Star Wars Andor, a new television series, just released episode 4, which, I must say, I found to be incredibly boring. I even warned my children about how boring it would be, and advised that if they watch it, then should have some Legos handy to offset their boredom.

But this got me thinking; why should a show like Star Wars be so boring? It was not intuitive, until I starting to work out the cause. What follows is my attempt to do that, though in a circuitous way, hinting at things rather than demonstrating them.

Propaganda as a Weapon

When I was a student of military journalism at the Defense Information School, I learned that the agenda and image of the branch of service for which I served was of paramount importance. The truth was not. The ethics of military journalism are far different from the ethics of civil journalism, and well, they should be. It was our job to inform the world of catastrophic causalities or deployment operations, the divulgement of which at the wrong time and with too much truth could jeopardize the mission.

My mission as a Navy journalist was simply to be a propagandist and report the favorable image of the Navy, to promote morale, and release only as much information as the public needed to know, or the crew for that matter. When doing journalism, the agenda, the mission, was first, never truth.

You see, propaganda is a weapon, and as a military journalist, I know first-hand how strategic it can be. There is such a thing as “display of dominance of power,” which is why you oftentimes hear of a bunch of Navy ships in the Pacific somewhere doing seemingly nothing more than launching aircraft and turning in circles at high speed. To the enemy of America, the Navy is asserting its maritime dominance, but my point is that our enemy wouldn’t even know about such dominance were it not for yourself truly and shipmates like myself photographing and writing stories about how awesome the Navy is.

You are probably wondering what any of this has to do with Star Wars Andor, the new American television series streaming on Disney+. Well, after watching the first few episodes, and the most recent fourth episode in particular, I am convinced that the writers of the show are military propagandists and not cinematic artists.

Andor as Political, Commercial, and Religious Propaganda

The virtue of art, as opposed to military journalism, which is propaganda, is beauty and truth. Insofar as art represents life and does so beautifully (an essential), it is art. If art only aims at truth, it is little more than journalism. If it only aims at beauty, or that which pleases when seen (Thomistic definition), it may be art, but it is very superficial and low art.

Propaganda, on the other hand, neither aims to be truthful or beautiful, but merely to persuade. What is propaganda? The definition in the Encyclopedia Britannica, as found on the Wikipedia page, is as follows:

“Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is being presented.”

Andor is heavy on the aim to persuade people to a particular agenda, which is that corporations are evil and political power is corrupt, or corrupts. I am not going to bother you with mentioning names in the show, in part because I can never remember myself what the characters are called, which is perhaps a consequence of my bad memory or my lack of interest in the characters–which is itself a consequence of the show being propaganda and not art.

False Dichotomy

I wanted to talk briefly about Andor as propaganda in order to get us thinking about why it is propaganda and not art, something that seemingly almost everything made today is after. Episode 4 of the show slowly develops a plot of characters after either domination or revolution. There is no third way, that of all seeking the common good of each and all, which is Christian solidarity.

Andor presents a world that is super-charged with either one of two characters, that of the rebel or that of the overlord. Either you are revolting against an order of domination or else you are suppressing an antagonist to that dominating order. This is a false dichotomy, and so a falsity of reality. The world is not separated by those who dominate and those who are dominated. Well, perhaps it is now, but my point is that it need not always be because it wasn’t in the past. A typical counter-example could be Saint King Louis IX, who helped to rebuild France, which was (fittingly) being plummeted into darkness by the rebellious noble class.

The false dichotomy dynamic is mostly seen in the relationship between the Empire and the little brigand band of rebels who, in this episode anyway, have adopted the identity of a people very much fashioned after the Scotts of the Highlands–who, interestingly enough, opposed Catholic conversion on the whole, preferring Calvinism.

So, you have these oppressed people the leader of which is painfully Irish in appearance, who are ready to execute an insurrection against the Empire stationed there. The show harps on the idyllic lands visually, and harps (pun intended, we are Irish for the moment!) on the sob story of how the indigenous tribes or clans were moved on by the Empire to make way for an outpost and staging area for the Empire. And we are made to feel that this is bad somehow, but if pressed to articulate in theoretical language why, I am sure no one could possibly say.

The show attempts to persuade the viewer of the opinion that the Empire is bad for being orderly and structured and the band of rebels is good for, well, rebelling against that order. Now, one knows why exactly it is bad to be big and strong and ordered, and no one really knows why it is good to be a part of the rebellion.

The costuming also charmingly underscores this mindless mind-shaping show. The Empire characters are always seen, and the Military Corporation, too, as neatly groomed, with ironed uniforms, and professional comportment, what in the Navy we would have called “squared away,” which was always complimentary.

Now, compare that to what the Rebels look like, in particular the main character, Andor, and you see what I mean. They are never really groomed, their clothes look like something out of a hipster catalogue or else something a bum would wear, and they slouch or lack good posture. They are lazy and lack discipline, unless we are talking about what seems to be a boss character of the Rebels. Then you have a character who shifts from a traveling salesman-like character to a flamboyant art dealer in the twinkling of an eye.

What the show cares little if anything about is developing interesting characters and moving the plot along. What the show does very well is develop this narrative that order, power, discipline are vices, and decentralization, weakness, and loafing are virtues. It is clear that the show is aiming neither at truth nor beauty but something else, an undercurrent and agenda which is, in the finally analysis a detriment to the American mind and culture.

Hence, propaganda as a weapon. Andor is a piece of propaganda which was made presumably to undermine civilization as such. Too far? Consider that before the issue was between the Republic and the Monarchy. The socialists have all but killed or hollowed out monarchy today, and so what is left is democratic republicanism, which the show Star Wars champions. The Empire is always evil, the Republic is always good. But the problem remains to change an Empire into a Republic.

Lest the reader think these are just imaginary musing on a television show with no practical application, I will remind him or her that our last sitting president who was attempting to make America great again was defrauded his re-election, and when the rebels came, they were not party to the republican president but to the democratic overthrow of that president through a farce of an election in which there was more fraud than could be adequately documented or presented. Anyone who doubts that needs to consult the history books.

The same rebels of Andor, and consequently, the same group of people the show is targeting to influence, were the ones with the fire bombs in the streets igniting cars when Donald Trump was elected president the first time, and who crowded the streets and did violence against Trump supporters on January 6, 2021.

The hero of Andor is quite literally the enemy of America. Andor was uprooted from his homeland, in which he had to fight the Empire and Corporations at a young age. This is the same type and character in the narrative currently influencing contemporary American culture, the African American, and South and Central American, or the non-White American, really.

(I should probably have mentioned that the uniforms of the Empire in this show are interestingly white, except for the individual Empire dissenter helping the pretender Irish Highlanders who have a shocking resemblance to the irredentism of the IRA, who is not white. He is black, and his uniform is black, too.)

Anyway, the show depicts the hero Andor as a rebel fighter really for his people. He is the rebel without a cause, even though the show talks a lot about “the cause.” We are not really sure what that is, if it isn’t to displace all order in the galaxy with a bunch of loafers in sheepskin and blasters, which seems to be the same agenda of the hidden Globalist Elite pulling the strings on these rebels in the American streets.

Wrap-up

I write this post in anticipation of Columbus Day, which is October 10. I plan to do a Chromocast for it, which should be very interesting. Let me just conclude by saying that we need to be on our guard against propagandist media. The forces of darkness have been trying to upset the order in the galaxy for a while now, and have been very successful in doing so, because God wills it. Make no mistake, Satan is at the back of all this, and the Antichrist in the Vatican (in other words, Francis) is doing his part in it all.

The move is to make Western civilization feel remorse for its past, just as the Second Vatican Council wanted to make the Catholic Church feel remorse for its past. This is because Western civilization is the Catholic Church. We see, then, that ultimately the political and commercial propaganda of Andor is at its roots religious propaganda.

Just as the superstitious pagans of England worshiped at Stonehenge, which was itself an astrological and religious site, so the show Andor has their raid and insurrection happening at the precise time of an astronomically significant event–which (we hope) the writers will get to in episode 5–at an astrological and religious site. The people from all over the land will be there to witness the phenomenon, and will do so as they gather at some kind of monolithic structure reminiscent of Stonehenge. Coincidence, or propaganda. You decide.

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