this post was submitted on 04 May 2026
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I'm really struggling with this reading. The rebels aren't space communists trying to save their homeland from the encroaching Empire, they're fighting to restore the republic that was the precursor to Palpatine's totalitarian regime. If you allow for the sake of argument that they represent the Viet Cong, then the story of the first movie is about how a handful of heroes, some of whom were defectors from the Empire, were the ones instrumental in the first major Rebel victory, which is a bizarre kind of Great Man Theory/white savior complex that I imagine the Viet Cong wouldn't have appreciated.
Also the later movies make it clear that the fall of the republic and the rise of the Empire was almost entirely due to the machinations of one man, Darth Sidious a.k.a. Emperor Palpatine, which again points to a Great Man Theory of history and doesn't align well with the real world, where the rise of the U.S. as an imperial power has more to do with structural forces that serve the interests of the capitalist class.
I'm not saying Lucas didn't intend it to be about the Vietnam War, but I'm saying that if he did intend that, he didn't include much in the movie that supports it.
What is it about "Great Man Theory" that the Viet Cong wouldn't have appreciated?
I've been to Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum. I've seen the man. He looks as fresh as any person at their own wake.
Attempting to load the Viet Cong with some sort of firm rejection of Great Man Theory is sheer projection and completely detached from reality.
Fair.
My reading is that it's not meant as a direct allegory to Vietnam but rather trying to stick Vietnam into a blender with stuff Americans like in order to link the Vietnamese struggle to other things. The rebels also draw some inspiration from the Revolutionary War, and obviously The Empire draws inspiration from Nazi Germany.
The way I believe Lucas saw it was that Americans ought to be inclined to support the Vietnamese (because of the Revolutionary War, WWII, and general "anti-authortarian" sentiment), but the specifics of the conflict were so loaded with propaganda, racism, and blind loyalty that people could not look at it objectively. So, the controversial communist aspect was cut out, the racial lens was removed by making the rebels white, and distance was created between The Empire and the US by giving them British accents, which let people evaluate the in-universe conflict in the abstract. Sort of a "Platonic form" of the Vietnam War, if you will.
If it was intended to change minds though, it's unclear how effective it actually was. The problem is that when people evaluate conflicts in the real world, the racial lens comes back, they get immersed in propaganda about the specific group and their actions and ideology, and there's a sense of patriotism and "rallying around the flag," all of which generally outweigh the aspect idea of sympathizing with "The Rebellion."
He actually said that the Ewoks were the Viet Cong.
Well, the man who won the Vietnam War knew damn well what a "Great Man/White Savior" could do, because the Bible used to win was T.E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
T.E. Lawrence was also known as Lawrence of Arabia.
That book is a guide to taking down an empire, and a warning about "great men/white saviors".
The key thing to remember, when fighting an empire, there are no Fronts, only Flanks.