Question

I've seen and heard people talking about Andor being anti-fascist. Do you think it actually is? Is the Empire really fascist? (feel free to discuss what fascism means to you)

A point I discussed with a friend is that in Andor class issues dominate over gender or race issues. I think this shows us the world of Star Wars in a much more Marxist light. I think this contrasts with the original trilogy, which did not really touch on class issues but did touch on racial/gender issues (the empire was white and male, the rebels were multiracial. Maybe the original trilogy was more "fascist vs liberal", whereas Andor feels "fascist vs worker").

Response

It is not really evidenced that the empire is fascist. To me they are more analogous to the British empire than any historical fascist state.

The early episodes show a corporate governing entity demonstrate incompetence and lose control over the colonised native population of Ferrix, only to have government assumed directly by the imperial core. This is reminiscent of the British Raj, which was created by the crown after the East India Company lost control during the Indian rebellion of 1857.

On Cassian's native planet, Kenari, we see a verdant 'untouched' jungle come into contact with the galactic republic. When Cassian is found he lives a peaceful life with his community, but through the show we see the brutal exploitation of Aldani at the hands of the galactic republic and later empire. The planet is mined until it is uninhabitable, and abandoned. This could be many real-life locations but it is particularly analogous to Nauru, a small pacific island whose previously lush climate was rendered infertile by British and Australian mining corporations.

On Aldhani we see a beautiful alpine wilderness dotted by ruined and abandoned villages. We learn that the native clans have been forcibly relocated to an 'enterprise zone' in the lowlands of the country, where they are deprived of their culture and forced to engage in industrial labour. This is a clear reference to the highland clearances of Scotland, during which hundreds of thousands of highlanders were evicted from their land and forced to emigrate to the lowlands and the Americas. This was done by English and Scottish lords and industrialists who preferred to use the land for hunting and for sheep herding, and irreversibly decimated the population. To this day, abandoned villages are still a common sight throughout the country.

On Narkeena 5 we see the imperial prison labour system, where inmates are forced to work indefinitely on an isolated and secret planet. We also see how this negatively affects the local population. This could certainly be compared to the American prison-labour complex or the early Soviet Gulags, but is probably closest to the British penal colonies of Van Diemen's Land. This facility housed British convicts for decades, and was often under guarded and saw frequent escapes. Within the first few decades of colonisation, the native population plunged from thousands to fewer than fifty.

Coruscant, of course, is the imperial core, to which all the profit of the empire flows. Lavish parties and polite conversation are commonplace, and the mainstream discourse is confined to 'high-minded' liberalism versus 'strong and stable' conservatism. Of course, the chauvinism inherent to both of these attitudes lies in their moderation - mainstream society on coruscant is insulated from the suffering of the colonial periphery, and throughout Andor we see this cause policies to backfire again and again.

Of course there are more parallels which can be drawn. The final episode could be the 1905 revolution, Morlana 1 could be Hong Kong, Syril Karn could be a young Hitler or Mussolini, etc., etc. The point is that none of these historical comparisons are against fascist states. The British Empire, America and Australia are all imperialist capitalist states which, while terrible and destructive entities, must be distinguished from fascism.

Through Andor, no clear ideology is presented by either the rebels or the empire. Besides the fact that it arose from the ashes of the dead republic, the empire shows few of the hallmark elements of fascism. There is no appeal to tradition, no rejection of modernity, and no clear cult of action. While usually meaningless, disagreement is permitted in private, and there is no clear attempt from the imperial authorities to appeal to a concept of nationhood. In fact we do not see any attempt by imperial authorities to direct the culture of the empire, all we see is the use of authoritarian power to maintain the status quo. On this basis Andor can be described as a critique of capitalism and authority, but not of fascism.

Reply: The British Empire’s not a different thing than fascism in any real sense.

Response: This raises an interesting question: What is fascism?

There are two main answers to this question, the first being the Marxist class analysis of fascism and the second being a more vague cultural definition.

In Marxist theory, fascism is the most drastic attempt by the bourgeoisie to maintain capitalism in the face of an imminent proletarian uprising. In this sense the British empire was not fascist, as it was fully functioning capitalism and there was no real threat of revolution. The illusion of democracy and civil liberties were still present, at least in the metropole.

The second definition is cultural and usually defined by Eco's 14 points, which can be found here: https://www.openculture.com/2016/11/umberto-eco-makes-a-list-of-the-14-common-features-of-fascism.html. I address this definition in the original post.