Part 2 of Matthew’s conversation with historian Craig Johnson (PhD Berkeley), who hosts Fifteen Minutes of Fascism, which covers the global rise of the radical right. He’s the author of an excellent new book, How to Talk to Your Son about Fascism, a guide for parents and educators on keeping young men out of the extreme right wing. 

Today we tackle strategy. To debunk or not to debunk? How do you derail the coolness of fascism? How do we theorize the agency of kids becoming political actors? How do we maintain trust while engaging with a family member sliding to the right?

Show Notes

How to Talk to Your Son about Fascism - 1st Edition - Craig A. Johnson 

Fifteen Minutes of Fascism YouTube 

Stream Fifteen Minutes of Fascism

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Historian Craig Johnson (PhD Berkeley) hosts Fifteen Minutes of Fascism, which covers the global rise of the radical right. He’s the author of an excellent new book, How to Talk to Your Son about Fascism, a guide for parents and educators on keeping young men out of the extreme right wing. 

In this first of a two-part interview, Matthew and Craig discuss definitions of fascism, why it appeals to young men (or how masculinity is socially constructed), irony poisoning, and whether fascism can be fought through accelerating cringe cycles. 

Part 2 drops in Patreon on Monday. That episode centers on an exploration of strategy: how do we theorize the agency of kids becoming political actors? How do we maintain trust while engaging with a family member sliding to the right? 

How to Talk to Your Son about Fascism - 1st Edition - Craig A. Johnson 

Fifteen Minutes of Fascism YouTube 

Stream Fifteen Minutes of Fascism

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Someone’s got dirt on RFK Jr. MAHA voters went MAGA because Bobby said he was going to end vaccine mandates—their code for ending vaccines, period. No longer would food be dyed and oils be made of seeds. Everyone would get free gym memberships. America’s chronic disease epidemic would end overnight, as he’s repeatedly claimed. 

Then Mr Kennedy goes to Washington only to declare that antisemitism is a public health crisis? And to say that the MMR vaccine is the most effective way to prevent measles? How could he say such a thing when, as Mikki Willis recently claimed, this “version” of measles is a bioweapon designed to infect the Mennonite population? 

This week we look way too deeply into Candace Owens’s recent episodes about the blackmailing of RFK Jr, a story that quickly spread its tentacles into the microphones of a number of contrarian right-wing podcasters. We’ll give you the lowdown on the story and how, like a children’s game of telephone, it repeatedly got distorted and reframed with every mind it touched.

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When the aliens landed, they told a young musician and wannabe race car driver that he was the chosen one, and they were the real gods. He should build them an embassy with a UFO landing pad in order to prepare humanity for their arrival. They taught him the secrets of sex meditation and cloning DNA as a way to keep switching bodies and never die. 

Not much in his story was original, but this was the 1970s, so free love hippies flocked to his French commune—then it all turned to shit. Somehow Claude kept landing on his feet. He took his schtick to Quebec, then Japan, and even found thousands of followers in Africa. Still no embassy, no divine alien arrival, no cloned human babies—but he kept raising funds from the gullible and living like a king with a ballerina bride 40 years his junior.

For the latest installment in Roots of Conspirituality series, Julian muses on the epic tale of the Raelians.

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When cultural and psychological anthropologist Katie Rose Hejtmanek set out to study Crossfit, she knew she had to throw herself into it fully. For seven years, she traveled to “boxes” around the world while committing herself to her local Brooklyn box. What she uncovered was a rabid fan base that deeply values community and a business model that offers a refreshing response to unfettered capitalism—as well as the misogyny, racism, and militarized Christian themes that inform this beloved and despised fitness regimen. She joins Derek to discuss her new book, The Cult of CrossFit: Christianity and the American Exercise Phenomenon.

The Cult of CrossFit: Christianity and the American Exercise Phenomenon

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"In order to have the future we want, we have to build and invent more of the things we need."

That’s the central claim of Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s new book, Abundance. They argue that Democrat-run cities and states have suffered self-inflicted wounds that are causing a mass exodus to red states, where life is simply more affordable. To stop the bleeding, Dems need to take action on a bold new vision that cuts through red tape to improve people’s lives and address the crises in housing, climate, healthcare and politics.

But many on the left are suspicious. Is this just Reaganomics wrapped up in the intellectualized language of the NY Times? Is Abundance the privileged prosperity gospel for white liberals?

Show Notes

The Abundance Agenda: Neoliberalism’s Rebrand

Abundance: The Left Hates It

Summary of Abundance Critiques

Politico: False Choice Between Abundance and Antitrust

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It's been quite the week at HHS with Robert F Kennedy Jr in charge. Derek considers what's been going on: Bobby's announcement that he's going to "determine" the cause of autism by September; his social media marketing-driven visit to grieving families in Texas; his pivot on the MMR vaccine; and his recommendation to the CDC that fluoride be removed from public water supplies.

Show Notes

RFK Jr. says HHS will determine the cause of autism by September

RFK Jr. says he plans to tell CDC to stop recommending fluoride in drinking water

What RFK Jr. Told Grieving Texas Families About the Measles Vaccine

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Jay Bhattacharya, Covid contrarian and co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, is now the Director of the NIH. The day before beginning his new job, he gave his first official interview to Bari Weiss on her podcast, Honestly. Derek and Julian discuss.

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There’s a mystery of violence swirling in and amongst the kids these days. Especially boys. What could it be? Snapchat? Video games? Andrew Tate? A hit Netflix series points to issues, and policy. But is it pointing in the right direction? 

Today we’ll look at “Adolescence”: the origin story, the strengths and liabilities of its one-take technique, and its deceptively conservative messaging. Should it be shown in Parliament? Schools? Does it tell us much about the kids it is worried about? Does it offload responsibility for misogyny and violence onto ambient internet chaos, when there are so many other causes closer to home? And why, if it is a meditation on violence committed by boys, do we learn so little about the girls who are harmed?

___

Correction: In the episode, Matthew said that Axel Rudakabana was of South Asian descent. He was born in the UK of parents from Rwanda.

Brief: Tate Crime

Teachers Warn That Misogynist Andrew Tate Has 'Radicalized' School-Age Boys

180: Is This the Next Andrew Tate?

Stephen Graham shares the heartbreaking stories that inspired Netflix's Adolescence 

'Adolescence' Becomes Netflix's Most-Watched Limited Series in First 2 Weeks With 66.3 Million Views

Elon Musk blasted for spreading 'concerning' misinformation about Netflix's Adolescence 

Netflix’s Adolescence makes TV history in the UK

“Netflix hit Adolescence has lessons for us all” says Northumbria PCC Susan Dungworth, as she welcomes PM backing for it to be shown in UK Schools 

Netflix's Adolescence inspired by true story of Croydon girl's horrific murder - MyLondon 

UK experts warn of dangers of violent content being readily available online | Southport attack

Croydon schoolgirl Elianne Andam stabbed in ‘white-hot anger’, court told | UK news

Hassan Sentamu sentencing remarks 

Sentencing Remarks: In the matter of the murder of Ava White

Crime in England and Wales: year ending September 2024 

The facts about firearm violence

Firearm Violence in the United States | Center for Gun Violence Solutions  

Online gangs of teenage boys sharing extreme material are ‘emerging threat’ in UK | NCA (National Crime Agency)

Beyond the Headlines 2024 Summary | Youth Endowment Fund 

Spotify takes down Andrew Tate ‘pimping’ podcast after complaints 

Kyle Clifford watched Andrew Tate videos before triple murder

The Terrifying Truth Behind Netflix’s ‘Adolescence’ 

Stephen Graham Netflix series Adolescence inspired by two real-life crimes

"Objective realism," ethnographic cinema, and the classical model of visual-anthropological research 

PACE Code C 2023

GCSEs harm our young people. Ministers should have the guts to abolish them – and start again

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Part Two: Matthew remembers the snow job of “The Sound of Music.” Also: more on Sophie Scholl, introducing the Edelweiss Pirates, the “adult gaze”, what trusting kids means, notes from Emma Goldman and Janusz Korczak, and excerpts from a poem by Aku Päiviö, father of Jules, who traveled from Northern Ontario to Spain in 1937 to volunteer in the International Brigade.

____

When fascism rises, and some young people are drawn into its orbit, because everyone from Jordan Peterson to Andrew Tate has figured out how to exploit resentment at the failures of capitalism, we have an opportunity to give our kids a lot more than moralistic calls for a return to normalcy, compliance, warnings about screen time, striving to be better students, doing more sports, and not making too much of a ruckus. 

The kind of parenting that limits itself to restoring the status quo for younger people in an age of fascism is not engaged parenting. 

It’s not enough to be a good boy or girl. Antifascism takes more than that.

Op-ed: Try again, President Kumar: Renewing calls for Tufts to adopt March 4 TCU Senate resolutions 

Death toll since Israel's aggression on Gaza on October 7 rises to 31,819 (March, 2024) 

Austerity Has Always Been a Project to Empower Capital at the Expense of Workers 

It's Not Them; It's Us: Thoughts on the Show Adolescence

Adolescence is a really well made depiction of misogyny that fails to critique it | by Mallory Moore | Mar, 2025

Netflix’s ‘Adolescence’ Taps Into the Latest Moral Panic   

Jonathan Haidt’s Claims On Kids & Tech Crumble Under Scrutiny From Top Expert, Candice Odgers | Techdirt 

UK government's own estimate says welfare cuts to push 250,000 into poverty | Reuters

Labour’s cuts to PIP will drag a quarter of a million people into absolute poverty, DWP figures show – Disability News Service

55: Games Against Humanity (w/ Thi Nguyen) — Conspirituality

207: Gaming Realities (w/Thi Nguyen) — Conspirituality  

Reminder to the media: Research video games before reporting on them 

Out of the Ruins:The Emergence of Radical Informal Learning Spaces

Anarchist Education and the Modern School: A Francisco Ferrer Reader 

The People's Republic of Neverland: The Child versus the State  

Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work

Teaching Resistance: Radicals, Revolutionaries, and Cultural Subversives in the Classroom

TRUST KIDS! Stories on Youth Autonomy and Confronting Adult Supremacy

Refusing Complicity: The Bravery of Sophie Scholl - Radical Tea Towel

Sophie Scholl and the youth resistance against the Nazis – DW – 02/22/2023

The majority of news influencers are conservative men, study finds 

An Unclaimed Country: The Austrian Image in American Film and the Sociopolitics of The Sound of Music 

The politics of The Sound of Music | Peter Levine 

Edelweiss Pirate Walter Mayer

The Edelweiss Pirates: A Story of Freedom, Love and Life

Walter Meyer describes his 1943 trial for looting, and the impact of his role in the Edelweiss Pirates on the sentence he received | Holocaust Encyclopedia

The Edelweiss Pirates

The Child and Its Enemies | The Anarchist Library —Emma Goldman

DECLARATION OF CHILDREN'S RIGHTS—Janusz Korczak 

The King of Children: A Biography of Janusz Korczak - Betty Jean Lifton

Sophie Scholl – The Final Days

Remember the Mac-Paps - rabble.ca 

The Canadians In The Spanish Civil War 

'Gentleman Jules' lived for just causes | Sudbury Star 

Poetry – Friends and Veterans

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