The Latest Bleeding Fool Article About 'Andor' Shows How Nominally Right Wing Outlets Normalize Left Wing Degeneracy
There is a major problem among nominally right wing pop culture commentary in that it normalizes left wing degeneracy. It does this by only opposing the so-called current extremes of left wing rhetoric while letting what was once considered extreme get a free pass. In fact, many shows will be praised because they just avoided pushing the Overton Window.
As an example, Bleeding Fool recently published an article by Jamison Ashley discussing Tony Gilroy’s Andor series.
The article posits that the series maintained a Star Wars identity rather than becoming an overt Hollywood attack on ICE and President Donald Trump. Jamison writes, “They kept this Star Wars show from turning into another Hollywood attack on ICE and President Trump.” In fact, Jamison even claims that this is praiseworthy, “Why praise their restraint now? Because it protected a $650 million investment from activist overreach.”
What’s his evidence for this? It’s a quote from the show’s creator Tony Gilroy admitting that he deceived audiences with a marketing tactic so he could push a radical anti-Trump political agenda.
Gilroy explained to The Hollywood Reporter the marketing tactic that he and Lucasfilm came up with to do with this, “The actors have a broad spectrum of political ideas, and we didn’t want anybody to perjure themselves or violate their conscience. So we came up with a legit historical model, and it’s a version of what I’m telling you now. ‘We studied history to make the show, and we based it on historical models. We don’t have a crystal ball. There’s comps for everything that we did all through history.’”
“So that was a very, very safe and legitimate place for us to sell the show without ever having to say what I’m free to say now,” he added.
And what is he saying now? In the same interview he’s describing President Trump and his administration’s immigration enforcement as fascist and he says that is literally the message he put in Andor.
He was asked, “Well, when you finally put it in your rear-view mirror and started making a movie called Behemoth!, real life, as it’s done before, eerily mimics numerous story points in Andor. Can you take me through your thought process as you’ve watched the reporting out of the Twin Cities?”
Gilroy answered, “Well, on a human citizen level, it’s just an absolute gothic nightmare. The simplest answer to the strange synchronicity of all of this is really on them, the outside forces. We were pretty much doing a story about authoritarianism and fascism, and the Empire is very clearly a great example of that. It’s a great place to deal with those issues, and as we’ve discussed many times before, we had this wide open canvas to deal with it.”
And this isn’t the first time Gilroy has talked about it. In fact, he bemoaned the fact that his show had so many “synchronicities” with the Trump administration because it made it harder to sell the lie. He admitted to Reason that people would easily recognize the parallels to current events in the show, “Oh, we saw that. We did the first season and that was just sort of done in a vacuum. That was done as per just trying to live and get through the show and make it happen. By the time we were in the second season and developing it—and, you know, the Trump resurgence was coming back—as we were finishing the show, it takes two and a half years to do the show. As we're finishing and watching the election coming up, we're going, ‘Wow, are we heading for a highway collision here or not?’”
He then bemoaned, “I would have been well pleased to not have the level of synchronicity that we had. As it started to happen—what can you do? It presented complexities for Diego and myself and some of the actors who were out selling the show, because we had to sell the show pretty hard for about six months. It made some of these early conversations very difficult, because we really didn’t wanna get… Disney has a lot of money invested in the show, and the Star Wars audience is rather large and complicated and probably includes all kinds of different people. We didn’t want to have anybody to tune out. We didn’t want to have anybody turn off.”
How does Jamison describe this deception? “Smart move. Disney sold a hit without letting politics tank the ratings.”
He did not stop there. He continued to glaze this deception as “smart business.” He wrote, “The series worked because it focused on drama, not cheap shots at ICE raids or Trump. Gilroy’s gag order proved effective. It maximized audiences and shielded the franchise. Isn’t that what smart business looks like? In a culture drowning in activist noise, Disney’s caution on Andor stands out. They protected their golden goose. Trump’s America rewards that kind of common sense.”
But here’s the real kicker, he positions this as part of a broader Disney marketing strategy where they cut transgender propaganda from animated children shows, “Look at Disney’s bigger picture. Trump wins his second term. The company shelves transgender episodes from Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur and Pixar’s Win or Lose. Those cuts dodged real heat from an administration that demands accountability. … Disney learned the hard way. Restraint on Andor spared them another flop.”
Win or Lose still promoted disordered homosexuality in the episodes it did release. Andor still pushes pro-immigration rhetoric and attempts to paint those enforcing immigration law (ICE) as depraved criminals. There’s an entire episode around an Imperial officer trying to sexually assault an immigrant. Ironically, one report indicates that up to 60% of woman and girls migrating from Latin America to the United States are sexually assaulted, and it’s not done by U.S. immigration officials.
And that brings us to the real point. Sure, the marketing was intentionally crafted to deceive people. This is not unexpected. Numerous people have been warning and predicting this would be the case. Gilroy is just admitting that it is something they did. However, the show itself still is propaganda. It still is attacking President Trump and ICE. Gilroy admits to that as well. It’s just not going to the extremes with gender ideology.
In the end, the real danger lies not in the overt extremes that draw fire from nominally right-wing commentators, but in their willingness to grant a free pass to what was once considered radical simply because it now wears the mask of restraint.
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I’ll never watched Andor, ever. Tony Gilroy has become insane at this rate.