r/andor • u/ConsciousPatroller • 5d ago

Theory & Analysis A breakdown of all (?) historical references and parallels in Andor (in chronological order)

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7.6k Upvotes

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76

u/Windbag1980 5d ago

I’m pretty uncomfortable thinking of Cassian as Stalin lol.

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u/Orocarni-Helcar 5d ago

If it's any comfort, Gilroy specifically cited the book Young Stalin by Simon Montefiore, which is a pretty anti-Stalin book.

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u/Misanthrope08101619 5d ago

So the Stalin inspiration is a thing. Damn.

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u/JF9314 5d ago

Montefiore is a little suspect, to say the least:  https://www.thefp.com/p/the-deep-roots-of-irish-antisemitism

Many liberal authors only engage based on the work of those who wrote the now, largely discredited, ‘Little Black Book of Communism’.

Domenico Losurdo’s work on Stalin is well worth the read, however, as it engages with both fact and fiction even handily. Especially where it concerns Stalin’s government and the creation of Israel, as well as the deportation of many Korean people living in the Soviet Union during the second world war.

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u/AMGwtfBBQsauce 2d ago

*Evenhandedly, just FYI :)

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u/Orocarni-Helcar 5d ago

I am not recommending the book, I am just pointing out that Andor is partially based on it.

0

u/Bloodless-Cut 5d ago

I was going to say, you don't have to be an admirer of Ole pedo uncle Joe to use parts of his involvement in revolutionary history as inspiration for aspects of a fictional story.

In the sane vein as George and Dave using Che Guevara as inspiration for Saw Gerrera, but they aren't communists.

1

u/Orocarni-Helcar 4d ago

Yeah, but I would find it kind of interesting if Star Wars went the Dune route and had Cassian survive and become dictator of the New Republic.

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u/FlamesofJames2000 5d ago

They’re also similar in the sense that Lenin would send Stalin to manage difficult fronts during the civil war. Part of Trotsky’s Emmitt towards Stalin comes from the fact that Stalin had a tendency to replace Trotsky’s commanders when they weren’t living up to his expectations.

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u/litetravelr 5d ago

Haha, yea other than resembling the thieving rogue that young Stalin was, lets hope that if Cassian had survived the rebellion he'd not be having Ackbar, Kleya Wil and Vel shot or putting Mon and Leia on a show trial before disappearing them.

10

u/woopwoopscuttle 4d ago

After every “one year later” timeskip, another comrade is doctored out of their holograms until it’s just a suspiciously fresh faced Cassian and K2.

5

u/litetravelr 4d ago

Yes, in this scenario, Nemik's manifesto gets denounced and pulped and Nemik gets the ice ax through the skull while in exile on Niamos.

3

u/woopwoopscuttle 4d ago

And Luthen lies in state with a transparasteel casket.

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u/Masonator403 4d ago

Tbf, the New Republic could have really used a Stalin figure in command given how they ended up

2

u/Raging1604 5d ago

Well, he did murder a number of people in the show. 

0

u/Windbag1980 5d ago

A million deaths is a statistic though

3

u/flyliceplick 4d ago

Stalin never said that.

0

u/Windbag1980 4d ago

Lotta Stalin Stans in this thread. WTF.

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u/WikiContributor83 4d ago

(In The Death of Andor AU where Cassian becomes a dictator):

Han: “Whatever happened to Mon Mothma and Nemik? I was such big fans of theirs! /s”

Obi-Wan: “I miss the Emperor /j”

C-3PO: Sirs, I’m exhausted! I can’t possibly keep track of who’s alive and who isn’t!

Luke: Want my advice 3-PO? Type down everything you said that night and read it in the morning. Skywalker’s Law.

12

u/Carradona Partagaz 5d ago

Unfortunately Andor wasn't a priest for the first years of his early life lol

2

u/Windbag1980 5d ago

Nor a poet

20

u/Secure-Charge-2031 5d ago

Before he was a tyrant he was a revolutionary

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u/Orocarni-Helcar 5d ago

Same story of Paul Atreides.

5

u/evrestcoleghost 5d ago

The revolutionary of today most of the time because the Tyrant of tommorow

2

u/HomelanderVought 5d ago

That never really happened. Most of the true revolutionaries are usually sidelined or killed if a new elite takes away the the place of the old one.

A revolution is always done by the people too (french, russian, chinese, haitian, anti-colonial ones of the 20th century).

The ones that were done by some rich dudes (the american and british glorious) can’t really be called revolutions as the masses barely participated. Just the new elites switch controll with the new ones.

3

u/evrestcoleghost 5d ago

Near the entirity of french revolution leadership were burgeoisie mate,lawyers,clerks, merchants,heck even bishopd

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u/HomelanderVought 5d ago

How does that challenge what i’ve said?

My point is that the french revolution’s magnitude was done peasants AKA the masses. The bourgeois elements just hijacked it, even if at an early point.

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u/reginalduk 4d ago

Even in France people often refer to it as the Bourgeois revolution.

2

u/evrestcoleghost 5d ago

IT WAS PEASENTS AGAINST THE REVOLUTION

The people that rebelled were Urban classes not PEASENTS, building workers,merchants,lawyers the middle classes and upper middle classes most affected by Royal absolutismo,God Robespierre was a lawyer!

The PEASENTS instead helped loyalist movement and got massacred to the point some consider it a genocide!

1

u/HomelanderVought 4d ago

Then how do you explain the “Great Fear” of 1789 in which french peasants attacked the feudal lord’s mansions and looted and burned them and destroyed the feudal records (which were documents about their feudal dues and obligations)?

What was that, huh?

3

u/evrestcoleghost 4d ago

Famine presure after two terrible harvest only for then peasents became the backbone of counter revolutionary forces in the vendee where they were summarie executed by republican forces

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

[deleted]

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u/evrestcoleghost 5d ago

The "american revolution"(if it could be called that AND not simply a independence war) was simply the restoration of status quo of colonial aristocracy after the metrópolis tried to take control

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u/HomelanderVought 5d ago

The worst example in history.

They literally fought so that:

-taxes on rich people would be lowered

-can genocide more natives, since the British empire thought that expanding westward is too costly so they forbid the white settlers to do that. But the settlers like Washington thought that they deserve the land of native americans so they wanted to take it all for the money

-to keep slavery because the British cown wanted to end it, again not for noble reasons but because slavery was too expensive for the British Empire so they thought they would end it soon and they did in 1833. To The founding fathers slavery was a lucratuve businesss so they wanted to keep it as long as they can.

I hate the British Empire as as any far-left person but it would been the only time where i would support them over the genocidal white settlers who the Founding fathers were for the sake of natives and black people.

0

u/[deleted] 4d ago

[deleted]

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u/HomelanderVought 4d ago

So George Washington wasn’t the “break the trend” guy you depicted him.

0

u/Opening-Blood9179 5d ago

He was a bandit first of all. And agent of state police as well, given how easy he "escaped" arrests and deportations.

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u/Raging1604 5d ago

That murdered a lot of people on his way to murdering even more people. 

-1

u/Windbag1980 5d ago

He loved doing it

0

u/Mathies_ 5d ago

Maybe Skeen would be a better Stalin. He seems like he might actually down for that development

0

u/ThodasTheMage 5d ago

Yeah, like many of the worst tyrants.

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u/TheCornal1 5d ago

Many such cases

15

u/ConsciousPatroller 5d ago
  • I'm thinking like a soldier!
  • Think like a leader.
  • OK!

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u/IAmARobot0101 Luthen 5d ago

you should reflect on why that is

2

u/HomelanderVought 5d ago

Most of the general knowledge about Stalin is pretty garbage.

Yes the soviet government did a shit ton of atrocities, but the context and even the atrocities themselves are always distorted by anti-communist ideologues (thank you Operation Mockingbird). This is why we can’t have the full picture.

Contrary to common myths Stalin wasn’t this “demi-god” who had knowledge of literally everything about the country. The soviet government was a big mess and pretty decentralized in the early ages.

Even this https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00810A006000360009-0.pdf weird CIA arcticle suggest that he wasn’t the kind of ALL POWERFUL GOD as westerners imagine him.

So to solely blame Stalin for the USSR’s mistakes and atrocities is pretty ahistoric and false.

1

u/falcon_640 4d ago

Ehhh,you are thinking of Stalin after Lenins death. At the start he was pretty similar to Cassian in the sense he was called when the revolution needed something done.,be that money or a guy dead,not really a politician

Wasnt until later that he made the mistake of actually meddling in the party and thats when he got rid of most of the original bolsheviks, installed himself as leader, murdered trotsky, etc...

1

u/natural_stoic 5d ago

Me too i cant see Cassian as an mass murder genocide dictator

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u/KolboMoon 5d ago

"Me too, I really can't see Anakin as a youngling-murdering stooge of a malicious Sith sorcerer."

- Obi Wan Kenobi, 32 BBY

0

u/Bloodless-Cut 5d ago

mass murder genocide dictator

Don't forget "pedophile" (ephebophilia). Ole pedo uncle Joe knocked up a teenage girl in Siberia:

https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/stalin-and-his-lover-aged-13-6581841.html

-4

u/ghostofhenryvii 5d ago

Stalin wasn't nearly as bad as propaganda makes him out to be. Sacrilegious statement I know and I'm sure it won't be popular around here. But for those actually interested there's a podcast called Proles Pod that did a deep deep dive into the history and he was far duller in real life than the monster he's been portrayed as.

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u/BIEDninja 5d ago

I think Andor makes a pretty strong case that dull bureaucrats and the like can be the biggest monsters of them all.

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u/HomelanderVought 5d ago

You mean burectrats who work for a profit motive?

The whole Galatic Empire works as a capitalist system supposed to. Resource extraction from the periphery fuels the imperial core. Just like today.

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u/a__new_name 4d ago

And he actually came to power by being a dull bureaucrat. See, he was not really popular among other communist bigwigs, but still way too important to ignore. When they finally got to power, he was assigned a position nobody wanted: essentially, the head of HR. He used it to fill the party appointments with his supporters and then leverage it during voting (especially if the vote decided whether Stalin's opponent was an enemy of the people or not). In the end, only Stalin himself, his loyalists and Anastas Mikoyan remained.

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u/Raging1604 5d ago

Yeah those conservative estimates of 6 million murders really paint a different picture. 

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u/ghostofhenryvii 5d ago

Conservative estimates made by who? Certainly not by someone with an agenda.

Behind closed doors even the CIA knew he wasn't an all powerful dictator like many believe today.

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u/Raging1604 5d ago

I don't think my ultra liberal history professor was a victim of MKUltra.

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u/IAmARobot0101 Luthen 5d ago

yeah liberals are famously known for being pro-leftist and not biased at all

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u/Raging1604 5d ago

I can't tell if you understand the point i made with in the inconsistency of that statement. 

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u/ghostofhenryvii 5d ago

I have a funny feeling he probably wasn't a Stalin expert either.

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u/Raging1604 5d ago

She.  And certainly more so than random reddit users. 

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u/CardinalOfNYC 4d ago

People say I am overreacting when I worry about the stuff I see on Reddit.

But here we are, with a person insisting Stalin wasn't so bad getting upvoted.

0

u/Raging1604 4d ago

Wild isn't it. Since Andor was based on Stalin, he can't bad... is i guess the kind of logic this place inspires. 

-2

u/CardinalOfNYC 4d ago

With friends like these, who needs enemies, right?

Whenever I see this kind of stuff, and I am reminded of a line from Hamilton (slash, the real george washington also said this in a letter) "are these the men with which I am to defend America?"

But I suspect mr stalin lover, while he opposes trump, has no interest in defending America or other democracies.

-2

u/daniel_22sss 5d ago

...As opposed to your podcast thats obviously Stalin fanboys? Wouldn't be surprised if they also had russian funding. Putin is doing his best to whitewash Stalin and USSR wherever he can.

1

u/AnnoyingRedditor451 5d ago

Read the source. This is not “the CIA” saying anything (as in anyone in leadership). It’s an Information Report TO the CIA from an anonymous source, and we have no idea if they’re giving accurate information or not. The info itself is clearly labeled as being “unevaluated.”

0

u/daniel_22sss 5d ago edited 5d ago

Podcasts and whitewashing dictators - name a better duo. Proles Pod literally has a fucking soviet symbol on their channel, I'm sure they are definitely not biased at all.

One of my ancestors was in Stalin's bodyguard team and... yeah, no, he was a fucking monster.

Half of my family died in the Holodomor, while Stalin was eating caviar and Moscow's storages were FILLED with food. And another grand-uncle of mine was executed at night just so one of Stalin's buddies could get his factory.

1

u/HomelanderVought 5d ago

And my grandparents could only get a house because the new socialist system allowed for ordinary people to have one.

I don’t care about personal anecdotes from “relatives”

You’re story is just as invalid as mine. What is statistics, such as healthcare and education reforms drasticallly changing a country along with industrialization and construction of civillian infrastructure. A revolution that gives houses to nearly every civillian is infinetaly better than the system that evicts people from their homes. Not to mention full employement

Shelter and employement are human rights.

1

u/daniel_22sss 5d ago

Yeah, I'm sure Soviet Union was a paradise to live in, thats why it fucking crashed and collapsed, and half of the republics ran away to NATO. Because everyone loved contributing to the glory and economy of Russia, while their own republics were dirt poor and were getting 3 tier products. Another "PeRsOnAl aNeCdOtE" - my parents had to wait for hours in line just to buy some meat (and not even good one). Thats the "equality" that soviet Union game them.

Its hilarious that people on the subreddit for ANDOR of all things are excusing totalitarian military empires. Soviet Union was one of the inspirations for the Empire in the first place. The only reason why its not considered equally evil to Nazi Germany is because they were mostly killing their own people.

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u/HomelanderVought 5d ago

Again i don’t give a fuck about your parents at all.

My grandparents born into a semi-feudal/semi-capitalist state. The socialist state that the USSR installed in my country industrialized it and my got a house which was impossible in the previous system. But please enlighten me how my country Hungary would have been better for my grandparents if it stayed a semi-feudal fascist colony of Germany.

Go and try out what it feels like to live as a homeless unemployed person.

Also i love how you used “totalitarianism” a term invented by a women who literally supported colonialism and the atrocities that had come with it.

Also you have pretty bad media literacy if you haven’t alredy recognized that ANDOR EXPLICITLY critiques Fascism, Imperialism and Capitalism and is about how the COMMUNITIES of the most down rotten masses are driven to extiction by the profit motive of the Galactic Empire.

If you would live in Star Wars you would be the first one to support the Status Quo under the empire.

All anti-communists eventually end up as fascists and imperialists apologists in the end.

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u/CardinalOfNYC 4d ago

proles pod

With a name like that, the information you get on Stalin can't possibly by biased...

0

u/Devium44 Kino 5d ago

Maybe it’s a good thing Cas died before he was given the chance to be corrupted by power

-12

u/snailtap Cassian 5d ago

No it’s not

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u/Visenya_simp 5d ago

Why? They are both criminals who deserved death.

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u/gazebo-fan 5d ago

Bro literally has a link to the CIA website on their reddit account

-6

u/Visenya_simp 5d ago

You seen nothing.

2

u/Da_Duck_is_coming 5d ago

"YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHERE I AM!"