UNLOCK 28.1 Adam Johnson Exposes the Sophistry of Fart Sniffers

UNLOCK 28.1 Adam Johnson Exposes the Sophistry of Fart Sniffers

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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Episoder(82)

UNLOCK 42.1 Friendship (is not easy)

UNLOCK 42.1 Friendship (is not easy)

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 w...

9 Aug 43min

UNLOCK: 41.1 The Anti-Vance Would Like a Word Pt 2 w/ Nathan Evans Fox

UNLOCK: 41.1 The Anti-Vance Would Like a Word Pt 2 w/ Nathan Evans Fox

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...

2 Aug 45min

42. Keep the Little Flame Alive w/  Carsie Blanton

42. Keep the Little Flame Alive w/ Carsie Blanton

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 ...

29 Jul 1h 1min

UNLOCK 40.1 Episodic and Thematic Thinking and Feeling

UNLOCK 40.1 Episodic and Thematic Thinking and Feeling

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 Shan...

26 Jul 19min

41. The Anti-Vance Would Like a Word w/ Nathan Evans Fox

41. The Anti-Vance Would Like a Word w/ Nathan Evans Fox

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...

22 Jul 52min

UNLOCK 39.1 Epistemic Injustice

UNLOCK 39.1 Epistemic Injustice

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 i...

19 Jul 21min

40: We Live on This Planet to Do Good Work w/ Nora Loreto

40: We Live on This Planet to Do Good Work w/ Nora Loreto

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 d...

15 Jul 1h 8min

UNLOCK 38.1 Gramsci’s Wars of Position, Wars of Maneuver

UNLOCK 38.1 Gramsci’s Wars of Position, Wars of Maneuver

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 confrontatio...

12 Jul 33min

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