Antifascist Dad Podcast

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 roots from the Jewish Labor Bund  through to the founding of the CCF and the Regina Manifesto. I cover the right-wing media meltdown, the redbaiting from Alberta's PostMedia papers, and the dissociative pundit-class response I'm calling "moneyball fugue state."

And I dig into the oldest conflict in leftist politics — Rosa Luxemburg's question about whether a socialist can enter the bourgeois state without becoming its servant — and why I think we need both revolutionary and reform comrades right now.

Avi Lewis elected NDP leader on first ballot with 56% of the vote — NDP official announcement

Full leadership results and candidate breakdown — CBC live coverage

Avi Lewis takes over a diminished NDP — can he make it a force again? — The Walrus

NDP elects Avi Lewis as new federal leader — Globe and Mail

What does Avi Lewis's arrival mean for the party? — CBC News

Matthew Polacko, "The Rightward Shift and Electoral Decline of Social Democratic Parties under Increasing Inequality," West European Politics 45, no. 4 (2022): 665–692

LSE summary of the Polacko paper — LSE European Politics blog

The Regina Manifesto (1933) — The Canadian Encyclopedia

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 about Canadian exceptionalism, including how settler colonial history and US foreign policy alignments have always been hidden from public education and are now almost invisible behind the halo of Mark Carney.

We talk about online activism and reflect on the generations between us and the middle school students she tutors, and also her love for libraries as third spaces, but the heart of our focus is on five bills currently reshaping Canadian law. Bill C12, Bill C9, Bill C15, Bills C8 and C22. We give them good names for clarity:

Bill C12: the scapegoat a migrant save a billionaire bill

Bill C9: the no more protesting against genocide bill

Bill C15: make Carney and his friends kings again

Bill C8: the we’re going to spy on all your s*** bill

Bill C22: the unlawful access to information bill

One thing Jane wanted me to stress in these notes, because we weren’t quite explicit about this in our conversation, is the sheer volume and rush of reality-changing legislation is strategic. It has a very “flooding the zone” vibe to it. This is the Steve Bannon innovation of deliberate saturation of media channels with so much information and noise that critical thinking becomes impossible. That wave is mirrored only by Carney’s extended charm offensive, which reached a peak on March 29th when he was glazed by the celebrity class at the Juno Awards, Canada’s version of the Grammys.

All things Leftie Jane! linktree

Bill C12 retroactivity and refugee claims, Migrant Rights Network

Amnesty International statement on Bill C12 and international humanitarian law

Avi Lewis on Canada’s deportation system, The Walrus

Bill C9 (Combating Hate Act) text, Parliament of Canada

Civil liberties concerns on Bills C8 and C22, International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group

Bill C15 omnibus provisions and ministerial exemption powers, Parliament of Canada

Palestinian Students and Scholars at Risk postcard campaign

Jodi Dean, Communicative Capitalism: Democracy and the Illusion of Connection, MIT Press

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Instagram: @matthew_remski

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TikTok: [@antifascistdad]

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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-class Saskatchewan kid who was underpaid for decades by union-busting Jack Adams, repackaging disciplined obedience to capital as national pluck. Meanwhile Carney's budget eliminates 40,000 federal jobs and cuts $57 billion from public programs while gutting Indigenous Services and environmental funding.

Anishinaabe scholar Niigaan Sinclair and others in Elamin Abdelmahmoud's essay collection push back hard. Elbows up, it turns out, describes the posture of a man who knows he'll be having beers with the other team when the game is over.

Charlie Angus's original March 3, 2025 "Elbows Up" Substack

Carney's March 22, 2025 "Elbows Up" post on X with Mike Myers

Gordie Howe biography and career — Wikipedia

Gordie and Edna's shared skates — Maclean's 1966 archive

Jack Adams — Wikipedia

Ted Lindsay union organizing and Adams's retaliation — Hockey Writers

Carney's 2025 budget: 40,000 public service jobs cut, $57 billion from programs — Globe and Mail

15% departmental cuts apply to Indigenous Services Canada — Policy Options

Environment and Climate Change Canada faces $1.3 billion in cuts — Ecojustice

Foreign aid cut $2.7 billion, breaking campaign promise — Results Canada

Elamin Abdelmahmoud's essay anthology Elbows Up: Canadian Voices of Resilience and Resistance

Bluesky: matthewremski.bsky.social

Instagram: @matthew_remski

YouTube: @antifascistdad

TikTok: @antifascistdad

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Pre-order Antifascist Dad

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 actually do, how dying-to-the-flesh theology creates the conditions for fascist dehumanization, and why religion is a social determinant of health.

She walks me through her own deconstruction — from traveling youth minister preaching against queerness at sixteen to queer womanist theologian — and explains how her grandfather's garden in Sacramento became a ritual site. We talk about "the good enough" gardener, Charlie Kirk's debate style as Christian nationalist domination, and why the hardest God to believe in is one who is simply pleased with you.

https://ciarrajonesconsulting.com/ 

Pamela Lightsey, Our Lives Matter: A Womanist Queer Theology (Pickwick Publications, 2015)

Kelly Brown Douglas, Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God (Orbis Books, 2015)

Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion (Simon & Schuster, 2010)

Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha (Bantam, 2003)

Kate Bowler, No Cure for Being Human: And Other Truths I Need to Hear (Random House, 2021)

Prentis Hemphill, The Embodiment Institute

SOCIALS

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-9/11 reckoning ultimately drove communities toward authenticity over performance.

We also trace her political awakening through hip-hop and spoken word in Flint, Michigan, where the Black community encouraged her to use her voice against racial and economic injustice. On the subject of hijab, Mona reframes it as a rejection of capitalist objectification — a demand to be met as a soul before a body. I add a personal coda about a Russian literature class that gave me an early, unexpected glimpse of a similar type of gender-disruption that I never forgot.

Mona Haydar

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 sovereignty and national pride.

We look at the math on the F-35 warplane purchase: what it actually costs, who controls it, and what that money could do instead. We talk about Arctic resource extraction and the military infrastructure being built to enable it, the integration of Canadian and US military supply chains, the No More Loopholes arms export bill, and the gap between Canada's international self-image and its actual record of 1,600 bombing missions over Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Serbia. We close with Brent's forty years of organizing experience — the losses, the marginal wins, and what sustains people in a long struggle.

Brent Patterson is Executive Director of Peace Brigades International, and writes for Rabble.ca.

SOURCES 

NATO total military spending 2024: $1,506 billion — SIPRI Trends in World Military Expenditure, 2024

NATO 5% GDP target agreed at The Hague summit — Atlantic Council NATO Defence Spending Tracker

Canada's Department of National Defence spent $34.5 billion in FY2024 — Canadaspends

Carney commits Canada to $150 billion annually in defence by 2035 — Globe and Mail, June 2025

Carney's first budget: $81.8 billion in defence investment over five years — CBC News, November 2025

DND defence spending targets and NATO commitments — Canada.ca

Full 45-year F-35 life-cycle cost estimated at C$73.9 billion — Parliamentary Budget Office, November 2023

F-35 acquisition cost jumps 50% to C$27.7 billion — Skies Mag / Auditor General, June 2025

Full acquisition cost now C$33 billion including infrastructure and weapons — Flight Global, June 2025

Full history of Canada's F-35 procurement process — Wikipedia

ALIS/ODIN: F-35 data stored on US servers, placing it under US government jurisdiction — Infodas technical analysis

No kill switch, but Mission Data Files give US effective control over allied F-35 fleets — The Aviationist, March 2025

NDP: US will maintain full control of F-35 maintenance and software updates — NDP press release

US Air Force 350th Spectrum Warfare Group reprograms every F-35 in the world — DefenseScoop, August 2023

Australia, Canada, UK Reprogramming Laboratory (ACURL) located at Eglin AFB, Florida — Janes

F-35 availability rate 50% in FY2024, 17 points below minimum requirement — DoD Inspector General / 19FortyFive, December 2025

Full mission capable rate only 30% in 2023 — Project on Government Oversight

Lockheed paid $1.7 billion despite poor F-35 readiness — Military Times, December 2025

Estimated 1,598 CF-18 bombing missions over Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Serbia — Canadian Dimension

CF-18 combat history: Libya, Serbia, Iraq missions — CBC News

Budget 2025: C$2.7 billion cut to foreign aid over four years — CBC News, November 2025

Carney broke campaign promise not to cut foreign aid — Results Canada

90 billion barrels of undiscovered oil in the Arctic — USGS Circum-Arctic Resource Appraisal, 2008

Arctic oil resources overview — US Energy Information Administration

Carney announces $35 billion for Arctic military and infrastructure — CBC News

Canada exports over $1 billion annually in arms to the US — Project Ploughshares

Bill C-233 No More Loopholes Act defeated 295 to 22 — Canadian Affairs, March 2026

PBO: $3.5 billion per year additional needed to achieve 50% reduction in chronic homelessness — Parliamentary Budget Office, 2024

265,000 to 300,000 Canadians experience homelessness annually — Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness

Homelessness costs Canada $10 billion per year; federal housing spending lower per capita than 1989 — Homeless Hub

Full text of Carney's January 20, 2026 Davos speech — CBC News

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 absorbing deference without understanding colonialism.

Jasmine identifies intergenerational socialist mentorship as her core source of resilience — the older comrades who remind her that none of this is new. We work through Kshama Sawant's lesson on concrete demands: "pull out of NATO" beats "anti-imperialist" every time, because it forces a defence. Jasmine also has some advice for 12-year-olds to read freely and build practical skills — let political consciousness develop without urgency.

In the coda I return to the Regina Manifesto of 1933 and the Lewis family dynasty to ask what threads of socialist history have survived to reach us now.

The Great Depression in Canada

Great Depression — The Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan

The Arid Years — Legion Magazine

Unemployment During the Great Depression — The Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan

The Regina Manifesto at 90: lessons for the Canadian left

Thomas Clement "Tommy" Douglas (1904–1986)

Rise of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation

Regina Manifesto — The Canadian Encyclopedia

New Democratic Party (NDP)

Moishe Lewis — EBSCO Research Starters

David Lewis — The Canadian Encyclopedia

Lewis family (Canada) — The Canadian Encyclopedia

Avi Lewis for NDP Leader

The Regina Manifesto (1933) — Socialist History Project

Capitalism Can’t Be Fixed—Onward to a Socialist Future

All music by Kallie Marie.

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 truthfulness; and taqwa, the reverence and permeating consciousness that Ramadan is designed to build. Mona makes the case that if Muslims fully practiced these commandments, global poverty could be eliminated. We also get into 9/11's psychic reckoning for American Muslim communities, the good Muslim/bad Muslim trap that Mahmood Mamdani diagnosed, and why Islamophobic attacks — including right here in Toronto from my own city councillor — keep producing conversion waves rather than retreat. Part Two is on Patreon.

Mona Haydar

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 through repression. It puts the irrational back into perspective.

Sources:

Michael Parenti, Black Shirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism (1997, City Lights Books) https://citylights.com/city-lights-published/blackshirts-reds-rational-fascism/

Michael Parenti, Waiting for Yesterday: Pages from a Street Kid's Life (2013, Bordighera Press) https://www.michael-parenti.org/book-waiting-for-yesterday

Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew (1945/1948 English translation, Schocken Books) https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/330311/anti-semite-and-jew-by-jean-paul-sartre/

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Pre-order Antifascist Dad: Penguin Random House

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 in 1961 as a merger with the anti-capitalist CCF, the party has always held its socialist roots at arms length. 

Jasmine's out to change that. We discuss the presidential vote structure that stacks the deck against grassroots candidates, the Yves Engler vetting scandal, and the concept of movement capture — how progressive energy gets absorbed and neutralized by parties that want your vote but not your values or full-time organizing.

Also: the solidarity economy's double-tax problem: ordinary people paying twice for dignity while their taxes continue to fund war. Part two is on Patreon now.

Sources:

New Democratic Party (NDP)

Once upon a Waffle

Canada's economy lost 84,000 jobs in February, unemployment rate ticked up to 6.7%

The Military Wins and Public Programs Lose in Carney's Budget

Canada releases Budget 2025: Canada Strong

Budget 2025: A "historic moment" for the arms industry

White nationalist fight clubs pose risk for 'extreme violence,' warns government report

'Active clubs' are all over Canada. What are they?

White Nationalism in Canada: Organized, Emboldened, and Growing

RCMP charges military members allegedly plotting to form militia and seize land

How a White Nationalist Club Thought It Found Safe Haven in a Montreal Gym

Bubble Pop with Rachel Gilmore

Here's one easy trick to combat foreign political interference in our media

Postmedia and the American Hedge Fund Takeover of Canada's Newspapers

For the sake of our democracy, American hedge funds should be banned from owning Canadian newspapers

B.C. premier says Alberta separatists seeking assistance from U.S. is 'treason'

Canadian separatists optimistic after meetings with Trump officials

Trump officials met with Canadian separatists; British Columbia premier alleges 'treason'

Are Trump officials driving Alberta's separatist movement in Canada?

NDP MP Lori Idlout crossing floor to Liberals, bringing Carney closer to majority

Latest floor-crossing puts Liberal majority within grasp — but Carney could still hit snags

MP Matt Jeneroux leaves Conservatives to join Liberals, citing 'national unity crisis'

Just one-in-four say Canadian MPs who cross the floor should be allowed to finish term with new party

Yves Engler for NDP Leader

Why I'm running for leadership of NDP

Avi Lewis for NDP Leader

Activist, filmmaker Avi Lewis launches campaign for federal NDP leadership

All music by Kallie Marie.