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Star Wars has always been political, no matter what the MAGA types who cosplay as Imperial agents and scream about Disney shoving diversity into “their Star Wars” say. 

The original trilogy showed a band of anti-imperialist fighters going up against a vicious pan-galactic state — based, according to its creator George Lucas, on the Vietnam War, with the Viet Cong “rebels” going up against the United States “Empire.”  

The prequels showed the transformation of the Galactic Republic into the Galactic Empire of the original trilogy. In 2018, during Donald Trump’s first administration, James Cameron interviewed Lucas about Star Wars’ anti-authoritarian messaging, highlighting a line spoken by Senator Padmé Amidala as Emperor Palpatine declares that the Republic is now an Empire: “So this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause.”

“We’re in the middle of it right now,” Lucas replies. 

Lucas sold Star Wars to Disney in 2012 and hasn’t been involved in production since then, but Andor, the new series set in the universe, doubles down on its anti-authoritarian roots, focusing on the creation of the revolutionary Rebel Alliance. In the process, it gives us a glimpse into the messiness and conflict that often accompanies building a movement on the left, as activists fight over which political philosophies and strategies work best.

And season two couldn’t have come at a more opportune time as Trump and his second administration carry out Project 2025 and Democrats do… well, not much. 

Caution: spoilers ahead.

“All doubts aside, there is one glaring certainty. If we do not stand together, we will be crushed.”

Like the U.S. Congress – and especially the Democrats – members of the Imperial Senate in the show have little actual power under Emperor Palpatine’s unitary executive. Senators Mon Mothma and Bail Organa use parliamentary procedure and political dealmaking to fight against the Emperor’s fascistic rule, but it becomes apparent that this strategy is futile. 

In Andor season two, Mothma tries to rally support against an extension of the Public Order Resentencing Directive (P.O.R.D.), an emergency directive from Emperor Palpatine that imposes harsher sentences on people for supposed crimes against the Empire. Senator Dasi Oran of Ghorman won’t support the bill because he “can’t risk chafing the Emperor,” who is already singling out his planet for unknown reasons (the audience later learns that Ghorman contains a mineral critical to completing the Death Star). Other senators assert that security concerns are more important than civil liberties, or that the crime numbers can be manipulated and they “believe what [they] feel.” 

“All doubts aside, there is one glaring certainty. If we do not stand together, we will be crushed,” Mothma tells Oran, but his decision has been made.   

After season one, Gilroy said in an interview that he sees Mothma as “sort of a Nancy Pelosi character… a powerful presence in the Senate but she’s facing defeat after defeat after defeat as the Empire is taking over.” 

But in the background, Mothma is secretly using her family’s money to fund a burgeoning insurgency, including Luthen Rael, a spymaster leading a covert Rebel network whose heist of 80 million credits from an Imperial garrison inspired the creation of the repressive P.O.R.D. law in the first place. Unfortunately, Pelosi’s family fortune and ice cream freezer probably aren’t being put to similar use right now.

At first, Mothma is committed to keeping the Rebellion from breaking into open violence against the powers that be, despite pressure from more radical actors in her orbit. 

Saw Gerrera, who heads another rebel cell known as the Partisans, is willing to fight the Empire “by any means necessary,” including through violence, as he says in the Star Wars book “Reign of Empire: Mask of Fear.” 

Gerrera and his Partisans have appeared throughout the Star Wars timeline, and are the most far-left revolutionary characters in the Age of Rebellion. Gerrera is frequently used as a foil for Senators Mothma and Bail Organa (father of Leia), who prefer to work peacefully from inside the system to fight the Empire. While the senators came to rebel from a place of immense wealth and privilege, fighting more on philosophical grounds, Gerrera has had to fight for the freedom of his people since he was young.

In a meeting among the three to discuss strategy in “Mask of Fear,” Gerrera tells his counterparts, “Democracy is a principle and people don’t fight for principles, no matter what they say. They fight for land, for resources, for their lives… A democratic genocide isn’t any more agreeable to its victims.” 

But a brutal massacre on Ghorman eventually pushes Mothma to armed resistance.

On Ghorman, an underground movement known as the Ghorman Front has been percolating since the gruesome killing of hundreds of peaceful protesters in the planet’s capital over a decade earlier. 

Over the course of the season, the show reveals that the Ghorman Front has been secretly sanctioned by agents within the Imperial Security Bureau, which allowed the rebels to steal Imperial weapons and put up a fight in order to manufacture consent across the galaxy for military crackdowns and the extraction of Ghorman’s mineral resources. 

When the Empire moves mining equipment onto the planet, the people of Ghorman gather in the capital to protest. A local leader, Carro Rylanz, sees the Empire’s provocation as the ruse it is, and urges his daughter Enza and the rest of the Ghorman Front to continue peaceful resistance. They ignore him and prep weapons for the demonstration anyway, with Enza Rylanz telling him, “You can’t keep screaming the same ideas expecting change!”

But the empire takes matters out of the Front’s hands. While the people chant, “We are the Ghor! The galaxy is watching!” and sing their national anthem, Imperial soldiers barricade them inside the plaza. An Imperial sniper perched on the roof sets off the violence with a false flag, purposefully killing an Imperial grunt and provoking an imperial attack, which forces the Ghorman Front to defend their people with arms. They are massacred.

As news of the massacre makes its way to the Imperial Senate, Ghorman Senator Oran is arrested without charges. Mothma realizes the time to fight peacefully from the inside has passed; the Rebellion must escalate its tactics with military action. 

In a speech on the Imperial Senate floor about the death of objective reality that wouldn’t be out of place on the U.S. Senate floor today, Mothma condemns the Ghorman Massacre as an “unprovoked genocide.” 

“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,” Mothma says. “And the monster screaming the loudest? The monster we’ve helped create? The monster who will come for us all soon enough is Emperor Palpatine!”

After her speech, Mothma flees to Yavin 4 where she will become the leader of the Rebel Alliance. Senator Organa stays behind to stall until the Rebellion is ready to go up against the Empire’s military might. 

The parallels of the world of Andor to the United States’ political reality in 2025 under Trump’s second administration are clear. 

Rightwing think tanks and news have spewed propaganda for decades to make us question objective truth, leaving us vulnerable to the monster screaming the loudest. People speaking up against Israel’s genocide in Gaza are being imprisoned without evidence or due process. Even politicians who dare go against Trump are targets for arrest now. What is it going to take for Democrats to do more than break floor speech records over things that don’t matter and fight for the people they represent? 

Our democracy is giving way to authoritarianism, and we can’t just wait for a Jedi to save us. We have to fight now.

Or as Karis Nemik, one of the rebellion’s freedom fighters, put it in a manifesto in the show’s first season: “The day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empire’s authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege. Remember this. Try.”

The post Andor Has a Message for the Left: Act Now appeared first on The Intercept.

Kyiv came under a massive air assault, as Russian forces launched waves of Shahed drones and ballistic missiles. Authorities report casualties and significant damage.

Russian forces targeted the Odesa region’s port infrastructure for the second time in 24 hours. Prosecutors have opened a war crimes case.

Some people just aren’t that interesting.

But for the sake of transparency, the Washington Free Beacon is publishing the names of the yet-reported anti-Israel radicals arrested after storming Columbia University’s Butler Library earlier this month.

They aren’t celebrity nepo babies, or phallus-obsessed poets, or silver spoon activists, or do much for search engine optimization—but they were still part of a violent raid that injured two, distributed pro-Hamas flyers, and damaged university property.

Below are the names of the individuals arrested on May 7. All but one was charged with criminal trespassing for storming the Columbia library, while the outlier, Hamza Mankor, was charged with misconduct and threatening behavior. The vast majority were students of Columbia or its affiliates, Barnard College and Union Theological Seminary.

Columbia University Students

Nisreen Khokhar, a J.D. candidate at Columbia Law School, signed several anti-Israel letters before her arrest. Just days after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, while she was an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, Khokhar signed one that falsely accused Israel of committing genocide and called for an immediate ceasefire. She signed a second that was distributed following an anti-Israel demonstration inside a school building that resulted in 40 arrests in November 2023. It demanded the school divest from companies that do business in Israel and shut down their partnerships with Israeli universities. She was the first signatory on both letters.

Priyanka Joshi is a Columbia senior studying philosophy and evolutionary biology. Joshi pursued a dual degree with Trinity College Dublin, according to a webpage for the program that has since scrubbed her presence. She’s quoted on the page saying, “You don’t have to have a reason for everything you do.” She’s currently seeking an internship in New York City, according to her now-deleted LinkedIn.

Jessie Rubin, a Ph.D candidate in ethnomusicology at Columbia, has long been a member of several anti-Israel groups, including Student Workers of Columbia (SWC), Students for Justice in Palestine, and Jewish Voice for Peace. She also helped form Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD)—the Ivy League school’s most notorious anti-Semitic group that took credit for the Butler Library storming. Her father, Jeff Melnick, is a professor of American studies at University of Massachusetts Boston and describes himself as an “anti-Zionist.” Hours after two young Israeli embassy staffers were killed in a brutal, close-range shooting, Melnick posted a defense of the slaying, arguing that “taking one life is not like killing all of humanity.”

Brenda Gonzalez is a Columbia senior pursuing a double major in ethnicity and race studies and education. She is an occasional contributor to the San Francisco-based Spanish-language newspaper El Tecolote, where she has produced such pieces as “8 Latinx events that center community and resistance in San Francisco” and “These 7 S.F. organizations support undocumented immigrants. Here’s what they offer.”

Two weeks after Matthew Ware’s arrest, he graduated from Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health and was inducted into the school’s Delta Omega Honor Society, which was established to “recognize outstanding achievement in the field of public health.”

Nadia Schwingle listed herself as a Barnard alumna in a November 2023 petition demanding Columbia reinstate the university’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter after it was suspended for repeatedly holding unauthorized anti-Israel protests. A university directory notes she is affiliated with Columbia’s School of Social Work.

Pramit Ghatak is a Columbia undergraduate studying computer science, according to university records. She signed a “dancers for Palestine” petition last year to show her solidarity. “Dance does not get an exception from the political realities of the places and times it is created,” the petition read. “May we dance into liberation soon.”

Ysabelle Tiana “Bell” Santos is pursuing a Masters of Social Work at Columbia. “I am for equity because equity starts with everyone,” she touted in a now-deleted LinkedIn page. In the past, she has worked as a behavioral therapist for the Manhattan Psychology Group.

Fatima Aamir is a student at Columbia’s Teachers College, according to the school’s student directory. When she’s not agitating for Hamas, she works as a therapist for Manhattan Alternative, which provides “nationwide kink, poly, trans & LGBQ affirmative providers,” according to its website.

“I create a therapeutic space where healing, self-exploration, and empowerment come together. I honor that we live in a world of interconnected systems, where the flow of power can impact each of us differently. Together, we can create ways for you to connect more deeply with yourself and the worlds around you by channeling the safety of hope,” Aamir offers.

Hayes Buchanan graduated from Columbia in 2021 with a M.S. in urban planning, according to his LinkedIn profile. After finishing college, he moved to Lebanon, where he has spent more than three years working for Beirut Urban Labs.

Buchanan has a passion for environmental justice, equitable international development, and decolonization, according to his website. In May 2021, he told a Columbia blog that President Donald Trump’s election in 2016 motivated him to become politically active. Buchanan also said he was motivated to pursue his degree by Hiba Bou Akar, who acted as security for the second pro-Hamas encampment.

Ayah Fakhy is a Columbia College student in the class of 2025. She is pursuing a bachelor’s degree with double majors in political science and sustainability studies and a minor in statistics, according to public records. Before attending college, she was active in Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, where she served as a “youth vanguard member.” She also worked as a production assistant for Netflix.

Ben Patricia Erdmann, the chief engineer of Columbia University’s student radio station WKCR, pursued urban studies and art history at the Ivy League school. He’s slated to start a Ph.D. in art history at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in the fall, his now-deleted LinkedIn notes.

Amena Aamir is a Columbia student associated with its Teachers College, according to the university’s student directory.

Valerie Yang is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in history at Columbia, according to her LinkedIn.

Daniel Fu is a student at Columbia’s Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, according to the student directory.

Jenna Elizabeth Price announced plans to attend Columbia to study visual art. Before it was removed, her entry in the Columbia student directory noted that she was studying in the religion department.

Belan Yeshigeta is a Kluge Scholar at Columbia, according to her now-deleted LinkedIn. The program aims to serve “underrepresented minority students.”

Mairead Hynes is a Ph.D. student in the history department “studying the comparative transpacific history of women’s war mobilization and anti-military feminism in 20th century Japan and the United States.”

Aeden Kamadolli is a Columbia sophomore majoring in human rights.

Mohsin Kazim is a master’s student at Columbia’s School of Social Work, according to his deleted LinkedIn.

Barnard College Students

Safiya Isabella O’Brien is a Barnard undergraduate who was an officer with Columbia’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter. She has a lengthy profile with the watchdog group, Canary Mission, which notes that she began publicly supporting Hamas just one day after Oct 7. In December 2023, she whined in the Columbia Spectator that she didn’t always feel safe wearing a keffiyeh.

Hayden Moir Chernow, meanwhile, attended Boston Latin Academy, a public exam institution ranked as a top-20 school, and resided in a five-bedroom, million-dollar home, before heading to Barnard.

She’s a member of the college’s prestigious Laidlaw Scholars Leadership & Research Program, sponsored by the Laidlaw Foundation, an international nonprofit dedicated to “developing leaders who embody excellence, act with integrity, and who are driven to solve the world’s most intractable problems.” Her research examines how the rising number of young refugees affects access to quality education in Jordan.

After the Free Beacon emailed Moir Chernow to seek comment on her arrest, one of her mothers, Susan Moir, responded via Instagram. “Get a real life, you running dog for the MAGA movement,” she told the Free Beacon reporter. When asked for further comment, the elder Moir deactivated her Instagram account. Her Instagram bio had read, “Palestine will be free. Stop the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Stop all military aid to Israel. Divest from all complicit corporations.”

Eva Salmon is a Barnard undergraduate in the department of political science, has held leadership positions in Barnard’s student government, and is expected to graduate in 2026. Before becoming an anti-Israel activist, most of her energy had been focused on climate change. She has previously worked as an intern at the Climate Campus Network and was a board member of Sunrise Columbia, which tackled environmental issues at the university.

Cody Cragun was the salutatorian of Rio Rancho High School’s Class of 2022 in New Mexico and attends Barnard.

Melaina Rose Moy, who touts “she/her” pronouns, is a diversity and inclusion coordinator in the Barnard class of 2026. She is matriculated in the school’s department of psychology.

When she’s not raging for Hamas, Barnard student Maimuna Islam enjoys babysitting and making handmade jewelry, according to her LinkedIn.

Union Theological Seminary Students

Maya Andonina Weber—a Union Theological Seminary student who identifies as “they/she“—proudly notes her enrollment in a class called “Queer Theology,” taught by the Rev. Dr. Patrick Cheng. Cheng, an expert in “Queer Anglicanism,”  serves as chancellor of the Episcopal Diocese of New York.

Katherine Scott is a Union Theological Seminary student, according to Columbia’s student directory.

New York University

While the rest of the arrestees were charged with third-degree trespassing, Mankor distinguished himself with misconduct and threatening behavior. Mankor is a doctoral student at New York University in the comparative literature Ph.D. program and J.D. candidate at the School of Law, according to an official NYU biography that has since been taken down.

Mankor lists “Critical theory, Black study, Indigenous studies, anarchist studies, anticoloniality, Africana and Arab existentialism” among his research interests. He is a longtime agitator and was labeled persona non grata in NYU buildings last year as a result of his past activism.

None of the schools listed above responded to requests for comment, nor did any of the contacted students. The following arrestees could not be reached since their contact information was scrubbed: Joshi, Gonzalez, Kamadoll, Kazim, Cragun, and Islam.

Unclear Affiliations

The following individuals were among the arrested, but the Free Beacon could not identify them as students of Columbia or its affiliates. As a result, none of the individuals in this section could be reached for comment.

Zachary Berman was among those arrested during the violent takeover of Columbia’s Hamilton Hall last year, The Free Lance reported.

Jingying Lin was also among the arrested. He was previously busted in June 2024. It’s unclear if he is affiliated with Columbia.

Allison Rachel Wuu was arrested for a second time in the spring semester after being taken into custody for storming Barnard’s library in March.

One person arrested was named Grace Wang. Columbia’s directory shows several students associated with the university, but the Free Beacon couldn’t determine if she was any of them.

New York Police Department sources also provided the following arrestees, but the Free Beacon could not identify them with certainty: Samuel Pham, Layla Rodriguez Johnson, Jasmine Walker, Henry Mohr Odelle, Katherine Annette Rose, Tiffany Yang, and Sofia Rodriguez Basil.

Previously Reported

The Free Beacon previously identified additional arrestees in the following stories:

Columbia Students Arrested for Storming Library Include Several Repeat Offenders—Including Grad Student Who Demanded Humanitarian Aid From University

11 Percent of Columbia Library Arrestees Identify as They/Them—Nearly 7 Times America’s Trans Population

‘Corpse of the Phallus,’ Black Latex, and Circus Performers: Meet The Avant-Garde Artists Arrested For Violently Storming Columbia Library

Bloomberg Journalist Among Anti-Israel Radicals Arrested for Storming Columbia Library

From Million-Dollar Homes to Radical Activism—These Posh Private School Alumni Were Among the Arrested Columbia and Barnard Students

The post Here’s the Full List of Everyone Arrested for Storming Columbia Library appeared first on .

One of the greatest dangers to the crew of a ship that has lost its bearings is also one of the most tempting: the water all around them. As the stores of freshwater run out, and the thirst sets in, the ocean and its contents look ever more inviting. But that way leads to death. A gulp of saltwater may relieve a parched throat for a moment, but it makes the thirst stronger and the body weaker. The only cure is the pure water that sustains life.

As with sailors, so with societies. A people that loses its sense of purpose and direction risks losing the great hearts and sharp eyes needed to regain its bearings. A society awash in Jew-hatred is headed for ruin, and Wednesday’s terrorist attack in Washington reminds us that the United States is such a society.

Wednesday night, a group of four left a reception for young diplomats hosted by the American Jewish Committee at the Capital Jewish Museum. A man affiliated with a variety of left-wing organizations shot at them, turned himself in to the police, and yelled, “Free Palestine.” Two Israeli embassy staffers, Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky, died in the attack. Yaron was days away from proposing to Sarah.

The murderer clearly targeted Jews that night, but his bigotry extends beyond them. Previously, he had denounced Amazon’s “whitening of Seattle” as “structurally racist and a direct danger to all workers who live in that city.” He feared the United States was becoming “a nation of cities dominated and occupied by massive corporations where only the rich and white can live.” The Network Contagion Research Institute reports that his network has troubling ties to the Chinese Communist Party and Iran, too. Anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism walk arm in arm again.

This coward is part of a trend of left-wing murderous terrorism, often but not exclusively aimed at Jews. In 2017, a leftist shot at members of the Republican congressional baseball team. Shortly after October 7, an anti-Israel protester killed a Jewish man voicing his support for Israel. The individual arrested for murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson has become a minor celebrity on the socialist left. Wednesday’s alleged murderer is reportedly a big fan.

If they have their way, these people will lead this country to ruin.

Societies that mistreat Jews rarely prosper. The England that expelled its Jews in 1290 was a fractious, violent backwater just off the coast of Europe; the England that welcomed them back in 1656 was developing the culture and habits that made it a global superpower. The Nazis staged many of their great rallies in Nuremberg, but in 1946 10 of their leaders swung from ropes there.

Philosemites tend to do much better. Chalk it up to God’s special favor for the Jewish people, the providence that George Washington relied on, or the fact that free and tolerant people tend to handle challenges admirably. Countries that treat Jews well tend to beat all comers, particularly when their love for Jews is an outgrowth of their love for liberty.

Healthy societies tend to repel self-defeating bigotries; it’s the sick ones that drink the saltwater. The high points of Jew-hatred in American history usually come at the nation’s lowest point. For example, the depraved ravings of “social justice” activists like Father Coughlin found their biggest audience during the Great Depression. America’s economic indicators are not nearly that bad today, but the explosion of suicides, drug overdoses, and alcohol-related deaths tells a much grimmer story. And when the American dream seems out of reach, people often blame the Jews.

In troubled times, a country’s leaders must seek out sources of vitality and strength. In a society as boisterous, complex, and constantly changing as ours, this is a daunting task. America’s institutional leaders are clearly not up to it. They have lost their minds and championed socialist economics, wild social experiments, and poisonous identity politics. Many of these lunatics excuse or even cheer on the Jew-hating mobs that emerged on Oct. 7.

Some of their critics are no better. Many of the people who most loudly condemn the left’s follies and villainies in the next breath excuse their allies who embody the same kinds of Jew-hatred and bigotry.

This civilization is in peril, but it still has the intellectual and spiritual resources to prevail. Out of Nuremberg recently came a young man, a Christian who embraced the Jewish people and represented Israel here in Washington. He met a young Jewish woman from Kansas, and they planned out their lives together. They stood for their people, and died for it.

We need more Yaron Lischinskys and Sarah Milgrims.

The post Awash in Anti-Semitism appeared first on .

Kyiv Art Sessions began a year ago born from the urgent need to showcase contemporary Ukrainian art as a powerful participant of global cultural dialogue.

This is an edited version of the author’s presentation to the International Democracy Union in which he spoke about how President Trump’s second term is currently viewed at home and abroad.

Kyiv came under a massive air assault, as Russian forces launched waves of Shahed drones and ballistic missiles. Authorities report casualties and significant damage.

In one of the largest air assaults to date, Russian forces launched 14 ballistic missiles and around 250 Shahed drones and decoys against Ukraine overnight, according to the Ukrainian Air Force.

In particular, the Fund will invest the funding contributed by the United States and Ukraine in natural resources, oil and gas, ports, and related infrastructure projects in Ukraine.