@kurtsh@mastodon.social2025-08-08 02:23:32
@kurtsh@mastodon.social2025-08-08 02:23:32
@pre@boing.world2025-09-04 08:42:16
Content warning: Andor S2
Being stuck with a broken wrist so unable to really do much of the things, I have spend a lot of this month watching TV.
I'm not all that up on Star Wars, so when I watched Season One of Andor I didn't know it was about a man called Andor, I had that name confused with Endor, and so I was distracted by the lack of Ewoks.
No such distraction for season two though, now I know it's about a rebel mercenary and his adventures leading up to him being in Rogue One delivering details about how to blow up a death star.
They all live in the Empire, which is relentless and authoritarian and evil just like the real life empire taking over western civilization now. They persecute and harass poor Andor and his buddies so much that they cause the rebellion against their authority that they intend to suppress.
Great show.
Wonder if all the people arrested wrongfully for doing no real crime in the US and UK and around the west will end up fighting the empire here too?
Still wish there was a series about ewoks though.
#watching #tv #andor
@hex@kolektiva.social2025-11-03 10:16:54
Adding another post. This one is a bit less polished, but I want to get it out. As things get harder for everyone, I'm seeing a greater tendency to want to grasp onto revolutionary fiction such as #Andor. I think there's value in that, but it has to come with an informed critique.
> We are so thirsty for hope that we will drink it up, even when that hope comes from a fiction and the truth behind the hope is poison. In Andor, we see the worst elements sacrifice themselves for some of the best. The revolution goes through a process of purification, the complicated elements weeding themselves out to make room for the simplified good, as the rebellion unifies. In reality, this tends to be the opposite how things actually work.
> [...]
> [The Urban Guerilla movement of the 60's through the 80's] centered militant revolution. In doing so, they omitted or cut themselves off from the logistic support needed to sustain such revolutionary activity. The trauma of carrying out violence further isolated and radicalized them. Lacking infrastructure for trauma healing, their decay escalated and became unrecoverable. Ultimately, their revolutionary movements both emulated and reinforced the status quo they were trying to resist.
> There emerges a strange historical parallel that is difficult to see from within the dominant paradigm. The competitive politics of electoralism derives from heroic competition, where people (typically men) compete (often violently) for control over a territory or people. Thus the insurrectionary enters into the very same competition as a challenger, not against the system of domination but for control over it. The success of the revolution, then, does not abolish the system of violent domination but changes rather replaces its management.
> Many modern anarchists will be quick to point out the disconnect between ends and means. While authoritarian projects often assert that "the ends justify the means," and Andor implies the same, anti-authoritarian projects assert the ends and the means are not only united but are, in fact, the same.
This is still very much something I'm actively editing, but I'd still love feedback to help me refine it to it's final form. Typo catches and clarifying questions welcome.
#USPol
@kurtsh@mastodon.social2025-10-02 22:56:51
@hex@kolektiva.social2025-11-03 11:18:08
This is a rephrasing of something I've said a few times in the past, but I think needs to be said again... and again... every day, day after day, until we understand it.
> There is a cultural blindness to the equivalent exchange inherent in violence. Every scar you inflict leaves one behind. A warrior takes on a burden. It's not just about risking one's life: it's about dealing with the scars of survival. Dead warriors are the ones who got out easy. And those scars are not just on the warrior. They come back to the community. Trauma is not a static wound, but a living contagion. Every bit of violence we express, even for our own liberation, inflicts wounds on ourselves that we need to heal or it risk its spread.
> All violence, even in self-defense, incurs a debt. That debt is not represented in popular media, it is invisible within the current paradigm, because it is paid back with feminized labor. In the Star Wars universe, the traumatized simply die for the revolution. The duality of the Jedi and the Sith are simply two aspects of the masculine hero (even when embodied by feminine characters). The feminized labor of healing, community building, movement building, and logistics are not represented (except where they happen to intersect with subterfuge or combat).
#Andor
@kurtsh@mastodon.social2025-09-19 23:01:05
“The first thing Putin did after taking power was silence shows that criticized him.”
✅ '#Andor' Writer #DanGilroy Knows Why You're Thinking About the Show This Week (and It's Not the Emmys)
@kurtsh@mastodon.social2025-09-14 13:52:38
@chris@mstdn.chrisalemany.ca2025-09-20 13:44:42
Cancelled our Disney subscription through Apple yesterday…
May just watch Andor constantly until the renew date to further make the point. 😆
#andor #Disney #fascism #corporateCowardice #freespeech #freeexpression #boycott #jimmykimmel
https://lemmy.nz/post/28397398
@kurtsh@mastodon.social2025-08-20 02:33:59
@kurtsh@mastodon.social2025-09-14 04:09:39