Fighting Fascism Podcast

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 wh...

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...

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 in...

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, joi...

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 25-3...

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 decisi...

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. Fighting...

“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 Immigr...

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...

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 MAH...

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—thi...

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...

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 K...

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...

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...

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 histo...

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 fasci...

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, a...

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-...

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 ask...

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! Reclaim RI is a member-led housing just...

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. Theme song and music by Horse Radish. Check th...

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...

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? Fighting Fascism Podcast is produced by Nik Damants in collaboration with The Nation.   Intro song and music by Horse Radish.   Follow u...

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 authoritaria...