Star Wars was never Left Wing

 Not by any Political Compass other then America's and even then not really.

I am still a Prequel Fan, I don't have to agree with a movie's politics to enjoy it.  But in the past I'd often tied to tie my Prequel fandom into arguing it's the most Anti-Capitalist part of Star Wars, but that doesn't mean much when none of it really is at all.  

You see so many Leftists living in online echo chambers really do have no idea how people who disagree with them actually think, as someone who was once an Anti-Communist, I can assure you most Conservatives and even Libertarians do believe most rich people are evil greedy mustache twirling villains, they simply disagree on what policies serve their interests.

If you watch those deleted scenes from A New Hope, there is one were Luke and Biggs talk about how the Farmers are having their farming needlessly complicated by the Imperial bureaucracy's regulations.  That sounds like Libertarianism, this movie was made when Neo-Liberalism was on the rise.

Peter Coffin really loved insisting that Canto Bait was some huge critique of Capitalism beyond anything Star Wars had done before.  It isn't, again it's mainly right-wingers who have their fantasies about the élite decadent ruling class flying off to remote locations to be decadent together while funding both sides of every war.

In The Prequels the stuff about evil rich people is at least more then just one segment of the film's C plot.  But still I see so many people going all "this corporation has representation in the Senate, and they're doing all this over having their Taxes raised", and yeah that seems more like a Progressive commentary then that OT deleted scene did.  But if this were really a Leftist Critique of Capitalism then they would be the final boss, instead they are being manipulated and controlled by the real evil as much as the government is.

I am also retracting the title of my old post titled "Star Wars was always about Fascism", the "Fascism" Star Wars was about was always cosmetic, The Empire is just a generic totalitarian dictatorship, calling "Stormtroopers" what would really be more accurately the Wehrmacht.  Fascists and Nazis aren't the only people who use those colors or wear fancy military uniforms.  There is no Populism or Xenophobia ever brought up in any of the mainline films anyway.  If you listen to George Lucas's audio commentaries the historical inspiration he most prefers to talk about is actually Napoleon III.

The Empire doesn't quiet fit the actual definition of Fascism, nor does it fit the Palingenetic Ultra Nationalism theory or Eco's thesis, nor does it fit Caleb Maupin's pet definition, or any of the Marxist definitions being discussed in the 1930s.  The only theory about what Fascism is and how it works that could possibly match the way Palpatine seizes power is the way Fascism was talked about by old Paleo-Conservative Conspiracy Theorists like Alex Jones during the Clinton and Bush years.

The Sith are basically the Satanists of the Star Wars Universe with the Sith Code popularized by KOTOR being modeled after the ethics of Anton Levy's Satanism.  Meaning them controlling both sides behind the scenes is just like the Evangelical right wing conspiracist perception of the Illuminati.

I feel the same way about John Carpenter's They Live, he gets so offended at the Nazis trying to claim it but no it's your own fault, when your "allegory" for Capitalism is demonic looking Aliens disguised as humans, it does become the exact same thing Far Right Conspiracy theorists believe in, for a small but notable subset it's not even an allegory.

So it likewise probably wasn't Lucas's intent to endorse Conspiracism, but that's what happens when you half hazardly mix a watered down superficial critique of Capitalism with Gothic Horror inspired Space Wizard Supervillians.

When we get to the Disney Trilogy, there was constantly a perception of Kylo Ren being representative of like a GamerGate style neo-reactionary.  But the truth is, given just how obsessed the entire Disney Trilogy was with being Meta about everything, Kylo Ren was I think written in part to be someone you could read as an allegory for Entitled Star Wars fans who hated the Prequels and Special Editions, even though Abrams and others involved weren't Prequel fans themselves, they did try hard not to 100% alienate those fans.  It simply turned out there was a decent amount of overlap between Entitled Star Wars fans and GamerGaters.

Update December 2022: I'm glad I wrote this before Andor came out because it would have tripled the size if I felt compelled to break down everything people are overhyping about that show.

Andor's "Anti-Fascism" is the same Star Wars always had, it's different in how it's putting that more in the foreground.  But the Empire still has no actual ideology besides being authoritarian, and in fact have been made more Demographically Diverse then they've ever been before.  And all the Rebel Manifestos's we've been given are just Liberalism, not actual calls for Communist Collectivism.  It's still a fundamentally Centrist ideology.