Star Wars is literally space conservatives rebelling against the galactic communist (1970s US propagandized version of invented communism-fascist aesthetic*) empire...
Firefly is to an even greater degree, like libertarian Browncoats rebelling. I love the fan fic take that the Alliance were the "good guys."
Yeah it's not actual communism but more like a reflection of the fears of communism in pop culture from the time when it was written in the late 70s. Comment was a bit inprecise but amended.
well i did say "derived from" and not "the exact same word" but as it turns out the connection to vater was a rumor george lucas himself started, likely to make originating vision for the series appear stronger and more planned. there is evidence that the name existed in the scripts before he was changed to be lukes father, so that does contradict the later assertion.
I'm not sure about Vader being more than a coincidence, but the roots of the word for "father" goes a lot further back than German. Linguists have traced it back through many cultures into prehistory. It's probably more ancient than we can ever discover. This blew my mind the other day.
It's just based on what other's have said about the Vietnam allegory but it's also whatever, I'm sure Lucas' wasn't thinking of it as a primarily political mission to produce Star Wars, since it's very much a standard plot with your usual archetype characters and roles.
There's a similar fan take on Lord of the Rings too which is interesting.
George Lucas has said that it was the Vietnam War that inspired the conflict in Star Wars, with the Empire representing the US, but also the rebels could represent the US against the British Empire from the Revolutionary War.
The Empire was in no way representative of Communism, it's a fascist Empire with literal "Stormtroopers." Lucas has shown more antifascist sentiment, and no anti-socialist sentiment. Lucas said the Empire represents the US, and the rebels the Viet Cong, in inspiration.
One time, he even said despite the censorship in the USSR, he felt that move directors and writers were more free to make what they wanted without the profit motive getting in the way, specifically citing artistic freedom being higher (in his words).