On “Andor,” as on Earth, disinformation defeats truth

Two years is not very long, especially when you suspect your time is running out. This is how much time the people of Ghorman have to wake up to the inevitability of their destruction — two years, which translates to eight episodes in “Andor” terms.

This is also how long it takes for the Empire to persuade enough of the galaxy to believe that 800,000 Ghorman citizens deserve to be displaced or eradicated. As Imperial Security Bureau (ISB) head Major Partagaz (Anton Lesser) mentions in “One Year Later,” the second season premiere, this is no easy task. Ghorman, Partagaz warns, is not without political power.  

As for why that is, he doesn’t say. Instead, series creator and showrunner Tony Gilroy shows us, in what appears to be a tourism film, that Ghorman is a cosmopolitan fashion mecca reminiscent of Paris. People dream of visiting, and if not that, owning clothing made of its famous fabric, woven from fiber spun by spiders.

But the Empire needs a mineral in the planet’s soil that not even its people, the Ghor, know about. Hence, on faraway Coruscant, it dedicates a secret task force devoted to ensuring that when the time comes, the planet’s people won’t be able to get in its way, and that few will desire to help them.

This is where the Ministry of Enlightenment’s propaganda weavers enter the picture.

“Andor” (Lucasfilm/Disney+)“Hasn’t there always been something slightly arrogant about the Ghor? Oh, we all feel it – what is that?” one purrs during the group’s first pitch meeting. He and his partner continue, you know, just ask a few questions. What gives them the right to put themselves first? And, did a “dedicated Imperial naval inspector” really have to die to protect Ghorman pride?

“We did that,” a second Enlightenment specialist proudly states. “We made the story. We shaped it, we blew it up. We decided when it was over. With the right ideas, planted in the right markets, in the right sequence, we can now weaponize this galactic opinion.”

There is a Ghorman resistance, but it is small and manipulated by ISB supervisor Dedra Meero (Denise Gough), who relocates to the planet with her lover Syril Karn (Kyle Soller) and plants him within the insurgents’ ranks. Syril believes he’s simply keeping tabs on them, while his overbearing mother Eedy (Kathryn Hunter) swallows every lie about the Ghor that the Imperial News pours into her ears.

“They won’t get another credit of mine! I’m not buying Ghorman again. I’m sick of it,” she harrumphs. “They were always too good for the rest of us!”

A few episodes later, we see reporters on the ground in Ghorman speaking as if they’re in a war zone instead of a place trying to go about its business during an Imperial occupation that grows more visible every day. One speaks of “the continued and inexplicable Ghorman resistance to Imperial norms.” Another talks about the unknown number of Imperial casualties in a series of fire bombings at terminals.

By the time the mining equipment and black-clad shock troops drop on the planet without warning, it’s too late for anyone to turn back – including Syril, who realizes at the 11th hour that Dedra used him to facilitate mass murder. Partagaz blithely describes it another way in his one-on-one meeting with Dedra, his star employee: “It’s bad luck, Ghorman.” The thought makes her a little sick, but her boss has the cure for that bout of conscience, too.

“Let the image of professional ascendance settle your nerves,” he coos. 

Arguments are the “Star Wars” universe’s conversation stimulant, but they tend to concern trivial matters. With “Andor,” debates revolve around what it’s trying to say or do, which is more a matter of timing and societal circumstance than anything else. Gilroy maintains in every interview that his show does not specifically take aim at Trumpism and its policies.

“The sad truth is, I did not write this with a newspaper,”  he told Rolling Stone before the new season premiered, adding that he and the writers started sketching out its two-season arc four or five years ago. “History has its own relevancy, and the repetition and the rinse and repeat of history is something that a lot of people don’t really seem to be aware of.”

Sure. Many speculative fiction writers say some version of this whenever people point out disturbing similarities in their shows and movies to current events. In the same way that 2016’s “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” arrived in theaters just as the nation officially embraced the Dark Side, the first season of “Andor” debuted just in time to confirm that America was well on its way to becoming an autocracy.

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Even back then, its writers didn’t have to consult dead tree pulp to recognize the ways the right-wing media has warped so many people’s views to a degree that the morally indefensible is acceptable.

For instance, recently, far-right YouTube influencer Nick Shirley shared a video from inside a Salvadoran prison titled “The El Salvador Prison the Media Doesn’t Want You to See.” It shows a bright white room full of prisoners hunched over sewing machines as Shirley sings the praises of its “pretty amazing” system.

The prisoners’ free labor, he says, provides clothing for law-abiding Salvadoreans, versus having to import it from the United States or China, “helping create a more self-sufficient El Salvador.” In March, when Fox News enthusiastically interviewed Shirley about his visit, the interviewer didn’t question his opinion that the prison, which stuffs around 80 people into one cell, is housing “some of the worst people roaming the Earth right now.”

That conversation took place around the same time that the major news outlets picked up the story that 238 Venezuelan migrants were deported to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center —“a place so harsh that El Salvador’s justice minister once said the only way out is in a coffin,” CBS News describes.

The network obtained a list of those migrants’ identities by examining internal government documents and found that an overwhelming majority have no apparent criminal convictions or even criminal charges. Among those listed are a makeup artist, a soccer player and a food delivery driver, CBS reported. 

“Andor” viewers can believe it, having seen this plot play out in its hero’s unjust imprisonment in Narkina 5’s manufacturing facility in its first season. Hence, Shirley’s Central American vacation video generated many versions of a meme superimposing his image on stills from the show’s prison arc.

Diego Luna as Cassian Andor in “Andor” (Lucasfilm/Disney+). Likewise, Season 2’s disinformation storyline isn’t predictive but reflective.

These actions join a saga long in progress, culminating in an America riven by fundamentally disparate versions of the truth.  

A hapless, pliable corporate media abetted that outcome, as “Daily Show” correspondent Desi Lydic satirizes on the series’ April 30 episode via a montage of conflicting descriptions of the opening 100 days of Donald Trump’s second term as president. “As we all know, the American media is just as divided as the country itself,” she says, “So depending on which cable news network you watch, Trump’s first 100 days were either . . . sick,” she says, emphasizing that descriptor with sharp indignance before switching to a dumb bro drawl to finish, “or … siiiiiiiiick.”

The net effect is an alarming percentage of Americans who fear their fellow citizens and foreigners, and a congressional body split between Republican enablers parroting the administration’s propaganda and hapless Democrats rubberstamping Trump’s agenda. We’ve watched ICE agents grab international students with legal status off the street and throw them into vans, and FBI agents arrest a Milwaukee judge, accusing her of allegedly obstructing immigration officers trying to arrest a man who was scheduled to appear in her courtroom. 

We’ve been heading in this direction since Fox News’ cable conquest after 9/11 and the resultant ascent of far-right news outlets like Breitbart and Newsmax. But what “Andor” does particularly well is remind its audience that fascism can only succeed if everyday people make it acceptable.

The current trio of episodes, directed by Janus Metz and written by Dan Gilroy, hits us in time for the Ministry of Enlightenment’s masterstroke to coincide with our president’s clamp-down on a free press, including an executive order to cut funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The war Russia instigated in Ukraine in 2022 is still hot, and more than half of Americans have been hypnotized into believing that the United States doesn’t have a responsibility to help Ukraine defend itself, according to Pew Research. Influencers like Shirley assisted in shaping that opinion, too.

The slaughter in Gaza, where the Israeli government has created a humanitarian crisis by cutting off all food imports and medical aid, is ongoing. Meanwhile, Americans are ticked off that groceries are still expensive. Many contentedly swallow Trump’s excuse that former President Joe Biden is to blame for our tanking economy, not his senseless import tariffs. 

Disney+ is rolling out this season of “Andor” in weekly three-episode drops, with each covering a year before Luke Skywalker enters the picture in the Battle of Yavin. This has proven dissatisfying to those who would rather see the show’s eponymous hero, Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), returned to the spotlight instead of using him as a guide through a rebellion struggling to find itself.

But making Cassian the main focus would obscure the show’s larger point about free societies being hustled off a cliff by mass complacency, facilitated by falsehoods.

In the Ghorman arc, Luna’s spy primarily serves as a witness. He’s at the scene of the massacre that occurs not as part of the cause, but to satisfy a vendetta that the violence’s outbreak delays. Not long after Cassian escapes, he’s rushed to Coruscant to chaperone Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) to her destiny as the Rebel Alliance’s leader on Yavin. The Galactic Senate has obeyed in advance, and its politicians make a show of supporting Palpatine’s lies about Ghorman. So Mon knows that she must summon the nerve to speak out against the Ghorman genocide, and doing so will mark the end of the life she knows.

“Andor” (Lucasfilm/Disney+). This legislative last stand also realizes the woeful hopes of American constituents who wish their legislators would effectively rise against this administration instead of writing strongly worded letters. If only our congressional officials and senators had Mon’s courage or the long-term vision of Alderaan’s Bail Organa (Benjamin Bratt, an acceptable recast of a role previously played by Jimmy Smits), who helps make her speech and hasty exit possible. 

“Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous,” Mon says as her fellow legislators boo her. “The death of truth is the ultimate victory. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest.” Then she calls the monster, Emperor Palpatine, by name as the Empire cuts off the Senate’s version of a C-SPAN feed, and Cassian swoops in to help her run for her life.

Elsewhere, Dedra has a panic attack once the gravity of her role in the Empire’s sanctions mass murder sets in, but that’s not enough to jumpstart her conscience. Syril nearly strangles Dedra for deceiving him, but backs off when she reminds him he didn’t seem to mind all the promotions. His final reward for risking everything for a raise is a shot to the dome right after Cassian, his white whale, looks him in the eye and doesn’t recognize him. “Who are you?” Cassian asks. Syril is dead before he can answer. 

“Andor” (Lucasfilm/Disney+)Prior to Mon Mothma’s flight from her apathetic political class, she watches as Ghorman’s senator is dragged off by Imperial officers despite not having committed any crime. “It’s my people today and yours tomorrow!” he warns, and the events of “Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope” tell us he’s right. Once totalitarianism gains momentum, it doesn’t wait for the opposition to catch up. Yet none of the Ghorman politicians’ colleagues intervene. How many of us would? How many of us are?

Oddly, some people still stop short of characterizing “Andor” as commentary on fascism, although parallels between the Empire and Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich abound. They always have. (Those white armored guys who can’t shoot straight aren’t called stormtroopers coincidentally.) Maybe this was a matter of discomfort with how similar America’s corporatized society looks to that of the Galactic Republic.

“Fascist isn’t quite the right category for the Empire,” opined a commenter on a 2022 think piece posted on the Online Library of Liberty. “Fascism emphasizes the unity of the people under the Leader. It has heavy propaganda campaigns to promote loyalty. All economic activity is closely controlled,” they said, clearly not suspecting what the second season of “Andor” or 2025 would have in store. 

New episodes of “Andor” premiere Tuesdays on Disney+.