Antifascist Dad Podcast

In this episode I talk with Kelsey Lyseng, an Edmonton nurse who confronted Jesse Brown at his October 14 town hall at the University of Alberta, "Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, Anti-Jew Hate in Contemporary Canada." Together, we go through the techniques use to avoid the question of genocide in Gaza:

withholding a verdict in the name of journalistic neutrality

substituting milder categories

treating proof of intent as the only standard

invoking safety

whataboutism 

blaming antisemitism on Muslim immigration

The pattern matches Jennifer Freyd's concept of DARVO: deny, attack, reverse victim and offender.

Kelsey describes why she showed up as a citizen and what it cost her. I close with the online pile-on Kelsey faced after our conversation, and with some words from Carsie Blanton on why leftists need to stop disorganizing each other.

Bluesky: matthewremski.bsky.social

Instagram: @matthew_remski

YouTube: @antifascistdad

TikTok: [@antifascistdad]

Patreon: antifascistdadpodcast

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Sources

Protest erupts in response to Jesse Brown town hall (The Gateway)
University of Alberta forum was met by angry protesters inside and out (Alberta Jewish News, via Frequency News)
Jesse Brown fires himself as host of flagship Canadaland podcast (Broadcast Dialogue)
Conspirituality 328: Canadaland Platforms Antivax Grifter
Jennifer J. Freyd, What is DARVO?
Lara Sheehi, From the Clinic to the Streets: Psychoanalysis for Revolutionary Futures (Pluto Press)
UN inquiry finds that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza (CBC)
Campus Antisemitism and Student Experiences (CASE) report (Canadian Heritage)
EPS chief says he stands by trip to Israel (CTV News Edmonton)

Artist and journalist Molly Crabapple has given more interviews about Here Where We Live Is Our Country than anyone can count. I wanted this one to drill down on the many meanings of the book's core concept: doikayt, or "hereness." This was the Jewish Labor Bund's commitment to fighting for dignity and equality where Jews already lived, as a lived practice and a counter to fascist fantasies of escape and hierarchy.

We talk about how art and New York's maximalist street life shaped her politics, about Adolf Loos and the colonial racism behind modernist minimalism, the bulldozing of Palestinian land and history, and the legacy of Bundist women from Pati Kremer to Sofia Dubnova.

We cover the Bund's refusal of both tsarism and Leninism, but also the Menshevik error of keeping Russia in World War I. We discuss leftist melancholy, secular spirituality, death threats against Avi Lewis, why young Jews tell Molly she gave them their ancestors back, and why the left needs to tell its stories with more clarity and passion.

On the same day I spoke with João Biondi about Lula's WhatsApp army, I talked with Belgrade writer and curator Lav Mrenović about a slower revolution. On October 25, the Student List defeated Aleksandar Vučić's Serbian Progressive Party with about 52.5 percent of the vote, ending fourteen years of his bullshit rule.

The Student List is a leaderless movement that grew out of the student blockades that followed the November 2024 collapse of the Novi Sad station canopy, which killed 16 people. Lav describes Vučić's alchemy of boring nerd and street tough, and the collective political depression that preceded the uprising.

He explains how faculty plenums spread into citizens' assemblies and independent unions, and how the plenums vetted a slate of 250 non-politicians. And we discuss whether a movement that has so far kept ideology off the table can form and hold a vision for a post-strongman future.

Lav Mrenović is a culture worker from Belgrade, Serbia. With an education in contemporary art history, he has been active in the independent cultural scene as a writer, editor, curator, and organizer.

Sources

Slavoj Žižek, "The New Face of Protest," Project Syndicate (Feb 13, 2025)
Vincent Bevins, "Diary," London Review of Books, Vol. 48 No. 6
Srđan Atanasovski, "A victory for student populism: Elite conflict and Serbia's future," LINKS (Oct 30, 2026)
Yugopnik, "A Balkan Leftist's Read On Serbia's Student Victory," YouTube (Oct 27, 2026)
Civic Initiatives, "Protests Against Corruption in Serbia: A Review of Events and Institutional Response" (2025)
N1, "BBC: Vučić's biggest test in Belgrade" — Vučić's Radical Party and information-ministry record (Dec 2023)
Pulitzer Center / New York Times, "The President, the Soccer Hooligans and an Underworld 'House of Horrors'" (May 2023)
PBS / AP, protests over irregularities in Serbia's December 2023 election
The Gazelle, "Serbia vs. Rio Tinto: Serbian Public Expresses Concerns Over Lithium Mining" (Sept 2024)
N1, Belgrade prosecutor's March 15 sonic weapon findings and the counter-evidence (Sept 2026)
bne IntelliNews, "Violent clashes in Serbia raise fears of state-sanctioned thuggery" (Aug 2025)
Sadie Zarris, "From plenums to parliament: the rulebook behind Serbia's Student List," The Loop / ECPR (Oct 21, 2026)
Denisa Kostovicova and Jessie Barton Hronešová, "Serbia's students have shown how to beat an autocrat at the ballot box," LSE European Politics (Oct 27, 2026)
Nina Djukanović, "Serbia's Students Changed How Serbians Think About Politics," Jacobin (Oct 29, 2026)
European Western Balkans, "Vučić courts voters as students take the campaign door to door" (Oct 6, 2026)
Meduza, "Serbia's student-backed opposition has defeated Vučić at the ballot box" (Oct 26, 2026)
Vreme, "Times: Vučić gave up the violent scenario after the election" (Oct 28, 2026)
Latin Times, election results and the Belgrade graffiti clean-up (Oct 30, 2026)

Socials

In the months following Lula's second-place finish in the first round of Brazil's 2026 presidential election, a WhatsApp channel run by André Janones grew from about 50,000 followers to more than 10 million, and Lula came back to beat Flávio Bolsonaro.

I talk with João Biondi, a Brasília-based writer, content creator and storytelling specialist, about what the Exército do Lula felt like from the inside: the daily missions, the rule never to engage the opposition, the 24-hour livestream that took over the "Dark Saturday" before the vote, the fandom AI memes, and the reclaiming of the green-and-yellow soccer jersey from the far right.

I open by connecting the campaign to Sarah Stein Lubrano's work on why argument rarely changes minds, and to the mini-manual of Janonism. We close on whether this kind of mobilization can outlast a single election based on a critical binary choice.

João Biondi is a writer and content creator from Brasília, Brazil. He has an International Relations degree and is also a Storytelling Specialist. He analyses fashion, film, art, and the semiotics that build the symbiotic relation between pop culture and politics. You can find João on social media using the tag @ojoaobiondi.

Patreon subscribers can hear my conversation with Lav Mrenovic on the Serbian student movement, up now.

SOURCES

Mini-Manual of Informational Insurgency (or Janonism), English PDF

Agência Pública: With Janones's "army," Lula achieves an unprecedented comeback

Paraíba Business: From 50,000 to 10 million, how Janones changed the digital race

SBT News: Exército do Lula reaches 10 million WhatsApp followers

SBT News: Lula gets his first cellphone and calls for 10 million in the digital "army"

Diário do Nordeste: TSE technical review finds no reported fake news on the Exército do Lula channel

Editora Record: André Janones, Janonismo Cultural

Sarah Stein Lubrano, Don't Talk About Politics (Bloomsbury)

Antifascist Dad Episode 10: Don't Talk About Politics with Sarah Stein Lubrano

MIT Press: Max Haiven, The Player and the Played

Penguin Random House: Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew

Hachette: Vincent Bevins, If We Burn

This week's Patreon coda applies Lara Sheehi's model of psychic intrusion — confusion, fear, exhaustion, and despair — to both the CASE report and the lived experience in the U of T Gaza encampment.

I look at Émile Durkheim's "social effervescence," Ben Case's "contentious effervescence," Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, and Carla Bergman and Nick Montgomery's Joyful Militancy, while tracking how state-backed reports and direct repression work together to disorient, frighten, exhaust, and demoralize anti-genocide organizers.

This coda revisits conversations with encampment organizer Sara Rasikh and with Daniel Sailofsky on the Jewish Faculty Network's fight against the CASE report's flawed methodology, and then closes with Sheehi's reframing of repetition compulsion. It's not personal failure that repeats. It's but power and oppression. Reversing that repetition is a daily practice.

Bluesky: matthewremski.bsky.social

Instagram: @matthew_remski

YouTube: @antifascistdad

TikTok: [@antifascistdad]

Patreon: antifascistdadpodcast

Order Antifascist Dad

CASE (Campus Antisemitism and Student Experiences) report – Canada.ca

Flawed by Design: JFN's response to the CASE report

Episode 44: Psychic Militancy w/ Dr. Lara Sheehi – Matthew Remski's Substack

Episode 2: Gaza Encampment w/ Sara Rasikh – Antifascist Dad Podcast

Episode 42: Keep the Little Flame Alive w/ Carsie Blanton – Matthew Remski's Substack

Episode 27: The Proto-Fascism of "Trust Me" Carney w/ Leftie Jane – Apple Podcasts

Bill C-9, the Combatting Hate Act – Department of Justice Canada

Street Rebellion: Resistance Beyond Violence and Nonviolence, by Benjamin S. Case – Firestorm Books

Joyful Militancy: Building Thriving Resistance in Toxic Times, by Carla Bergman and Nick Montgomery

The Wretched of the Earth, by Frantz Fanon – Grove Atlantic

The Global Sumud Flotilla to Gaza: Everything you need to know – Al Jazeera

Next week, from November 6 to 8, the Marxist-Leninist Alliance of Workers and Students is hosting Seeds Beneath the Snow, a three-day anti-imperialist symposium in Toronto, with an opening keynote by Ajamu Baraka. Today I sit down with AWAS founding members Sabine Fernandez, a former migrant care worker and PhD candidate in Critical Disability Studies at York University, Talia, a Master’s student in engineering, and Mahyar Mohaghegh Dolatabadi, a PhD candidate in political science at York who researches Iranian capitalism.

We discuss why anti-imperialism is a crucial topic to discuss, especially in election season, what Marxism-Leninism means to them in 2026, vanguardism and the potential limits of spontaneous movements like Occupy, why social revolution needs engineers, and how they navigate vibes-based myths about who "working people" are, and what they value. 

I also asked them how they came to their values and commitments.

Sources
Seeds Beneath the Snow: An Anti-Imperialist Symposium (Eventbrite)
Alliance of Workers and Students
Peter Kropotkin, An Appeal to the Young (1880), Marxists Internet Archive
Mao Zedong, On Contradiction (1937), Marxists Internet Archive
Radhika Desai, Geopolitical Economy (Pluto Press)
Vincent Bevins, If We Burn (Hachette)
Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics (Verso)

SOCIALS

Bluesky: matthewremski.bsky.social

Instagram: @matthew_remski

YouTube: @antifascistdad

TikTok: @antifascistdad

Patreon: antifascistdadpodcast

Order Antifascist Dad

Subscribe to Antifascist Dad Podcast (all platforms)

Max Haiven's The Player and the Played: From Gamed Capitalism to 21st-Century Fascism argues that financialization has trickled down into our personal lives, turning each of us into a speculative player in a maze of unwinnable games: education, housing, fitness, relationships. When we realize the game is rigged, we can lose our minds, but our rage can be redirected away from the ruling class and onto scapegoated "cheaters": migrants, trans people benefits claimants, DEI hires.

Max walks me through his three-part model of manifest, latent, and microfascism, and why 21st-century fascist group activity looks more like a Fortnite lobby than a Nuremberg rally. We get into Silicon Valley's Dungeons and Dragons-derived worldbuilding, the fragility of fascist friendship as seen in the QAnon collapse, the problem of who owns the platforms we play on, and the distinction between revenge fantasy and an avenging imaginary. 

Before the interview: a note on Olivia Chow's re-election and the Bradford campaign's Victory app.

Now on Patreon: "The Anti-Imperialists Come to Town," ahead of the Seeds Beneath the Snow symposium in Toronto, November 6–8.

The Player and the Played, free open access edition (MIT Press Direct)
Billionaires & Guillotines board game by Max Haiven (Pluto Press)
Revenge Capitalism by Max Haiven (Pluto Press)
On Microfascism: Gender, War, and Death by Jack Z. Bratich (Common Notions)
Everything to Play For by Marijam Did, open access edition (OAPEN)
Kingdom of Play by David Toomey (Simon & Schuster)
The Score by C. Thi Nguyen (Penguin)
Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed by Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff (Penguin)
Sarah Stein Lubrano, author of Don’t Talk About Politics (London Review of Books contributor page)
Casual Games for Protesters by Paolo Pedercini and Harry Josephine Giles (Molleindustria)
David Graeber, “On the Phenomenology of Giant Puppets,” in Possibilities (The Anarchist Library)
Seeds Beneath the Snow: An Anti-Imperialist Symposium, Toronto, Nov 6–8 (Eventbrite)

Michael Löwy is a veteran Marxist sociologist and ecosocialist, and a long-time scholar of revolutionary movements. I spoke with him on October 15, two days before the October 17 national mobilization in France.

I asked Michael how the high school uprising compares with May 1968, and he described a mass movement that began from concrete material conditions: missing teachers, schools without furniture, crumbling walls, and classrooms ill-equipped for deadly summer heat.

This movement has grown into a broader revolt against a government that refuses to tax the rich while it increases funding for the military.

We discuss why the street rhetoric is antifascist, why he finds the government’s attempt to blame La France Insoumise not credible, and why schools and tenant unions show that class struggle extends beyond the factory.

He tells me how he supports the students blockading the university across from his apartment, and gives his advice to parents. For more timeline and context, scroll back to Episode 52 with Danielle Duncan.

Socials

Sources

International Viewpoint: Michael Löwy author profile
Institute of Advanced Studies, University of São Paulo: Löwy curriculum vitae
Maire-Info: movement origins at Créteil
Caducée: 2026 heat wave excess deaths
24 heures: student loses hand at Lens
Public Sénat: Matignon on LFI; Retailleau on banning LFI
La Gazette France / AFP: LFI mayor Bally Bagayoko and the students

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 chooses professional pathways for them at 15.

By October 17, the children-led revolt had drawn up to 800,000 people into the streets alongside university students, unions and veterans of the gilets jaunes. They were met with brutal militarized police force.

I spoke with Danielle Duncan, an American professor of Internet culture and English in Paris, on October 15. She walks me through the stratified French school system, conditions in the banlieues, the memes mocking police infiltration, why the street rhetoric is antifascist, and who in French politics is speaking to the moment. I open with a timeline through October 20 and close on how reactionary centrists are reframing the uprising as a story about property damage and "ultra-left violence".

My interview with Michael Löwy on the same topic but from a revolutionary history perspective, is up on Patreon now.

Socials

Sources

Maire-Info: movement origins at Lycée Saint-Exupéry, Créteil
Brut: demands on Parcoursup and university places
France 24: October 13 turnout and university closures
24 heures: student loses hand at Lens
franceinfo: arrests and injuries as of October 15
Sud Radio: stun grenades re-authorized October 16
Orange / L’Express: October 17 turnout and toll
CNN: orchestra and tear gas at Place de la République
CNews: second night of looting in Paris
franceinfo: arrest in the Limoges city hall fire
Actu17: Paris curfew orders
Public Sénat: Matignon on LFI; Darmanin on parents paying
Orange / L’Express: Paris prosecutor’s reservations on ultra-left attribution
La Gazette France / AFP: Bally Bagayoko, mayor of Saint-Denis
The Trillium: TDSB supervisor’s meetings with real estate arm
Toronto Life: Ford’s “basket-weaving” remark and OSAP cuts
International Viewpoint: Michael Löwy author profile
Progressive Geographies: Max Haiven, The Player and the Played (MIT Press)

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 professional work is in co-op housing policy, including the federal Co-op Housing Development Program. We also talk about what she hears about homelessness at the door, and why she rejects jails and involuntary treatment as responses. I bring her a puzzle from Etobicoke: city land at 5207 Dundas West, leased to Tricon and Kilmer on confidential terms, where the “affordable” units are priced at up to full average market rent. What's going on with Toronto housing, and what can socialists do about it?

Sources

Diana Yoon for City Council, University-Rosedale
The Local: Ward 11 University-Rosedale candidate tracker
Toronto ACORN 2026 municipal election platform
Federation of Metro Tenants' Associations
Jacobin: Toronto's Tenant Union Is Just Getting Started
The Grind: Building Citywide Tenant Power
City of Toronto: TCHC single-family homes transferred to community land trusts
CMHC: Co-op Housing Development Program
Government of Canada: Launch of the $1.5 billion Co-operative Housing Development Program
Quill and Quire: Maggie Helwig wins 2025 Toronto Book Award for Encampment
CP24: Maggie Helwig wins the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Encampment
CreateTO: 5207 Dundas Street West (Bloor-Kipling Block 1)
Link2Build: Affordable rents at 5207 Dundas West set at 40 to 100 percent of average market rent
APTN: Grassy Narrows repeats call for Carney apology over "outlast" remark
CP24: Ontario plans massive jail expansion
Global News: Ontario plan to add 2,500 jail beds, including third bunks in existing cells
City of Toronto: Section 37 funds to Toronto Chinatown Land Trust for 81 Huron Street