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Matthew speaks with Maria Bernardes, a volunteer in Lula's digital army, about how Nossa Senhora Aparecida, Brazil's Black Marian patron, became a flashpoint in the 2026 presidential runoff. The conflict pit Catholic, multiracial universalism against the racist neo-Pentecostal church to which the Bolsonaro father and son have given themselves, in the hope that Christofascism would lead them to power. 

In our segment last Thursday we discussed how Worker’s Party propaganda director Andre Janones staged an assault to capture the green-and-yellow colours back from the right wing. This is a deeper version of that story, in which the Bolsonaro gang attempted to defame the Black Virgin of Brazil as transgressive, subhuman, corrupt, and disgusting. It did not work. 

Maria Bernardes is a Brazilian voice actress, improv performer and anti-fascism activist, now based in Barcelona.

Show Notes

Maria Bernardes 

Maria on Instagram

The 1995 "chute na santa" incident (Wikipedia)

Entenda a polêmica envolvendo Flávio Bolsonaro e Nossa Senhora Aparecida (Diário do Nordeste)

 "Fake news, né, presidente?": Lula é contestado sobre Nossa Senhora (CNN Brasil)

Flávio sobre polêmica com Nossa Senhora: "espécie de facada" (Congresso em Foco)

Flávio Bolsonaro afirma que Brasil será "do Senhor Jesus Cristo" (O Tempo)

Pastor de Flávio Bolsonaro diz: "Deus odeia o culto à Rainha dos Céus" (Metrópoles)

Flávio presenteou o pai na prisão com livro em que bispo JB Carvalho ataca "santos católicos" (Revista Fórum)

Saiba qual livro Flávio Bolsonaro apresentou em visita ao pai na prisão (Estado de Minas)

CNBB defende Constituição e pede intercessão de Nossa Senhora após embate com Flávio Bolsonaro (A Gazeta)

Em carta, bispos católicos apontam ameaça à democracia em candidatura de Flávio Bolsonaro (CartaCapital)

Caetano Veloso, Marieta Severo e Nossa Senhora Aparecida em clipe de Lula (Revista Fórum)

Tudo sobre o novo álbum de Anitta, EQUILIBRIVM II (Billboard Brasil)

Edir Macedo critica lema bolsonarista "Deus, Pátria e Família" (O Povo)

"Em nome do Pai": evangélicos se afastam de Flávio Bolsonaro (Agência Pública)

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What is going on with Gen-Z revolutions across the globe right now? 

A student-led movement in Serbia just organized a massive nonviolent protest movement against widespread corruption and democratic backsliding. Despite state control of the media, violence and intimidation from government thugs and organized crime, and election interference, they won an overwhelming victory, sending their proto-authoritarian dictator packing.

This is in the wake of similar victories in Hungary, Poland, and Brazil. But it turns out that American first daughter Ivanka Trump and her real estate heir husband may have lit the fuse on both the Serbian movement and the ongoing Flamingo Revolution in neighboring Albania. They’ve been attempting to build Gulf State-funded corruption-magnet multi-billion dollar luxury hotel resorts in those countries—and the local kids are having none of it!

Julian looks into how the nonviolent protest movement that ousted Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic informed the strategies and success of the Student List just this last month, leading to the CANVAS model that trains pro-democracy activists worldwide. He contrasts this with less effective, undisciplined approaches that research says often accomplishes very little, while playing into the hands of authoritarians, stopping the wider population from participating.

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First, the blue wave. Then, Russell Brand gets convicted of rape and sexual assault. Derek and Julian talk about the meltdowns going on in America right now.

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For the moment, a sigh of relief ripples across America, perhaps even across the world. Seats that have not gone Democrat in decades did so across the country on Tuesday. Voters appear to have finally rejected MAGA. But from our perspective, a cult leader can only lie, cheat, and do the opposite of what he promised his followers he'd do, for so long. His now betrayed populist appeals to affordability and avoiding endless foreign wars appear to have been the final straws. Not January 6, not election tampering, not pulling out of global climate agreements, not the Ukraine-aid fiasco, not his criminal indictments, not even the actions of proto-fascist ICE thugs—the price of gas.

Well, we'll take it. For now. 

We debrief and decompress from a night when the polling data over-delivered instead of delivering a gut-punch. Derek looks at the MAHA implications, Matthew notices a trend toward progressive populists reclaiming of patriotic symbolism, and Julian covers what and who to keep an eye on as the highly-organized anti-democracy election-conspiracists begin their assault on these results.

Show Notes

RFK Jr. and MAHA Suffer Brutal Election Night Wipeout

Stage Set for Election Denial Chaos

Key Election-Denial Activists

8 Things You Should Know About Trump’s Effort To Take Over Midterm Elections

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Julian interviews journalist Anand Giridharadas about his new book, Man in the Mirror: Hope, Struggle, and Belonging in an American City. The book centers on the tragic death of Jordan Neely, a deeply traumatized, mentally ill, and unhoused former Michael Jackson impersonator who was put in a five-minute choke hold on a New York subway car by Marine veteran Daniel Penny, who was acquitted on all counts.

Giridharadas spent three years investigating the stories beneath the high profile criminal trial. He takes readers on an immersive narrative journey that explores race, mental illness, homelessness, addiction, and the networks of support and care struggling within a failing system of social services.

Show Notes

Man in the Mirror: Hope, Struggle, and Belonging in an American City

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Matthew tracks the concept of "islamo-gauchisme," the French accusation that leftists are useful idiots for jihad. Pierre-André Taguieff's 2002 book on "new Judeophobia" is ground zero, and a forensic Twitter analysis has shown that far-right accounts pushed the term for years, until it was taken up by Macroniste ministers in 2020. The academic consensus is that it is a political slogan with no empirical reality. 

But like any (potential) conspiracy theory, it also emerges from a constellation of partial truths: solidarity between leftists and the French immigrant working class, the contested influence of the Muslim Brotherhood on civil society, Mélenchon's pivot from friendship with the late Charlie Hebdo editor to an anti-Islamophobia position, and the LFI  refusing to condemn October 7 as an act of terrorism.

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Election denialism didn’t go away after the Capitol Insurrection. If anything, the revolving door between the Trump administration, the far-right conspiracy-mongering media ecosystem, and those directly involved in (and even convicted and imprisoned for) undermining democracy has only gotten more elaborate and determined.

As the elections loom, Julian talks to the VP of Media Matters for America, Julie Millican, about her organization’s excellent reporting on how figures like Steve Bannon, Jerome Corsi, and Cleta Mitchell (the attorney involved in the infamous Brad Raffsenberger phone call) are sowing distrust and calling for confiscation of ballots and voting machines. 

They also discuss the armed ICE presence at polling sites and Tina Peters, who was convicted on charges involving attempts to overturn the 2020 election and sentenced to nine years in prison. After President Trump threatened to withhold federal funding from Colorado, the Governor commuted her sentence, freeing her to now reportedly meet personally with the President and work on “preserving election integrity.”

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In 2021, the first secular embryo adoption organization received federal funding after decades of pro-life Christian organizations had hogged the kitty with their particular views on who is fit enough to raise a family.

Then in 2026, a change in language and some apparently shady bookkeeping on the part of an agency under RFK Jr's HHS resulted in two ultra-religious organizations receiving nearly all funding. Derek is joined by Maya Grobel, who cofounded that secular organization, Empower with Moxi, to discuss the consequences of this funding direction.

Show Notes

Empower with Moxi

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The protests in France were initially sparked in mid-September by high school kids as young as 14 in the poorer metro districts, articulating concrete grievances about their neglected schools, underpaid and absent teachers, an AI-driven vocational assignment algorithm that forces them to choose career paths at 15, and a pervasive culture of smug condescension from the adult world.

Anthony Mansuy joins us today. You might know him as the French correspondent for QAnon Anonymous. He was part of a journalist team from Societe publication, a print-only magazine in France, that travelled to places like Creteil and Alencon to interview these kids, and he walks Matthew through what they told him. 

First: the midterms are upon us, and so are new waves of MAGA bullshit. Derek has an update on what MAHA action is up to in the final push and Julian catches up on how Team Trump is aiming to invalidate the polls before they open.

Show Notes

An Iowa Republican’s Unusual Connection to the Kochs (and Kansas)

Calley Means, top MAHA ally, resigns from Trump administration

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Mikki Willis is back with another installment of Plandemic—er, with a new book that further explains Plandemic, or something like that. Given how badly his sequels have gone, it appears that he’s looking for a new angle to mine (and monetize).

Derek opens the pages of Bad Medicine: How COVID Protocols Turned Hospitals into Death Traps only to find Willis’s continual inability to grapple with reality is in book form.

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Matthew welcomes friend of the pod, Brad Onishi, back to Conspirituality. Brad is the co-host of Straight White American Jesus, and he’s got a new book out called American Caesar: How Theocrats and Tech Lords Are Turning America into a Monarchy. 

Onishi’s scholarship charts the Frankenstein alliance of reactionary Catholic integralists, Protestant Reconstructionists, and Silicon Valley monarchists who find a common vein of worship in their rejection of democratic rule and a preference for an unbound executive.

But: How will the trad-Caths out-maneuvre Pope Leo? Why do Paul Weyrich and Leonard Leo see  Trump as a wrecking ball who precedes a Vance-type successor? How do they justify their openly minoritarian strategy? 

And: can these post-liberal believers really subordinate markets to a "common good"? Or is that impossible, given the wrath of their true deity, capital itself?

Show Notes

American Caesar by Bradley OnishiPeter Thiel calls Greta Thunberg a servant of the Antichrist (CTV News/AFP)Thiel's Nashville Antichrist lectures target Pope Leo XIV over AI (Gizmodo)Paul M. WeyrichBarre Seid's $1.6 billion donation to Leonard Leo's Marble Freedom Trust (JTA)US government takes 10% stake in Intel (CBS News)Kevin Roberts and Dwarkesh Patel, "Tech and the American Republic"Catholic Land Movement gaining momentum (The Catholic Register)Jeff Bezos on AI and a three-day work week (VnExpress International)Review of David Harvey's The Enigma of CapitalKarl Marx, Capital, Volume One (Marxists Internet Archive)

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