I stand corrected then!

I have a new-found respect for Mr Lucas

You must not have seen the Andor series. Fascism is upfront and center.

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.

I think it's very possible to read too much coherent political thinking into the soup of influences that Lucas was tapping into for Star Wars, particularly the first one. He was anti-Vietnam War, absolutely, but he also got to the point of filming a scene where Biggs is decrying the Empire's nationalization of industry, and the aesthetics were absolutely good Allies versus bad Nazis.

He was basically a pretty average left-leaning American boomer. He loved big oil guzzling cars, but also rooting for the little guy. He hated Richard Nixon and mapped him onto Palpatine, but in his initial thinking was an ominous but naive shut-in who was manipulated by his advisors; hardly the apologia any serious analyst of Nixon would have gone with. Lucas had us rooting for the Rebels to overthrow the Empire and replace it with the Republic, but also wove in an absolutely medieval fondness for royalty.

All of it was because the fairy tale was more important than the specifics of the politics, which were basically anti-authoritarian vibing.

And one of his stated reasons is that the Empire is nationalizing industry. Lucas is well-meaning but all over the place. The political influences are many and not super deep, just like the the literary/cinematic ones. The brilliance arises out of the pastiche spread liberally across the bones of a fairy tale.

I read the script once and it had that scene and I thought it was strange cause I didn't remember it, but then again I probably watched it a hundred times before a really noticed half of the things Obi-Wan says in the dialogue in his house after he saves Luke from the raiders. So I kinda just shrugged it off.

But it made some things make a whole lot more sense. Like it kinda tied the story together in some ways. Biggs runs off to avoid being drafted into the Empire. Hopes to find the rebellion, but wants to keep that part quite (for obvious reasons).

So then later when Luke meets Biggs with the Rebels and they obviously know each other, I don't feel as gaslit about how I should know this character. And when they reminisce about their childhood, it makes a lot more sense when you recognize him as one of Luke's friends from back home.