Antifascist Dad Podcast
This podcast serves as a guide to antifascist history and tradition, offering stories, strategic insights, and practical wisdom from past and present movements. Host Matthew Remski frames each episode as a waypoint for understanding resistance against fascism across generations. The show blends personal reflection, historical context, and contemporary lessons for activism and community building. It aims to equip listeners with a deeper understanding of antifascist practice.
Episodes
52: Children Revolt in France w/ Danielle Duncan
On September 18, students at a suburban Paris high school went on strike against deplorable conditions and in solidarity with their underpaid teachers. Within weeks, high school students across France were blockading their schools over faculty shortages, crumbling buildings, overloaded classes and Parcoursup, the algorithmic placement system that choose
51: Housing is a Human Right w/ Diana Yoon
Another TO election episode, gearing up for October 26! Diana Yoon is running for Toronto City Council in University-Rosedale. Yoon came to tenant organizing through climate work, helping ACORN secure a climate grant to survey tenants before and after energy retrofits, and later joined the board of the Federation of Metro Tenants’ Associations. Her prof
50: Brad Bradford, Toronto’s Mamdani Backlash Candidate w/ Inori Roy
Many cities on Turtle Island are hoping Mamdani fever comes to town. But Toronto is seriously considering rolling out the red carpet for a right wing populist climbing in the polls.
I'm joined by Inori Roy, Features Editor at The Local, to discuss her in-depth profile of Toronto mayoral candidate Brad Bradford, published just 2 weeks before the October
UNLOCK 49. Avi Lewis Harassed and Threatened Over Yom Kippur Prayer
On September 20th, Yom Kippur, Canadian Army veteran Sean Ward opened fire outside the Sons of Jacob Synagogue in Belleville, Ontario. An hour later, and before the first news report, NDP leader Avi Lewis posted a personal prayer of atonement, reflecting on how antizionist Jews had failed to stop a genocide committed in the name of Jewish safety.
I trac
48 “We Bring Everything We Have” to City Hall w/ Jennie Worden
My guest today is Jennie Worden, running a fantastic socialist campaign for Toronto City Council in my very own Ward 19, Beaches–East York. On the agenda: what choral music teaches about community. What tenant organizing teaches about shared struggle. Why Brad Bradford, our former councillor now running for mayor, is such a heel (my word not Jennie's),
47. From Rent Strikes to City Hall w/ Chiara Padovani
With Toronto's municipal election set for October 26, I'm spending the next few weeks with local socialist candidates! First is Chiara Padovani: social worker, food bank worker, co-founder of the York South-Weston Tenant Union, and candidate in Ward 5, where she came within 94 votes of unseating Frances Nunziata in 2022.
Chiara describes growing up in M
46: How Capital Uses Workers’ Pensions Against Them w/ Kevin Skerrett
I sit down with Kevin Skerrett, a pension researcher who spent thirty years as a Senior Research Officer for CUPE and co-edited The Contradictions of Pension Fund Capitalism. We trace how Canadian pension funds went from holding government bonds to becoming some of the world's most aggressive private-market investors.
We start with the nineteenth-centur
UNLOCK: 44.1 Psychic Militancy w/ Dr. Lara Sheehi Pt. 2
Part two of my conversation with Dr. Lara Sheehi about her outstanding book From the Clinic to the Streets, focusing on how the "psychic intrusions" of confusion, fear, despair, and exhaustion function as tools of imperial and state power that disconnect people from movements.
We review a 1970 interview with Ghassan Kanafani, whose refusal to accept "
45: When Zionists Dominate Antisemitism Discourse w/ Daniel Sailofsky
Since October 7th, young people who have joined antifascist and anti-genocide organizing on campus have faced one of the most disorienting accusations available: that their solidarity with Palestinians is antisemitic.
This week I talk with Daniel Sailofsky, a University of Toronto prof and member of the non-Zionist Jewish Faculty Network, about what it
UNLOCK 43.1: Understanding Lebanon w/ Ayman Makarem Pt 2
Part two of my conversation with Ayman Makarem picks up where we left off: with Lebanon and Israel as co-developed colonial entities.
We trace how the 1943 National Pact locked in a sectarian power-sharing system that functions as elite class rule dressed up as pluralism. The contradictions led to both the 1975 civil war and the 2019 uprising. We discus
44. Psychic Militancy w/ Dr. Lara Sheehi
My guest today is militant Lebanese Arab clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, Dr. Lara Sheehi, here to unpack her book From the Clinic to the Streets: Psychoanalysis for Revolutionary Futures.
Following Frantz Fanon's decolonial legacy, Sheehi argues mainstream psychology's fixation on the nuclear family as the origin of the psyche obscures how whit
43. Understanding Lebanon w/ Ayman Makarem
Lebanon is once again on the front line of Israel's regional war, and a lot of leftist coverage, where there is any, flattens a hundred years of colonial history into campist slogans. In this episode I sit down with Ayman Makarem of Politically Depressed on YouTube— Lebanese, Druze, queer, and anti-authoritarian leftist — to slow down and build a pictur
UNLOCK 42.1 Friendship (is not easy)
An excerpt from the audiobook of Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times — Chapter Eight, Friendship Is Not Easy.
I'm putting this out as a companion to my interview with Carsie Blanton because she models in her touring life exactly what I'm trying to articulate in this chapter: solidarity as the antidote to the individu
UNLOCK: 41.1 The Anti-Vance Would Like a Word Pt 2 w/ Nathan Evans Fox
Part 2 of my convo with Nathan Evans Fox, going deeper into the psychological and theological architecture of what JD Vance is actually doing in his new memoir, and what it costs him and everyone else to do it.
Nathan reads Communion as a work of apologetics built on the logic of accumulation: prestige, then money, then virtue, with each step more abstr
42. Keep the Little Flame Alive w/ Carsie Blanton
I sit down with socialist singer-songwriter Carsie Blanton to explore how unstructured freedom — from schooling, the music industry, and institutional religion — became the soil for her political and artistic radicalization. A stack of jazz records from her grandfather led to countless gigs, poltical organizing, and eventually to the Global Sumud Flotil
UNLOCK 40.1 Episodic and Thematic Thinking and Feeling
Picking up a on thread from my interview with Nora Loreto interview: a coda on the tension between zooming in on the daily news cycle and zooming out to a coherent analytical framework.
I draw on Shanto Iyengar's 1991 research on episodic versus thematic framing in television news, and on Wendy Brown's concept of responsibilism, tracing how mainstream m
41. The Anti-Vance Would Like a Word w/ Nathan Evans Fox
JD Vance's Communion presents itself as a spiritual memoir but functions as a rebranding operation: It's the same narcissistic trick he played with Hillbilly Elegy.
Who better to sit down with to sort this out than Nathan Evans Fox — country musician, seminary graduate, board-certified hospital chaplain, and actual Appalachian? His review of this gnarly
UNLOCK 39.1 Epistemic Injustice
Years ago, I failed to understand my autistic son's needs. Instead of fully taking in his distress at school, I projected my own story, values, and experience on him. He'll manage. He'll get used to it. He'll toughen up.What does this have to do with a British judge sentencing Palestine Action activists as terrorists? More than I expected.
In this coda
40: We Live on This Planet to Do Good Work w/ Nora Loreto
Today I sit down with Nora Loreto, a Quebec City-based journalist and labour organizer, to discuss her five-volume Canada in Decline series — a forensic history of the dismantling of Canada's social democracy by the forces of capital.
We discuss her wide-ranging, independent beat: Volume 1, The Social Safety Net (2024), traces the forty-year erosion of
UNLOCK 38.1 Gramsci’s Wars of Position, Wars of Maneuver
Antonio Gramsci, writing in a fascist prison in the early 1930s, distinguished between wars of position—the slow struggle over culture, values, and consent—and wars of maneuver, or direct confrontation with capitalist power.
It's useful for thinking through something I've been sitting with: the contradiction between feeling genuinely nourished by Pope L
39: Supporting the Filton 25 w/ Lisa Matthews
In August 2024, six Palestine Action activists breached Elbit Systems UK's newly built facility in Filton, Bristol, and used sledgehammers to sabotage drones, computers, and manufacturing equipment. Elbit is Israel's largest private defence contractor, and supplies armaments to the IDF used in their genocidal attack on Gaza. Twenty-five activists were c
UNLOCK 37.1 Enough is Enough, Again w/ Dean and Matt of Magnificast (pt 2)
Part 2 of my convo with Dean Dettloff and Matt Bernico of the Magnificast podcast, digging into the forensic heart of their great new book, Enough is Enough: Degrowth, Capitalism, and Liberation Theology. We work through Walter Benjamin's fragmentary essay on capitalism as religion, the liberation theology critique of GDP as a modern idol, what degrowth
38. Radicalized at 15 by Climate and Corporate Greed w/ Emily Lowan
Today I'm sitting down with Emily Lowan, leader of the BC Green Party and the first GenZ leader of a major political party in Canada. Emily was radicalized at 15 during the 2016 US election while on a cross-country school trip. She built a decade of movement work through climate organizing, Wet'suwet'en solidarity, and pipeline fights, then won an insur
UNLOCK 36.1 Asking Liberals: “Do You Condemn Imperialism?”
Following up on my conversation with Toronto comedian Nour Hadidi: I'm haunted by one detail from the harassment campaign against her.It's about how she posted the clip of Al Jazeera bureau chief Wael Al-Dahdouh refusing Christiane Amanpour's question, "Do you wish Hamas had never committed October 7th?" by dismantling its premise entirely. I look at Ad
37. Enough is Enough w/ Dean and Matt of The Magnificast, pt 1
I'm joined today by Dean Dettloff and Matt Bernico, co-hosts of The Magnificast podcast and the authors of a brilliant new book, Enough is Enough: Degrowth, Capitalism, and Liberation Theology, out now from Fortress Press. We start with some basics: what the Magnificat is and why secular leftists should care about it, what "enough is enough" actually me
UNLOCK 35.1 “AI for All” of Carney’s Friends
Update episode on the Carney government's national AI strategy, "AI for All," released June 4, 2026. The document's most-used word is "sovereignty" — appearing 51 times — while "emissions," "climate," "consent," "Palantir," and "Amazon" appear nada.
I trace the political etymology of "sovereignty" from First Nations liberation discourse through working-
36. Stand-up for Gaza w/ Nour Hadidi
I sit down with Jordanian-Canadian comedian, writer, and podcaster Nour Hadidi to talk about standup as survival, solidarity with Gaza, and what it means to do political comedy in a liberal industry that wants your watermelon emoji but not your actual politics. We discuss her journey from a finance 9-5 to standup, to standup in a radical register that h
UNLOCK 34.1 Looks Like Jonathan Haidt Did a Moral Panic
Jonathan Haidt recently padded his bestselling career by telling worried parents that their kids' anxiety was caused by smartphones and social media — and that the fix was bans.
I always thought the argument was depoliticized, correlational, and suspiciously convenient for parents who'd rather blame a device than interrogate the world they've handed the
35. Antifascist Tooth Fairy w/ E.V. Debs
Joining me today is E.V. Debs (not their real name!) an antifascist community organizer from Seattle to talk about their new tabletop game, Antifascist Tooth Fairy, now getting funded on Kickstarter for a November release.
Throw hands, collect teeth, manage charges, build mutual aid networks. It's a ton of fun as it guides players through the moral, leg
UNLOCK 33.1 Antifascist Body Culture: A Brief History
I wanted to trace the century-old roots of Maren Forsberg's antifascist self-defense work, so I dug into three overlapping histories.
First: the German Bund's use of Körperbildung — body education through eurythmics — as both a resistance philosophy and a cover for anti-Nazi organizing.
Second: the Jewish Labour Bund's Morgenstern athletic club in inter
34. From the Street to City Hall w/ Diana Chan McNally
Diana Chan McNally has been unhoused, a teen mother, a museum curator, a college instructor, a harm reduction worker, a frontline homelessness advocate, and a DJ. Now she's running for Toronto City Council in Ward 4 Parkdale–High Park.
We trace the through-line connecting all of it: organizing, interpreting, and showing up for people. Diana explains wh
UNLOCK 32.1 What Tommy Douglas Knew & What We All Know about Socialized Medicine
In a coda to episode 32, I reflect on what socialized medicine means not as culture or sentiment but as raw material security and the basis for working-class solidarity.
I draw on Beatrice Adler-Bolton's analysis of American healthcare as organized abandonment, and personal accounts of a near-fatal DVT and an emergency C-section that would have meant fi
33. Antifascist Self Defence and Rewriting the Body's Response to Violence w/ Maren Forsberg
Norwegian kickboxer Maren Forsberg works as a self-defense trainer focused on building antifascist courage and resilience for women, queer, and trans people. I spoke with her about her path from childhood play-fighting with her jiu-jitsu dad through national-level kickboxing competition, to coaching survivors of violence and trauma. What is the freeze r
UNLOCKED 31.1 Kensington Market Palimpsest
In this coda to my conversation with Serena Purdy, I track the layered history of Kensington Market through the metaphor of the palimpsest, the medieval manuscript practice of writing over earlier texts that never fully disappear.
Indigenous territory through colonial land seizure. Victorian working-class housing. Jewish Bundist labour militancy. Succes
32. Smith and Carney May Destroy Socialized Medicine w/ Nikolas Barry-Shaw
I sit down with Nikolas Barry-Shaw, researcher and trade and privatization campaigner for the Council of Canadians, to break down how Alberta's Bill 11 is dismantling Canada's public healthcare system, with the help of an insurgent private insurance campaign.
Manulife, Canada Life, and Sun Life control two thirds of Canada's $66 billion private health b
UNLOCK 30.1 The Left Didn't Betray Anyone: Material Conditions and the Limits of Rockhill
A coda to my conversation with Richard Gilman-Opalsky around Gabriel Rockhill's new book, Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism. It's a reflection on what Rockhill's viral success tells us about how leftists manage feelings of loss and betrayal — and why I think his paranoid framework, however emotionally compelling, misreads the material conditions it
31. Voices of Kensington will Ring in Ottawa w/Serena Purdy
Serena Purdy is a comparative health policy researcher at the University of Toronto and socialist candidate who ran in the recent 2025 University-Rosedale federal byelection. We talk about what the upcoming three years of Carney austerity means for healthcare and housing, how electoral organizing doubles as political education, the fight to enfranchise
UNLOCK 29.1 Natalie Wynn and Joshua Citarella Cannot Do Everything
Expanding my IG analysis of Natalie Wynn's appearance on Joshua Citarella's Doomscroll podcast — a 3-hour-and-20-minute conversation that clocked nearly 200,000 views in a week.
Rather than relitigating Wynn's political positions, I'm more interested in what the format itself reveals: two skilled cultural commentators ranging across 15 distinct knowledg
30. Another Conspiracy Theory about Marxists w/ Richard Gilman-Opalsky
Wecoming back my first return guest, philosopher and union activist Richard Gilman-Opalsky, for a deep dive into the viral controversy surrounding Gabriel Rockhill's new book Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism?
Rockhill's thesis, in its simplest form, is that the smartest left intellectuals you've heard of were bought by capital to function as contr
UNLOCK 28.1 Adam Johnson Exposes the Sophistry of Fart Sniffers
A coda to my interview with journalist and media critic Adam Johnson on how the genocide got sold. Here I zoom in on Adam's affect — the rhetorical technique he uses to puncture what I'm calling the habitus of liberal political discourse.
Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's theory of embodied social capital, I analyze two moments where institutional power reas
29: Antifascist Dad Audiobook Excerpt: Capitalism Everywhere and in Everyone.
This week there's no guest — instead, I'm sharing the dedication and an introduction to Chapter Four of the Antifascist Dad audiobook, now available wherever books are sold!
Chapter Four, "Capitalism Everywhere and in Everyone," is the heart of the book's argument: that understanding capitalism's structural cruelty is foundational to recognizing fascism
UNLOCK 27.1 Communicative Capitalism vs. Instagram Activism
Following up on my conversations with Ciarra Jones and Leftie Jane by working through Jodi Dean's concept of communicative capitalism and what it means for those of us doing antifascist political work online.
I start with Marx's distinction between use value and exchange value, using my late mother's hand-knit sweater. Dean's framework pivots on this sp
28. How to Sell a Genocide w/ Adam Johnson
Adam Johnson is a media analyst and co-host of the podcast Citations Needed. His new book How to Sell a Genocide (Pluto Books, out now) draws on analysis of over 12,000 articles and 5,000 TV segments to document how US center-left legacy media — the New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, and others — provided systematic PR cover for the genocide in Gaza.
Johnson a
UNLOCK 26.1 Springtime for Democratic Socialism in Canada
On March 29, 2026, Avi Lewis won the federal NDP leadership on the first ballot in Winnipeg, taking 56% of the vote in a field of five candidates. This episode contextualizes this huge win for international listeners — because what just happened in Canada matters to anyone who follows democratic socialist politics anywhere.
I trace the Lewis family's ro
27. The Proto-Fascism of “Trust me” Carney w/ Leftie Jane
My guest today is Jane Yearwood—aka Leftie Jane on the TikTok and Instagram machines. She lives here in Toronto and does amazing political commentary from a leftist and disability justice POV.
Today we’ll be looking at why so many Canadians seem to believe that MAGA-stye fascism couldn’t possibly take root here, even though it actually is. So we talk ab
UNLOCK 25.1 Mark Carney's “Elbows Up” Hockey Schtick: a Review
A close reading of "Elbows Up" — the hockey slogan Mark Carney skated on to sell his Trump response policies over the past year.
It began on March 1, 2025. Mike Myers mouthed the phrase on SNL, inspiring former NDP MP Charlie Angus to publish a galvanizing Substack two days later tracing it to Gordie Howe. The slogan conscripts the legacy of a working-c
26. Antifascist Gardening Theology w/ Ciarra Jones
I first came across Ciarra Jones on TikTok as @thegardeningtheologian, and I was moved by her eloquent, queer, and plant-based antifascism. She grew up in the Assemblies of God Pentecostal Church, but through her studies at UC Berkeley and Harvard Divinity School she developed a public theology grounded embodiment. We talk about what public theologians
UNLOCK 24.1: Mutual Aid in Islam w/Mona Haydar
In part two of my conversation with Mona Haydar, we move from the theological architecture of Islamic mutual aid into the lived political pressure of Muslim identity in America. We dig into the good Muslim/bad Muslim trap that Mahmood Mamdani diagnosed: the demand to perform as secular, unthreatening, and patriotic. Mona holds to the view that the post-
25. Polite Canada Remilitarizes w/ Brent Patterson
I sit down with Brent Patterson, a veteran anti-militarism organizer whose four decades of work span prison abolition, Indigenous solidarity, and campaigns against state violence. We examine the Carney government's remilitarization agenda. It is not a response to genuine security threats, but as a coherent economic strategy dressed in the language of so
UNLOCK 23.1 The Future of Socialism in Canada w/ Jasmine Peardon pt. 2
In part two of my conversation with Jasmine Peardon, we trace her path from UBC to federal public policy to a master's at Concordia, and the radicalization that travel through the Global South and October 7 accelerated.
We share a moment of recognition about India: how white spiritual tourists and white activists alike can move through a country absorbi
24: Mutual Aid in Islam w/Mona Haydar
I've wanted to understand the radical flank of Islam for a long time, and I feel a little ashamed it took me this long. In this episode I talk with Mona Haydar — rapper, poet, chaplain, and Muslim activist — about the theological architecture of Islamic mutual aid: zakat, the mandatory redistribution of wealth; sadaqa, voluntary charity rooted in truthf
UNLOCK 22.1 Fascism is Also Rational
In Toronto, the morning after US strikes ignited oil depots across Tehran. I reach for Michael Parenti. His core insistence is that fascism is not madness or mob psychology but a calculated counter-revolution: deployed when socialist and labour movements threaten property relations, used to crush unions, criminalize minorities, and restore profitability
23. The Future of Socialism in Canada w/ Jasmine Peardon
Canada's proto-fascist scorecard is racking up big numbers. Jasmine Peardon — organizer, policy researcher, and New Democratic Party Socialist Caucus candidate for party president — joins me to discuss this critical turning point.
We look at Mark Carney's Davos speech as a case study in political dishonesty. We trace the NDP's founding compromise: born
22. Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Will
What does it mean to hold both clear-eyed despair and committed action at the same time? I trace the antifascist axiom "pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will" through my own life — my late mother's instinctive class consciousness, my writing teacher Luciano's daily creative discipline, and my early Buddhist practice of contemplating impermane
21. Against the Hierarchy of Bodies w/ Michelle Cassandra Johnson
Sitting down today with racial equity educator and spiritual director Michelle Cassandra Johnson about what she calls the “hierarchy of bodies” — the long-standing social logic that determines whose lives are protected, valued, and believed. Against mainstream claims that rising authoritarianism is shocking or unprecedented, Michelle argues that today’s
UNLOCK 21.1 Against the Hierarchy of Bodies w/ Michelle Cassandra Johnson pt 2
Back with Michelle, and pivoting from diagnosis to practice. We get a powerful story from her anti-racism work about calling someone into accountability without shaming or discarding them — and what real healing can look like in the room. We explore how multiracial, multicultural communities of care are built on the ground through shared language, liste
UNLOCKED 19.1 From the Mormon Priesthood to Trans Advocate Dad w/ Blair Hodges Pt 2
Back for Pt 2 of my conversation with Blair Hodges—Salt Lake City journalist, former Mormon insider, and dad to a trans kid—by digging into Mormon masculinity. Blair explains how Mormon emotional vulnerability descends from early charismatic revival culture, but also how a rising alt-right strain inside the church is pushing toward a more punitive “musc
20: Fascist Pipeline, Evangelical Pipeline w/ Brad Onishi
Welcoming friend and colleague and fellow dad Brad Onishi (Straight White American Jesus, Preparing for War), to explore the parallels between evangelical conversion and fascist recruitment. Brad was a convert to evangelicalism at 14 and shares how teenage anxiety, alienation, and the search for belonging made him vulnerable to a worldview that offered
UNLOCK 20.1: Fascist Pipeline, Evangelical Pipeline w/ Brad Onishi
Part 2 with Brad Onishi. What interrupts extremist pipelines? Brad dishes on his Japanese American family and how multicultural, multiethnic community might inoculate against fascist identity formation. I discuss the flip side: whiteness as the erasure of roots, the vulnerability of deracinated teens searching for story
What are the healthier forms of r
UNLOCK 18.1 Talking to Young People about the Epstein Files pt 2
What happens when a person we admire is implicated in networks of abuse? How can kids navigate guilt by association without sliding into cynicism or spectacle? Using Deepak Chopra’s Epstein emails to Jeffrey Epstein, we can see what charisma offers people in pain, what red flags look like, and how media culture trains us to confuse popularity with truth
19. From the Mormon Priesthood to Trans Advocate Dad w/ Blair Hodges
I’m joined by my friend Blair Hodges—Salt Lake City journalist, nonprofit comms pro, and dad to a trans kid—for a conversation that starts with his powerful public testimony opposing Utah’s anti–gender-affirming-care bills.
Blair unpacks what it’s like raising a trans child in a “blue dot” city under a hostile state supermajority, and how the so-called
UNLOCK 17.1 Understanding the Boys and Men of 4Chan w/ Dale Beran pt 2
I'm back with Part 2 of my conversation with Dale Beran, turning to what happened to the people he followed while reporting on early 4chan, and what it means to grow out of a life shaped by anonymous online worlds.
Some were able to step away as their offline lives improved, but others remained tied to screens in cycles of addiction.
I also share how
18. Talking to Young People about the Epstein Files
An audio essay on how to talk with young people about the Epstein files from an antifascist perspective. How to hold questions without amplifying sensationalism. How to name harms amidst the absence of accountability.
Also: fragmented Epstein File discourse could trigger a QAnon-style wave on the left, unless adults provide steadier sources, context, an
UNLOCK 16.1 Mark Carney is Not Your Antifascist Dad pt.2
As he laid it out at Davos, Carney’s prescription for avoiding fascist chaos is more of the same conservative capitalism that accelerates fascism: tax cuts, deregulation, fast-tracked investment in oil, AI, and minerals, and new trading blocs with the more stable “middle powers.”
He’s not talking about or taking action domestically to support labour uni
17. Understanding the Boys and Men of 4Chan w/ Dale Beran
Writer Dale Beran visits to discuss the far-right online subcultures he documented in his excellent 2019 book, It Came from Something Awful: How a Toxic Troll Army Accidentally Memed Donald Trump into Office.
I ask whether the cohort of alienated, terminally online young men still exists and whether it lost power after gaining it. TLDR? The specific 4ch
UNLOCK 15.1 Mother and Minister in Minneapolis w/ Rev. Angela Denker Pt 2
I'm back with Rev. Angela Denker, discussing antifascist faith under pressure. Angela names the misogyny threaded through white Christian nationalism—from “submission” theology to the contempt aimed at women who refuse it—and explains why the killing of Renee Good landed as specifically gendered terror. We talk about the double-bind of ministry: how chu
16. Mark Carney is Not Your Antifascist Dad
Carney’s recent speech at Davos really is as important as everyone’s saying it is. But in my view, it’s not important for the obvious truth we just heard him confess, but for the lessons it provides about the deep contradictions and hypocrisies of liberal politics, and how when it pretends to stand up to fascism it’s really asking that the capital order
UNLOCK 14.1 How to Talk to Your Son About Fascism w/ Craig Johnson Pt 2
Picking it back up with historian of fascism Craig Johnson with the question of why fascism can feel cool—especially online—and how we might interrupt that appeal without fighting on fascism’s terms. But fascism isn't just pretending to be cool: it’s popular, aesthetic, and subcultural, and it sells itself through speed, power, transgression, and a sens
15. Mother and Minister in Minneapolis w/ Rev. Angela Denker
I’m joined by Rev. Angela Denker, Lutheran minister, journalist, and mom in Minneapolis, as the city groans under intensified ICE activity. We discuss realities on the ground for families and schools, how she talks with her own kids about fear and safety, and why she believes clear, steady adult context matters in a fragmented media world.
As a ministe
UNLOCK: 13.1 More Degenerate Art, Please! w/ Sarah Jaffray pt.2
I'm back with Sarah Jaffray to probe the aesthetics of fascism and the politics of cultural memory. We talk about how fascist movements rely on a triumphalist victim complex that cannot tolerate vulnerability or disability, and how this connects to the Nazi impulse to purify society through the language of degeneracy and the “enemy within.” Of course we
14. How to Talk to Your Son About Fascism w/ Craig Johnson
I sit down with historian of fascism Craig Johnson to talk about one of the hardest and most urgent questions facing parents right now: how do we talk to our sons about fascism in a world where so much political socialization happens online, fast, and without supervision?
I open the episode in the shadow of the killing of Renee Nicole Good by ICE—and ho
13. More Degenerate Art, Please! w/ Sarah Jaffray
What makes art politically dangerous to fascism—and why does empathy now count as transgression?
Today I'm joined by art historian, educator, and curator Sarah Jaffray for a wide-ranging conversation about modern art, fascism, and the politics of perception. Starting from the Nazis’ infamous “Degenerate Art” campaign, Sarah traces how artists in the aft
UNLOCK 11.1 The Communism of Love w/ Richard Gilman-Opalsky pt 2
Happy New Year, everyon! This is Part 2 of my conversation with Richard Gilman-Opalsky on the “Communism of Love."Love isn’t something to trade, measure, or deserve, and this makes it incompatible with capitalism, and how it gets distorted into obligation, sacrifice, and unpaid, gendered domestic labor.
We talk about improvisation in music, parenting, a
12. The Little Match Girl: An Antifascist Rewrite
Happy Solstice, Holiday, Christmas, Deep Winter, Chanukkah, Kwanzaa to you all. A familiar short story today, this time ending in revolution—not sentimentality.
Notes:
H.C. Andersen : The Little Match Girl (Hersholt translation)
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/AntifascistDadPodcast
TikTok and YouTube: @antifascistdad
You can still pre-order my bo
UNLOCK 10.1: Don't Talk About Politics w/ Sarah Stein Lubrano Part 2
In Part 2 of my conversation with Dr. Sarah Stein Lubrano, we move from the critique of debate and “critical thinking” into the deeper question: what actually radicalizes us?
Sarah talks about the moments that changed her politics—teaching in prisons, supporting a student after sexual violence—and why no amount of abstract knowledge could have done the
11. The Communism of Love w/ Richard Gilman-Opalsky
I asked communist philosopher and jazz drummer Richard Gilman-Opalsky a deceptively simple question: What do we actually mean when we say “love”?
Richard’s "Communism of Love," insists that love is an active, non-exchange relation that contradicts the logic of capitalism. You can’t measure or spreadsheet it, or cost it out.
Unfortunately, this fact can
UNLOCK 9.1 Trans People Drive Fascists Bananas w/ Sara Rose Caplan pt 2
In part two, Sara and I open with the question Matt Walsh can’t stop weaponizing: “What is a woman?” Sara walks me through her one-woman show that answers Walsh by shifting the frame to a deceptively simple word—“chair.” Through a live game with the audience, she demonstrates how even basic terms are messy, negotiated, and context-bound, and how fascist
10: Don't Talk About Politics w/ Sarah Stein Lubrano
What if the entire “marketplace of ideas” story about how people change their minds is mostly wrong? In this episode, I talk with political theorist and organizer Dr. Sarah Stein Lubrano about why debate, podcasts, and “critical thinking” rarely shift anyone’s core political commitments.
Sarah and I dig into her book Don’t Talk About Politics: Changing
9. Trans People Drive Fascists Bananas w/ Sara Rose Caplan
Donald Trump casually embraces the word “fascist” in front of Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, and doesn't bat an eye when Mamdani accuses him of funding genocide. This smug absorption of rhetorical confrontation is something we need to think about.
On the same day Mamdani brought socialism discourse to the Oval Office, the Democratic leadership voted in f
UNLOCK 7.1 Antifascist Father w/ David Inczauskis, S.J. Pt 2
In Part 2, David and I go deeper into the contradictions, tensions, and possibilities of the Catholic Church at this political moment. We discuss ideological purity, coalition building, critiques of capitalism, the role of synodality, and how leftists and religious radicals can meet each other in common struggle.
What are the spiritual and emotional dim
