Why the politics of Star Wars still matters (part 1): “It’s not a story the Jedi would tell you”

This is a series of posts drawing on my forthcoming book Welcome to the Rebellion: A New Hope in Radical Politics (published in June 2020 by Zero Books).

This first post is about the importance of rebel stories.

If your immediate reaction is to cry “leave politics out of Star Wars!” (or the other way around), you’re welcome to enjoy your space favourite space opera however you like (it’s a big galaxy, after all). But there’s politics in this epic story of civil war, a faltering republic, the rise of empire, and of course rebellion – undeniably in its inspirations (as we’ll discuss in this series), and I’d argue, in its continued relevance today. If your politics is different from mine, this is only one interpretation, and again, you’re entitled to your own (plenty of libertarians love Star Wars, and I can absolutely understand why).

My book starts in a paradox, at least it’s a paradox from my perspective. The political story of our times is that a rebellion is underway against elites and their greedy global order. It is amassing support from ordinary people, who feel marginalized and unheard. In a way they haven’t felt for a long time, people feel an increasing sense of power and belonging. They are back at the centre of the story, and elites fear them.

But of course, they’re part of a regressive revolt, led by the right, by Donald Trump in the United States, conservative hard Brexiteers in the UK, the far right across Europe, and authoritarians across the world. How is it that such a story, a rebel story, which should naturally be owned by the left, has been seized by the right, and what do progressives and the left need to do to reclaim this story?

I’ve written a book on the relevance of the politics of Star Wars today because the saga, and the universe that’s expanded from it, is about many contemporary issues: freedom, democracy, oppression, exploitation, hope and rebellion. But the first thing Star Wars is about is stories and their power to shape politics.

In particular, it’s rather good at depicting how authoritarians use stories to serve their own ends. Senator Palpatine wouldn’t have been able to take over the galaxy without telling stories, that’s where his dark powers really lay. Similarly, the right understands that politics lies downstream from culture (Andrew Breitbart, the right-wing nationalist ideologue, said that), and culture is about stories.

For decades, in countries such as the US and UK, many people have seen their wages stagnate while the rich have got massively richer. They have seen their towns and cities decline, their hearts ripped out by globalization, outsourcing, automation and a lack of care. They have seen corrupt political elites doing the bidding of corporations. And they have been told a story of ‘trickle-down’ economics which ended in a financial crisis, for which no-one was held accountable. It’s not that, as often stated in the mainstream media, people ‘feel’ left out. They are left out. No wonder they were ready for a new story, and they were so willing to shake up the status quo.

Now, I’d argue that the programs and policies being driven through by the right will benefit only the already rich and powerful. Nonetheless, the story people have been told – of their subjugation and defeat, and their revolt and rise to victory – speaks to them. Our economic system increasingly says to people, ‘you are nobody’. These stories tell people that they matter. They draw on the behaviour and self-interest of politicians, domineering corporate interests and the hopelessness felt in forgotten people and places. Not only do these stories identify the problems and the villains, they cast ordinary people as overmatched heroes: regular folk doing battle against mendacious elites. They allow people to see themselves as rebels, the imperilled remnants of human freedom, taking a stand against sadistic all-powerful global forces (that would be the ‘empire’) who are forever tightening the screws.

Stories don’t have to be manipulations, however. Even when they are selective, which stories necessarily are, they can express deeper truths and help us to face them. The problem is, the left seems to have forgotten how to tell good tales.

The left used to have its stories, its adventures, its victories and defeats involving individual and collective struggles. But ‘scientific’ socialism pushed aside storytelling socialism, liberal ‘pragmatism’ looks down on storytelling as dangerous populism, and now, with postmodern-influenced cultural theory, stories themselves are said to be dead. And so instead of telling its own stories, the left often spends more time trying to deconstruct the right’s stories. But as environmental campaigner and journalist George Monbiot suggests, you can’t take away someone’s story without giving them a new one. Reactionary myths need to be overcome by emancipatory myths.

For these and other reasons, the left has neglected that it ‘owns’ the most popular rebellion story of our age – one that is political but also personal, democratic, collectivist rather than individualist, emotional and hopeful, a wildly popular saga, arguably the most successful story of our time.

It's more important than ever that we can tell popular stories about the need to stand against empire. We need to believe that many more people are ready to join the rebellion than we’re often told. And among other things, we need to claim popular culture to do it.

It means something that our most popular modern myth is a radical left story about fighting fascism. Contrary to postmodern cultural pessimism, the continuing popularity of stories such as Star Wars suggests the potential for a popular radical politics which is anti-authoritarian, pluralist, participatory, democratic and humane. From its roots in the 1960s new left (as I’ll describe in the next post), Star Wars still speaks to so many people today, including new generations of fans. It indicates a widespread desire to reject nihilism and despair, and to struggle against oppression and for liberation.

Yes, it’s a space fantasy, but even so, go with it and Star Wars can be used to illuminate the dark times in which we live. It also suggests that if we tell the right stories, we can welcome many more people to the rebellion and the fight for a better world.

Welcome to the Rebellion: A New Hope in Radical Politics, will be published in June 2020 by Zero Books. You can pre-order your copy now at:

US: Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Books-A-Million, Indiebound

UK: Amazon.co.uk, Zero Books, Waterstones, Foyles, Blackwells

Rest of the world: Chapters/Indigo, Booktopia, Book Depository, Goodreads

A FREE preview of the introduction to the book is available on Amazon.