mothma has been diverting money to charity (i.e. funding terorrism), and the Empire’s auditors are starting to crack down on the tax evasion and financial independence of her class. This is a central part of the story of both seasons of the show, with Mon Mothma resorting to liaisons with gangsters in order to cover up her financial irregularities. Indeed, by the middle of season 2 one could be forgiven for questioning whether she is committed to the rebellion at all, and is actually trying to extricate herself from her involvement with them as soon as attention turns towards her. And why wouldn’t she? She has a lot to lose from being associated with the rebellion, and her reasons for being involved in it seem paper thin.
This is a fundamental problem with the rebellion. It is a top-down movement organized by partially disenfranchised nobles, who wish to restore their ancestral rights and privileges. There is no organic, grassroots movement to force change on the empire, because from the perspective of ordinary people very little has changed. We hear occasionally from people complaining about increased imperial attention, just wanting to be left alone, or intrusive security activities, but for much of the show the only real victims of the Empire appear to be certain aggrieved members of its ruling class. Even when the action shifts to the planet of Ghorman, where the Empire appears to be genuinely behaving very nastily, the primary voices of resistance are a wealthy businessman and his children, whose web-weaving business is threatened by Imperial overreach. It is very clear that this is a movement of the rich for the rich. It’s more 1688 England than 1917 Russia.
If you doubted the bourgeois elements of this revolution, consider the two set pieces of season 1: A bank heist and a prison break. The bank heist (well, actually an armored car robbery, but whatever) is carefully organized and orchestrated by the rich leadership, who have prepared and “financed” (i.e. paid Cassian) a team on Aldhani, assisted by a turncoat within the regiment who is mostly disaffected because he was denied access to local pussy. They have prepared an escape route and a plan to disseminate the money, which – we are told – will be used to finance the rebellion. Although it seems later in the season that some of this money will be diverted to cover Mon Mothma’s costs, because the rich leadership do not seem to be willing to take much of a hit for the cause – unlike their foot soldiers, who complain about living on “worms and roots” while Andor is paid a small fortune.
In contrast, later in the season Cassian Andor is sent to prison for classically ridiculous reasons. The prison is a masterclass in repression and human control. There is no rebel presence in this prison at all, no turncoats, no spies, nobody in any position of authority who has any connection to the rebellion at all. Not even a cleaner, a freighter pilot or a power engineer. There is no network of prison organizers, no rebel old hands who rule over their wing with an iron fist but make sure they use their position to radicalize the inmates. In fact it is unclear whether the rebel leadership even know of the existence of these prisons. As a result the prisoners have to organize their own breakout, which ultimately succeeds but leaves them forced to swim to safety on the mainland where they can be picked off one by one. In a sad ending to the story one of the main organizers has to stay behind, presumably to be caught and executed by the guards after a desperate last-ditch stand with the other remnants, because he cannot swim. Nobody is waiting to help them, there is no undersea railroad or smuggling network to hide and protect them. The entire system is less developed than Poland in world war 2. Although the prison is well designed and brutal this failure of the rebel leadership does not arise because the infiltration and undermining of the prison system is impossible, but because they didn’t care to try. It was certainly easy enough for them to find a mole in the top secret TIE fighter development system and to insert Cassian Andor as a fake test pilot so he could steal one. This lack of organization is completely inconsistent with any real life experience of ordinary prisons anywhere in history, except perhaps for the Nazi death camps. Prison organizing is a consistent, essential part of every resistance movement, and the only reason it would fail to take place in the prisons we see in Andor is that there is no organic grassroots uprising against the Empire. To the ordinary citizens of the galaxy nothing has changed, and nobody is actually interested in fighting to restore Princess Leia’s ancestral rights.
We also see this in the few moments where we are exposed to anything resembling an ideological basis for the rebellion. Karis Nemik, one of the Aldhani heist crew, has written a manifesto and we occasionally get to hear some excerpts, as well as listen to his description of the rebel perspective. In this manifesto there is no mention of the economic difficulties that the ordinary population of the galaxy face, no discussion of the sharp inequalities, and no consistent underlying class, racial, species or national consciousness. There are only abstract concepts like freedom and independence, a “Don’t Tread on Me” politics of individual liberty. When people on affected planets complain about the Empire, or express their reasons for dissent, they almost never mention the grinding poverty of their ordinary lives, focusing instead on the intrusive security apparatus and the desire to be “left alone”. The bourgeois origins of this resistance movement, a manufactured rebellion that aims to restore the rights of ancestral land owners to dodge taxes, ignore all local and galactic law, and treat the citizens of their planets as peasants, does not allow any deeper political theorizing. On what ideological basis would the movement organize? How would it sell itself? Who would risk anything in a battle to restore the pre-eminent power and rights of a landed gentry who neglected their territories and sucked their people dry? It’s a revolution of land owners, for land owners, using stolen tax money that they use to pay anarchist dupes to commit acts of terrorism and banditry that have the express purpose of forcing the Imperial security state to overreach, until the people can stand it no longer and rise up against the Empire. It’s a movement that wants the people to choose between the lesser of two evils, by forcing the Empire to clearly establish itself as the greater evil. And the leadership salivate at the thought of every turning of the Imperial screw, which never puts pressure on them. This is why it took 17 years for the rebellion to finally establish itself as a meaningful presence with leadership and properly organized cadres on Yavin. No one wanted to join their aristocratic cause until Imperial repression had escalated sufficiently that the evils of the Republic were no longer comparable. Some cause!
Stellar self-determination and liberation in the outer planets
In contrast the OPA and the Belter cause are a clear example of an organic, widely-supported grassroots liberation movement. The Belters have a shared understanding of oppression and poverty that they directly relate to their economic conditions under the control of the inner planets, and express concrete political and economic goals related to these conditions. Although they use abstract overarching themes like liberty and independence, they seek these goals as a necessary precondition for achieving economic and political equality with the inner planets. This shared understanding manifests in the aesthetic of the stations and space ships we see in the television show, which are festooned with posters supporting political causes and smeared with the graffiti of the OPA. The struggle is present wherever we look in the belt.
This direct relationship between their ideological goals and their economic conditions is also the reason why the Belter leadership is made up of workers and soldiers rather than aristocrats and industrialists. OPA representatives like Dawes (the stevedores’ union) and Johnson (a former soldier) take positions of importance in the industrial and transport networks that make up the outer planets’ economic base, and use them to steal resources like nuclear missiles and spaceships, rather than money. The heroes of the fiction are also ordinary people with ordinary jobs in transport and industry. Probably the most elite member of the crew of the Rocinante is James Holden, born on freehold land on an inner planet, but he is on the run from that life because he was conceived as a kind of elaborate form of tax evasion. The others are laborers, ship workers, or brothel guards. The environment of the outer planets is also not conducive to the involvement of inner planet elites in its politics, the most notable example of this being Julie Lao, who flees her rich family to work with the belters and dies a horrible death directly connected to her origins. This is a movement of the people and for the people, with leadership and footsoldiers alike recruited from among the people.
Belter solidarity is also very clear, expressed in both their language (“beltalowda”) and their actions. Although Belter communities can be riddled with crime and poverty, there are heirarchies and gangsters and inequality, they have a shared identity and a shared sense of struggle. This sometimes manifests through violence against Inners (for example when refugees from the inner planets are spaced during evacuation), but also means that they are willing to sacrifice and fight for each other in ways that we do not see from the rebellion. The factions among the OPA do not turn on each other as the rebellion did on Luthen until they are confronted with a lunatic who threatens their humanity itself. They also don’t break easily under torture, as we see happen repeatedly to rebels in Andor, because they have greater loyalties than just their bonds to their immediate superiors or to the particular elite that recruited them.
The Belter cause incorporates a lot of clear political elements from the “third worldist” struggles of the 20th century. It is a stellar version of a national self-determination movement, identifying political independence and sovereignty directly with the dire economic conditions of the places where Belters live. The OPA has much in common with the liberation movements of sub-Saharan Africa, the ANC and IRA, and shares with these movements much of their language, their aesthetic and their activities. Just as those 20th century movements were able to secure solidarity from across the colonial world, such as in the volunteers who fought for Zimbabwe or the popular support for sanctions on South Africa, so the OPA is able to draw support across the belt. The movement is everywhere, because the economic conditions under which it formed are ubiquitous to the outer planets.
The corruption of the rebel cause
George Lucas famously said that he envisioned the rebel cause as analogous with the People’s Army of North Vietnam, and in the original movies it was not difficult to see this analogy. There was no information about how long the Empire had lasted, the action did not take place across dozens of planets that were all mired in poverty, and it was easy to assume that the difficult conditions people faced were a consequence of the Empire’s neglect or cruel extractive policies. Even the name of the antagonist, “Empire”, suggested something imposed on the people of the planets we saw, although there was a little vague political background that contradcited this impression. By the time we get to Andor, however, it is no longer possible to believe this. In fact, Andor seems to imply that the Republic was responsible for just as much evil as the Empire, at least up until the development of the Death Star, through the origin stories of Cassian Andor and Saw Gerrera. Through the many products to come out of this franchise since Disney took it over we can see clearly the widespread poverty and inequality of the galaxy, and how it obviously precedes the Imperial era. By the time we get to the end of Andor whatever vision Lucas originally had for the rebellion as a kind of national liberation movement has been lost, and it has morphed into something much closer to the Glorious Revolution or the American Revolution.
It makes sense that such a corruption of intent would come about, especially after the acquisition of the franchise by Disney. Americans have obviously come to identify themselves with the rebels, which have become a kind of cipher for the elite’s self-conception of America as a symbol of freedom and independence. But America is the actual bad guy, so it’s natural that the actual political motivations of the rebel cause and its leadership should slowly be watered down and denatured until it becomes just a group of gangsters rallying around a few vague principles, led by rich landowners and industrialists. What else could you possibly expect from an analogy to the USA? Like Harry Potter with its politics of colonial elitism, the more the setting is investigated, the clearer it becomes that the political force the protagonists are associated with is evil. It might not be the worst evil in the setting, but it is definitely evil. And in order for us, the viewer, to continue sympathizing with this society as its flaws are revealed, we need its politics to become increasingly abstract until ultimately somehow our heroes are rallying around empty slogans. And in turn, the writers have to find ways for believable, likable characters to support this society, until the rebel movement and its main agents are rendered politically vacuous. This problem is compounded if in the process of expanding the universe it has somehow come to be associated with our own national identity, as has happened to Star Wars.
In contrast, nobody associates the Belters with a western national identity, and the parallels with exploited nations on the periphery is so continually obvious that appreciating the show requires some emotional distance. This gives the writers much more freedom and flexibility to elucidate a coherent political and ideological framework, and in the process also to develop more genuine, flawed and believable characters. This is why The Expanse gets to have characters like Camina Drummer and modern Star Wars does not, while classic Star Wars could at least have Han Solo. It’s difficult to have rich and complex characters in a setting that has been leeched of all moral content in order to prop up a social system we are supposed to believe is good, but which any degree of interrogation reveals clearly to be bad.
It’s a shame, because the Star Wars setting is fun and the idea of rebelling against an Imperial system that overtook a previously wealthy and functioning galactic liberal order is both compelling on its own and offers obvious parallels with inter-war Germany. But unfortunately, once the Star Wars universe expands beyond the specific circumstances of Yavin, the Death Star, and the cute little romances that happen on the sidelines of the battle, it all unravels. As an allegory to modern-day America it works well, but only if we accept that the Republic was evil, and the rebellion is a failed project, just as any attempt to restore American “greatness” – whether Clinton-era Democrat or Reagan-era Republican – is a failed project. The world needs Belters, not Rebels!
