Antifascist Dad Podcast8 Marras 2025

UNLOCK 4.1 Courage in Resistance w/ Ben Case Pt 2

In Part 2 of our conversation, Ben Case and I move from frameworks to consequences. We revisit the 2017 Richard Spencer punch as a concrete case of “little” versus “big” violence, asking what deterrence, backlash, and dignity look like when an act becomes a meme and a cautionary tale at the same time.

Ben draws on his Muay Thai career to talk about fight training as a metaphor for political life: how normalizing adrenaline and pain helps you keep your head during arrests, how to tell hurt from injury, and why the ability to read an adversary in real time matters as much as strategy documents. We sit with responsibility: what communities owe each other when actions bring heat, how mutual aid and legal defense slot into any honest conversation about risk, and why some moments demand acting without guarantees simply to preserve human dignity.

In the closing segment, I unpack the Graham Platner morality play: a black box for the contemplation of masculinity, recklessness, red flags, trauma, accountability, marks of Cain, internet vs. public identities, and the status of trust in the spectacle.

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Notes:

Brief: Beyond Violence and Nonviolence (Part 1) w/ Ben Case

Street Rebellion: Resistance Beyond Violence and Nonviolence

Magic Numbers Are No Shortcut to Strategy (New article from Ben Case)

Venezuela Military Personnel

'Violent protest is not protected,' Biden says of college campus unrest - ABC News

The Success of Nonviolent Civil Resistance | ICNC

Hegseth orders that all defense personnel review his speech to top military brass on fitness, standards | CNN Politics

Pete Hegseth | Signal, Tattoos, Harvey Milk, Secretary Defense, Military Career, & Facts | Britannica

Sullivan man launches campaign for U.S. Senate | PenBay Pilot

The Political Awakening of the Oyster Farmer Taking on Susan Collins | The New Republic

Who is Graham Platner and why is he everywhere right now? | Maine Public

Can a Maine Oyster Farmer Defeat a Five-Term Republican Senator?

Chapters

(00:00:10) - Courage in Resistance
(00:02:12) - Anti-Fascism, Part 2
(00:06:53) - Richard Spencer Gets Punched
(00:08:24) - Punishing Richard Spencer: The Consequences
(00:14:48) - The Most Important Things That Ben Learned From Sport Fighting
(00:16:53) - Fighting in the Ring
(00:20:14) - Protesters Disrupt ICE Agents
(00:22:56) - Fighting Sports for antifascist activists
(00:28:13) - On human dignity
(00:28:42) - The Culture of Contempt
(00:33:18) - Meet the Maine Democrat Running for Congress on a Left Wing
(00:44:19) - The Platner Spectacle
(00:46:21) - The Social Brain

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35. Antifascist Tooth Fairy w/ E.V. Debs

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 f...

10 Kesä 33min

UNLOCK 33.1 Antifascist Body Culture: A Brief History

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 thr...

7 Kesä 22min

34. From the Street to City Hall w/ Diana Chan McNally

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 Co...

3 Kesä 53min

UNLOCK 32.1 What Tommy Douglas Knew & What We All Know about Socialized Medicine

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-Bolto...

31 Touko 22min

33. Antifascist Self Defence and Rewriting the Body's Response to Violence w/ Maren Forsberg

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 child...

27 Touko 59min

UNLOCKED 31.1 Kensington Market Palimpsest

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 tex...

24 Touko 28min

32. Smith and Carney May Destroy Socialized Medicine w/ Nikolas Barry-Shaw

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...

20 Touko 1h 13min

UNLOCK 30.1 The Left Didn't Betray Anyone: Material Conditions and the Limits of Rockhill

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 ...

17 Touko 33min