Conspirituality

Megamillionaire supplements and New Age life coach tycoon Aubrey Marcus recently claimed the goddess Isis told him that he must impregnate both his wife and the third member of their throuple while doing spiritual tourism in Egypt.

During a nearly three-hour podcast, the three explain their polygamous plans and heartaches while their on-call guru, Marc Gafni—an old-school spiritualist most famous for the long list of sexual assault and misconduct allegations against him—frames their drama as a sacred crisis.

We pick apart the spectacle, assessing how badly Marcus is getting his ass beat.

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Does the word protestor conjure a masked figure in black clothing smashing windows and lighting fires or a weekend liberal ineffectually following rules while sipping on a creamy latte along the state-permitted protest route?

A popular media narrative is that peaceful protest works best, but has the power of nonviolent resistance been debunked? 

Julian responds to Matthew’s interview with political sociologist, Benjamin Case.

In the context of anarchist activism, Case points out that successful “nonviolent protest movements” have always featured property damage, street-fighting, and window smashing. His ethnographic research shows that rioting can also be personally transformative and empowering, as the participant experiences “contentious effervescence.”

His interview (and book, Street Rebellion) included a pointed critique of celebrated nonviolence advocate and academic, Erica Chenoweth, and their towering predecessor, Gene Sharp—who, inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, practically created the field of nonviolent resistance studies. Case has some excellent points, especially about how often Chenoweth’s work is misinterpreted.

But was Gene Sharp really a tool of American imperialism? Is Erica Chenoweth a willing lapdog to status quo liberalism and capitalist power? What kinds of protest strategy might serve us best in our terrifying authoritarian moment?

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Marty Makary and Vinay Prasad claim they're going to open the "black box" at the FDA, an agency they're now both employed at. So they started a podcast. It's not the first official FDA podcast, but it certainly fits into the contrarian ethos both men have cultivated since 2020. Derek and Julian listen in to see how much of that box is actually being opened.

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We’ve been talking about RFK Jr for years, and even dedicated an entire chapter to him in our 2023 book—and we’re going to keep covering him. Since his power and influence has only grown, and since he’s now in charge of America’s entire health apparatus, there’s no way to avoid it.

This week we catch up on the last few months of MAHA. Derek looks into why he believes Kennedy’s apparatus, despite claims of being about health, is really a cover for Project 2025’s deregulatory agenda. Julian discusses a recent paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine by Covid contrarians Marty Makary and Vinay Prasad, who now both work under Kennedy. Finally, Matthew will contemplate Kennedy’s crude remarks on autism through the lens of disability politics.

Show Notes

What Has All This Restaurant Food Done to My Gut?

Function Health is Another Theranosesque Scam

MAHA’s Goal Is Not Health: Robert Kennedy’s movement promises more privatization

RFK Jr. meets with health tech startups, most backed by Andreessen Horowitz

COVID infection no longer gives lasting immunity

Hybrid Immunity May Be the Key to Developing Better Vaccines

Makary, Bhattacharya in New England Journal of Medicine

Consequences of Work Requirements in Arkansas: Two-Year Impacts on Coverage, Employment, and Affordability of Care 

Concerns About ABA-Based Intervention: An Evaluation and Recommendations - PMC 

Adler-Bolton, Beatrice, and Artie Vierkant. 2022. Health Communism: A Surplus Manifesto. Verso Books.

SURPLUS. Adler-Bolton, The New Inquiry. October 18, 2022. 

Extractive Abandonment - Stimpunks Foundation 

Social and medical models of disability and mental health: evolution and renewal - PMC

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Calley Means is one of RFK Jr’s top advisors. Alongside Tucker Carlson, Means has claimed responsibility for shepherding Kennedy into Trump’s camp. Does this former business school graduate Heritage Foundation intern and business school graduate really care about the nation’s health? Derek listens to a recent interview with Politico and finds the deregulatory ethos that underlies all of Project 2025 is alive and well in MAHA.

Show Notes

Full interview with Calley Means | POLITICO Health Care Summit 2025

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After being confirmed as Secretary of HHS, RFK Jr started installing his cabal of wellness influencers and contrarian doctors across the government's many public health agencies. And that means they have to apologize for their boss. Derek and Julian listen in on some of the most outrageous takes so far.

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The most annoying convert TradCath in the world, JD Vance, whose cherubic face belies all his bootlicking aggression, gets his moment with Pope Bob. Usha stands behind him in a black mantilla. He hands the pontiff an oversized envelope: an invitation from Donald and Melania to a White House dinner. Bob smiles guardedly as he takes it and without looking at it, setting it on his desk. “I’ll read that at some point,” Vance sputters, “of course, of course.” 

The scene is set for the Church-State tension of whatever phase of global fascism we’re now entering. These ghouls who jail students, disappear immigrants, and lobby for the Trump Gaza resort, shuffle into the Vatican with hats in hand to meet a fellow American who is nothing like their boss, asking for pats on the head, wondering what kind of alliance they can forge, perhaps through anti-wokeness discourse.

The enigmatic response from Pope Bob sums up where we all are as we read the incense swirls for whether he’s going to keep steering the world’s 1.4B Catholics against the tides of late-stage capitalism and environmental disaster, Francis-style. 

Show Notes

Michelle Remembers | Satanic Panic Patreon Collection 

Brief: Deep Church Conspiracy (w/David Lafferty) 

Brief: The CPAC Pope and the Icicle Babies (w/ Brad Onishi)

183: Woke Pope Cancels America's Bishop (w/Mike Lewis)

Sisters of the Little Way

Vatican’s financial watchdog reports decrease in suspicious activities reports in 2024

Why the next Pope faces major money challenges

Pope warns the Vatican pension fund needs urgent reform as employees demand transparency

Cardinal convicted of embezzlement won't participate in conclave for Pope Francis's successor

A cardinal is convicted of embezzlement and sentenced to 5 1/2 years in Vatican trial 

Church defends Indigenous peoples: ‘Doctrine of Discovery’ was never Catholic

Vatican Denounces ‘International Law of Colonization’

Reparations for empire: What the new pope owes to Africa | Slavery

Catholic Order Pledges $100 Million to Atone for Slave Labor and Sales

The Dark History of How the Catholic Church Built Its Massive Wealth

The Vatican—Bulwark of Imperialism

Indigenous leaders hope Vatican's repudiation of oppressive colonial concepts leads to real change

The Man Who Took On Pope Francis: The Story Behind the Viganò Letter

The Excommunication of Archbishop Viganò - Crisis 

Bishop Strickland removed from diocese after accusing pope of backing 'attack on the sacred'

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Matthew is back today for more with Ben Case: profiling Gene Sharp and the (non)politics of strategic nonviolence, plus his strange funding sources. Also: why did Erica Chenoweth speak out against antifascist Trump protesters in January of 2017, and suggest their research proved that property damage and scuffles with the police would ruin any opposition movement to Trump? Also: where does the funding come from for all this bad research? Gene Sharp worked for the Department of Defense, and today, Bill Ackerman is a top funder of strategic nonviolence research. 

Case is a retired professional Muaythai fighter, an organizer, educator, and writer. He is a researcher at the Center for Work and Democracy and a fellow at the Resistance Studies Initiative. 

Show Notes

Street Rebellion: Resistance Beyond Violence and Nonviolence | Case

Why Civil Resistance Works | Columbia University Press 

Why Not Riot? Interview with Author Ben Case - CounterPunch.org  

Change Agent: Gene Sharp’s Neoliberal Nonviolence (Part One) – Nonsite.org 

Have Repertoire, Will Travel: Nonviolence as Global Contentious Performance 

Violence Will Only Hurt the Trump Resistance | The New Republic

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You may have grown up with the term “nonviolence” shining like a pole star over every discussion of how we accomplish socio-political change. But what does it really mean? And who defines violence for that matter—beyond the police, the courts, and others in power?

Today, the theory of non-violence has grown beyond its Gandhian, spiritual aspiration roots, while retaining an irrational faith and offering a distorted view of resistance history. It is now a think-tank-approved, purportedly evidence-based method that guarantees movement success. 

That reasoning comes from the pioneering scholarship of the pacifist Gene Sharp in the 1960s, and his inheritors in strategic nonviolence discourse, Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan. They argue that Gandhi’s sacred ideal of satyagraha also happens to be the only successful pathway to lasting change—and they have the data to prove it. 

But do they? Nope. Matthew’s guest today persuasively shows that the movements we think of as “nonviolent” never really are. Why don’t we know this? Through a tangle of academic malpractice, spiritual bypassing, liberal wish fulfillment, and erasing anticolonial voices. Oh, and Gene Sharp also got a lot of funding from the Department of Defense.

Benjamin S. Case is a retired professional Muaythai fighter, an organizer, educator, and writer. He is a researcher at the Center for Work and Democracy and a fellow at the Resistance Studies Initiative. 

P.S.: During our conversation, Ben mentioned that there are antifascist fighting clubs out there. Here are a few to look into:

Haymaker in Chicago.

SKN Muay Thai in Pittsburgh, PA.

Balagoon Boxing Club in Philly, PA.

Show Notes

Street Rebellion: Resistance Beyond Violence and Nonviolence | Case

Why Civil Resistance Works | Columbia University Press 

Why Not Riot? Interview with Author Ben Case - CounterPunch.org  

Change Agent: Gene Sharp’s Neoliberal Nonviolence (Part One) – Nonsite.org 

Have Repertoire, Will Travel: Nonviolence as Global Contentious Performance 

Violence Will Only Hurt the Trump Resistance | The New Republic

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The chat bot flashes its elipsis at the bottom of the screen. What is it thinking, what does it want from you, what do you want from it? Beneath those pixels lies a sea of mined data and lightning storms of electricity heating up servers in barren deserts. What will it find for you in the past labor of the generations?

According to a stunning new article in Rolling Stone, it will find whatever the fuck makes you feel like a god—incuding all the NewAge pablum it has scarfed down—because oops, ChatGPT released a model that is just too sycophantic.

But as we break down today, the AI nonsensient flattery machine is designed to hook you into the regurgitative process of self-seduction. Is this a new spiritual delusion, or more of the same? And what does that kind and agreeable bot conceal?

Show Notes

People Are Losing Loved Ones to AI-Fueled Spiritual Fantasies

Chatgpt induced psychosis

ChatGPT And Generative AI Innovations Are Creating Sustainability Havoc 

LLM Can Be A Dangerous Persuader

You'll Be Astonished How Much Power It Takes to Generate a Single AI Image 

A bottle of water per email: the hidden environmental costs of using AI chatbots

Intelligent Computing: The Latest Advances, Challenges, and Future 

AI Data Centers Pose Regulatory Challenge, Jeopardizing Climate Goals

AI, Climate, and Regulation: From Data Centers to the AI Act 

AI could impact 40 per cent of jobs worldwide in the next decade, UN agency warns

The Future of Jobs Report 2025

History’s Magic Mirror: America’s Economic Crisis and the Weimar Republic of Pre-Nazi Germany

The Great Filter: A possible solution to the Fermi Paradox 

Academic Publisher Sells Authors’ Work to Microsoft for AI Training

Address of the Holy Father to the College of Cardinals (10 May 2025) | LEO XIV 

Capitalism's Fascistic Tendencies — McGowan 

McGowan, Todd. 2016. Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets. Columbia University Press.

Adorno, Theodor W., and Max Horkheimer. 1997. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Verso.

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It begins with a failed human sacrifice in Detroit in 1932. Some would say it actually starts with an evil god-scientist who created the first white people—white devils, really—some 6,000 years ago. Either way, the Nation of Islam has had an important cultural and political presence for almost a century in America.

Today’s installment of Julian’s Roots of Conspirituality series covers the incredible real world history of this extremist new religious movement, as well as its outlandish sci-fi mythological theology.

Show Notes

UAP in Nation of Islam?

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In 2022, Oregonians passed Measure 111, which amends the state constitution to declare access to affordable healthcare a right for every citizen. As it happens, this was the first ballot Derek voted on when moving to the state.

Now that the long journey to universal healthcare is a reality in Oregon, what does that actually entail? Derek is joined by two members of the nonprofit organization, Health Care for All Oregon: Collin Stackhouse, the Social Media Coordinator, and Rebecca Schoon, an Associate Professor of Public Health at Pacific University, who’s on the board. Together, they map out the journey ahead.

Health Care for All Oregon

Measure 111 passes, giving Oregonians a constitutional right to access affordable health care

Maga’s era of ‘soft eugenics’: let the weak get sick, help the clever breed

Show Notes

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Cancer, as physician and author Siddhartha Mukherjee writes, is the emperor of all maladies. The disease—the over 200 different diseases all falling under this umbrella term—has been with us as long as we’ve been us. If anything is truly ancient, it is the cancer cells that are in all of our bodies, just waiting to be turned on if the conditions are right, or if our genes dictate the inevitability.

Deep in wellness land, cancer is something entirely different. It’s avoidable if you stop consuming seed oils, stop using 5G, stop thinking negative thoughts, and by god, stop taking those jabs that cause all the turbo cancers going around. And with every wellness warning comes a wellness solution. Today our correspondent, Mallory DeMille, returns for a deep dive into the treacherous depths of one of the more insidious grifts: treating cancer with the power of…water.

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Gen X went from leaning slightly right in 2016 to become, as one analysis puts it, “the bedrock of Trumpism.” Derek meditates on what happened to his generation by reading from four different thought pieces on the topic.

Show Notes

Wait, What Is Really Up With Gen X’s Politics?

Is Gen X a Bunch of Trumpers? Maybe That’s the Wrong Question.

How Gen X Became the Trumpiest Generation

How Gen X Went from Raging Against the Machine to Swallowing Misinformation While “Doing Their Own Research”

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The White House Correspondents’ Dinner was a little different this year. No president. No comedian. The event featured a mea culpa from an Axios journalist who discussed the media’s complicity in failing to expose Biden’s mental decline. Meanwhile, Substack promoted an alternative parallel event called “Not The White House Correspondents’ Dinner” with an email that announced, “a new media order is emerging.” Legit—or just another conspiracy touting MAGA sham?

Julian reports on the proceedings of both events, as well as how the media landscape is shifting in ways that render the definitions of terms like “independent,” “journalism,” and “unbiased” hard to pin down. Digging beneath the surface on Substack, and outlets like The Free Press, and the increasingly mainstreamed far right cult-rag the Epoch Times, all of which claim in some way to represent this emergent new media order, leads him to ask: where is the real home of fact-based independent journalism?

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Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government in Ontario has leased the public space of OP to the Therme Spa company, which promises to bring wellness and democracy to the good citizens of Toronto, for a price.

Bruce Van Dieten and Ann-Elizabeth Samson of Ontario Place for All join Matthew to discuss the history and possible future of Toronto's cherished public space.

Bruce is "a retired busybody with nothing better to do than to lodge burrs under the saddles of politicians who see us as customers instead of citizens and treat us like obstacles."

Ann Elisabeth Samson specializes in equality, innovation, and futures thinking. She founded and ran BabyCenter Canada, and led the launch of the $300M Equality Fund. She is co-chair of Ontario Place for All and as an open water swimmer and rower - loves Lake Ontario.

Show Notes

Ontario Place for All 

“To Rid Society of Imbeciles”: The Impact of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg’s Stand for Eugenics

RFK Jr. Wants to Send People Addicted to Antidepressants to Government “Wellness Farms”

Ontario Place 

Quick Facts & Analysis + Fact Checker: Ford government's health care funding

Ford government spending $525-675M on Therme Spa to get up to $380-580M in value back if it is successful for 95 years: analysis

Ford says he will ‘double and triple check’ Ontario Place deal after new report

European Spa Company Therme Misrepresented Itself in an Effort to Expand Into Canada

Province grilled over Therme's credentials to build luxury spa at Ontario Place

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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

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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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But the parents? Meh. 

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 (as Marco Rubio calls it). 

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.

In this Part One, Matthew previews our main feed discussion of Adolescence (coming this Thursday), parses a speech by Gareth Southgate, wonders why Jonathan Haidt knows nothing about gaming, and remembers Sophie Scholl. 

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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"If Americans want to change their government, they're going to have to get over their dictator-phobia."

That's neo-reactionary philosopher Curtis Yarvin in 2012, when he outlined a strategy that's eerily similar to how Trump and Musk are now destroying our government.  The "dark enlightenment" blogger, long a transgressive darling of the New Right, has in the last two months enjoyed a fresh round of mainstream exposure.

We look at a man who has the ear of those who are reshaping our world at breakneck speed.

Show Notes

That's Bait - by Jeff Sharlet

Kristi Noem Gets a MAGA Makeover - The New York Times

Kristi Noem’s New Teeth Are Blowing Up in Her Face | Vanity Fair

Venezuela-hired lawyers file petition in El Salvador aimed at freeing Venezuelans deported by US | AP News

Kristi Noem’s El Salvador Prison Photo Op Might Have Violated the Geneva Convention

Trump wants FEMA gone. But that could be its own kind of disaster.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem posed in front of El Salvador prisoners wearing $50k watch  

Will Stancil: "The El Salvador government is using its concentration camp as a kind of Disneyland thrill ride for right-wing influencers”

Kelly Brogan’s Divine Dungeon: Pt 1 (feat/Esme Providence Brown)

Kelly Brogan’s Divine Dungeon: Pt 2 (feat/Esme Providence Brown)  

‘All life is a service’: The Contested Erotics of Fascism from Foucault to Frost – Retrospect Journal

Cathedrals of Erotic Misery • Ill Will

Politico Yarvin Interview

Financial Times on Dark Enlightenment

TIME on Dark Enlightenment

Common Dreams on Dark Enlightenment/DOGE

NYT Podcast End of Democracy

Jennifer Kollmer, 1971-2021 — Yarvin’s obit poem, TW on the rest of the blog!

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What is an oligarchy, exactly? Is the US entering a period similar to post-Soviet Russia in the 1990s? What do Russian oligarchs have to do with proven interference in the 2016 US election? 

Julian digs into Russian history to explore parallels with modern-day America. Meet Vladislav Surkov, the architect of both Putin’s 25-year rule over what Surkov has dubbed “sovereign democracy,” and the global propaganda strategies generating our post-truth ecosystem of disinformation and conspiracies. There’s a reason why politics feels like theater these days, why democracy seems like a pipe dream. 

While MAGA has a fascism fetish, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine might be a better match for Hitler on the verge, with Trump and Co acting as macho-clown versions of Neville Chamberlain.

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Derek and Julian discuss Robert Paxton's 2004 book, The Anatomy of Fascism, in light of 2025 America.

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McGill University science communicator, Jonathan Jarry, was recently given hundreds of hours of Zoom calls between alt-med salesman, Joseph Mercola, and a supposed clairvoyant that goes by Bahlon. Jonathan joins us to discuss what he found.

Show Notes

Brad Schimel Admitted to Having "Psychologically Beat the Daylights Out" Of His 8-Year-Old Daughter - MeidasTouch News

Rallying Anti-Musk Donors, Liberal Judge Raises $24 Million in Key Court Contest - The New York Times

Here are claims about Wisconsin’s Supreme Court candidates — and the facts

Ahead of Wisconsin Supreme Court election, Elon Musk PAC offers cash for pledge - WPR

Trump backs Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate in hotly contested race - ABC News

Billionaires become a focus of the 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court race

Brad Schimel Begins Campaigning With Anti-MLK Advocate Charlie Kirk - MeidasTouch News

Exclusive Videos Show Dr. Joe Mercola’s Dangerous Ideas Whipped up by Alleged Medium

Brief: RFK's Health Propaganda Roundtable

Terminated HHS grants

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The Wellness Company is now selling retatrutide, a weight loss drug currently undergoing stage 3 trials by Eli Lilly. An anti-vax company that uses fear-based marketing to push supplements appears to be overstepping legal lines. Yet will they be held accountable in an RFK Jr-led HHS?

Derek looks at private market healthcare propaganda from Ronald Reagan to Kennedy, showing how health is not the real goal of MAHA. But if they can sell untested products to fat and chronically ill patients along the way, all the better.

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Julian covers the recent Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference in London. Headlined by Jordan Peterson, featuring Konstantin Kisin, Ayan Hirsi Ali, Jonathan Pageau, and Eric Weinstein, the conference positioned itself as an inspiring cultural gathering focused on reclaiming Western values. 

Behind the scenes, a hedge-fund billionaire new media baron, conservative libertarian think tank, shady funding source in Dubai, and an evangelical English aristocrat use the prestige of ARC and its celebrity figureheads to popularize a very specific political, economic, and religious agenda.

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Trump administration Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, recently stated the American economy is going to need a "detox" period. And so today we look at peak the conspirituality convergences between biological and political purification projects.

Quinn Slobodian, professor of international history at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, joins Matthew in the final segment to offer his big picture view on the Kings of Pain.

Show Notes

Johns Hopkins to lose 2,000 jobs after Trump’s $800m cut in USAid funding

Young scientists see career pathways vanish as schools adapt to federal funding cuts

Report: mRNA vaccines are in RFK Jr’s crosshairs; funding in question

FDA Makes Flu Vaccine Recommendations Without Convening Advisors

HHS sends all employees a $25,000 voluntary buyout offer

Exclusive: US CDC plans study into vaccines and autism, sources say

USDA gears up for MAHA dietary guidelines update

Musk Said No One Has Died Since Aid Was Cut. That Isn’t True.

Watch CNBC's full interview with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent

Why we must teach medical students about the role of physicians during the Holocaust | AAMC

Teaching Hard Truths About Medicine and the Holocaust | Journal of Ethics | American Medical Association

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Click here to hear the full episode on Patreon.

Second of Matthew’s two-part examination of why the hell questions of force, non-violent resistance with and without force, unarmed violence and property damage, and armed violence are so incredibly hard to talk about in a culture thick with spiritual and political bypassing. Are we capable of understanding the difference between morality and strategy?

Part 1 focused on philosophy and psychology while today the focus will be on definitions and tactics. Together, both parts will push back on conspiracism about the identities, motives, and methods  of antifascists. Both will present slices of the rich discourse on violence and non-violence from antifascist history, including clarifying definitions of key terms. Both will open a space to think carefully about what intensities of self and community defense are both useful and tolerable in the fight against fascism. 

Today we’ll get into the very thick weeds of how the “strategic nonviolence” research of Gene Sharp, Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan is framed as empirical, but may be way more about idealizing Gandhi than about facts on the ground.

Huge list of references for each!

Stopping the Press: The Threats to the Media Posed by the Second Trump Term | The New Yorker

What the FBI Has Done, and Kash Patel Could Do - Columbia Journalism Review 

Hakeem Jeffries cracks down on Trump speech disruptions 

Neo-Nazi Richard Spencer Got Punched—You Can Thank the Black Bloc | The Nation 

Aamer Rahman: Is it really ok to punch nazis? 

$16.5M settlement reached in class-action lawsuit over mass arrests during 2010 G20 summit | CBC News 

Meditations at the ringed fence around G20 Toronto - rabble.ca 

Remaining Human: A Buddhist Perspective on Occupy Wall Street - Michael Stone 

Brief: The Outside Agitator Conspiracy Trope (w/Dr. Peniel Joseph) — Conspirituality 

Anti-fascists linked to zero murders in the US in 25 years | Donald Trump | The Guardian 

40 Ways to Fight Fascists: Sunshine 

rules for radicals | saul d. alinsky 

198 METHODS OF NONVIOLENT ACTION | — Gene Sharp

She Interrupted a Town-Hall Meeting and Was Dragged Out by Private Security - The New York Times 

Martin Luther King Jr. had a much more radical message than a dream of racial brotherhood 

The Enigma of Frantz Fanon | The Nation

Frantz Fanon and the struggle against colonisation | MR Online

Frantz Fanon and the Paradox of Anticolonial Violence – Solidarity

Frantz Fanon—a vital defence of violence by the oppressed - Socialist Worker

Land and Freedom (1995 Ken Loach) [ENG Sub] (starting at the collectivization debate scene) 

Full Spectrum Resistance — McBay 

The Failure of Nonviolence | The Anarchist Library 

Beyond Violence and Nonviolence | ROAR Magazine 

Debunking the myths around nonviolent resistance | ROAR Magazine 

Social movements and the (mis)use of research: Extinction Rebellion and the 3.5% rule 

Responding to Domestic Terrorism: A Crisis of Legitimacy - Harvard Law Review 

Domestic Terrorism: Definitions, Terminology, and Methodology — FBI 

676 | United States Sentencing Commission

Activists use 'Tesla Takedown' protests to fight job cuts by Musk and Trump | Reuters

Tesla vehicles destroyed, vandalized since Musk began role at White House, authorities say - ABC News

Anti-DOGE protests at Tesla stores target Elon Musk's bottom line | AP News

Tyre Extinguishers: A Night Out with the Climate Activists Sabotaging SUVs

Leaflet | Tyre Extinguishers 

Tesla Stocks Tumble as Elon Musk’s Political Role Grows More Divisive - The New York Times

Internal Memos: Senior USAID Leaders Warned Trump Appointees of Hundreds of Thousands of Deaths From Closing Agency 

Beyond Violence and Nonviolence | ROAR Magazine 

Violence Will Only Hurt the Trump Resistance | The New Republic 

Why Not Riot? Interview with Author Ben Case - CounterPunch.org

10 Lessons on Filmmaking from Director Ken Loach

BBC Taster - How to Make a Ken Loach Film

Land and Freedom (1995 Ken Loach) [ENG Sub]

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First of Matthew's two-part examination of why the hell questions of force, non-violent resistance with and without force, unarmed violence and property damage, and armed violence are so incredibly hard to talk about in a culture thick with spiritual and political bypassing. Are we capable of understanding the difference between morality and strategy?

Part 1 focuses on philosophy and psychology while Part 2 focuses on definitions and tactics. Together, both parts will push back on conspiracism about the identities, motives, and methods  of antifascists. Both will present slices of the rich discourse on violence and non-violence from antifascist history, including clarifying definitions of key terms. Both will open a space to think carefully about what intensities of self and community defense are both useful and tolerable in the fight against fascism. 

Part 2 gets into the very thick weeds of how the “strategic nonviolence” research of Gene Sharp, Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan is framed as empirical, but may be way more about idealizing Gandhi than about facts on the ground. Drops Monday on Patreon.

Huge list of references for each!

Show Notes

Stopping the Press: The Threats to the Media Posed by the Second Trump Term | The New Yorker

What the FBI Has Done, and Kash Patel Could Do - Columbia Journalism Review 

Hakeem Jeffries cracks down on Trump speech disruptions 

Neo-Nazi Richard Spencer Got Punched—You Can Thank the Black Bloc | The Nation 

Aamer Rahman: Is it really ok to punch nazis? 

$16.5M settlement reached in class-action lawsuit over mass arrests during 2010 G20 summit | CBC News 

Meditations at the ringed fence around G20 Toronto - rabble.ca 

Remaining Human: A Buddhist Perspective on Occupy Wall Street - Michael Stone 

Brief: The Outside Agitator Conspiracy Trope (w/Dr. Peniel Joseph) — Conspirituality 

Anti-fascists linked to zero murders in the US in 25 years | Donald Trump | The Guardian 

40 Ways to Fight Fascists: Sunshine 

rules for radicals | saul d. alinsky 

198 METHODS OF NONVIOLENT ACTION | — Gene Sharp

She Interrupted a Town-Hall Meeting and Was Dragged Out by Private Security - The New York Times 

Martin Luther King Jr. had a much more radical message than a dream of racial brotherhood 

The Enigma of Frantz Fanon | The Nation

Frantz Fanon and the struggle against colonisation | MR Online

Frantz Fanon and the Paradox of Anticolonial Violence – Solidarity

Frantz Fanon—a vital defence of violence by the oppressed - Socialist Worker

Land and Freedom (1995 Ken Loach) [ENG Sub] (starting at the collectivization debate scene) 

Full Spectrum Resistance — McBay 

The Failure of Nonviolence | The Anarchist Library 

Beyond Violence and Nonviolence | ROAR Magazine 

Debunking the myths around nonviolent resistance | ROAR Magazine 

Social movements and the (mis)use of research: Extinction Rebellion and the 3.5% rule 

Responding to Domestic Terrorism: A Crisis of Legitimacy - Harvard Law Review 

Domestic Terrorism: Definitions, Terminology, and Methodology — FBI 

676 | United States Sentencing Commission

Activists use 'Tesla Takedown' protests to fight job cuts by Musk and Trump | Reuters

Tesla vehicles destroyed, vandalized since Musk began role at White House, authorities say - ABC News

Anti-DOGE protests at Tesla stores target Elon Musk's bottom line | AP News

Tyre Extinguishers: A Night Out with the Climate Activists Sabotaging SUVs

Leaflet | Tyre Extinguishers 

Tesla Stocks Tumble as Elon Musk’s Political Role Grows More Divisive - The New York Times

Internal Memos: Senior USAID Leaders Warned Trump Appointees of Hundreds of Thousands of Deaths From Closing Agency 

Beyond Violence and Nonviolence | ROAR Magazine 

Violence Will Only Hurt the Trump Resistance | The New Republic 

Why Not Riot? Interview with Author Ben Case - CounterPunch.org

10 Lessons on Filmmaking from Director Ken Loach

BBC Taster - How to Make a Ken Loach Film

Land and Freedom (1995 Ken Loach) [ENG Sub]

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Lately a lot of folks (including us) have been doing the fascism comparisons.

The questions we ponder this week: How long it takes for fascism to fully dig its roots in, how varied is the opposition along the way, and what role does the media play?

Show Notes

165: Outrage Machine (w/Tobias Rose-Stockwell)

16 October 1919 | Hitler Archive

Konrad Heiden 

Fritz Gerlich, publicist and prophet – how did he resist the Nazis? 

Fritz Gerlich 

Nazi Germany’s Schriftleitergesetz: The End of Freedom of the Press - Arolsen Archives

The illegal press – Verzetsmuseum  

The Liberal Media Always Fails Against Fascism — Robert Evans 

Can a news media that doesn’t really oppose fascism ever cover it well?

Against Normalization: The Lesson of the “Munich Post” | Los Angeles Review of Books

The Newspaper Axis: Six Press Barons Who Enabled Hitler

Fascist-Sympathizing Newspaper Barons Were the Blueprint for Today’s Right-Wing Media

Media's Failure in Times of Crisis: Election Coverage in the Interwar Period

How Journalists Covered the Rise of Mussolini and Hitler | Smithsonian

How Britain's Nazi-loving press baron made the case for Hitler | The Times of Israel

Wahl-Jorgensen, K. (2016). Is there a “postmodern turn” in journalism? In C. Peters and M. Broersma (Eds), Rethinking Journalism (pp. 97-111). London: Routledge.

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Subscribe for full episode

The MAGA attack on government jobs, takeover of government agencies, and purge of supposed “DEI” and “woke” professionals has a long history in the US. Julian uses old-timey newsreels, biographies, and events in the public record to trace the lines from 1919 to today, making stops at the so-called Red Summer’s “race riots,” Red Scare communist panics, Hollywood Blacklist, and Lavender Scare that fired thousands for being presumed gay.

Unrelated to any of this completely useless and repressive paranoid bigotry, actual Soviet spies were being apprehended and prosecuted—even then everything was not on the level. The prosecutors had their own hidden skeletons and shady bedfellows, even as they claimed the patriotic moral high ground.

At the heart of this history is a lineage of men who never let truth get in the way of gaining, and wielding, power and cruelty. Julian uncovers a surprisingly direct lineage of dirty-tricks demagogue succession, from Woodrow Wilson to A. Mitchell Palmer, to J. Edgar Hoover, to Joe McCarthy, to Roy Cohn, to Roger Stone, to our current president.

Editorial Note: The Paul Robeson clip that starts the episode is a re-enactment by James Earl Jones for the Zinn Education Project. It uses the transcript of Robeson’s 1956 appearance before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee.

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MAHA's response to the measles outbreak has been horrific, though expectable. Yet RFK Jr's op-ed, in which he advocated for the MMR vaccine, ripped apart his coalition—briefly.

Derek looks at the responses to Bobby's moment of clarity, then contemplates what MAHA really wants now that their champion is the bureaucracy.

Show Notes

Dr Jessica Knurick’s video

Vitamin A For Measles: Kevin Klatt

Measles is not a harmless illness — complications include brain damage, immune amnesia, and death

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This week we’re looking at how folks who associated themselves with the magical and morbid QAnon memes about the “coming storm” that would destroy the Deep State have become that storm, mainly by talking about it, and are now in the position to congeal an even Deeper State characterized by more repression and control. They’re doing it both as conspiracists and as conspiracy theorists would predict: as rich guys pretending to be oppressed.

This opens up the question of “Have we been here before in the US, and what happened?” The parallels are uncanny. In the late 1920s, Henry Ford had his car dealers stick copies of The Dearborn Independent newspaper in the glove compartments of new cars. That was the rag in which he published excerpts of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Today another auto baron, Elon Musk, busts out seigheils and posts Nazi memes whenever he likes. But only one of them got a White House office.

CDC Statement on Measles Outbreak

US Health Secretary Kennedy calls for end to deadly Texas measles outbreak

Copy of STORM is HERE Data 

LIVE: Kash Patel’s confirmation hearing for FBI director 

Kash Patel Wants to Work From Home for FBI. But Who Does He Live With? | The New Republic 

Kash Patel privately agreed to hire an experienced deputy FBI director. Then Trump picked a loyalist | The Independent 

How Dan Bongino Went From Infowars to FBI Deputy Director | WIRED 

How Trump’s Justice Department has gutted the government’s ability to chase public corruption | CNN Politics 

123: The Red-Pilled "Academic" Who Named Our Podcast — Conspirituality 

Darkness Over All: John Robison and the Birth of the Illuminati Conspiracy — The Public Domain Review

Conspiracy Theories Abounded in 19th-Century American Politics | Smithsonian 

Wealthy bankers and businessmen plotted to overthrow FDR. A retired general foiled it.  

Medical Mystery: What killed ‘Red Scare’ Sen. Joseph McCarthy? 

FBI director considering having UFC train agents in martial arts, say people familiar with plan | Reuters 

What We Know About the CIA's Midcentury Mind-Control Project | Smithsonian 

FBI Records: The Vault — COINTELPRO

On campaign trail, RFK Jr. pushes 'bonkers' theory about CIA's 'takeover of the American press' - ABC News  

Richard Hofstadter’s “The Paranoid Style” Can’t Help Us Now 

Rehabilitating McCarthyism 

JFK, Richard Hofstadter, and the ‘Paranoid Style in American Politics’

Ford's Anti-Semitism | American Experience | Official Site | PBS

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Former "race realist" Richard Hanania recently published an article on The Free Press claiming that all those Nazi salutes the right is waving high in the sky is really "just trolling." Derek disagrees.

Show Notes

Enough — John Ganz

I Can Explain Why the Nazi Salute Is Back — Richard Hanania

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Is life worse for women now than in the 1950s? In a recent interview for The Free Press, author Louise Perry and journalist Bari Weiss muse on just how much women have lost since premarital sex was normalized, the pill reduced sex to consequence-free hedonism, and Roe v Wade rendered abortion as common as going to the dentist. Perry calls this “re-paganization,” delivering an eloquent longing for a lost golden age of female subservience as Weiss nods along and smiles. It’s all very heterodox.

Or is it? No mention of the impacts of Project 2025, the dangerous ascendancy of Christian Nationalism, or the deadly crisis of women’s health in full swing.

Julian analyses their conversation to pinpoint how digital new media dresses up traditionalist right-wing talking points as if they’re open-minded, edgy, and brave intellectual insights.

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Trump has decreed it’s the Gulf of America, and Google agrees, at least for US users. Rep Buddy Carter has introduced HR 1161, the Red White and Blueland Act of 2025 to rename Greenland. And then, of course, there's making Canada the 51st state.

Pay attention to shit like this: it's a magic spell.

Trump is speaking in the old language of the Discovery Doctrine. That’s what we’ll excavate today.

Show Notes

Zizian Killing Spree and Arrests

Zizian leader denied bail

Roko’s Basilisk and Zizian beliefs/practices

Feb 2023 Community Alert about Ziz on Less Wrong

Project 2025 Observer

Native America, Discovered and Conquered: Thomas Jefferson, Lewis and Clark, and Manifest Destiny — Richard J Miller

Trump calls Canada a 'very serious contender' to become 51st state 

H.R.1161 - 119th Congress (2025-2026): Red, White, and Blueland Act of 2025 

DISCOURSE ON COLONIALISM Aime Cesaire Translated by Joan Pinkham 

Biography - Burnum Burnum - Indigenous Australia 

The fight to 'free' the Aboriginal flag

Common Methods of Annexation | Snohomish County, WA

Doctrine of Discovery: How the 500-year-old Catholic decree encouraged colonization 

Speech Acts (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) 

Mexico's President Sheinbaum threatens to take legal action over the Gulf name change : NPR 

How Canada planned to invade the U.S. (and vice versa) 

Poilievre says Canada is broken

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What do we worry more about: the far-right beliefs of trolls, or the coding skills of the trolls? 

The split focus on Marco Elez and Elon Musk—are they Nazis, or hackers, or Nazi hackers?— highlight two prongs of emergent fascism. The ideological/aesthetic/psychological on one side, and the technocratic on the other. We can call them the manners and the machine. 

First, Matthew unpacks a century-old thesis by an OG fascist that says totalitarian regimes take shape when both are working together, but that ultimately, the coup d’etat is about seizing control of the machine. 

Then he rounds off with a rant about how easy it is liberal-centrist discourse about manners to distract from the reality of the machine. Why? It’s because in the absence of a clear analysis of how capital and power work—it’s in the sphere of manners—that liberals feel they have a fighting chance. But it’s also exactly where Musk and Elez and Vance and Trump can ignore them.

Show Notes

A Doomed Democracy | STANFORD magazine 

The October Revolution - Introduction | Marx Memorial Library 

Alexander Kerensky Dies Here at 89 - The New York Times 

Curzio Malaparte | Italian Author, Journalist & Politician | Britannica 

Reading the Eccentric Italian Writer Who Tried to Cover Up His Fascism ‹ Literary Hub 

Curzio Malaparte: The Illusion of the Fascist Revolution 

The Californian Ideology 

The Californian Ideology Personified - Truthdig 

Cyberlibertarianism: The Right-Wing Politics of Digital Technology on JSTOR 

175: Diagonalism (w/William Callison and Quinn Slobodian) — Conspirituality 

Opinion | Don’t Believe Him - The New York Times 

Welcome to Neokayfabe — Abraham Josephine Riesman // Writer 

 40 Ways to Fight Fascists: Street-Legal Tactics for Community Activists — Spencer Sunshine

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Education / Public service alert:

Matthew critically reviews six books that define fascist eras and recount how they have been opposed. A kind of “here we are, now what?” episode that hopefully interrupts the doomscroll with the sobriety of some practical considerations.

• Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny (2017)
• Robert Paxton, Anatomy of Fascism (2004)
• Paul Mason, How to Fight Fascism (2018)
• Mark Bray, Antifa: The Antifascist Handbook (2017)
• Curzio Malaparte: Technique de Coup d’Etat (1931)
• Spencer Sunshine: 40 Ways to Fight Fascists: Street-Legal Tactics for Community Activists (2021)

Formats range from popular nonfiction to academic history to pragmatic field guide. Politics range from liberal to anarchist. More feminist and non-white sources to be reviewed soon.

On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder 

Timothy Snyder’s Bad History | City Journal 

Robert O. Paxton - The Anatomy of Fascism 

Is It Fascism? A Leading Historian Changes His Mind. - The New York Times 

How to Stop Fascism 

Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook  

Curzio Malaparte - The Technique Of Revolution 

40 Ways to Fight Fascists: Street-Legal Tactics for Community Activists — Spencer Sunshine

Joyful Militancy | The Anarchist Library 

Let This Radicalize You | HaymarketBooks.org 

Being Numerous: Essays on Non-Fascist Life — Natasha Lennard

DISCOURSE ON COLONIALISM Aime Cesaire Translated by Joan Pinkham

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Raw Milk. Raw Water. Raw Meat.

Mallory DeMille returns to break down the raw trend in wellness. We look at the science and cultural implications behind it.

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The eighth installment of Matthew’s Five Big Questions Posed to an Extremely Thoughtful Person. 

Friend of the pod Blair Hodges joins Matthew to talk about how he’s transformed the teachings of his Mormon upbringing into inspiration for social justice, how he grapples with the limits of the nuclear family as he thinks about community building, and why James Baldwin is so important to him.

Blair has degrees in journalism, religious studies, and disability studies from the University of Utah and Georgetown University. He’s currently working on a research project on the history of intellectual disabilities in Mormon thought.

Show Notes

Relationscapes—with Blair Hodges 

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“You don’t get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, start a religion.” With those words, prolific sci-fi pulp fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard prophesied the course of his life’s work. 

The 1950s saw the emergence of UFO- and alien channeling-based spiritual groups, as postmodern religious syncretism transformed supposedly ancient angels and demons into benevolent and/or terrifying aliens. No iteration of this fantasy has been more financially fruitful, culturally impactful, controversial, or bizarre than Hubbard’s brainchild: Scientology.

In the latest episode of Roots of Conspirituality, Julian digs into the fascinating backstory of this prolific author, revered as prophetic by thousands, pursued as a fraud by the IRS for decades, described as a cult leader by church escapees, and called an abusive madman by his ex-wives. Allegedly…

The religion is a complex blend of self-help psychology, elaborate pseudoscience, high-demand paranoia, and alien mythology that, at its height, commanded 100,000 members—and is still valued at roughly $2 billion.

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Given how much shit the zone is being flooded with right now, you might have missed Donald Trump screaming about the supposed mistreatment of white South Africans recently. Last week, he said “certain classes of people” were being treated “very badly.” The trigger was a bill signed by South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, a former anti-Apartheid activist, trade union leader, and successful businessman—three qualities Trump doesn’t really understand.

Like the Trump administration, we have our own South African on staff—and he’s legitimately employed here! Julian grew up under apartheid and left the country due to it. Derek chats with him about what life was like growing up there, and he explains the confusion that Trump is injecting into the body politic.

Show Notes

Trump vs. South Africa

South African president signs controversial land seizure law

No Proof Elon Musk's Grandparents Belonged to Nazi Party

Errol Musk Talks About Elon’s Maternal Grandparents

Understanding What the 2025 Expropriation Act Means

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As of recording time, RFK Jr has not yet been confirmed to the HHS Secretary position by the Senate. That might change by publication date. But if we were setting odds on this confirmation, we’d say put your money on Bobby.

So, WTF. Bobby Brainworms will be in charge of US public health, and its influence around the world. Our years of reporting on him have been defeated by the influencer noise of the MAHA Mamas. But we. Will. Carry. On.

Julian reviews the misinfo docket. Derek runs down the bureaucratic implications. And Matthew speculates on just how perfect someone like RFK Jr would be as the domestic health figurehead of a fascist movement, if, you know, that were ever to be possible.

Show Notes

Some Cancers Rising Amongst Younger people

Increased Lung Cancer from the 1960s to 80s.

Lung Cancer Rates Today

Smoking Suppresses Appetite and Results in Lower BMI for Some

64% of Adults in UK Overweight

65% of Australians Overweight

Diabetes Was 1.8% in the US in 1960

11.6% of US Population Has Diabetes

Risk of Alzheimer’s Doubles Every 5 Years After 65

30% of Smokers are Overweight or Obese

A recent study did NOT show vaccines cause autism, but RFK Jr. keeps pushing the lie.

“A New Academic Publishing Model”: Right-Wing Dark Money Group Launches Fringe Medical Journal

Judge Orders White House to Unblock Funding for NIH, Others

RFK Jr.'s financial disclosures reveal millions in both debt and income as he awaits HHS confirmation

Racial ‘Sterility’ and ‘Hyperfecundity’ in Fascist Italy. Biological Politics of Sex and Reproduction in 

History of fascism, reproductive rights offers lessons for today

Are tyrants good for your health? 

When the leader is ill—or addicted to cocaine, meth, steroids, or hormones

Five Pseudosciences That Fueled the Nazis

‘Hitler Was Centre of Our Lives’: Confessions of Nazi Criminals’ Wives | History | Nuremberg. Casus pacis 

Theodor Morell: Hitler’s Particularly Odious Physician 

Public Health Under the Third Reich

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