>>36470Reread my post you imbecile, I grew up on films and books about the Revolution, given my background. My own great-grandfather was one and his father as well.
Also
>implying that the Bolshevik movement was unitary before 1920 <implying that the Bolshevik leadership condoned anarkid wrecker shit Lenin was hardcore about reigning and directing red terror in a manner that benefited the Revolution, not random sabotage, encouraging a united leadership in ideology as well as action, not this inane bullshit conglomerate that Andor has, consisting of space-Kulaks and liberals.
>hine about the fact that the regular people who ended up with the galactic insurgency weren’t all squeaky clean heroes who never feared and always knew what they were doing Nice strawman there faggolo. That's not what I said at all. What I said is that this is fiction with a story that has a specific idea behind it, through a specific character. However the idea is skewed because of multiple reasons such as the hero being violent not because he has to be, but because he's a cowardly, snivelling sociopath going with the flow, and the other rebels are mostly the same. He's supposed to be motivated to join the rebel movement, but instead just gets dragged along, like shit in a current.
>the Rebellion had to do some shady shit toNo you brainless, speedreading simpleton. The rebellion in the original and pre-Disney works also did shady shit. Stealing from a train for example isn't the problem - it makes sense and is obviously a rebel-partisan act. It's how this is executed, and with what motivations and characters; The motivations are not revolutionary, it's just petite-bourgs fucking around because the Empire didn't cut them into the deal and so they're lashing out, using mercenaries and psychopaths to do it. That's not the actions of a leftist revolutionary, that's the actions of a reactionary subversive element, like the Basmachi counter-revolutionaries that the Bolsheviks fought AGAINST in Mid-East Asia.
>you didn’t actually explain how the show makes the Empire look betterI did, in simple terms: the rebels act just like the Empire - greedy, ruthless, violent and scummy, but even worse, because their actions harm the people they're supposedly fighting for. It would take literal essays to break-down each moment of the Empire compared to the Rebels in this show to see how the Empire looks justified to anyone looking at this from a neutral lens and not already aware that the rebels are supposed to be the 'good guys'. The imperial raid has some moron literally rush them when told to stop so they gun the fat fuck down… even though in the context of the scene, it's utterly illogical for whats-his-face character to do that and the ISB literally responded to an attempted assault. I'm not defending the empire here, I'm stating that from the way we see this scene in episode 3 the actions of the Agents appears more rational and justified than the actions of the supposedly justified rebels. Let me repeat - the show makes THE EMPIRE'S AGENTS appear MORE RATIONAL and JUSTIFIED than their opponents.
Compare this to Cass who gets into a fight with a couple of drunken mook asshole who don't know him and who he will never see again, nor have a way of tracking him, yet when the man is begging for his life in the street, he shoots him in the head in cold blood. Wow, such moral greyness, much drama! And then even more comedically the local Imperials decide to sweep it under the rug - the command literally decides to mark it down as a tragic accident and dismiss it, rather than (as expected of a fascist empire) cracking down harshly, locking down the area and mass-arresting suspects as has been depicted in other shows, films and books of Star Wars and in real life dictatorships. And the reasoning for this is literally taken from anti-Soviet propaganda about Soviet militia forces under-reporting crimes because of "muh bureaucracy". Especially when, if the crime report was supposed to look good to the upper command, they could simply have done what they do in another episode - arrest and frame some random person and mark the case solved.
So to compare - Imperial Agents kill a man that may assault them (excessive police violence) vs our "hero", beats up a drunk pair of glorified deputies and then when they are no threat to him and have no way of IDing him, fucking murders them execution style, which is not only abhorrent, but also stupidly illogical because any criminal knows that cop-killing is a surefire way to get the fucking feds hunting you, a desperate, aimless criminal like Cass would be avoiding that at all costs. So not only does Cass appear far more immoral to the Imperials, but he also is depicted as doing so not only with no clear reason, but directly contrary to his own interests at the time. So yes in the context of Cass and the other "rebel" characters the Empire appears more justified and decent than it has any right to be. Hilariously enough Andor later spares an Imperial Officer in Episode 3 despite having MORE reason to kill the officer… why? Because who fucking knows, because he never has any impact on the plot after this. Maybe Season 2 will have something, but regardless it'll be contrived.
The entire show is like this with fucking CawofDoody tier writing, but because Western audiences fap to this LARP conception of revolutionaries (projecting their inner fantasies, insecurities and strawmen), they lap this shit up as "realistic" and 'gritty'. It isn't, this is stupid writing from both a realism perspective, and from the perspective of a story with greater themes over the base plot. Since the actual actions and depictions gainsay much of the supposedly intended themes.
Another example is in Episode 4 where supposedly the shepherds in the mountains were oppressed by the Evuuul Empire… even though within the conversation of Andor and the StrongWomanStereotype#243 it's revealed that the Empire built apartments and homes that most of the indigenous residents basically chose to live in rather than remain troglodytes… and it's even proven to be a choice because there remain people that prefer to live in nature as hermits. In episode 6 we actually see more of these Indigenous peoples that the 'rebel' group Andor joins is supposedly sympathetic to; on a pilgrimage to the area of the rare natural event that will occur, which is also conveniently near a developing Imperial base. The Imperials wish to place an landing pad on the sacred plateau, that the local population venerates. And how does the EVUL EMPIRE behave towards these undeveloped aboriginals? Do they massacre them with superior firepower, intentionally and unintentionally spread disease among the population, rape their women, take their lands and resources while forcing their remainders onto sparse reservations like the United States did to the Native American tribes? Do they enslave and force them to work on plantations like the British and Americans did to Africans? No. Instead they offer transport to the plateau, build taverns for rest, food and drink catering to local tastes. Not only that, but those remaining 60 pilgrims that continue onwards are not warded off with guns, but greeted cordially, and the Imperial Officer in charge proceeds to personally greet and welcome these people, respecting their traditional ways, requesting politely to join them and exchanging goat skins with them as a token of peace and friendship. All to subtly discourage this religious remnant of a tradition. Let me remind you that this is not the corrupt Republic, but the FASCIST GALACTIC EMPIRE led by one of the most evil villains to exist in fiction or reality. Let me also remind you that discouragement of religious spooks is something encouraged by communist thought, while rhetoric such as Nemik's harping about the better past that is "forgotten" is reminiscent of typical succdem bleating about "good capitalism not bad capitalism!" As a reminder, the Bolsheviks tore down churches that were not considered culturally significant or works of art. Compare this to rebels' attitude towards the aboriginals that reeks of typical entitled american liberal rhetoric, of "you poor uneducated minority, let me act on your behalf, you just don't know you're being oppressed by these actions!" taking away all agency of this indigenous people, who are not being maltreated in any way, but in fact are being treated well in an attempt to benignly integrate them into the Empire.
Then the rebels burst in, kidnap the Officer's family including his young son, and when the Officer states that regardless of what he'll do, they'd kill all of them anyway, to which LeadStrongWomanStereotype#243 accuses him of doing the same, in spite of his actions on the planet being in direct contrary to this claim. The actions following, wherein the "rebels" force the guards to load coin until the old one dies of heartfailure, results in the Imperials REBELLING against the rebels. The writers probably thought they were being very clever with this ironic turn of events, but it's just stupid, and again just makes the rebels out to be little more than bandits.
>inb4 muh Romanoffs The EMPEROR of an empire is completely incomparable to some officer in some backwater who has literally done nothing to evoke such retribution, not to mention that revolutions rely on low-level officers and troops being swayed to the opposing side such as in the case of the RKKA. Moreover Lenin himself was against the execution of the Tsar's family as it made him a martyr and the killing of the children was pointless given that the Czar had abdicated long before the Bolsheviks even took power, the Ural Soviet took action on their own and against Lenin's orders. I'm not even going to mention that in regards to children Stalin held a policy that "the son is not responsible for the sins of the father" in regards to counter-revolutionaries and their families. This action may be realistic, but the point is that in regards to this entire situation, AGAIN, the Empire appears more benign than the fucking rebels, especially considering the violent backlash these activities cause. The entire heist is supposed to be an "homage" to Soviet films, but it's so ass-backwards that I can only assume that either the writer is an anti-communist, or has hands growing out of his ass.
Let me reiterate for umpteenth time, the Empire is an evil, fascist dictatorship, but these depictions of it and the rebels are so fucking contradictory to this narrative, that the only reason we see the Empire as evil, is the backlash that the rash, wrecker activities of the so-called-rebels inflict upon the local peoples, while the actual rebels remain unscathed. That isn't grey morality or realism, that's just retarded story-telling.
Or another example, when Cass gets snitched on by Bix's jealous BF, his criminal report regarding actions ranges from assault, to sabotage and other felonies each of which on their own in the USA today, can land you a 5-15 year prison sentence at the very least, yet this fucker is free as a fucking bird despite being known to the Empire as an active dissenter and criminal - how the fuck does that work? Either the Empire is a totalitarian, regime that brutally cracks down on crime in excess or it's an incompetent bunch of idiots. Frankly speaking why the fuck should I care about Cass? He's a swindling, murdering dirtbag that, out of all the characters, deserves his prison sentence. You think the Bolsheviks were tolerant of this shit? 70+% of the Gulag was criminals, and not political ones either, were they all secretly revolutionary for doing crime? Or I guess the USSR was evil for punishing looters, rapists and war criminals in its ranks with execution by firing squad? In real life loose canons like Cassian would be fucking shot in the back by fellow rebels, for being a scumbag. The depiction of "concentration camps" is literally the same shit people screech about Gulags, but because everyone already has the concepts of the rebels being good guys overall and the Empire being a fascist dictatorship, (holding over from the OT), it skews everything, creating a mess of a message.
The biggest fucking comedy of all is that this entire shitshow takes place less than FIVE YEARS BEFORE A New Hope and it's stated, seen and implied over the series that the Empire only cracked down just now, with the rebels already "existing" as is even though
A) In the original canon, the crackdown began with the fall of the Republic, and is seen in examples like the glassing of Geonosis, and so should have been going on for much longer than 5 years
B) The rebels, like any revolutionary group began actively fighting back as the fascist Empire's actions drove people to rebel, and as the Empire tried to suppress this, drove even MORE people into the rebellion.
Yet according to Andor the Empire has been relatively complacent until very recently and it takes an extremely short time for dissenters and disgruntled people to rise up… which goes directly against dialectical materialist analysis and reality itself - the Russian Empire was harsh as is, but rebellion didn't take off until WW1 worsened things by so much that the people literally had nothing left to lose.
In the OT by the Battle of Yavin, the rebellion was an organized group with a military discipline and organization that supposedly all came together in 5 years? The Russian revolutionary groups took decades to gain such influence, unity and organization, and even then part of the reason the Red Army had any discipline and military capability was because many Tsarist officers and White Army soldiers defected and were a driving force behind the military arm, for example Marshal Zhukov, or Budyonny.
So not only is this show's plot a retcon with counter-revolutionary ideology masquerading as "revolutionary" but it also is in direct conflict with reality and realistic depiction. So what we have is an edgy, nonsensical mess, pretending to be "DEEEEEP"
You want moral greyness? They should have had one of the rebel "leaders" get lynched by his men for trying to use the rebellion for his own ends, rather than being true to the cause, that would have been fucking moral greyness. Or having a Rebel fighter group capture a group of storm-troopers and ISB agents, but because they have no way of keeping POWs and can't just let them go to fight against them another day, are forced to execute them. Or do what Come and See did, with the actions of the rebels having huge consequences for local civilians under occupation, in the form of war crimes, and when the rebels finally take the village/planet/etc., they execute the war criminals without a trial, and move on to fight the next grim battle. THAT is morally grey and mature writing of a revolution, that is a display of rebels in gritty reality without stooping to making the rebels merely a ragtag loose group of liberal oppositionists, opportunist kulaks and marauding bandits masquerading as an opposition to the Empire. Anyone that likes Andor's counter-revolutionary depiction of rebels is either a blind moron or a fucking toxic psychopath.
TL;DR: Andor's depiction of "revolutionaries" and "rebels" is literally /pol/'s old meme of Commissar Jamal coming for your toothbrush. I've literally cited examples of morally grey stories about revolutionaries and rebellion in
>>36440 and
>>36406 that are actually good. This show is not and you're a moron for not seeing the blatant liberalism oozing from this edgy shitpile of a show. FUCK ANDOR AND FUCK YOU.