 In Star Wars at times, I find it's far too easy to quickly undermine the cruelty of the Empire. When it's Jedi against Sith, or Rebel against random droid, you have these people who wield tremendous abilities against, say, an alien with mechanical legs, so it's easy to detach yourself from the evil. But Andor really shows us how evil, how terrible, and how horrifying the Empire truly is. How oppressive they really are, by centering this story around regular people. The regular person can't use the Force to easily manipulate soldiers or police officers to leave them alone. This idea separates Cassian Andor from Obi-Wan Kenobi, for example. This series doesn't move past Episode 1, where Cassian a Force-wielding Jedi. In this series, Stormtroopers and all the different Imperial variants of them are actual emblems of fear. We see how terrifying it is when a TIE fighter is deployed, how strong they are against regular people. I'm personally used to thinking of Stormtroopers as the lowest of the low. We all know the jokes about Stormtrooper AIM. Against regular people, they are elite soldiers. They kill people. They are the faces of firing squads. In this series, they're terrifying. Going back to the Empire as a whole, what's so apparent in this series is that they understand the minds of the people. They understand the motivations of the people. There's one line to me that accurately describes the Empire's goal. Speaking to Mon, Luthin says that, it's telling, how the most iconic face of the Empire, Darth Vader, his most iconic ability, is how he'd force choke his enemies. His Empire does the exact same thing. They choke the life, the hope, the soul out of people and nations out of planets, forcing them to accept their conditions. They've developed so many tactics, mostly fear based, to maintain a certain status quo established by themselves, and they know how to keep the people content with their terrible lives, how to keep them complacent. And it's this brutality that immediately jumps out in the series. The torture tactics used on Bix, Salman, and his son. The fact that they would publicly hang anyone who stepped out of line. The fear that that instills a lone, staggering. Along with their brutality, on pharynx we see these tactics in play. The fear disseminating out into the public. The secrecy to which they discuss virtually anything that isn't work. Out of fear of being killed, most citizens don't get involved in anything that could even be misconstrued as resistance. Again, that creates complacency. Even Cassian falls victim to it. It's better to live. Better to eat, sleep, do what you want. He's the perfect protagonist for this series because to a degree he echoes the sentiments of the people. His whole life he's had to fight. He just wants to live, to survive, but even that is not possible under the Empire. By being such a fearsome and constant force throughout the galaxy, their presence cuts through the morale of the people. When that happens, they don't even physically have to be present anymore. Their mere aura and the threat of their presence forces people to be compliant. Oppressive regimes like that of the Empire, the point of their constant oppression is to sap the desire out of people, sap their rebellious energy to kill their hope. In No Place to Hide by Glenn Greenwald, he writes that if you can never evade the watchful eyes of a supreme authority, there is no choice but to follow the dictates that authority imposes. You cannot even consider forging your own path beyond those rules. If you believed you are always being watched and judged, you are not really a free individual. All oppressive authorities, political, religious, societal, parental, rely on this vital truth, using it as a principle tool to enforce orthodoxies, compel adherence, and quash dissent. It is in their interest to convey that nothing their subjects do will escape the knowledge of the authorities. Far more effectively than a police force, the deprivation of privacy will crush any temptation to deviate from rules and norms. In Episode 5, Vell and the team lay out their plan to steal credits off an Imperial base while the eye is happening. When Gorn goes to speak to Corporal Kim Zee, he mentions the possibility of the Empire tearing down the Aldani Highlands to move their airbase. Kim Zee casually laughs about the stench of the Aldani people, but are more invested in the fact that this is how an empire wipes out a people, casually, slowly, and systematically, and for nothing. As J. Hold explains, the empire offers the Dani what they call alternatives, when in fact they are given ultimatums, where they have to choose between the death of their traditions or survival. It's the Dani's land, but they hold absolutely no power, nor do they have bargaining power. J. Hold calls them prideful, that they'd rather lose than accept the empire's conditions. But when accepting means being colonized, is that a matter of pride or self-respect? This information is relayed under the pretense that this is a partnership between the Dani and the Empire. The Colonel asks Gorn if the Dani will let them destroy their land, their sacred valleys, their homes, in peace, as if it is a completely rational and respectful question, like he genuinely believes that this is a partnership. The Empire didn't just mow down the Dani people in one fell swoop, even if they do see them as a useless inferior people. Much like in Narkino 5, only the dead are truly useless, everyone can be put to work. And so, though the Dani are aware of what's happening to them, there's not much they can do. They have to keep their culture alive, and the only way they can do that is by living. By participating in their culture, by taking the 10 day pilgrimage, by staying true to what they believe in. But Imperials understand human nature, human desires, so they use cheap beer, warm lodging, comfort units as they call them, to slowly divide and dwindle down the Dani numbers, knowing how taxing a 10 day hike up a mountain can be. It's a slow, methodical destruction of a culture by slowly breaking them down into individual people, detaching them from their tradition and forcing them to become workers of the Empire. To wipe out a group slowly, first they manipulate their people, create barriers, disrespect their culture and now they're taking over their natural resources. The Aldani Highlands effectively sapping their water supply, and when that happens, there will be no point in going back. They can never rebuild or return, and like that the Empire has gained thousands of workers. They've been slowly dismantling the Dani for 12 years, through manipulation and brute strength. So efficient and so evil. The Empire is both competent and systematic, and cruelly empathetic in their imperialism. I say this because, again, they understand people, their needs and their emotions, and they prey on these very things. Like the way Dedra makes Bix see the condition that Salman's in before she gets tortured, it's incredibly inhumane and cruel. But at the same time, like Cassian says, they also don't care, which makes things so much worse. They care only about being efficient, but when it comes time to punish people, they punish everyone without a care in the world. The overreaction to the heist on Aldani show this off. After that, look at how terrifying it was to simply exist. Because simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time, you could get thrown into prison without any real reason. You can get hanged for taking a wrong step. Your life has no meaning or value if it's not for labor. The stormtroopers, these KX security droids who nearly choked Cassian to death, they now hurt and they kill indiscriminately. The absurdity of Cassian getting thrown into prison for 6 years for what he did or didn't do tells you all you need to know about the Empire. They just don't care. The people are already too afraid to try and fight back, so they will accept it. They will allow the Empire to choke them slowly because that is better than death. What forces Cassian to true rebellion is the treatment that he and the other prisoners are given in Narkina 5. There, this reality becomes that much more harrowing. Like in many prison systems, the incarcerated here are stripped of basic humanity and decency down to the last depressing drop. Greenwald writes that privacy is essential to human freedom and happiness for reasons that are rarely discussed but instinctively understood by most people. In prison they eat, sleep, shower, shave, and work in the open, there is no privacy here. And just like the Donny, the prisoners at Narkina 5 are only useful for their labor and it's the same psychological warfare that is imparted onto the regular people but now just on a different level. Kino, a prisoner, is the unit manager. He commands the floor ensuring that their work is done on schedule. By giving prisoners this false sense of power and authority, even these titles, their power becomes tied to their sentence. Suddenly the identity that they take on is not prisoners but it's unit manager. The better they do, the better things go, the more work they complete, only confirms that they will be leaving the prison on time. By giving one prisoner this power, against all other prisoners, along with consequences to those who don't follow it, ensures that the work will get done. But something else also happens. Don't ever slow up my lines. Kino takes pride in his work because he has no choice. Kino says I'm used to having my room come in the top three. We play against all other rooms, he says. Creating teams, adding basic incentives, this gamification of their labor mixed with the real threat of danger forces even prisoners to take pride in the work that will want to kill them. This whole thing becomes a well-oiled imperial machine. And at night, the one time the prisoners get to be alone with their thoughts, their dreams sometimes get halted by the screams of those who've had enough, those who have taken their own lives on the floor right beside them. When Cassian sees this, he's mortified. Everyone else is worried about how this will affect their work. This is regular for the prisoners of Narkino 5. The empire calls it a grid disruption. They are denied even the tiniest bit of humanity or even decency to be called deaths. The psychological damage was done on the first day that each of them stepped foot in that prison. The all-white design of the prison, the fact that they're suspended in the air, they scare prisoners by the lack of force, the electric floors, they don't carry weapons, the prisoners are calm. You start off fearing the possibilities. Evaluation has been made to feel constant and so therefore it is. And that's what Cassian tries to make Kino understand before he finds that out himself. Greenwald writes, those who believe they are being watched will instinctively choose to do that which is wanted of them without even realizing that they are being controlled. The panopticon induces in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. With the control internalized, the overt evidence of repression disappears because it is no longer necessary. The guards don't need to watch over them full time because like Kino and the rest believe they are always being watched and being listened to, the control has been internalized. However, it's in episode 9 nobody's listening that really demonstrates the breadth of the Empire's cruelty. While in this show, the competence, the intelligence, and the wit of the Empire has been praised, once more I want to bring up their brutality and the diversity of it, while the hanging, the firing squad, and the KX security droids show off the physical nature of the Empire's brutality. When Bix is getting tortured, it's another look at the psychological damage that the Empire can impart. The Imperial soldier Gourst mentions to Bix how after completely wiping out the Dysonites to create an Imperial Refueling Center, so after committing genocide, they had the genius and just so evil idea to record these beings as they die, children to clarify, in order to use their sounds, their dying sounds to torture people. A sound that we don't hear, but instead can imagine through Bix's blood curdling screen, 10 minutes into the episode. Later in this very episode, an entire floor in Narkina 5 is killed because of a quote unquote mistake. We learn that when their sentence is over, they simply get recycled to another prison. Even later than that in this episode, the only doctor on the floor, who is a prisoner of course, is not allowed to save people. He can only simplify the circumstances of their death, like he did for Ula. He says it himself, that's all he can do. Hurt prisoners take away from the labor cycle, instead they get another prisoner to fill the last one's spot, and the labor cycle can continue. So to recount, they can get killed without reason, they get recycled at the end of their sentences, their entire sentences are made up, and if they get injured, they get killed. These are not prisoners in a fair system. These are slaves in a corrupt regime who will never be released. They either die or work, and they will work until they die. Only to be replaced by another key for Gergo, who's been given six years for being at the scene of a fake crime. This is the empire. If we go up the ranks to the senators and politicians who are supposed to represent democracy, injustice, and a fair fight for all, Mon Mothma is the only one trying to change things. But even the imperial senate, they don't help anyone. They don't even listen to her speeches, they've all become these pawns to the emperor. And in this show, we also learn a bit about who runs things on a ground level, down to the ISP supervisors, the military officers, and even the deputy inspector. It's an interesting perspective, this series has chosen, following Jayholt, Dejra, and Cyril. But what's important here is that they are all real people. They all have their own personal problems to deal with. Jayholt has a family he's having trouble with, and he's having trouble connecting with his son. He just wants to finish their assignment so that he can leave the planet and try to turn things around for them. Cyril is trying to gain control and order in his life that he just doesn't have because of his mother. Dejra is trying to move up in her work, amidst all the different barriers presented to her, though she's smarter than all of her colleagues. I think what stands out is that they're not just evil for the sake of being evil. They have their own dreams, goals, and desires. And that is what fuels them. It's easy to root for Dejra once she's just trying to make a place for herself at work. They all represent workers at different stages, at different levels, all having unique problems, but they all take pride in their work. These are the people that are signing off on orders to destroy families, lives, cultures, and planets. They are the ones choking the life and the hope out of tribes, rebellions, and individuals. Just regular people, ordinary regular people, with mothers and fathers, and wives and children. Not just the ones who can wield lightsabers and shoot out lightning out of their fingertips. That to me makes it scarier. They are humanized, but they've lost their humanity in the grand scheme of things. This is how the empire takes your soul. They do it methodically, they do it brutally, and they do it psychologically. Until the people are so beaten down, so worn out, that they don't need to care anymore. That is what makes the empire so terrifying.