Fighting Fascism Podcast

We haven’t had any political candidates on Fighting Fascism yet. But we decided to make an exception for Jane Kim, who is running to be the next insurance commissioner of California. Part of that exception is because Jane is an old friend. But part of it is because the office she’s running for touches on such interesting and important issues. We don’t think often about insurance, particularly property and casualty insurance. But it’s the foundation for so much of our economic world. And right now it’s not working. Well, it’s actually working great for the massive corporations raking in billions in profits while denying and underpaying claims and saddling us with massive climate risks. But Jane believes a better way is possible. And we think you will, too, after listening to our conversation.

Dr. Isabella Weber’s new book is called Anti-Fascist Economics. As a native of Nuremberg, where the Nazis staged their famous mass rallies, there’s another term she also uses: the economics of “never again.” We think this book is such an important intervention in the world right now. So we were thrilled to have Isabella on the show to discuss why the rise of today's authoritarian movements is not an accident, but is rooted in an economic order that has treated regular people as expendable while elevating markets above democratic choice. In the face of rising costs, what if we didn’t take the primacy of corporate profits and market fundamentalism as a given? What if, instead, we said, “Let’s do something about this! Let’s take on the corporate profiteering and stabilize the price of essential goods and actually use government to help people so they don’t elect a bunch of fucking fascists!” If you care about democracy, you should read Isabella’s book. And you should definitely check out this episode.

Data centers and AI, AI and data centers. We all know how pivotal these issues have become. But lots of the analysis on these topics has been coming from pundits who are the farthest removed from them. That’s why we wanted to speak with Ben Inskeep and Bryce Gustafson from Citizen Action Coalition. Bryce and Ben have been helping communities on the frontlines of data center fights in Indiana organize and stand up against Big Tech, and their on-the-ground insights—about what’s motivating the backlash, the potential for a broader political realignment, and more—are critical to understanding what’s actually going on right now.

Staten Island is often referred to—by its inhabitants—as the Forgotten Borough of New York City. But who knew that in the 1990s, Staten Islanders literally tried to secede. Our guest this week, Ben Naddaff-Hafrey, is a journalist and senior producer for the Revisionist History podcast, and he’s created a brilliant new series called The Staten Island Problem that tells the history of this moment when New York City almost came apart. Ben sees this story as an early example of the politics of resentment that dominates America today. To understand Staten Island is to understand the communities across our country that feel forgotten and disrespected, whose resentments Trump rode to power. Oh, and obviously we also talk about how Staten Island—or Shaolin, as they call it—explains the Wu-Tang Clan, which totally fits perfectly well with the other themes and definitely isn’t just shoehorned in because it’s super interesting. To get started on Ben’s series: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/revisionist-history/id1119389968?i=1000776007729

Last week, we spoke with campaign manager Ben Shanahan about David Morales’s winning strategy in his successful campaign for Providence mayor. Today, we have a very different conversation with Jenn Steinfeld, David’s field director, about how they built the grassroots operation that knocked proportionately more doors than Zohran’s, without burning anyone out. It turns out campaigns really can run field the right way and win. Let’s do it more often!

Two weeks ago, 28-year-old democratic socialist David Morales defeated Providence's incumbent mayor Brett Smiley in the latest electrifying win for the Democratic Party's populist wing. But how did it happen? And how can it be repeated? In the first episode of this two-parter, Aaron and Matt talk to David's campaign manager Ben Shanahan about the message, strategy, and tactics that powered this insurgent victory. Next week, we expand this conversation with David's field director, Jenn Steinfeld, who gives a window into what it looks like to combine electoral campaigns with movement building. For more analysis on David's win, see Aaron's piece in The Nation: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/david-morales-mayor-race-providence-rhode-island/

Yotam Marom has been helping build movements — and many of the most important movement organizations — for the last 20 years. His new book, "For Louder Days: Reaching Beyond a Politics of Powerlessness" is an essential read for everyone on the left who wants to win a better world. Yotam, who became an organizing leader in Occupy Wall Street alongside Jonathan approximately a million years ago, joined us to talk about the left's conflicted relationship to power, leadership, identity, and strategy. We discuss how and why movements too often get in our own way, turn on each other, and play small, and talk through the big shifts we need to make if we hope to win the big battles ahead.

For this Labor Day episode we’re joined by Bill Fletcher, a longtime union organizer who’s spent the last several years working to build out the labor movement’s anti-fascist infrastructure. Bill has an important reminder for those of us who direct most of our anti-fascist energy against Trump and the oligarchy: MAGA isn’t some astroturf trick. It’s a genuine social movement representing some 25-30% of Americans, and any strategies that ignore this fact are missing something fundamental about today’s dangerous political reality. You can learn more about Bill's organization, Standing for Democracy, here: https://www.standing4democracy.org/

What can ancient human prehistory teach us about fighting fascism today? It turns out, quite a bit! So says historian Patrick Wyman, whose recent book, Lost Worlds, covers the 10,000 years between the end of the Ice Age and the Late Bronze Age collapse. Together, we discussed what makes societies fall apart, what is lost when they do, and how history demonstrates that human agency — and our decisions today — really do matter in determining what comes next for our civilization. Check out Patrick’s wonderful book, Lost Worlds: How Humans Tried, Failed, Succeeded, and Built Our World⁠: https://bookshop.org/p/books/lost-worlds-how-humans-tried-failed-succeeded-and-built-our-world-patrick-wyman/d35a39f742ad1625 And his great podcast, Past Lives: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/past-lives/id1852618120

Nobody asked for this. But we said we'd talk about Graham Platner someday, and that day has arrived. We were all super excited about Platner. That excitement turned out to be misplaced. So what are the lessons we should draw from this saga? We also reflect back on the broader primary season, debate Woke 1, talk data centers, and look toward November, in this first just-us-cohosts-episode.

“The first and crucial step to closing a camp is being against the camp. Not a camp, not that camp, not a newly proposed camp or this particularly atrocious camp. But against camp as concept, against camp as practice—against all camps. Against locking people up because of where they were born or where they are.” This is the thesis of “How to Close a Camp: Dispatches from the Fight Against Immigrant Detention” by John Washington. Washington is a longtime reporter on the border and immigration detention, and he joined us to discuss what we can learn from the organizers and activists who’ve been leading the fight against America’s expanding network of immigration camps—and why these mechanisms for indefinite detention without the benefit of due process or trial by jury are obviously the infrastructure of authoritarianism. Check out John’s book: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2880-how-to-close-a-camp And here’s Aaron’s review of the book for The New Republic: https://newrepublic.com/article/213448/closing-detention-center-rarely-single-strike-it-siege

We all love making fun of fascists. But Dr. Bret Devereaux makes an art of it. Bret is a historian of antiquity and a Tolkien scholar, and he doesn’t suffer fools. He’s been going at it with the world of online chud “historians” — the fascists who say they’re fighting to defend “Western Civilization,” something they’ve never bothered to actually try to understand. And he has similarly choice words for the far right billionaire freaks who idolize, and utterly misunderstand, the Lord of the Rings. This is a genuinely delightful conversation for nerds like us. But it’s also a serious look into the ways the far right misuses history and literature to advance their fucked up worldviews — and how we can fight back. Check out Bret’s WONDERFUL blog, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, at acoup.blog.

Something weird is happening on the far right. MAGA influencers are calling out the pork industry. RFK Jr. is taking credit for militant animal rescue actions. And the animal welfare movement is taking notice. Astra Taylor joins us again to talk about a forthcoming article she and Aaron co-authored on the shifting political terrain around animal rights. The core question: Could this be the new MAHA (Make America Healthy Again)? A few years ago, it was impossible to imagine that crunchy moms who hate Monsanto would become a key part of Trump’s electoral coalition. But here we are, in part because Democrats created a vacuum on health issues that the right stepped into. We think something similar could be happening today with animal rights—which, if the left doesn’t wake up, could be very bad for all of us.

In recent weeks, we’ve seen our skies engulfed in dystopian haze. We’ve had lethal heat waves ruin our Fourth of July cookouts. States have announced emergency water rationing due to record-breaking droughts. Tens of thousands of Europeans have been killed by extreme heat so far this summer; hundreds of thousands are being evacuated by apocalyptic wildfires. And we know it’s just the beginning—this is, after all, not just the hottest summer of our lives, but the coolest summer for the rest of our lives. This didn’t just happen. Climate change is overwhelmingly the result of pollution and deception from specific Big Oil companies that were predicting decades ago that their fossil fuels would cause, in their own words, “globally catastrophic” climate harms that would create “more violent weather” and cause “suffering and death due to thermal extremes.” Even as they used this knowledge to protect their own infrastructure, they orchestrated fraudulent campaigns of climate denial to lock us into the disasters we are currently experiencing. But we’re not powerless in the face of these nightmares. We can take on Big Oil, and the fossil-fueled authoritarianism that these corporations have done so much to engender. And there are few people with more experience in these fights than Jamie Henn, director of Fossil Free Media. He joined us for a great conversation about making polluters pay, the ways clean energy developments have totally transformed the climate fight, and how to balance hope and fear in the midst of climate chaos.

This one’s a little different. Aaron, Matt, and Jonathan talk with Ken Salazar—former U.S. Senator from Colorado, Secretary of the Interior under Obama, and Ambassador to Mexico under Biden—about why Democrats need to rethink their approach to the U.S.-Mexico border and start treating immigration not as a liability to be managed, but a genuine opportunity to be seized. We also discuss the politics of Mexico and Ken’s experiences with AMLO, Mexico’s former insanely popular populist president, and Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s current insanely popular populist president. Aaron even tries to get a little feisty with Ken about his climate record, but fails spectacularly due to Ken’s kind grandpa demeanor. Oh well! Check out Ken Salazar’s new book, Borderlands: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Borderlands/Ken-Salazar/9798902680215

Back in May, Pope Leo XIV released his first encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas” — a surprisingly forceful call-out of dehumanizing technology, Big Tech oligarchs, and an economic order that casts the few as gods and the many as disposable. To talk about this work (and Aaron’s growing Catholicism-envy, and the utterly pathetic “faith” of J.D. Vance), we invited Matthew Sitman, co-host of the great Know Your Enemy Podcast and official Catholic sage of the erudite left, to walk us through this era of moral leadership from the Catholic Church. This is a good one. We swear, so help us God!

To celebrate the 250th, we’re looking back at the founding with Tad Stoermer, author of the NYTimes bestseller “A Resistance History of the United States.” Why did the same people who kicked off the American Revolution actively oppose the adoption of the Constitution? Was Rhode Island always a mob state? What can we learn from the musical 1776, starring Mr. Feeny? All this and more on this special 4th (well, 6th) of July episode of Fighting Fascism. Check out Tad’s book here: https://www.tadstoermer.com/

Sara Nelson is the President of the Association of Flight Attendants, and one of the most badass leaders in the labor movement today. But that doesn’t mean we didn’t do a hard-hitting, critical interview with her. Well, actually, that’s exactly what it means. Hear Sara lay out the challenges and opportunities that unions face right now and the role of organized labor in fighting fascism. And hear us just kinda fan-boy nod along to everything she says!

Cory Doctorow, guy who coined the term enshittification, has been eviscerating Big Tech oligarchs for many years. He’s now turning his razor-sharp mind onto one of our most/least favorite topics: AI. His new book, “The Reverse-Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI,” is in many ways a practical guide for how to resist (actually resist, not just feel-good resist) the biggest financial scam in human history. Cory joins us to discuss what we should really be protesting when we protest AI. (And, at the end, we make sure to touch on his idea that Democrats should start preparing to prosecute the fascists who have so desperately got it coming, a.k.a., the Nuremberg Caucus.) Check out Cory's blog, Pluralistic, at pluralistic.net. And buy his new book "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to Life After AI" on Kickstarter.

That’s right, friends…it’s another crossover episode! We were joined by Daniel Bessner and Derek Davison from American Prestige, a podcast that offers a left analysis on international affairs. Which…we got to eventually (Iran, Israel, USAID, what Democrats’ foreign policy should look like, all the hits)…but only after Daniel and Aaron ended once and for all the age-old debate of: Is Trumpism fascism? All this and more on this banger of a crossover!

We swear to god, we haven’t turned into a sports podcast (despite all Matt’s efforts). But it turns out there’s a not-insignificant intersection between the World Cup, democracy, and authoritarianism. So we invited Alex Shephard — a senior editor and writer at The New Republic and founder of Golden Goal, a literary magazine about the 2026 World Cup — to walk us through the dramas, controversies, and political implications of the global tournament that’s kicking off this week. Whether you’re obsessed with sports, like Matt, or have barely heard of them, like Aaron, there’s something in this conversation for you.

We often think of democracy as a political issue, rather than an economic one. Matt Stoller and Zephyr Teachout, two leaders in the anti-monopoly movement, believe that’s a fundamentally false division. They joined us to explain why, as they see it, economic concentration is causing the loss of freedom we are experiencing across so many aspects of our lives, and why this country needs a great “re-illusionment” (or whatever word means the opposite of disillusionment) to fight back against the corporate monopolies ruining everything around us.

You may have noticed that corruption is legal in our country. At this point, it’s like the air we breathe or the water we swim in — it’s everywhere, and so it almost feels natural, like something we just have to accept. But that’s horseshit, according to David Sirota, investigative journalist and editor-in-chief of The Lever. David has spent his career uncovering and opposing corruption. So we asked him to help us understand how we got here (hint: it wasn’t by accident), and how, for the love of all that’s good and holy, we can claw our way out. This is an important one if you want to understand the state of our world today!

Aaron and Jonathan talk to Dan Denvir, not about his famous lefty podcast The Dig, but about his not-so-famous local organizing project, Reclaim RI. We swap stories about what it really looks like to build the power necessary to turn the Democratic Party into an institution that can actually fight fascism. It's practical! It's theoretical! It's praxis-tical!

You've already heard us rant about AI. What if you could hear someone who's actually super smart and profoundly informed...also rant about AI? We're joined by tech expert Sarah Myers West, who lays out why AI, as it's currently structured, is all about the consolidation of power among a handful of oligarchs, BUT ALSO why that's not how it needs to be.

Tara Raghuveer joins us to talk about her work building tenant unions, her belief that tenant unions can be to working class people in the 21st century what labor unions were in the 20th century, and her faith that, if we have a chance to beat fascism, the chance lives in the tenant union. This is legit our favorite episode so far. Seriously, Tara rocks, listen to this conversation with her right now.

Aaron and Matt are joined by Eric Rauchway, author of Why the New Deal Matters, to discuss America’s OG antifascist, FDR. What lessons can we learn from Roosevelt's successes in battling back the threat of American fascism that was rising in the 1930s?

We have, of course, always been experts on Hungary…but just in case we’re missing something, we brought on two actual experts. Senior Vox correspondent Zack Beauchamp and political scientist Dr. Jennifer McCoy have spent a lot of time studying Viktor Orban's reactionary regime, and they joined us to help explain his rise and (hurray!) fall. How did Peter Magyar beat Hungary’s longtime authoritarian leader? What lessons does this victory hold for our fight here in the U.S.? How much does all of this prove our priors and nobody else’s? And, of course, should Eminem run for president in 2028? If you were excited about the news out of Hungary and want to understand the dynamics better, you’re gonna like this episode!

Aaron and Matt are joined by David Klion, a writer for Jewish Currents and The Nation, to talk about the relationship between fascism in Israel and America and what it means for American Jews like Aaron, David, and not Matt.

Aaron, Matt, and Jonathan are joined by Morris Katz, lead strategist for Zohran Mamdani and Graham Platner, to talk about why the Democratic Party sucks so much and how we can make it suck less. Topics include lessons from Zohran’s campaign, our favorite Morris ads, the importance of naming a villain, 2028 prognostication, and that one time three years ago when Aaron and Morris had to pull a sunken canoe out of a pond.

Aaron, Matt, and Jonathan are joined by Astra Taylor, author of End Times Fascism, and Mark Bray, author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, for a big picture conversation about what it means to fight fascism in this historical moment. Topics include popular resistance to ICE, tensions between “radical” and “normie” mobilization, how much we all hate AI, and why it shouldn’t actually be that hard to build a majoritarian coalition around the idea that like 25 creepy billionaires shouldn’t own literally everything on the planet.

Enjoy our theme song, Bella Ciao, performed by our friends Horse Radish.