Antifascist Dad Podcast

What does it mean to hold both clear-eyed despair and committed action at the same time? I trace the antifascist axiom "pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will" through my own life — my late mother's instinctive class consciousness, my writing teacher Luciano's daily creative discipline, and my early Buddhist practice of contemplating impermanence. I unpack Eve Sedgwick's concept of paranoid versus reparative reading, and why the left's hypervigilance can foreclose on the energy needed for repair. I correct the common attribution of the mantra to Gramsci, locating the phrase's origin in Romain Rolland's 1920 review of Raymond Lefebvre's WWI novel — a cry from Flanders Fields about bourgeois sacrifice of the young. And I map the tension between intellect and will onto bodily experience, arguing that theory and mutual aid aren't competing demands but two characteristics of how we already live.

Sources

Romain Rolland, review of Le Sacrifice d'Abraham, L'Humanité, 19 March 1920 — transcription and translation

Antonio Gramsci, "Address to the Anarchists," L'Ordine Nuovo, 3–10 April 1920

Raymond Lefebvre (1891–1920), Le Sacrifice d'Abraham (Flammarion, 1919)

Academic treatment of the phrase's history: "Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Will," Rethinking Marxism (2019)

Political reading of the slogan: "Pessimism of the Will," Viewpoint Magazine (2020)

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, "Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading," in Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (Duke University Press, 2003)

Bluesky: matthewremski.bsky.social

Instagram: @matthew_remski

YouTube: antifascistdad

TikTok: @antifascistdad

Patreon: antifascistdadpodcast

Pre-order Antifascist Dad: Penguin Random House

Sitting down today with racial equity educator and spiritual director Michelle Cassandra Johnson about what she calls the “hierarchy of bodies” — the long-standing social logic that determines whose lives are protected, valued, and believed. Against mainstream claims that rising authoritarianism is shocking or unprecedented, Michelle argues that today’s crises reflect very old patterns of domination rooted in race, power, and proximity to privilege.

Why do some communities experience the current political moment as rupture while others recognize it as continuity? What are the downstream effects of the backlash against diversity, equity, and inclusion work? What does anti-racism training actually look like on the ground — and why re relationship, solidarity, and accountability more important than shame or guilt? Is multiracial community grounded in care the strongest inoculation against fascism?

Part 2 now up on Patreon.

Michelle Cassandra Johnson is an author, activist, spiritual teacher, racial equity consultant and educator, and intuitive and shamanic healer. For over 25 years as a racial equity educator, she has worked with large corporations, non-profits, and community groups. Michelle is a six-time published author, and in May 2025, her sixth book, The Wisdom of the Hive, co-written with her best friend, Amy Burtaine, was released.

She lives in North Carolina with her husband, sweet dog, Jasper, and her honeybees. 

https://www.michellecjohnson.com/.

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 

Back with Michelle, and pivoting from diagnosis to practice. We get a powerful story from her anti-racism work about calling someone into accountability without shaming or discarding them — and what real healing can look like in the room.

We explore how multiracial, multicultural communities of care are built on the ground through shared language, listening, and repair. Why is the backlash against DEI and why relationship remains a quiet, radical force against fascism.

Michelle also reflects on growing up in the Black Baptist church, how her spiritual life has always been inseparable from her political life, and why faith — in something beyond what we can currently see — may be essential to sustaining resistance. 

CODA: A story from Antifascist Dad about the first inklings I had as a kid that I was white, and what that meant.

Michelle Cassandra Johnson is an author, activist, spiritual teacher, racial equity consultant and educator, and intuitive and shamanic healer. For over 25 years as a racial equity educator, she has worked with large corporations, non-profits, and community groups. Michelle is a six-time published author, and in May 2025, her sixth book, The Wisdom of the Hive, co-written with her best friend, Amy Burtaine, was released.

She lives in North Carolina with her husband, sweet dog, Jasper, and her honeybees. 

https://www.michellecjohnson.com/.

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 

Back for Pt 2 of my conversation with Blair Hodges—Salt Lake City journalist, former Mormon insider, and dad to a trans kid—by digging into Mormon masculinity. Blair explains how Mormon emotional vulnerability descends from early charismatic revival culture, but also how a rising alt-right strain inside the church is pushing toward a more punitive “muscular” Christianity.

On parenting: why children’s rights and autonomy require dismantling authoritarian habits, how neurodivergence exposes the cruelty of “normal” discipline, and how institutions often treat kids as property. Also: the privilege of political disengagement, what it feels like when the “flood” of fascism reaches your floor, and why listening to marginalized people is the starting point for real antifascist practice.

I close by reading a short excerpt from my upcoming book, a section on gender performance and why trans liberation matters to all of us.

Relationshapes: Blair Hodges

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 

Welcoming friend and colleague and fellow dad Brad Onishi (Straight White American Jesus, Preparing for War), to explore the parallels between evangelical conversion and fascist recruitment. Brad was a convert to evangelicalism at 14 and shares how teenage anxiety, alienation, and the search for belonging made him vulnerable to a worldview that offered refuge, certainty, and an enemy to fight.

Bottom line: both fundamentalist religion and far-right movements promise clarity in chaotic times—binary thinking, moral urgency, and cosmic stakes.

At the top: I trace the historical roots of the Satanic Panic and connect it to the current flood of conspiratorial reactions to the Epstein files. If we're parenting or mentoring, we have to recognize spiritual warfare narratives when they resurface on social media. They only confuse things. 

Part 2 now up on Patreon.

Brad Onishi is a social commentator, scholar, and co-host of the Straight White American Jesus (SWAJ) podcast. He founded Axis Mundi Media in 2023 in order to provide a platform for research-based podcasts focused on safeguarding democracy from the threats of extremism and authoritarianism. His writing has appeared at the New York Times, Politico, Rolling Stone, NBC News, HuffPost, and many other outlets. Onishi is a frequent guest on national radio, podcast, and television outlets, including “Fresh Air” with Terry Gross and MSNBC. His podcast, SWAJ, ranks in the top 50 of Politics shows on Apple’s podcast charts – ahead of programs from NPR, the NYT, and other national outlets. His book, Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism – And What Comes Next is available now.

CORRECTION: In the intro, I said that Paul 23 presided over Vatican 2. It was actually John 23. 

Satanic Panic archive on Conspirituality.

The Devil You Know — Sarah Marshall 

The Smoke of Satan on the Silver Screen: The Catholic Horror Film, Vatican II, and the Revival of Demonology | Journal for the Academic Study of Religion

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 

Part 2 with Brad Onishi. What interrupts extremist pipelines? Brad dishes on his Japanese American family and how multicultural, multiethnic community might inoculate against fascist identity formation. I discuss the flip side: whiteness as the erasure of roots, the vulnerability of deracinated teens searching for story

What are the healthier forms of religion—traditions that invite complexity, mystery, and emotional range rather than binary thinking and enemy-making? 

The coda is on self-regulation, frugality, and inner renewal as part of antifascist life. Do we need antifascist spirituality? 

Brad Onishi is a social commentator, scholar, and co-host of the Straight White American Jesus (SWAJ) podcast. He founded Axis Mundi Media in 2023 in order to provide a platform for research-based podcasts focused on safeguarding democracy from the threats of extremism and authoritarianism. His writing has appeared at the New York Times, Politico, Rolling Stone, NBC News, HuffPost, and many other outlets. Onishi is a frequent guest on national radio, podcast, and television outlets, including “Fresh Air” with Terry Gross and MSNBC. His podcast, SWAJ, ranks in the top 50 of Politics shows on Apple’s podcast charts – ahead of programs from NPR, the NYT, and other national outlets. His book, Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism – And What Comes Next is available now.

Satanic Panic archive on Conspirituality.

The Devil You Know — Sarah Marshall 

The Smoke of Satan on the Silver Screen: The Catholic Horror Film, Vatican II, and the Revival of Demonology | Journal for the Academic Study of Religion

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 happens when a person we admire is implicated in networks of abuse? How can kids navigate guilt by association without sliding into cynicism or spectacle?

Using Deepak Chopra’s Epstein emails to Jeffrey Epstein, we can see what charisma offers people in pain, what red flags look like, and how media culture trains us to confuse popularity with truth.

Finally: how much apocalyptic evidence do we need before we pivot from doomscrolling to building durable forms of hope? I draw on Dahr Jamail’s arc catastrophe reporting to documenting Indigenous wisdom to explore the question.

Occult Features of Anarchism | The Anarchist Library

The End of Ice - The New Press — Dahr Jamail

We Are the Middle of Forever Indigenous Voices from Turtle Island on the Changing Earth — Jamail and Rushworth 

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 

I’m joined by my friend Blair Hodges—Salt Lake City journalist, nonprofit comms pro, and dad to a trans kid—for a conversation that starts with his powerful public testimony opposing Utah’s anti–gender-affirming-care bills.

Blair unpacks what it’s like raising a trans child in a “blue dot” city under a hostile state supermajority, and how the so-called “Utah Way” pairs polite PR with targeted cruelty—from flag bans to efforts to rename Harvey Milk Boulevard in the centre of town.

We also trace Blair’s journey from Mormon priesthood culture to trans advocacy: how missionary life cracked his worldview open, how Mormon theology hardens into cis-hetero supremacy, and how real relationships—and research—changed his mind.

Part two (now on Patreon) goes deeper on Mormon masculinity, authoritarian parenting, children’s rights, and why protecting his kid ultimately mattered more than reforming an institution from within.

PS from Blair!

On Mormons not being considered white, see W. Paul Reeve, Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness (Oxford University Press).The best current one-volume history of the church in its American context, its political realignments, etc., see Benjamin E. Park, American Zion: A New History of Mormonism (W.W. Norton). The best history of Mormon thought on sexuality and gender is Talor G. Petrey, Tabernacles of Clay: Sexuality and Gender in Modern Mormonism (UNC Press). For a firsthand account of the church's chief architect overseeing its temple building program who came out as trans and subsequently lost her job and church membership, see Laurie Lee Hall, Dictates of Conscience: From Mormon High Priest to My New Life as a Woman (Signature Books). I interviewed her about the book on Relationscapes, "Trans In the Latter Days."

Relationshapes: Blair Hodges

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 

I'm back with Part 2 of my conversation with Dale Beran, turning to what happened to the people he followed while reporting on early 4chan, and what it means to grow out of a life shaped by anonymous online worlds. 

Some were able to step away as their offline lives improved, but others remained tied to screens in cycles of  addiction.

I also share how Dale’s work has helped me talk with my own kids about online culture, bullying, and the attention economy, as a form of inoculation against extremism and despair.

This episode ends with an informal report on how conversations about online spaces are going in this antifascist house. 

It Came from Something Awful: How a Toxic Troll Army Accidentally Memed Donald Trump into Office —Beran

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 

An audio essay on how to talk with young people about the Epstein files from an antifascist perspective. How to hold questions without amplifying sensationalism. How to name harms amidst the absence of accountability.

Also: fragmented Epstein File discourse could trigger a QAnon-style wave on the left, unless adults provide steadier sources, context, and care.

Occult Features of Anarchism | The Anarchist Library

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