Conspirituality
Derek Beres, Matthew Remski, Julian Walker
- 47 minutes 40 secondsBrief: Antifascist Woodshed 3: The Kids are Alright
But the parents? Meh.
When fascism rises, and some young people are drawn into its orbit, because everyone from Jordan Peterson to Andrew Tate has figured out how to exploit resentment at the failures of capitalism, we have an opportunity to give our kids a lot more than moralistic calls for a return to normalcy, compliance, warnings about screen time, striving to be better students, doing more sports, and not making too much of a ruckus (as Marco Rubio calls it).
The kind of parenting that limits itself to restoring the status quo for younger people in an age of fascism is not engaged parenting.
It’s not enough to be a good boy or girl. Antifascism takes more than that.
In this Part One, Matthew previews our main feed discussion of Adolescence (coming this Thursday), parses a speech by Gareth Southgate, wonders why Jonathan Haidt knows nothing about gaming, and remembers Sophie Scholl.
Show Notes
Op-ed: Try again, President Kumar: Renewing calls for Tufts to adopt March 4 TCU Senate resolutions
Death toll since Israel's aggression on Gaza on October 7 rises to 31,819 (March, 2024)
Austerity Has Always Been a Project to Empower Capital at the Expense of Workers
It's Not Them; It's Us: Thoughts on the Show Adolescence
Netflix’s ‘Adolescence’ Taps Into the Latest Moral Panic
UK government's own estimate says welfare cuts to push 250,000 into poverty | Reuters
55: Games Against Humanity (w/ Thi Nguyen) — Conspirituality
207: Gaming Realities (w/Thi Nguyen) — Conspirituality
Reminder to the media: Research video games before reporting on them
Out of the Ruins:The Emergence of Radical Informal Learning Spaces
Anarchist Education and the Modern School: A Francisco Ferrer Reader
The People's Republic of Neverland: The Child versus the State
Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work
Teaching Resistance: Radicals, Revolutionaries, and Cultural Subversives in the Classroom
TRUST KIDS! Stories on Youth Autonomy and Confronting Adult Supremacy
Refusing Complicity: The Bravery of Sophie Scholl - Radical Tea Towel
Sophie Scholl and the youth resistance against the Nazis – DW – 02/22/2023
The majority of news influencers are conservative men, study finds
The politics of The Sound of Music | Peter Levine
The Edelweiss Pirates: A Story of Freedom, Love and Life
The Child and Its Enemies | The Anarchist Library —Emma Goldman
DECLARATION OF CHILDREN'S RIGHTS—Janusz Korczak
The King of Children: A Biography of Janusz Korczak - Betty Jean Lifton
Sophie Scholl – The Final Days
Remember the Mac-Paps - rabble.ca
The Canadians In The Spanish Civil War
'Gentleman Jules' lived for just causes | Sudbury Star
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5 April 2025, 10:00 am - 58 minutes 10 seconds251: Who Is Curtis Yarvin?
"If Americans want to change their government, they're going to have to get over their dictator-phobia."
That's neo-reactionary philosopher Curtis Yarvin in 2012, when he outlined a strategy that's eerily similar to how Trump and Musk are now destroying our government. The "dark enlightenment" blogger, long a transgressive darling of the New Right, has in the last two months enjoyed a fresh round of mainstream exposure.
We look at a man who has the ear of those who are reshaping our world at breakneck speed.
Show Notes
Kristi Noem Gets a MAGA Makeover - The New York Times
Kristi Noem’s New Teeth Are Blowing Up in Her Face | Vanity Fair
Kristi Noem’s El Salvador Prison Photo Op Might Have Violated the Geneva Convention
Trump wants FEMA gone. But that could be its own kind of disaster.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem posed in front of El Salvador prisoners wearing $50k watch
Kelly Brogan’s Divine Dungeon: Pt 1 (feat/Esme Providence Brown)
Kelly Brogan’s Divine Dungeon: Pt 2 (feat/Esme Providence Brown)
Cathedrals of Erotic Misery • Ill Will
Financial Times on Dark Enlightenment
Common Dreams on Dark Enlightenment/DOGE
Jennifer Kollmer, 1971-2021 — Yarvin’s obit poem, TW on the rest of the blog!
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3 April 2025, 10:00 am - 6 minutes 6 secondsBonus Sample: American Oligarchy and the Kremlin Wizard
What is an oligarchy, exactly? Is the US entering a period similar to post-Soviet Russia in the 1990s? What do Russian oligarchs have to do with proven interference in the 2016 US election?
Julian digs into Russian history to explore parallels with modern-day America. Meet Vladislav Surkov, the architect of both Putin’s 25-year rule over what Surkov has dubbed “sovereign democracy,” and the global propaganda strategies generating our post-truth ecosystem of disinformation and conspiracies. There’s a reason why politics feels like theater these days, why democracy seems like a pipe dream.
While MAGA has a fascism fetish, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine might be a better match for Hitler on the verge, with Trump and Co acting as macho-clown versions of Neville Chamberlain.
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31 March 2025, 10:00 am - 43 minutes 37 secondsBrief: Is It Fascism?
Derek and Julian discuss Robert Paxton's 2004 book, The Anatomy of Fascism, in light of 2025 America.
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29 March 2025, 10:00 am - 1 hour 18 seconds250: The Mercola Tapes
McGill University science communicator, Jonathan Jarry, was recently given hundreds of hours of Zoom calls between alt-med salesman, Joseph Mercola, and a supposed clairvoyant that goes by Bahlon. Jonathan joins us to discuss what he found.
Show Notes
Here are claims about Wisconsin’s Supreme Court candidates — and the facts
Ahead of Wisconsin Supreme Court election, Elon Musk PAC offers cash for pledge - WPR
Trump backs Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate in hotly contested race - ABC News
Billionaires become a focus of the 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court race
Brad Schimel Begins Campaigning With Anti-MLK Advocate Charlie Kirk - MeidasTouch News
Exclusive Videos Show Dr. Joe Mercola’s Dangerous Ideas Whipped up by Alleged Medium
Brief: RFK's Health Propaganda Roundtable
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27 March 2025, 10:00 am - 6 minutes 7 secondsBonus Sample: The War on Fat People
The Wellness Company is now selling retatrutide, a weight loss drug currently undergoing stage 3 trials by Eli Lilly. An anti-vax company that uses fear-based marketing to push supplements appears to be overstepping legal lines. Yet will they be held accountable in an RFK Jr-led HHS?
Derek looks at private market healthcare propaganda from Ronald Reagan to Kennedy, showing how health is not the real goal of MAHA. But if they can sell untested products to fat and chronically ill patients along the way, all the better.
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24 March 2025, 10:00 am - 40 minutes 41 secondsBrief: Jordan Peterson’s Shady Billionaire Backers
Julian covers the recent Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference in London. Headlined by Jordan Peterson, featuring Konstantin Kisin, Ayan Hirsi Ali, Jonathan Pageau, and Eric Weinstein, the conference positioned itself as an inspiring cultural gathering focused on reclaiming Western values.
Behind the scenes, a hedge-fund billionaire new media baron, conservative libertarian think tank, shady funding source in Dubai, and an evangelical English aristocrat use the prestige of ARC and its celebrity figureheads to popularize a very specific political, economic, and religious agenda.
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22 March 2025, 10:00 am - 1 hour 7 minutes249: Kings of Pain
Trump administration Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, recently stated the American economy is going to need a "detox" period. And so today we look at peak the conspirituality convergences between biological and political purification projects.
Quinn Slobodian, professor of international history at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, joins Matthew in the final segment to offer his big picture view on the Kings of Pain.
Show Notes
Johns Hopkins to lose 2,000 jobs after Trump’s $800m cut in USAid funding
Young scientists see career pathways vanish as schools adapt to federal funding cuts
Report: mRNA vaccines are in RFK Jr’s crosshairs; funding in question
FDA Makes Flu Vaccine Recommendations Without Convening Advisors
HHS sends all employees a $25,000 voluntary buyout offer
Exclusive: US CDC plans study into vaccines and autism, sources say
USDA gears up for MAHA dietary guidelines update
Musk Said No One Has Died Since Aid Was Cut. That Isn’t True.
Watch CNBC's full interview with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent
Why we must teach medical students about the role of physicians during the Holocaust | AAMC
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20 March 2025, 10:00 am - 5 minutes 39 secondsBonus Sample: Antifascist Woodshed 2.1 (Punching Nazis?)
Click here to hear the full episode on Patreon.
Second of Matthew’s two-part examination of why the hell questions of force, non-violent resistance with and without force, unarmed violence and property damage, and armed violence are so incredibly hard to talk about in a culture thick with spiritual and political bypassing. Are we capable of understanding the difference between morality and strategy?
Part 1 focused on philosophy and psychology while today the focus will be on definitions and tactics. Together, both parts will push back on conspiracism about the identities, motives, and methods of antifascists. Both will present slices of the rich discourse on violence and non-violence from antifascist history, including clarifying definitions of key terms. Both will open a space to think carefully about what intensities of self and community defense are both useful and tolerable in the fight against fascism.
Today we’ll get into the very thick weeds of how the “strategic nonviolence” research of Gene Sharp, Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan is framed as empirical, but may be way more about idealizing Gandhi than about facts on the ground.
Huge list of references for each!
Show Notes
Stopping the Press: The Threats to the Media Posed by the Second Trump Term | The New Yorker
What the FBI Has Done, and Kash Patel Could Do - Columbia Journalism Review
Hakeem Jeffries cracks down on Trump speech disruptions
Neo-Nazi Richard Spencer Got Punched—You Can Thank the Black Bloc | The Nation
Aamer Rahman: Is it really ok to punch nazis?
Meditations at the ringed fence around G20 Toronto - rabble.ca
Remaining Human: A Buddhist Perspective on Occupy Wall Street - Michael Stone
Brief: The Outside Agitator Conspiracy Trope (w/Dr. Peniel Joseph) — Conspirituality
Anti-fascists linked to zero murders in the US in 25 years | Donald Trump | The Guardian
40 Ways to Fight Fascists: Sunshine
rules for radicals | saul d. alinsky
198 METHODS OF NONVIOLENT ACTION | — Gene Sharp
She Interrupted a Town-Hall Meeting and Was Dragged Out by Private Security - The New York Times
Martin Luther King Jr. had a much more radical message than a dream of racial brotherhood
The Enigma of Frantz Fanon | The Nation
Frantz Fanon and the struggle against colonisation | MR Online
Frantz Fanon and the Paradox of Anticolonial Violence – Solidarity
Frantz Fanon—a vital defence of violence by the oppressed - Socialist Worker
Land and Freedom (1995 Ken Loach) [ENG Sub] (starting at the collectivization debate scene)
Full Spectrum Resistance — McBay
The Failure of Nonviolence | The Anarchist Library
Beyond Violence and Nonviolence | ROAR Magazine
Debunking the myths around nonviolent resistance | ROAR Magazine
Social movements and the (mis)use of research: Extinction Rebellion and the 3.5% rule
Responding to Domestic Terrorism: A Crisis of Legitimacy - Harvard Law Review
Domestic Terrorism: Definitions, Terminology, and Methodology — FBI
676 | United States Sentencing Commission
Activists use 'Tesla Takedown' protests to fight job cuts by Musk and Trump | Reuters
Tesla vehicles destroyed, vandalized since Musk began role at White House, authorities say - ABC News
Anti-DOGE protests at Tesla stores target Elon Musk's bottom line | AP News
Tyre Extinguishers: A Night Out with the Climate Activists Sabotaging SUVs
Tesla Stocks Tumble as Elon Musk’s Political Role Grows More Divisive - The New York Times
Beyond Violence and Nonviolence | ROAR Magazine
Violence Will Only Hurt the Trump Resistance | The New Republic
Why Not Riot? Interview with Author Ben Case - CounterPunch.org
10 Lessons on Filmmaking from Director Ken Loach
BBC Taster - How to Make a Ken Loach Film
Land and Freedom (1995 Ken Loach) [ENG Sub]
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17 March 2025, 10:00 am - 43 minutes 2 secondsBrief: Antifascist Woodshed 2 (Punching Nazis?)
First of Matthew's two-part examination of why the hell questions of force, non-violent resistance with and without force, unarmed violence and property damage, and armed violence are so incredibly hard to talk about in a culture thick with spiritual and political bypassing. Are we capable of understanding the difference between morality and strategy?
Part 1 focuses on philosophy and psychology while Part 2 focuses on definitions and tactics. Together, both parts will push back on conspiracism about the identities, motives, and methods of antifascists. Both will present slices of the rich discourse on violence and non-violence from antifascist history, including clarifying definitions of key terms. Both will open a space to think carefully about what intensities of self and community defense are both useful and tolerable in the fight against fascism.
Part 2 gets into the very thick weeds of how the “strategic nonviolence” research of Gene Sharp, Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan is framed as empirical, but may be way more about idealizing Gandhi than about facts on the ground. Drops Monday on Patreon.
Huge list of references for each!
Show Notes
Stopping the Press: The Threats to the Media Posed by the Second Trump Term | The New Yorker
What the FBI Has Done, and Kash Patel Could Do - Columbia Journalism Review
Hakeem Jeffries cracks down on Trump speech disruptions
Neo-Nazi Richard Spencer Got Punched—You Can Thank the Black Bloc | The Nation
Aamer Rahman: Is it really ok to punch nazis?
Meditations at the ringed fence around G20 Toronto - rabble.ca
Remaining Human: A Buddhist Perspective on Occupy Wall Street - Michael Stone
Brief: The Outside Agitator Conspiracy Trope (w/Dr. Peniel Joseph) — Conspirituality
Anti-fascists linked to zero murders in the US in 25 years | Donald Trump | The Guardian
40 Ways to Fight Fascists: Sunshine
rules for radicals | saul d. alinsky
198 METHODS OF NONVIOLENT ACTION | — Gene Sharp
She Interrupted a Town-Hall Meeting and Was Dragged Out by Private Security - The New York Times
Martin Luther King Jr. had a much more radical message than a dream of racial brotherhood
The Enigma of Frantz Fanon | The Nation
Frantz Fanon and the struggle against colonisation | MR Online
Frantz Fanon and the Paradox of Anticolonial Violence – Solidarity
Frantz Fanon—a vital defence of violence by the oppressed - Socialist Worker
Land and Freedom (1995 Ken Loach) [ENG Sub] (starting at the collectivization debate scene)
Full Spectrum Resistance — McBay
The Failure of Nonviolence | The Anarchist Library
Beyond Violence and Nonviolence | ROAR Magazine
Debunking the myths around nonviolent resistance | ROAR Magazine
Social movements and the (mis)use of research: Extinction Rebellion and the 3.5% rule
Responding to Domestic Terrorism: A Crisis of Legitimacy - Harvard Law Review
Domestic Terrorism: Definitions, Terminology, and Methodology — FBI
676 | United States Sentencing Commission
Activists use 'Tesla Takedown' protests to fight job cuts by Musk and Trump | Reuters
Tesla vehicles destroyed, vandalized since Musk began role at White House, authorities say - ABC News
Anti-DOGE protests at Tesla stores target Elon Musk's bottom line | AP News
Tyre Extinguishers: A Night Out with the Climate Activists Sabotaging SUVs
Tesla Stocks Tumble as Elon Musk’s Political Role Grows More Divisive - The New York Times
Beyond Violence and Nonviolence | ROAR Magazine
Violence Will Only Hurt the Trump Resistance | The New Republic
Why Not Riot? Interview with Author Ben Case - CounterPunch.org
10 Lessons on Filmmaking from Director Ken Loach
BBC Taster - How to Make a Ken Loach Film
Land and Freedom (1995 Ken Loach) [ENG Sub]
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15 March 2025, 10:00 am - 1 hour 20 minutes248: What Side Are You On?
Lately a lot of folks (including us) have been doing the fascism comparisons.
The questions we ponder this week: How long it takes for fascism to fully dig its roots in, how varied is the opposition along the way, and what role does the media play?
Show Notes
165: Outrage Machine (w/Tobias Rose-Stockwell)
16 October 1919 | Hitler Archive
Fritz Gerlich, publicist and prophet – how did he resist the Nazis?
Nazi Germany’s Schriftleitergesetz: The End of Freedom of the Press - Arolsen Archives
The illegal press – Verzetsmuseum
The Liberal Media Always Fails Against Fascism — Robert Evans
Can a news media that doesn’t really oppose fascism ever cover it well?
Against Normalization: The Lesson of the “Munich Post” | Los Angeles Review of Books
The Newspaper Axis: Six Press Barons Who Enabled Hitler
Fascist-Sympathizing Newspaper Barons Were the Blueprint for Today’s Right-Wing Media
Media's Failure in Times of Crisis: Election Coverage in the Interwar Period
How Journalists Covered the Rise of Mussolini and Hitler | Smithsonian
How Britain's Nazi-loving press baron made the case for Hitler | The Times of Israel
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