Since its very conception, Star Wars has been political. Now Andor will take on Trump 2.0

Premiering today, the second and final season of Star Wars streaming show Andor seems destined to be one of the pop culture defining moments of the second Trump presidency.

Andor, which began airing in 2022, tells the story of the early days of the Rebel Alliance before the adventures of Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia. The series is the most politically articulate of the Star Wars franchise.

Where older Star Wars entries focused on lightsaber battles and dogfights in space, Andor shows a world of political manifestos, fractious alliances between rebel groups, and surreptitious fundraising for revolution.

Season one of the show followed the political awakening of the titular Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), who progresses from troubled thief to total ideological commitment to fighting the Empire. The show also follows a covert revolutionary leader (Stellan Skarsgård), an ineffective politician who secretly finances the rebellion (Genevieve O'Reilly), and two Imperials manoeuvring for power (Denise Gough and Kyle Soller).

Showrunner Tony Gilroy has so far taken inspiration for Andor from a variety of real historical revolutionary events, from Stalin’s bank robbery in Tiflis of 1907 to the Baader-Meinhof group in West Germany.

Aesthetically, Andor has more in common with the political filmmaking of the likes of The Battle of Algiers (1966), the films of Costa-Gavras, or early Paul Greengrass than the central Flash Gordon-inspired Star Wars saga.

As authoritarian governments and conflicts loom large globally, the final season of Andor in 2025 is perfectly timed to articulate anxieties much closer to home than the galaxy far, far away.

Berlin reports rise in attacks on refugees amid surge in far-right crime

Berlin has reported a marked increase in attacks on asylum seekers and refugee shelters, amid a sharp rise in far-right crime and a hardening of German migration policy.

Official figures provided at the request of two local Green party lawmakers showed there were 77 assaults on asylum seekers and refugees in 2024 and eight instances of deliberate damage to residences housing them.

This compares with 32 targeted attacks on people and none on residences in 2023, one of the deputies, Ario Ebrahimpour Mirzaie, told the news agency dpa.

As a result of the assaults, 34 people needed treatment in hospital, according to the official data. These included 16 women, 14 men, two girls and two males whose age was not reported.

Thirty-seven suspects in the direct assaults on people were identified, 11 of whom were known to police. Authorities reported no concrete leads in the attacks on refugee shelters.

Jian Omar, the other Green deputy who sought the publication of the statistics, called the report an “alarm bell”.

“We demand a clear protection plan for refugees, a visible police presence at endangered residences, comprehensive prevention work and above all policies that clearly recognise rightwing violence and decisively fight it,” he said.

Berlin has about 35,000 registered refugees in official reception centres and dormitories and a further 10,000 in emergency shelters, for example at the former Tegel and Tempelhof airports, where conditions have been often criticised as substandard and overcrowded.

Officials from the state office for refugee affairs (LAF) told local media that all of its residences had plans in place to prevent violence, including round-the-clock security personnel at most facilities.