Explore every episode of the podcast Antifascist Dad Podcast
| Title | Pub. Date | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 54. The Fascist Thinks He Was Cheated w/ Max Haiven | 28 Oct 2026 | 01:35:10 | |
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. Sources
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| UNLOCK 53: Elders Support the Children’s Revolt in France w/ Michael Löwy | 25 Oct 2026 | 00:24:25 | |
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 | |||
| 52: Children Revolt in France w/ Danielle Duncan | 21 Oct 2026 | 01:09:34 | |
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 | |||
| 51: Housing is a Human Right w/ Diana Yoon | 18 Oct 2026 | 00:40:11 | |
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 | |||
| 50: Brad Bradford, Toronto’s Mamdani Backlash Candidate w/ Inori Roy | 14 Oct 2026 | 01:03:42 | |
Many cities on Turtle Island are hoping Mamdani fever comes to town. But Toronto is seriously considering rolling out the red carpet for a right wing populist climbing in the polls. I'm joined by Inori Roy, Features Editor at The Local, to discuss her in-depth profile of Toronto mayoral candidate Brad Bradford, published just 2 weeks before the October 26 election. We discuss her data-first method, the weaknesses of Canadian investigative journalism, the gap between feelings and facts about crime in Toronto, and Bradford's shift from bike-lane councillor to right-wing fear-monger. We cover allegations from former staffers, the campaign's response, his Al-Quds Day stance and pro-Israel base, and whether his campaign represents a backlash to the Mamdani model of municipal politics. Inori Roy is a Toronto-based journalist and Features Editor at The Local. She holds a Master's in investigative journalism from City University of London. She has led data-driven investigations into long-term care and road safety, and her work has appeared in The Walrus, the Toronto Star, The Narwhal, Unearthed, and CBC. SourcesBrad Bradford Seems Angry—He’s Betting Torontonians Are Too (The Local) Socials
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| UNLOCK 49. Avi Lewis Harassed and Threatened Over Yom Kippur Prayer | 11 Oct 2026 | 00:25:42 | |
On September 20th, Yom Kippur, Canadian Army veteran Sean Ward opened fire outside the Sons of Jacob Synagogue in Belleville, Ontario. An hour later, and before the first news report, NDP leader Avi Lewis posted a personal prayer of atonement, reflecting on how antizionist Jews had failed to stop a genocide committed in the name of Jewish safety. I trace how pro-Israel commentators, Liberal MPs and the Globe and Mail linked Lewis's prayer to the shooting, even as reporting showed Ward was likely a second-wave QAnon antivax conspiracist who appeared to blame Jews for COVID. If you're a progressive or leftist and you haven't yet lent a hand (in whatever way you can) to your fellow Palestinians and antizionist Jews, now's the time. Because right now, attacking critics of Israel as antisemitic is becoming indistinguishable from attacking the political alternative to capitalism and imperialism, at this precarious moment for the climate and ourselves.
Sources Avi Lewis, Yom Kippur post on X | |||
| 48 “We Bring Everything We Have” to City Hall w/ Jennie Worden | 07 Oct 2026 | 00:43:36 | |
My guest today is Jennie Worden, running a fantastic socialist campaign for Toronto City Council in my very own Ward 19, Beaches–East York. On the agenda: what choral music teaches about community. What tenant organizing teaches about shared struggle. Why Brad Bradford, our former councillor now running for mayor, is such a heel (my word not Jennie's), and what we have to do to repair the damage of 15 years of austerity at City Hall. Sources Jennie Worden for Beaches–East York: campaign site Socials
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| 47. From Rent Strikes to City Hall w/ Chiara Padovani | 04 Oct 2026 | 00:59:35 | |
With Toronto's municipal election set for October 26, I'm spending the next few weeks with local socialist candidates! First is Chiara Padovani: social worker, food bank worker, co-founder of the York South-Weston Tenant Union, and candidate in Ward 5, where she came within 94 votes of unseating Frances Nunziata in 2022. Chiara describes growing up in Mount Dennis, a social assistance system that hasn't kept pace with inflation in decades, and political insiders who told her not to knock on apartment doors because tenants don't vote. She walks me through the 16-month rent strike against Dream Unlimited, the sit-in that got a senior tenant back into her home, and Ontario's Bill 60. And Chiara explains why she thinks the tenant movement is where the labour movement was a century ago.
Sources Chiara Padovani 2026 campaign platform | |||
| 46: How Capital Uses Workers’ Pensions Against Them w/ Kevin Skerrett | 30 Sep 2026 | 01:29:06 | |
I sit down with Kevin Skerrett, a pension researcher who spent thirty years as a Senior Research Officer for CUPE and co-edited The Contradictions of Pension Fund Capitalism. We trace how Canadian pension funds went from holding government bonds to becoming some of the world's most aggressive private-market investors. We start with the nineteenth-century labour movement's demand for a universal, state-provided pension, and follow the mid-century turn toward employer-specific, financialized plans in the US, before tracing the same shift through the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan and the Canada Pension Plan. Kevin walks me through his own disillusionment negotiating joint union trusteeship in the 1990s, OMERS' role in privatizing Nova Scotia schools, and CPP Investment Board's involvement in privatizing Rio de Janeiro's water system under Bolsonaro. We close on what a $30 billion OTPP surplus could fund if fiduciary law required something other than maximum return. Up now on Patreon: my interview with Chiara Padovani, running for Toronto City Councillor in Ward 5. Bluesky: matthewremski.bsky.social Kevin Skerrett, OMERS AC board bio
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| UNLOCK: 44.1 Psychic Militancy w/ Dr. Lara Sheehi Pt. 2 | 27 Sep 2026 | 00:58:24 | |
Part two of my conversation with Dr. Lara Sheehi about her outstanding book From the Clinic to the Streets, focusing on how the "psychic intrusions" of confusion, fear, despair, and exhaustion function as tools of imperial and state power that disconnect people from movements. We review a 1970 interview with Ghassan Kanafani, whose refusal to accept "dialogue" as a neutral premise models what Sheehi calls psychic militancy. She also reframes grieving as reality-testing and divestment from power's narrative, contrasting it with Mark Fisher's diagnosis-without-tools "capitalist realism." Sources
Socials: Bluesky matthewremski.bsky.social | |||
| 45: When Zionists Dominate Antisemitism Discourse w/ Daniel Sailofsky | 23 Sep 2026 | 01:00:21 | |
Since October 7th, young people who have joined antifascist and anti-genocide organizing on campus have faced one of the most disorienting accusations available: that their solidarity with Palestinians is antisemitic. This week I talk with Daniel Sailofsky, a University of Toronto prof and member of the non-Zionist Jewish Faculty Network, about what it was actually like inside the U of T encampment — Shabbat services, multifaith prayer, Zionist agitators trying to provoke a reaction — versus how it was covered in the press. We dig into the federal government's CASE report (Campus Antisemitism and Student Experiences), published in August. Its respondent were recruited through avowedly Zionist organizations, it had no safeguards for verifying identity, and its definitions of anti-Zionism and antisemitism were absolutely melted. Is this conflation of terms the last rhetorical weapon defenders of a genocide have left?
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| UNLOCK 43.1: Understanding Lebanon w/ Ayman Makarem Pt 2 | 20 Sep 2026 | 01:05:12 | |
Part two of my conversation with Ayman Makarem picks up where we left off: with Lebanon and Israel as co-developed colonial entities. We trace how the 1943 National Pact locked in a sectarian power-sharing system that functions as elite class rule dressed up as pluralism. The contradictions led to both the 1975 civil war and the 2019 uprising. We discuss Moshe Dayan, whose own words lay out, decades in advance, the occupation strategy Israel would go on to execute in South Lebanon. We discuss Hezbollah's 2023 anti-gay moral panic and its contradictory entanglement in Syria, but how disarming Hezbollah won't end Zionist aggression. Ayman concludes with some concrete advice for listeners in the Global North: solidarity means building socialist power at home. SOURCESIsrael's Long War on Lebanon: A Joint History of the Zionist and Lebanese Entities SOCIALS Bluesky matthewremski.bsky.social | |||
| 44. Psychic Militancy w/ Dr. Lara Sheehi | 16 Sep 2026 | 00:56:51 | |
My guest today is militant Lebanese Arab clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, Dr. Lara Sheehi, here to unpack her book From the Clinic to the Streets: Psychoanalysis for Revolutionary Futures. Following Frantz Fanon's decolonial legacy, Sheehi argues mainstream psychology's fixation on the nuclear family as the origin of the psyche obscures how white supremacy, settler colonialism, and capitalism actually shape our inner lives — turning the family into the site where structural power gets animated and made to feel like love. We discuss her critique of "specialization," the hoarding of clinical knowledge to pathologize suffering and enforce adaptation, and its counter, "despecialization" — the process of handing tools like disavowal, identification with the aggressor, and the reality principle back to ordinary people. Part two continues on Patreon: antifascistdadpodcast. Source
Socials: Bluesky matthewremski.bsky.social | |||
| 43. Understanding Lebanon w/ Ayman Makarem | 09 Sep 2026 | 00:56:50 | |
Lebanon is once again on the front line of Israel's regional war, and a lot of leftist coverage, where there is any, flattens a hundred years of colonial history into campist slogans. In this episode I sit down with Ayman Makarem of Politically Depressed on YouTube— Lebanese, Druze, queer, and anti-authoritarian leftist — to slow down and build a picture of a nation where easy explanations go to die. In Part One we talk about how growing up Druze shaped Ayman's comfort with ambiguity, the class dimensions of queerness in Beirut, and about a virulently homophobic Christian militia few Western listeners have heard of. We talk about Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, and the difference between geopolitical abstraction and lived, local knowledge. Part two, where we get into the Lebanese entity, the Zionist entity, and Hezbollah, is available now for Patreon subscribers, and will post here in a few weeks. SOURCESIsrael's Long War on Lebanon: A Joint History of the Zionist and Lebanese Entities SOCIALS Bluesky matthewremski.bsky.social | |||
| UNLOCK 42.1 Friendship (is not easy) | 09 Aug 2026 | 00:43:35 | |
An excerpt from the audiobook of Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times — Chapter Eight, Friendship Is Not Easy. I'm putting this out as a companion to my interview with Carsie Blanton because she models in her touring life exactly what I'm trying to articulate in this chapter: solidarity as the antidote to the individualism capitalism enforces on artists, activists, and everyone else. The chapter draws on D.W. Winnicott's incommunicado core, Aristotle's three types of friendship, and David Graeber's everyday communism to build the case that real, horizontal friendship is already a form of non-capitalist life. Sources:Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times — Penguin Random House Bluesky matthewremski.bsky.social | |||
| UNLOCK: 41.1 The Anti-Vance Would Like a Word Pt 2 w/ Nathan Evans Fox | 02 Aug 2026 | 00:45:15 | |
Part 2 of my convo with Nathan Evans Fox, going deeper into the psychological and theological architecture of what JD Vance is actually doing in his new memoir, and what it costs him and everyone else to do it. Nathan reads Communion as a work of apologetics built on the logic of accumulation: prestige, then money, then virtue, with each step more abstract and less obviously empty than the last. Nothing is enough for this guy. He traces Vance's Catholicism to a pragmatic need to authorize whiteness and hierarchy. We discuss the SSPX schism, the conformist-older-brother archetype in abusive family systems, why buying into whiteness at the expense of solidarity destroys your capacity to grieve, and what imperial theology does when it cannot satisfy itself. SOURCES Nathan Evans Fox, "Do Not Read JD Vance's New Book. Read This Review Instead." SOCIALS matthewremski.bsky.social | |||
| 42. Keep the Little Flame Alive w/ Carsie Blanton | 29 Jul 2026 | 01:01:31 | |
I sit down with socialist singer-songwriter Carsie Blanton to explore how unstructured freedom — from schooling, the music industry, and institutional religion — became the soil for her political and artistic radicalization. A stack of jazz records from her grandfather led to countless gigs, poltical organizing, and eventually to the Global Sumud Flotilla, where she and her comrades used dialectical materialism to assess risk—when they weren't singing "Little Flame". NOTE: This is the finale of season 1! I'll be catching up on rest and taking more family time for August but will be back on September 9th. Sources:carsieblanton.com Bluesky matthewremski.bsky.social | |||
| UNLOCK 40.1 Episodic and Thematic Thinking and Feeling | 26 Jul 2026 | 00:19:33 | |
Picking up a on thread from my interview with Nora Loreto interview: a coda on the tension between zooming in on the daily news cycle and zooming out to a coherent analytical framework. I draw on Shanto Iyengar's 1991 research on episodic versus thematic framing in television news, and on Wendy Brown's concept of responsibilism, tracing how mainstream media's default mode — treating each crisis as a disconnected event — structurally prevents systemic critique from forming. SOURCES Is Anyone Responsible? How Television Frames Political Issues — Shanto Iyengar SOCIALS matthewremski.bsky.social | |||
| 41. The Anti-Vance Would Like a Word w/ Nathan Evans Fox | 22 Jul 2026 | 00:52:02 | |
JD Vance's Communion presents itself as a spiritual memoir but functions as a rebranding operation: It's the same narcissistic trick he played with Hillbilly Elegy. Who better to sit down with to sort this out than Nathan Evans Fox — country musician, seminary graduate, board-certified hospital chaplain, and actual Appalachian? His review of this gnarly book is one of the sharpest pieces of cultural criticism to emerge from the Trump era. Nathan and I cover Vance's blogboy Catholicism, his apologetics-disguised-as-memoir, the aesthetic function of tradcath whiteness, and what it means when a hillbilly chooses empire over solidarity. Plus: Stephen Miller's physiognomy lecture at the Rubio terrorism hoedown, and what antifascist parenting looks like when the street goes quiet. SOURCES Nathan Evans Fox, "Do Not Read JD Vance's New Book. Read This Review Instead."
SOCIALS matthewremski.bsky.social | |||
| UNLOCK 39.1 Epistemic Injustice | 19 Jul 2026 | 00:21:56 | |
Years ago, I failed to understand my autistic son's needs. Instead of fully taking in his distress at school, I projected my own story, values, and experience on him. He'll manage. He'll get used to it. He'll toughen up. In this coda to my interview with Lisa Matthews (stepmother of Finn Collins, facing trial in February as one of the Filton 25), I trace a fault line that runs from parenting failures, to failures to support young people during the encampments of Spring, 2024, through to the courtroom where Justice Johnson ruled that six young people could not tell a jury why they acted, then sentenced them as terrorists under a provision he'd concealed. Edward Said, Frantz Fanon, Miranda Fricker, and Marsha Linehan all describe this injustice: through postcolonial, philosophical, and psychological lenses: how the authority or parent erases a subject's self-account and replaces it with lies. SOURCES Free the Filton 25 — campaign site Support Finn — GoFundMe (Michael Collins) Re: Rajiv Menon KC — contempt ruling, full text Edward Said — Culture and Imperialism (1993) Miranda Fricker — Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing (2007) Frantz Fanon — The Wretched of the Earth (1961) Aimé Césaire — Discourse on Colonialism (1950) Stuart Hall et al. — Policing the Crisis (1978) Eqbal Ahmad — Terrorism: Theirs and Ours (2001) Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak — Can the Subaltern Speak? (1988) Marsha Linehan — Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder (1993) SOCIALS
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| 40: We Live on This Planet to Do Good Work w/ Nora Loreto | 15 Jul 2026 | 01:08:00 | |
Today I sit down with Nora Loreto, a Quebec City-based journalist and labour organizer, to discuss her five-volume Canada in Decline series — a forensic history of the dismantling of Canada's social democracy by the forces of capital. We discuss her wide-ranging, independent beat: Volume 1, The Social Safety Net (2024), traces the forty-year erosion of the welfare state. Volume 2, Corporate Control (2025), documents the privatization of Crown corporations and the financialization of housing and care. Volumes 3, on Canadian democracy, 4, on culture, the far right, and religion, and 5, on the security state, are on the way, and might even be out before Canada slides into full fascism. We were also both pretty shocked to discover some uncanny biographical symmetries: we were both church organists, both our dads were teacher-librarians and our moms were English teachers. Throughout, we discuss how the zoomed-out coherence of a long-form project keeps the fragmentation of daily journalism in meaningful focus. SOURCES Sandy and Nora Talk Politics SOCIALS matthewremski.bsky.social | |||
| UNLOCK 38.1 Gramsci’s Wars of Position, Wars of Maneuver | 12 Jul 2026 | 00:33:33 | |
Antonio Gramsci, writing in a fascist prison in the early 1930s, distinguished between wars of position—the slow struggle over culture, values, and consent—and wars of maneuver, or direct confrontation with capitalist power. It's useful for thinking through something I've been sitting with: the contradiction between feeling genuinely nourished by Pope Leo XIV's liberation theology posting on Twitter and his AI encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, and worrying that the moral register he's working in — however beautiful — leaves capitalism structurally intact and keeps radical energy locked on position, while fascists run maneuvers at will. SOURCES Pope Leo XIV on Twitter/X SOCIALS matthewremski.bsky.social | |||
| 39: Supporting the Filton 25 w/ Lisa Matthews | 08 Jul 2026 | 00:57:39 | |
In August 2024, six Palestine Action activists breached Elbit Systems UK's newly built facility in Filton, Bristol, and used sledgehammers to sabotage drones, computers, and manufacturing equipment. Elbit is Israel's largest private defence contractor, and supplies armaments to the IDF used in their genocidal attack on Gaza. Twenty-five activists were charged under a "joint enterprise" provision in relation to the direct action. Four have been convicted and sentenced as terrorists, under a provision the judge concealed from the jury. My guest this week is Lisa Matthews, step mother of Finn Collins, one of 19 defendants still awaiting trial. Finn faces criminal damage and violent disorder charges, with his trial scheduled for February 2027. Lisa walks me through the retroactive use of counter-terror powers against activists who acted before Palestine Action was proscribed, the judicial rulings that stripped the defendants' right to explain themselves, and what it's like to hold an antifascist family together when one's vision is clear but one's future is uncertain. SOURCES Free the Filton 25 — campaign site and legal timeline Support Finn — GoFundMe (Michael Collins) Geoffrey Robertson KC on the Filton Four — Free the Filton 25 Re: Rajiv Menon KC — contempt ruling, full text Menon KC closing speech, Trial 1 — Real Media Inside the Palestine Action trial that could redefine protest as terrorism — openDemocracy Palestine Action activists sentenced as terrorists — Novara Media Amnesty International and lawyers condemn terrorism sentencing — Peace Brigades International Canada Gaza toll could exceed 186,000 — Lancet letter, Al Jazeera Prairieland defendant sentenced to 30 years for moving a box of antifascist zines — The Intercept SOCIALS
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| UNLOCK 37.1 Enough is Enough, Again w/ Dean and Matt of Magnificast (pt 2) | 05 Jul 2026 | 00:48:26 | |
Part 2 of my convo with Dean Dettloff and Matt Bernico of the Magnificast podcast, digging into the forensic heart of their great new book, Enough is Enough: Degrowth, Capitalism, and Liberation Theology.
SOURCES Enough is Enough: Degrowth, Capitalism, and Liberation Theology — Bernico and Dettloff, Fortress Press | |||
| 38. Radicalized at 15 by Climate and Corporate Greed w/ Emily Lowan | 01 Jul 2026 | 01:04:14 | |
Today I'm sitting down with Emily Lowan, leader of the BC Green Party and the first GenZ leader of a major political party in Canada. Emily was radicalized at 15 during the 2016 US election while on a cross-country school trip. She built a decade of movement work through climate organizing, Wet'suwet'en solidarity, and pipeline fights, then won an insurgent party leadership campaign in two weeks at age 25. We talk about heat domes, Kristi Noem advising a BC mining company and American oligarchs buying up 1.2M acres in the interior. Emily also shares a visualization practice for doing this work without burning out that she learned from an ecosocialist movement elder. SOURCES Emily Lowan on Instagram matthewremski.bsky.social | |||
| UNLOCK 36.1 Asking Liberals: “Do You Condemn Imperialism?” | 28 Jun 2026 | 00:22:44 | |
Following up on my conversation with Toronto comedian Nour Hadidi: I'm haunted by one detail from the harassment campaign against her. Al Jazeera Journalist Wael Al-Dahdouh Slammed CNN — YouTube Adam Johnson and Nima Shirazi — Citations Needed podcast Noura Erakat — Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine — Stanford University Press Frantz Fanon — The Wretched of the Earth — Grove Press Charles Cobb — This Nonviolence Stuff'll Get You Killed — Duke University Press Zohar Kampf — "Do You Condemn?" chapter in The Discourse of Indirectness — John Benjamins Edward Said — Covering Islam — Penguin Random House Ramzy Baroud — My Father Was a Freedom Fighter — Pluto Press The Onion — Dying Gazans Criticized for Not Using Last Words to Condemn Hamas
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| 37. Enough is Enough w/ Dean and Matt of The Magnificast, pt 1 | 24 Jun 2026 | 00:56:50 | |
I'm joined today by Dean Dettloff and Matt Bernico, co-hosts of The Magnificast podcast and the authors of a brilliant new book, Enough is Enough: Degrowth, Capitalism, and Liberation Theology, out now from Fortress Press. Also: was St. Francis of Assisi a proto-socialist? Was he neurodivergent? And how about the Global South rise and Global North suppression of liberation theology? In this era of Pope Leo: does the church still metabolize radical ideas into liberal poetry? Cool stuff for anyone trying to understand the antifascist religious left that JD Vance doesn't want you to know exists.
SOURCES Enough is Enough: Degrowth, Capitalism, and Liberation Theology — Bernico and Dettloff, Fortress Press | |||
| UNLOCK 35.1 “AI for All” of Carney’s Friends | 21 Jun 2026 | 00:22:29 | |
Update episode on the Carney government's national AI strategy, "AI for All," released June 4, 2026. The document's most-used word is "sovereignty" — appearing 51 times — while "emissions," "climate," "consent," "Palantir," and "Amazon" appear nada. I trace the political etymology of "sovereignty" from First Nations liberation discourse through working-class populism to its current deployment by the Davos class as branding for capital accumulation. I also examine AI Minister Evan Solomon's performance on CBC Front Burner, where he dodged nine accountability questions in thirty minutes using the word "trust" as a revolving door. Finally, a look at Dr. Jason Edward Lewis's Indigenous AI epistemology framework and the concept of "data colonization." Because the familiar crime now reanimated against Indigenous communities through AI infrastructure is a template for what is coming for us all. SourcesCanada's National Artificial Intelligence Strategy: AI for All CBC Front Burner: Minister Defends Canada's New AI Strategy — Transcript DeSmog: Carney Allowed Gas-powered AI Data Centres After Lobbying From Alberta Energy Company Project Ploughshares: Setting the Record Straight on Canada's Arms Exports to Israel CJPME: Canada's Record-Breaking 2023 Military Exports to Israel APTN News: What's Behind Canada's Sovereign AI Plan? Intercontinental Cry: Ancestral Intelligence — How Indigenous Knowledge Informs AI and Data Ethics Policy Options: AI Threatens Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Digital Self-Determination Assembly of First Nations: Brief to Parliamentary Committee on Bill C-27 The Intercept: Philly Cops Admit They're Tracking First Amendment Activity Critical of AI Abacus Data: Canadians Split on AI Data Centres Abundant Intelligences Project — Dr. Jason Edward Lewis, Concordia University | |||
| 36. Stand-up for Gaza w/ Nour Hadidi | 17 Jun 2026 | 01:11:07 | |
I sit down with Jordanian-Canadian comedian, writer, and podcaster Nour Hadidi to talk about standup as survival, solidarity with Gaza, and what it means to do political comedy in a liberal industry that wants your watermelon emoji but not your actual politics. We discuss her journey from a finance 9-5 to standup, to standup in a radical register that helped her discover who she was and what her values are. She also tells few jokes. SourcesNour Hadidi — The Noursletter on Substack Nour Hadidi Podcast on Spotify Comedians for Palestine on Instagram Al Jazeera Journalist Wael Al-Dahdouh Slammed CNN — YouTube Vivian Silver Impact Award — New Israel Fund Canada Palestinian Youth Movement Toronto — Instagram Global March to Gaza — Coalition Against Israeli Occupation UNRWA — United Nations Relief and Works Agency
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| UNLOCK 34.1 Looks Like Jonathan Haidt Did a Moral Panic | 14 Jun 2026 | 00:15:46 | |
Jonathan Haidt recently padded his bestselling career by telling worried parents that their kids' anxiety was caused by smartphones and social media — and that the fix was bans. I always thought the argument was depoliticized, correlational, and suspiciously convenient for parents who'd rather blame a device than interrogate the world they've handed their children. Now the research is catching up. Psychologist Jen Lumanlan's challenge in Psychology Today exposed the romanticized and racially selective "golden age" childhood Haidt keeps gesturing toward. A major NBER working paper from Allcott et al. studied over 1,300 US schools using Yondr pouches and found near-zero academic effects. A Dutch study by Vanluydt et al. in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence found that full bans may actually undermine school belonging, especially for girls. Meanwhile, Pope Leo XIV's encyclical Magnifica Humanitas does what Haidt won't: it plants digital technology inside a structural critique of platform capitalism. That's the conversation I want to have.
Jen Lumanlan, "What Research Really Shows About School Phone Bans," Psychology Today, July 2025 | |||
| 35. Antifascist Tooth Fairy w/ E.V. Debs | 10 Jun 2026 | 00:33:38 | |
Joining me today is E.V. Debs (not their real name!) an antifascist community organizer from Seattle to talk about their new tabletop game, Antifascist Tooth Fairy, now getting funded on Kickstarter for a November release. Throw hands, collect teeth, manage charges, build mutual aid networks. It's a ton of fun as it guides players through the moral, legal, and strategic weeds of community self-defense. We cover the game's origins, the ethics and limits of physical confrontation, "anarchist calisthenics," and why games are a legitimate form of political education. I close with a passage from my book on Thi Nguyen's theory of games as the art of agency. SourcesAntifascist Tooth Fairy Kickstarter Games: Agency as Art — C. Thi Nguyen, Oxford University Press | |||
| UNLOCK 33.1 Antifascist Body Culture: A Brief History | 07 Jun 2026 | 00:22:50 | |
I wanted to trace the century-old roots of Maren Forsberg's antifascist self-defense work, so I dug into three overlapping histories. First: the German Bund's use of Körperbildung — body education through eurythmics — as both a resistance philosophy and a cover for anti-Nazi organizing. Second: the Jewish Labour Bund's Morgenstern athletic club in interwar Poland, which united boxing, gymnastics, swimming, and internationalist youth camps under the banner of do'ikayt, the right to belong wherever you are. Third: the Austromarxist Workers' Olympiad of 1931 in Red Vienna, where 25,000 athletes gathered to demonstrate that the worker athlete and the militant soldier for socialism were one and the same. I close with a passage from my book on bully culture in mainstream phys ed, and what it can feel like to step in and stop violence. Follow Maren Forsberg on Instagram and find her self-defense workshops through her page.
Mark Roseman, Lives Reclaimed: A Story of Rescue and Resistance in Nazi Germany Molly Crabapple, Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund | |||
| 34. From the Street to City Hall w/ Diana Chan McNally | 03 Jun 2026 | 00:53:26 | |
Diana Chan McNally has been unhoused, a teen mother, a museum curator, a college instructor, a harm reduction worker, a frontline homelessness advocate, and a DJ. Now she's running for Toronto City Council in Ward 4 Parkdale–High Park. We trace the through-line connecting all of it: organizing, interpreting, and showing up for people. Diana explains why governments allow homelessness to persist and grow, what our laws can and can't do for the unhoused, and why protest must be disruptive to be effective. She also tells me about being served a lifetime ban from the Ontario legislature, code-switching to write for the Toronto Sun, and what her first mentor Bob Rose taught her about relationship-based community work. SOURCES Diana Chan McNally for Ward 4 Parkdale–High Park The Shift — Housing as a Human Right National Housing Strategy Act, Canada City of Toronto Housing Charter Ontario Bill 6 — Safer Municipalities Act Waterloo encampment Charter ruling, 2023 Maggie Helwig — Encampment (Toronto Book Award) St. Stephen-in-the-Fields Anglican Church Maytree — Diana Chan McNally Fellow First United Church — Amanda Burrows, Vancouver
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| UNLOCK 32.1 What Tommy Douglas Knew & What We All Know about Socialized Medicine | 31 May 2026 | 00:22:14 | |
In a coda to episode 32, I reflect on what socialized medicine means not as culture or sentiment but as raw material security and the basis for working-class solidarity. I draw on Beatrice Adler-Bolton's analysis of American healthcare as organized abandonment, and personal accounts of a near-fatal DVT and an emergency C-section that would have meant financial ruin for us in the US. But where I see Tommy Douglas's strategic insight that Medicare must expand or be destroyed most vividly is in our autistic son's daily experience of exclusion. For me it grounds Robert Chapman's argument that neurodivergence is a class war issue. SourcesConspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat Beatrice Adler-Bolton — Health Communism Empire of Normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism — Robert Chapman Tommy Douglas and the Quest for Medicare in Canada — Gordon Lawson The Telepathy Tapes — Conspirituality critical analysis Socials
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| 33. Antifascist Self Defence and Rewriting the Body's Response to Violence w/ Maren Forsberg | 27 May 2026 | 00:59:04 | |
Norwegian kickboxer Maren Forsberg works as a self-defense trainer focused on building antifascist courage and resilience for women, queer, and trans people. I spoke with her about her path from childhood play-fighting with her jiu-jitsu dad through national-level kickboxing competition, to coaching survivors of violence and trauma. Follow Maren Forsberg on Instagram!.
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| UNLOCKED 31.1 Kensington Market Palimpsest | 24 May 2026 | 00:28:52 | |
In this coda to my conversation with Serena Purdy, I track the layered history of Kensington Market through the metaphor of the palimpsest, the medieval manuscript practice of writing over earlier texts that never fully disappear. Indigenous territory through colonial land seizure. Victorian working-class housing. Jewish Bundist labour militancy. Successive immigrant waves, encampment clearings, and the CBC sitcom that converted a neighbourhood's socialist politics into warm liberal vibes... Kensington's history is all still readable in its brickwork, its cracked plaster, and storefront signs painted over and over again. On walks through the Market with our 13-year-old, I wonder: when the political energy has faded but the cultural vibrancy remains, what are we inheriting, and what are we waiting for? SOURCES Kensington Market Community Land Trust Kensington Market Overdose Prevention Site — St. Stephen's Community House Gwartzman's Art Supplies — 448 Spadina Avenue Weekend Characters — design studio, Kensington Market Bone and Busk — designer Katerina Mior, Nassau Street El Trompo — 277 Augusta Avenue King of Kensington — CBC Archives Walter Benjamin, Berlin Childhood around 1900 — Harvard University Press Sigmund Freud, "A Note Upon the 'Mystic Writing Pad'" General Jewish Labour Bund — YIVO Encyclopedia Workmen's Circle / Arbeiter Ring — Toronto Antifascist Dad Episode 31: Voices of Kensington Will Ring in Ottawa with Serena Purdy Bluesky: matthewremski.bsky.social YouTube: @antifascistdad [TikTok: @antifascistdad] Patreon: antifascistdadpodcast Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times | |||
| 32. Smith and Carney May Destroy Socialized Medicine w/ Nikolas Barry-Shaw | 20 May 2026 | 01:13:09 | |
I sit down with Nikolas Barry-Shaw, researcher and trade and privatization campaigner for the Council of Canadians, to break down how Alberta's Bill 11 is dismantling Canada's public healthcare system, with the help of an insurgent private insurance campaign. Manulife, Canada Life, and Sun Life control two thirds of Canada's $66 billion private health benefits market. These behemoths helped draft Danielle Smith's signature legislation through covert government working groups. Meanwhile, doctors, unions, and the public were excluded. Bill 11 creates a two-tier fast lane for the privately insured and opens the door to privatizing any part of the system by administrative fiat. So far, the Carney government is refusing to enforce the Canada Health Act, and Saskatchewan and Ontario watching that closely, ready to pounce. Barry-Shaw argues this moment poses an existential threat to Medicare, from coast to coast. As Tommy Douglas warned forty years ago: the system must move forward or it will be crushed by capital. SourcesPandora's Box: Danielle Smith and Insurance Giants Unleash Attack on Healthcare Danielle Smith Admitted She Wants to Throw Out Canada's Public Health Care Law Alberta's Bill 11 Breaks Federal Law — Canadian Health Coalition Bill 11 Analysis — Parkland Institute Bill 11 Report — Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Council of Canadians — Trade and Privatization Socials
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| UNLOCK 30.1 The Left Didn't Betray Anyone: Material Conditions and the Limits of Rockhill | 17 May 2026 | 00:33:33 | |
A coda to my conversation with Richard Gilman-Opalsky around Gabriel Rockhill's new book, Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism. It's a reflection on what Rockhill's viral success tells us about how leftists manage feelings of loss and betrayal — and why I think his paranoid framework, however emotionally compelling, misreads the material conditions it claims to analyze. I trace the destruction of internationalist Marxist intellectual networks through CIA-backed coups in Chile, Brazil, Indonesia, and Argentina, and argue that the "fallow period" Rockhill mourns was shaped less by ideological capture than by survivorship and repression. I also bring in some personal intellectual biography, the history of New Criticism, and Melanie Klein's theory of paranoid splitting to ask: what does it mean to grieve a political tradition honestly, without turning loss into conspiracy? SOURCE LIST
All theme music by the amazing www.kalliemarie.com. | |||
| 31. Voices of Kensington will Ring in Ottawa w/Serena Purdy | 13 May 2026 | 00:45:04 | |
Serena Purdy is a comparative health policy researcher at the University of Toronto and socialist candidate who ran in the recent 2025 University-Rosedale federal byelection. We talk about what the upcoming three years of Carney austerity means for healthcare and housing, how electoral organizing doubles as political education, the fight to enfranchise unhoused voters, and why Kensington Market — Serena's neighbourhood and spiritual home — is both microcosm and proof of concept for the kind of city we could build. From the Canada Health Act's gutted enforcement to Carney's mysterious sovereign wealth fund, we examine the stakes of federal power for working-class communities, and talk about refusing to go down without a fight. SOURCES Kensington Market Community Land Trust Parliamentary Budget Office — Canada Infrastructure Bank assessment Kensington Market Overdose Prevention Site — St. Stephen's Community House Bone and Busk — designer Katerina Mior, Nassau Street, Kensington Market Elections Canada — voting without a fixed address Antifascist Dad Episode 31 coda: Kensington Market Palimpsest — Patreon early access Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times Bluesky: matthewremski.bsky.social Instagram: @matthew_remski YouTube: @antifascistdad [TikTok: @antifascistdad] Patreon: antifascistdadpodcast | |||
| UNLOCK 29.1 Natalie Wynn and Joshua Citarella Cannot Do Everything | 10 May 2026 | 00:30:29 | |
Expanding my IG analysis of Natalie Wynn's appearance on Joshua Citarella's Doomscroll podcast — a 3-hour-and-20-minute conversation that clocked nearly 200,000 views in a week. Rather than relitigating Wynn's political positions, I'm more interested in what the format itself reveals: two skilled cultural commentators ranging across 15 distinct knowledge domains, from political economy and psychoanalysis to media ecology and feminist theory—all without the expertise, research teams, or fact-checking any of those domains actually requires. Applying Jodi Dean's communicative capitalism framework, I argue that the episode's viral energy — and its 4,000-plus comment thread — functions less as political participation than as pro bono content for platform circulation. The real beguiling thing here isn't the politics, but the aesthetic: a sunlit loft, elite conversation, the fantasy of having something interesting to say about everything.
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| 30. Another Conspiracy Theory about Marxists w/ Richard Gilman-Opalsky | 06 May 2026 | 01:19:05 | |
Wecoming back my first return guest, philosopher and union activist Richard Gilman-Opalsky, for a deep dive into the viral controversy surrounding Gabriel Rockhill's new book Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism? Rockhill's thesis, in its simplest form, is that the smartest left intellectuals you've heard of were bought by capital to function as controlled opposition. So Richard and I work through the Frankfurt School's origins, French theory's disillusionment with actually existing socialism, Herbert Marcuse's gifts and compromises, and Richard's core challenge to Rockhill: the concept of the enemy. Who are we actually fighting? The ruling class, or each other? SOURCES Institute for Social Research, Goethe University Frankfurt Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment — Stanford University Press Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry — Routledge Gabriel Rockhill, Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism? Richard Gilman-Opalsky, review of Rockhill — Marx and Philosophy Review of Books Richard Gilman-Opalsky, The Communism of Love — AK Press Herbert Marcuse papers — UC San Diego Library Vivian Gornick, The Romance of American Communism — Verso Books Vladimir Lenin, "Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder" — Marxists Internet Archive Alexandra Kollontai Archive — Marxists Internet Archive Emma Goldman, My Disillusionment in Russia — Marxists Internet Archive University of Illinois faculty union strike coverage — Chicago Tribune
Find Matthew on Bluesky at matthewremski.bsky.social, on Instagram at @matthew_remski, on YouTube and TikTok at @antifascistdad. Support the show and get early access to part two episodes at Patreon. Pick up Antifascist Dad from Penguin Random House — also available as audiobook and ebook. | |||
| UNLOCK 28.1 Adam Johnson Exposes the Sophistry of Fart Sniffers | 03 May 2026 | 00:32:54 | |
A coda to my interview with journalist and media critic Adam Johnson on how the genocide got sold. Here I zoom in on Adam's affect — the rhetorical technique he uses to puncture what I'm calling the habitus of liberal political discourse. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's theory of embodied social capital, I analyze two moments where institutional power reasserts itself through laughter and procedure: State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller deflecting AP reporter Matt Lee's questions about Gaza with schoolboy metaphors, and Mark Carney laughing off a Grassy Narrows First Nation grandmother demanding justice for decades of mercury poisoning. I contrast this with Adam Johnson's use of bathos and polysyndeton — visceral, low-register language that breaks the spell. Sources:UNRWA — Gaza child amputees statement, December 2025 OHCHR — Gaza disabilities report, August 2025 Institute for Palestine Studies — Blinken/Austin letter full text Al Majalla — Blinken/Austin letter full text Times of Israel — Miller/Lee briefing context, November 5, 2024 American Academy of Diplomacy — Matt Lee bio CBC News — Carney / Isaacs / Etobicoke press conference APTN News — Isaacs accepts Carney's challenge APTN News — Western University / Dryden Mill study, 2024 National Observer — Western University study, May 2024 CBC News — ISC budget cuts, July 2025 CBC News — Indigenous budget 2025, November 2025 Marxists.org — Junius Pamphlet DigitalCommons@UNL — Goodman & Silverstein, Bourdieu in Algeria
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| 29: Antifascist Dad Audiobook Excerpt: Capitalism Everywhere and in Everyone. | 29 Apr 2026 | 00:53:12 | |
This week there's no guest — instead, I'm sharing the dedication and an introduction to Chapter Four of the Antifascist Dad audiobook, now available wherever books are sold! Chapter Four, "Capitalism Everywhere and in Everyone," is the heart of the book's argument: that understanding capitalism's structural cruelty is foundational to recognizing fascism. I draw on David Graeber's concept of everyday communism and Marx's analysis of surplus labor value to make these ideas genuinely accessible to young readers and their families. The chapter moves from the warmth of domestic life through the cold logic of exploitation, metabolic rift, and capitalist realism — and asks what it would take to build worlds centered on care rather than theft. The Patreon coda this week applies Jodi Dean's communicative capitalism framework to Natalie Wynn's three-and-a-half-hour appearance on the Doomscroll podcast, asking what it means to perform political analysis, and whether leftist discourse can be helped by punching left.
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| UNLOCK 27.1 Communicative Capitalism vs. Instagram Activism | 26 Apr 2026 | 00:26:52 | |
Following up on my conversations with Ciarra Jones and Leftie Jane by working through Jodi Dean's concept of communicative capitalism and what it means for those of us doing antifascist political work online. I start with Marx's distinction between use value and exchange value, using my late mother's hand-knit sweater. Dean's framework pivots on this split between use and exchange, and she ties it to the contradictions of networked media: the contribution trap, reflexive communication, the fantasy of participation, and the way followership mimics solidarity without producing it. And... what about my own Instagram account, which has grown from 3,000 to 50,000 followers since January? I ask: what that growth actually means, what it conceals, and what ethical questions I need to keep asking myself to avoid becoming part of the infrastructure. Sources
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| 28. How to Sell a Genocide w/ Adam Johnson | 22 Apr 2026 | 01:07:28 | |
Adam Johnson is a media analyst and co-host of the podcast Citations Needed. His new book How to Sell a Genocide (Pluto Books, out now) draws on analysis of over 12,000 articles and 5,000 TV segments to document how US center-left legacy media — the New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, and others — provided systematic PR cover for the genocide in Gaza. Johnson and I dig into the quantitative evidence for asymmetric language, the invention of the "Hamas-run health ministry" pejorative, the three masks of helpless/fuming/umpire Biden, and the "moats of rationalization" that allowed liberal audiences to intellectually and emotionally distance themselves from industrial-scale slaughter live-streamed into their phones. All royalties from Adam's book go to the Middle East Children's Alliance. LINKS
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| UNLOCK 26.1 Springtime for Democratic Socialism in Canada | 19 Apr 2026 | 00:37:04 | |
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. SourcesAvi 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
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| 27. The Proto-Fascism of “Trust me” Carney w/ Leftie Jane | 15 Apr 2026 | 01:11:59 | |
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:
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 SourcesBill 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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| UNLOCK 25.1 Mark Carney's “Elbows Up” Hockey Schtick: a Review | 13 Apr 2026 | 00:23:56 | |
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. Sources: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 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
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| 26. Antifascist Gardening Theology w/ Ciarra Jones | 08 Apr 2026 | 01:00:12 | |
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/ Sources: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
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| UNLOCK 24.1: Mutual Aid in Islam w/Mona Haydar | 06 Apr 2026 | 00:39:59 | |
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.
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