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 how disorienting it feels to say what we plainly saw while powerful institutions deny it. As a parent of two sons, I think out loud about what it means to slow things down, to regulate myself first, and to create a space where fear, grief, anger, and dignity can all be held without panic or cynicism.

Johnson argues that fascist movements have always relied on young men to do their dirty work, and traditional Western masculinity—organized around power, domination, speed, and violence—creates a gateway. Boys aren't inherently fascist, but gendered expectations are easily exploited.

We talk about how platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Discord are dense ecosystems where irony, transgressive humor, and memes function as social signals. Racist or sexist jokes are designed to pull kids in quietly, and how adult outrage can sometimes backfire by confirming the fascist story that these ideas are “forbidden.”

When a kid brings a meme to you, that moment is a crossroads. Punishment and shutdown don’t work. Curiosity, care, and asking a child to explain the joke can slow everything down and open space for honesty. 

Notes:

How to Talk to Your Son About Fascism — Johnson

Fifteen Minutes of Fascism — Johnson's podcast

Part 2 now up on Patreon.

All theme music by the amazing www.kalliemarie.com.

Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times (North Atlantic Books, April 2026).
Preorder: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/807656/antifascist-dad-by-matthew-remski/

Instagram: @matthew_remski

TikTok: @antifascistdad

Bluesky: @matthewremski.bsky.social (Bluesky Social)

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AntifascistDad 

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 aftermath of World War I deliberately abandoned realism, narrative, and institutional aesthetics in order to resist authoritarian power.

We explore why fascist movements obsess over image control, why abstraction and disorientation can be politically subversive, and how artists make the invisible visible—in part by slowing us down and drawing out deeper levels of attention. We discuss Dada, Surrealism, New Objectivity, Otto Dix, and George Grosz alongside contemporary struggles over AI-generated art and outcome-driven creativity.

We talk a lot about time: the time art requires, the time empathy needs, and the way authoritarian systems try to eliminate both. Sarah argues for art as witness, process, and lived testimony in the face of political dehumanization.

Part Two of this conversation, available now on Patreon, continues into practical guidance on aesthetic freedom and creative survival under pressure.

Antifascist Dad is out on April 26! You can preorder here.

About — Sarah Jaffray 

Barron, Stephanie, ed. “Degenerate Art”: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1991.
https://www.getty.edu/publications/virtuallibrary/0892362651.html

Bauhaus-Archiv Museum für Gestaltung. “Bauhaus History 1919–1933.”
https://www.bauhaus.de/en/das_bauhaus/21_history/

Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” 1935.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm

Dixon, Paul. “Uncanny Valley.” Encyclopaedia Britannica.
https://www.britannica.com/science/uncanny-valley

Dix, Otto. “War (Der Krieg), 1929–1932.” Dresden State Art Collections.
https://skd-online-collection.skd.museum/Details/Index/334771

Evans, Richard J. The Coming of the Third Reich. New York: Penguin, 2003.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/297974/the-coming-of-the-third-reich-by-richard-j-evans/

Gross, George. “Background and Biography.” Tate.
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/george-grosz-1188

Harrison, Charles, Francis Frascina, and Gill Perry. Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction: The Early Twentieth Century. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300055191/primitivism-cubism-abstraction/

Hitler, Adolf. Speech at the opening of the Entartete Kunst exhibition, Munich, July 19, 1937.
English excerpts reproduced at:
https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/entart.htm

Holbein, Hans (the Younger). “The Ambassadors.” National Gallery, London.
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/hans-holbein-the-younger-the-ambassadors

Kandinsky, Wassily. Concerning the Spiritual in Art. 1911.
https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/3483

Lawrence, Jacob. “The Migration Series.” Museum of Modern Art.
https://www.moma.org/collection/works/37346

Nochlin, Linda. “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” ARTnews, 1971.
https://www.artnews.com/art-news/retrospective/why-have-there-been-no-great-women-artists-2413/

Riley, Bridget. “Lecture and Interviews.” Tate Britain Archive.
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/bridget-riley-1845

Rothko, Mark. “Rothko Room.” Tate Modern.
https://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-modern/rothko-room

Schulz-Hoffmann, Carla, and Judith C. Weiss, eds. Neue Sachlichkeit / New Objectivity. Munich: Prestel, 2015.
https://www.prestel.com/books/neue-sachlichkeit-new-objectivity/

Tate. “Dada.”
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/d/dada

Tate. “Surrealism.”
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/s/surrealism

Velázquez, Diego. “Las Meninas.” Museo del Prado.
https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/las-meninas/9fdc5f42-5e09-4c5a-9d50-70b43fca0a30

Walker, Kara. “Artist Overview.” Tate.
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/kara-walker-2660

Winckelmann, Johann Joachim. History of the Art of Antiquity. 1764.
English edition via Project Gutenberg:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21891

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, and politics. Suppressing improvisation is rooted in an obsession with control, predictability, and rigid developmental maps—hallmarks of fascist thinking. Against that are openness, uncertainty, and experiment as conditions of human flourishing.

We talk family and education, where communistic relations already exist in partial, uneven ways. What would it mean to de-privatize care—while recognizing, as bell hooks warned, that family is not a reliable site of love for everyone?

Richard Gilman-Opalsky at UIS 

Support the show on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/antifascistdadpodcast
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@antifascistdad
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@antifascistdad
Matthew on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/matthewremski.bsky.social
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/matthew_remski 
Preorder Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times

Happy Solstice, Holiday, Christmas, Deep Winter, Chanukkah, Kwanzaa to you all. A familiar short story today, this time ending in revolution—not sentimentality.

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 book and as a gift, and let them know in a card!

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 same work. I share how parenting an autistic kid has transformed my sense of who the world is designed for, and what it means to resist capitalist norms around productivity, learning, and success.

Also: why televised debates and “reasoning as warfare” formats (ahem, Jubilee) are great entertainment but terrible tools for social change, how the marketplace-of-ideas myth functions as liberal ideology, and why protest rarely changes governments or “the public” directly, but can permanently change the protesters themselves.

For Lubrano, good politics looks a lot like good friendship: long-term, non-transactional, joyful where possible. She offers advice to a hypothetical 15-year-old on how to enter political life without burning out: learn to be a good friend, find a broken part of the world you care about, and commit to fixing it together.

I close with an in-person story about meeting my previous guest, Sarah Rose Kaplan, and watching her improv a small act of mutual aid with three hungry kids in a Toronto restaurant—a live illustration of Lubrano’s thesis that new social experiences can change lives.

Dr. Sarah Stein Lubrano is a political theorist and organizer with a background in feminist mutual aid, local grassroots work, and teaching in prisons. She holds a PhD from Oxford and a master’s degree from Cambridge, and works with the Sense and Solidarity Initiative and the Future Narratives Lab. Her first book is Don’t Talk About Politics: How to Change 21st-Century Minds (Bloomsbury).

– Website: https://www.sarahsteinlubrano.com
– Substack: https://sarahsteinlubrano.substack.com
– X (Twitter): https://x.com/SSteinLubrano
– Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahsteinlubrano/
– Sense and Solidarity Initiative: https://senseandsolidarity.org
– Sense & Solidarity podcast (Spotify): https://open.spotify.com/show/2dcKkTCJNZM2j2CLKJZS3W

Buy Don’t Talk About Politics: How to Change 21st-Century Minds
– Publisher (Bloomsbury – main hub):
https://www.bloomsbury.com/ca/dont-talk-about-politics-9781399413923/

– Support the pod on Patreon!
– Preorder: Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times (out April 26, 2026). 
– TikTok: @AntiFascistDad
– If you have an antifascism story to share—especially about relationships, generations, or parenting—leave me a voice message on Signal at username: antifascistdad71.

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 also curdle into an excuse for sidelining and ignoring the vast amount of unpaid, often gendered, domestic labor—the "secret workshop" described by feminist marxists—where the concept of love is abused and "weaponized" to justify working for free, claiming that love is its own reward.

We talk about how real caregiving love requires parents to actively participate in their children's becoming—what they are not yet. That means getting over the anxiety of control and the tendency to treat children as emotional/financial investments. Parenting, like revolutionary politics and improvisational jazz, requires a constant, collective improvisation and a love for possibilities over rigid predetermined structures.

In “Fascist, Squish, and Antifascist News of the Week” I focus on Ontario Premier Doug Ford responding to reporting about a Canadian armored vehicle manufacturer supplying ICE.

Part Two is up now on Patreon, where Richard and I go deeper into improvisation, music, and why fascist control hates the freedom required for human flourishing.

Richard Gilman-Opalsky at UIS 

Support the show and hear Part Two on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/antifascistdadpodcast

Canadian Defence Review. “Roman Shimonov: 2025 Defence Executive of the Year.” Canadian Defence Review, 2025.
https://canadiandefencereview.com/roman-shimonov-2025-defence-executive-of-the-year/

Canadian Press. “ICE Ordering Fleet of 20 Armoured Vehicles from Canadian Firm.” CityNews Halifax, December 2, 2025.
https://halifax.citynews.ca/2025/12/02/ice-ordering-fleet-of-20-armoured-vehicles-from-canadian-firm/

Canadian Press. “ICE Says Armoured Vehicles Ordered from Roshel Produced in U.S.” CityNews Toronto, December 4, 2025.
https://toronto.citynews.ca/2025/12/04/ice-says-armoured-vehicles-ordered-from-roshel-produced-in-u-s/

Canadian Press. “Sale of Canadian Armoured Vehicles to ICE Agency ‘Deeply Troubling’: Kwan.” CityNews Toronto, December 3, 2025.
https://toronto.citynews.ca/2025/12/03/sale-of-canadian-armoured-vehicles-to-ice-agency-deeply-troubling-kwan/

CPAC. “NDP MP Jenny Kwan Discusses Arms Exports Bill (C-233).” Headline Politics, September 19, 2025.
https://www.cpac.ca/headline-politics/episode/ndp-mp-jenny-kwan-discusses-arms-exports-bill--september-19-2025?id=755fc44b-a0b7-4bb1-b972-855c673ec354

Duggan, Kyle. “Anita Anand Won’t Say Whether Canada Would Block Export of Armoured Vehicles for Use by ICE.” The Globe and Mail, December 2025.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-anita-anand-block-export-armoured-vehicles-ice/

Ford Motor Company. “Ford Pro Upfitter Program.” Ford Canada.
https://www.fordpro.ca/en-ca/upfit/pro-upfitter/

Ford Motor Company. “Qualified Vehicle Modifier (QVM) Program Overview.” Ford Pro.
https://www.fordpro.com/en-us/upfit/qualified-vehicle-modifiers/

Gilmore, Rachel. “A Canadian Company Is Supplying Armoured Cars to ICE.” The Tyee, December 4, 2025.
https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2025/12/04/Canadian-Company-Armoured-Cars-ICE/

Global Affairs Canada. “Report on Exports of Military Goods from Canada 2023.” Government of Canada.
https://www.international.gc.ca/transparency-transparence/controls-controles/military-militaires/index.aspx?lang=eng

Global Affairs Canada. “Report on Exports of Military Goods from Canada 2024.” Government of Canada.
https://www.international.gc.ca/transparency-transparence/controls-controles/military-militaires/index.aspx?lang=eng

Global News. “Ford Welcomes ICE Plan to Order Ontario Armoured Vehicles.” Global News, December 3, 2025.
https://globalnews.ca/news/11558322/doug-ford-ontario-armoured-vehicles-ice/

Global News. “ICE Taps Canadian Firm for 20 Armoured Vehicles Despite Trump Trade War.” Global News, December 2, 2025.
https://globalnews.ca/news/11556588/us-ice-canada-roshel-armoured-vehicles/

Independent, The. “Canadians Call for Halt to ICE Armoured Vehicle Sale After Roshel News.” The Independent, December 2025.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/canada-ice-vehicle-sales-trump-carney-b2878330.html

Leadnow. “Stop the Contract: No Canadian Weapons to ICE.” Leadnow Petition, December 2025.
https://leadnow.ca/stop-the-contract-roshel-ice/

Patterson, Brent. “Ontario-Based Company to Sell Armoured Vehicles to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).” Peace Brigades International–Canada, December 3, 2025.
https://pbicanada.org/2025/12/03/ontario-based-company-to-sell-armoured-vehicles-to-u-s-immigration-and-customs-enforcement-ice/

Patterson, Brent. “Questions and Concerns About the Pending Export of Canadian-Made Armoured Vehicles to the Israel Police.” Peace Brigades International–Canada, April 17, 2025.
https://pbicanada.org/2025/04/17/questions-the-pending-export-of-canadian-made-armoured-vehicles-to-the-israel-police/

Read, Justin Ling. “Canada Sold $18.9 Million of Military Goods to Israel Despite ‘Pause’.” The Maple, 2025.
https://www.readthemaple.com/canada-sold-18-9-million-of-military-goods-to-israel-despite-pause/

YouTube. “Anita Anand on Roshel–ICE Contract (Scrum Clip).” December 3, 2025.
https://youtube.com/shorts/Ce7gk6LDLqA

Yahoo News Canada. “Canadian Firm Roshel to Provide ICE with Armoured Vehicles.” Yahoo News Canada, December 3, 2025.
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/business-matters-canadian-firm-roshel-171906482.html

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@antifascistdad
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@antifascistdad
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/matthewremski.bsky.social
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/matthewremski
Preorder the book Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times: https://northatlanticbooks.com

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 language games depend on pretending that words like “woman” have timeless, universal meanings.

We dig into why bad-faith questions are a form of bullying, what it means to feel the ground of language fall away under your feet, and how that eerie feeling can also open up freedom and solidarity. We talk about affect as antifascist strategy—why Sara cultivates a calm, philosophical delivery online, how it relates to depression, privilege, and safety, and how it offers a model of trans dignity that refuses both panic and “debate me, bro” energy.

I end with a reflection on coming to understand gender performativity as a cis guy.

Links from Sara:
https://equalitytexas.org/give/501c3/
https://hcb.hackclub.com/donations/start/lastreetcare
https://www.instagram.com/sararosecaplan

Bluesky: @matthewremski.bsky.social
Instagram: @matthew_remski 
YouTube: Antifascist Dad on YouTube 
TikTok: @antifascistdad

Support the project/instant access to Pt 2.
Patreon: patreon.com/AntifascistDadPodcast 

Preorder the book that this podcast is building toward:
Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times.

If this episode helped you think or talk differently about fascism and gender, you can:
• follow the show in your podcast app
• leave a rating or short review
• share this episode with a friend, comrade, or family member who’s struggling to talk about trans issues and fascism

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 21st Century Minds, the limits of political education, the classed nature of “critical thinking,” cognitive dissonance and cult dynamics, and why good politics begins with friendships, cooperative projects, and building a different world together.

Dr. Sarah Stein Lubrano is a political theorist and organizer with a background in feminist mutual aid, local grassroots work, and teaching in prisons. She holds a PhD from Oxford and a master’s degree from Cambridge. Sarah works with the Sense and Solidarity Initiative and the Future Narratives Lab. Her first book is Don’t Talk About Politics: Changing 21st Century Minds (Bloomsbury).

Website: https://www.sarahsteinlubrano.com

Substack  https://sarahsteinlubrano.substack.com 

X (Twitter): https://x.com/SSteinLubrano 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahsteinlubrano/ 

Sense and Solidarity Initiative: https://senseandsolidarity.org 

Sense & Solidarity podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/2dcKkTCJNZM2j2CLKJZS3W 

Don’t Talk About Politics: How to Change 21st-Century Minds: https://www.bloomsbury.com/ca/dont-talk-about-politics-9781399413923/ (Bloomsbury Publishing)

Mentioned in this episode
– Olivia Nuzzi, American Canto
– Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (audio excerpt)
– Leon Festinger, When Prophecy Fails and the origins of cognitive dissonance theory
– Thomas Kelly’s archival critique of Festinger’s study (discussed further on Conspirituality)
– System justification theory
– Aristotle on friendship and the “friend of virtue”
– The Dig podcast (as a political education project)
– The School of Life

– Please leave a rating and review so more people can find the show!
– Preorder my book Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times (out April 26, 2026)
– Become a supporter on Patreon.
– If you have an antifascism story to share – especially about relationships, generations, or parenting – leave me a voice message on Signal at username: antifascistdad71.

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 favour of House Resolution 58, “Denouncing the Horrors of Socialism,” which features Jordan Peterson’s favorite “100 million deaths” talking point from the dodgy stats of 1997's Black Book of Communism.

But guess what? this same week, the province of Kerala, which has be led by democratically-elected communist parties since 1957, declared that it had eradicated extreme poverty for 64K households through an intensive micro-plan program involving helping folks making like than $3/day get good documents, ration cards, travel allowances, health care, house repairs, and palliative nursing. 

And: I'm joined today by trans philosopher and performer Sara Rose Caplan. We explore why trans people drive fascists bananas; fascism as a fear response to freedom and uncertainty; C.T. Nguyen’s idea of “games as existential balm”; the Cassandra feeling of warning about fascism while no one listens; philosophy as “thinking in slow motion”; and why you can’t win arguments with bad-faith actors like Matt Walsh. Part 2 is available now on Patreon.

Sara Rose Caplan is a trans woman, performer, and educator originally from Houston, Texas. She studied philosophy in undergrad before spending a decade in LA as an improv comedian. This fall, she started working on a MA in philosophy at Cal State LA under the mentorship of trans philosopher Talia Mae Bettcher, though she has sadly had to put her studies on hold as she and her wife, also trans, have decided to leave the United States for safer, hopefully less christofascist shores up North.

Sources:

Text - H.Con.Res.58 - 119th Congress (2025-2026): Denouncing the horrors of socialism. 

The Right Can’t Figure Out What to Do With Zohran Mamdani  

Jordan Peterson: The right to be politically incorrect | National Post 

The Black Book of Communism Is a Shoddy Work of History 

How Kerala eliminated extreme poverty | Brookings

Kerala becomes the first state to eradicate extreme poverty | Peoples Democracy

Links from Sara:
https://equalitytexas.org/give/501c3/
https://hcb.hackclub.com/donations/start/lastreetcare
https://www.instagram.com/sararosecaplan

Bluesky: @matthewremski.bsky.social
Instagram: @matthew_remski 
YouTube: Antifascist Dad on YouTube 
TikTok: @antifascistdad

Support the project/instant access to Pt 2.
Patreon: patreon.com/AntifascistDadPodcast 

Preorder the book that this podcast is building toward:
Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times.

If this episode helped you think or talk differently about fascism and gender, you can:
• follow the show in your podcast app
• leave a rating or short review
• share this episode with a friend, comrade, or family member who’s struggling to talk about trans issues and fascism

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 dimensions of direct action? What gives people courage to resist? The effort to bring communion to detainees is not a stunt but a deeply rooted pastoral act grounded in human rights, sacramental practice, and a public demonstration of both humility and defiance.

What happens when people of very different beliefs show up at the same protest? What does collaboration look like when disagreements run deep? What happens if coalitions fracture? The right is always ready to fill the vacuum when the left stumbles backwards.

Finally: a diary entry on post (?) religious antifascist parenting.

David's excellent podcast on Liberation Theology