Tony Wolf: Art and Pushing Back Against Fascism

Sam Goldman interviews Tony Wolf, actor and artist (view his diverse resume at tonywolfactor.com) about fascism, culture, and cultivating a variety of forms of pushback against the fascists. His comic essay “Where is Evil?” can be seen at brokenfrontier.com where he writes, “I sought to share my personal reflections as I grappled with how to process the acts of the Trump administration and the GOP / conservative supporters who have backed this utterly vile man.” Follow him on Twitter at @tonywolfness.Right now: help organize for mobilizations this spring to demand abortion rights at riseup4abortionrights.org.

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Music for this episode: Penny the Snitch by Ikebe Shakedown.

Episode 97

Sun, 2/6 8:09PM • 46:11

Tony Wolf 00:00

We are in some truly scary times. People need to get loud and they need to be so loud that they can’t be ignored. It really needs to be a large swell of collective protest. We might all be small drops in a bucket, but many drops in a bucket leads to a very heavy bucket.

Mark Tinkleman 00:39

Welcome to Episode 97 of the Refuse Fascism podcast. This podcast is brought to you by volunteers with Refuse Fascism. I’m Mark Tinkleman, one of those volunteers and host of this week’s episode. Sam Goldman is ill this week. Refuse Fascism exposes, analyzes, and stands against the very real danger and threat of fascism coming to power in this country.

Today, I’m excited to share with you a conversation Sam had on Holocaust Remembrance Day with Tony Wolf, an artist whose recent work Where Is Evil? spoke to deep questions on this moment. It was fitting to speak with a comic illustrator the same week that Art Spiegelman’s Maus was removed by a school board in Tennessee.

The boundaries of public discourse were a major cohering theme for this week in fascism. On one end, fascist thugs across the country continued to call for government censorship of a whole range of literature about slavery and the Holocaust, about sex and gender, books which even raise doubts of the exceptional greatness of the United States, including a literal book burning in Tennessee, of “heretical books” — for example, Harry Potter. The fascist politicians like the governors of Texas and Florida and Virginia, advanced their efforts to indoctrinate a generation of Americana youth, ignorant of the rotten history and criminal present day reality of this country.

But that wasn’t all. On the other end of the spectrum, in their official censure of Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the National Republican Party explicitly stated that as opposed to Maus, The 1619 Project, as opposed to the January 6 investigation, the January 6 insurrection itself was “legitimate political discourse.” This was not some Matt Gaetz press conference. The Republican National Committee is the most senior body of the party. As CNN noted, the move to censure Cheney and Kinzinger is unprecedented and marks the first time the national party has rebuked an incumbent congressional Republican, much less two, with a formal censure backed by its members.

When the resolution was introduced Friday to all 168 RNC members, it was described as “a motion to no longer support Cheney and Kinzinger as members of the Republican Party.” These two Republican representatives have not broken ranks on issues like voting rights, abortion, education, COVID, foreign policy, or campaigned against other party members or anything like that. They just don’t venerate the Big Lie and they sit on an investigative body into the January 6 insurrection. Contrary to what must by now be thousands of opinion pieces published since 2016, the GOP is not splintering, or dying, but it’s hardening into a vicious, fascist organization ready and willing to seize and hold onto power by any means.

This becomes even more remarkable, when you remember that this same esteemed body has not adopted an official party platform since 2016. They’re telling you what’s important here. We have a fascist party, purging itself of anyone who refuses to fight hard enough for obvious lies, already openly subverting the election processes for years to come. What’s the takeaway from this? Is it just that the Republicans are vicious, crass, power hungry, or opportunistic? Of course, they are those things. But clearly, they also recognize that ideas matter. Through all this, they’re explicitly and implicitly working to define the boundaries of what people are allowed to think and how people are allowed to see the world, all to fit their fascist ends. Ideas do matter.

Meanwhile, the Democratic leadership is telling the tens of millions of people in this country who want some form of a just future that all we can do is try to vote harder in elections that are already being undermined. We need to legitimize a whole different political discourse, one that supports action to stop this fascist onslaught, action of the people and fostering a search for deeper answers about how to create a radically better world here in the real world. Now, here’s Sam’s interview with Tony Wolf.

Sam Goldman 05:03

So, today, it’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. I wanted to bring on someone to the show from a little bit of a different side, an artist. Today, I’m joined by Tony Wolf. Tony is an actor. He’s a voiceover guy. He sings, he’s an artist, he writes. Today I want to talk to him about his comics. In particular, a comic essay he did on Where Is Evil? I think it relates both to the anniversary that we’re marking today, but also the moment we’re in. I’m really glad that we’re doing it. So, hey, Tony, thanks for joining us.

Tony Wolf 05:37

Hey, Sam, thank you very much. I’m very happy to be here.

Sam Goldman 05:40

You are a comic creator amongst many other things. I want to start with, we’re now in a year of Biden presidency, a solid year now. How are you seeing the fascist danger? What are you thinking about the moment that we’re in? How have things changed and how they stay the same?

Tony Wolf 06:02

One thing I’ve been thinking about in the last year, especially, we see it playing out still now, it might seem reductive or trite, but I think we’re really in, starting with the first years of the Trump presidency and culminating with the summer of 2020 and Black Lives Matter, this continual fascist authoritarian push from the Republican Party, beginning with Trump — you can even see the roots of that going back to Reagan and Newt Gingrich and the Moral Majority and Jesse Helms. But these last several years, and now, I don’t know if this is too reductive to say, but I think history is going to look back at this era — you could even maybe put this in capital letters — the Second Civil Rights Era. We know the 60s and, to some degree, the 70s as the Civil Rights era. That’s how it’s referred to in social studies, in history.

I really think it is astonishing, the degree to which we are seeing so many of the same themes, and a lot of the same playbook from the conservatives, the Republicans. In many ways, sometimes even worse, and even more totalitarian quashing of the rule of law, flouting of the rule of law. If we get through this as a functioning democracy, you’re never going to eliminate all of these trends. You’re never going to eliminate fascism or these people that want this conservative, fascist kind of oppressive government, or lack of government. If we get through this, I’m hard pressed to envision how this isn’t considered the Second Civil Rights Era in uppercase capital letters. It’s just astonishing to me every day, every week, how the Republican Party has continually doubled down on all of this blatantly anti-democratic, repressive, chaotic really, completely bending the law to their aims, to their devices.

In a way it’s very similar to McCarthyism. Trump was mentored by Roy Cohn. This continual sense of, even when Michael Cohen gave his testimony, he had documents, he had proof for these payments that violated any number of laws, and I’ll never forget the Republicans’ response was: “Well, you’re just a lying criminal, why would we ever believe you?” It was as if they’d never heard of a gangster turning state’s evidence against his higher level mob boss. You look at Donald Trump with his between 18 and 25 sexual harassment suits, at least two rape charges — one of which was from his first wife — in deposition and E. Jean Carroll’s now. Republicans do nothing, but when Cuomo’s stuff comes out, the Republicans say: “Oh, get him out of there, these horrible Democrats, these horrible Democrats.” Cuomo steps down, and that’s good, we get least have some progress there, movement, something.

It’s just continually amazing to me how Democrats, flawed though they may be, they at least make some effort to do the right thing a good amount of the time, in principle and in practice, I personally believe. The Republicans just ignore, deny, and double down. I know there’s a large portion of the Left who feels that the Democrats as an institution are sort of useless, and they don’t go far enough, and they’re just as bad as the Republicans. I personally do not think that. With all the Democrats weaknesses and flaws, when they say, “Oh, Biden’s not giving us everything we want, so therefore he’s terrible, or he’s useless, or he’s senile, or he’s this or he’s that…” If Biden is a seven out of 10 for them, Trump was a negative five out of 10 for humanity. It’s astonishing.

In any case, I was always interested in politics. I consider myself kind of mentored by really good junior high school and high school teachers, one of whom I’ll give a shout out to, a woman named Goldie Seiderman who was probably one of the best teachers I ever had. I grew up in Long Island and we were in the public school district, and Goldie Seiderman, who’s still around taught us. I still email her and we still discuss what’s going on in the world. The Republicans would consider her a terrible activist, controversial, making your kids uncomfortable kind of teacher. She taught the reality of American history. I wouldn’t say that she was always teaching activism, but she was encouraging it certainly, and your role in the American experiment, as were other teachers.

In any case, I was always interested in politics, but I wouldn’t really say I was very activist. I cared, I thought about it, but I just watched the pendulum swing back and forth. Even with all of the terrible things, for example, that Reagan did, and his ilk — Newt Gingrich, the Moral Majority, Jesse Helms, all of these people, Oliver North — there was at least a vague sense of a general modicum of: These are the rules we play by. With each successive Republican administration, you see some of these rules just get chipped away further and further. With George W. Bush, for example, we all know what happened there, and now with Trump. I protested in the streets once when GWB took the Republican National Convention to Manhattan, to New York City. I live in New York City. I grew up on Long Island and I live in the New York City area. I protested in the streets down Fifth Avenue once, and that was it.

I was very upset about the Iraq War. I was in college when a lot of that played out. College was Desert Storm for me, and in the second Iraq War I was very much not in college. Once Trump was the Republican candidate, I have to admit, like many liberals are like many Democrats, I just thought, oh, he’ll never win. This is insane. I distinctly remember Lin-Manuel Miranda doing his bit on Saturday Night Live saying: Well, now that the Stormy Daniels information is out, he’s never going to be president now. You know the song from Hamilton. We dodged that bullet because now it’s Stormy Daniels, this candidacy is tanked.

To see the way the Republicans embraced him — there’s still that great clip of Lindsey Graham saying if we nominate Trump we’ll get destroyed and we’ll deserve it. In any case, Trump’s election made me an activist. I’m not claiming to be some large scale activist, but in whatever ways I can in my life. I never drew political cartoons before, even though I’m an illustrator, my whole life. I have made, I think, 25 pieces of anti-Trump art, posters, and political cartoons. I never drew political cartoons before. I had friends that did them about Reagan, when I was a kid and I read them. I read Mad Magazine or I looked at the magazines. Suddenly I was churning out tons of political art, political cartoons.

Sam Goldman 12:40

Do you remember the moment when you did your first?

Tony Wolf 12:43

Oh, it was the day he was elected. It was Election Day. There’s a famous image in comic books of Jack Kirby drawing the cover of Captain America number one where he’s punching out Hitler. At the time, by the way, they received death threats for publishing that comic where Captain America is punching out Hitler. There were a lot of sympathizers in Manhattan and in the New York area. That was very controversial at the time, because I don’t even think America had entered the war at that point. There was still that period where America was reluctant to get involved in the European war. So, I drew, as has been done countless times. I’m sure I’m not the only person to have drawn it, especially with regards to Trump, but I draw it on election day.

It’s very funny because I drew Rudy Giuliani in the background next to David Duke of the KKK, because at the time it seemed that Giuliani was going to be selected for the Trump administration. He was not, but we’ve all know that Trump quickly later went to Giuliani for assistance and support and how all that played out. So, the pandemic comes, and it’s now the spring of 2020. I had been, as a person who was raised Catholic and is now spiritual but not religious, and as a person who really wants to adhere to the ideals of a teacher like MLK or John Lewis. You look at John Lewis and there’s a graphic novel series based on his life called March, which is something really, really special. John Lewis, Elijah Cummings, these people who really worked so hard to embody this notion of: “Try hard not to hate your enemy, but you must stand up against them vociferously. You must stand up and fight and fight and fight, but don’t give into hate.”

I was always reading MLK his writings and paying special focus to how do you get over your anger? Or how do you deal with your anger towards these people that are ripping apart society in some ways? Of course, because I tried to be philosophical about it, they think we’re the cancer. They think we are the ones ripping apart the norms and threatening their way of life. You know, they feel certain that they are right, just like we feel certain that we are right, but of course, in life and in reality and with integrity, there is a difference. This whole “both sides are the same narrative,” or “shouldn’t we all just get along and Kumbaya and come together?” I’m not flouting Kumbaya as a silly reductive joke, but I’m very distressed by this thing we see in the media with: Well, both sides are bad; both sides are wrong.

No! One side is not trying to eradicate the election process. One side is not forging election documents. One side is not letting its party get away with massive sexual harassment. One side is not confirming Supreme Court judges who have raped and harassed people. One side is not trying to repeal Roe v. Wade. There is a massive, massive difference. So, I’m looking at all this and I just started feeling this idea of doing a comics essay bubbling up inside me. Look, there’s so many people out there who are writing creative, thoughtful, nuanced comics essays. Nate Powell, Peter Cooper, there’s a publication called The Nib, which you might be familiar with, which does a lot of political work, a lot of activist comics.

Sam Goldman 15:53

Yeah, we had Nazia Kazi who partnered with someone to do a beautiful, beautiful piece around the anniversary of the war on Afghanistan.

Tony Wolf 16:02

Oh, The Nib is excellent. So, I thought, well, I don’t purport to be some political genius with my writing, but what I do know and what I’ve learned over the years, especially after I wrote and illustrated four pieces for the New York Times — they were kind of like comics journalism. It was almost like a journalism article in illustrated comics form. I thought, what if I just give my train of thought — it’s going to be an essay — but it will tell the reader my thought process. I’m not going to proclaim to have the answers, because it really does go back to that classic problem, you know, philosophers, priests, rabbis, there is that famous question: “Why do bad things happen to good people? Or what is the philosophical, spiritual answer to why is there evil, hatred, war, malice, murder, aggression? Why do people take glee and doing harm to others?”

I thought, okay, I felt I had something to say about my thought process. Also, one of the points that I make in the comic — at the time, I felt a little uncomfortable doing it, but now it’s been borne out by all the research about January 6th — I say in the comic — which is called Where Is Evil? Searching for that, where do we define the boundary, and how do we deal with our anger when faced with evil in society? In the comic I said, how different is the anger and hatred and prejudice that fueled 911? How different is the hatred and anger and murderous designs that fuel terrorism from the Muslim extremists that the conservatives love to trot out anytime they want a boogeyman or something, how different is that from the violent extremists who tried to overtake the US Capitol? It’s not different. It is the same zealot-fueled hate. It is the same sheer danger and violence and destruction of basic societal norms.

There is a comic book, where a comic book writer named Alan Moore, who famously did Watchmen, tried to grapple with this notion of what is the balance of good and evil in our world philosophically. I used to live in Hoboken, New Jersey. There’s a 911 Memorial in Weehawken that has girders from the actual Twin Towers. I thought that was like the germination. I’ve been wrestling with this idea for a while. Once I saw that, I thought that’s my opening image of this story, looking at this Weehawken 911 Memorial. I’ve never seen pictures of it. It’s not a 911 memorial that ever gets visually referenced in the press and media. It’s Weehawken, it’s not the middle of Times Square, it’s an area that doesn’t get a lot of attention. You feel very small looking at this girder, it’s three stories tall. I just thought that’s the opening image, and then I’m just going to take people through my train of thought.

As a mostly lapsed Catholic, I find myself thinking about this notion of Jesus on the cross saying, forgive them, they know not what they do, as he was crucified. But the only principle I need to take from that is: I might feel in my everyday life, tremendous anger and even hate for all these people that I see gleefully rejoicing in so much harm, so much prejudice, so much fear mongering and what I believe is evil, but knowing that they are misguided. Of course, you can’t just say: “Oh, well, they’re misguided, we hope they get better.” This misguided nature is leading to countless deaths and it’s leading to real, real dangers. We’re creeping closer to fascism and authoritarianism. We see it, speaking of comics and graphic novels, today’s news, they want to ban Art Spiegelman’s Maus.

Sam Goldman 19:39

All of what you brought up brought me to three thoughts that I’m having simultaneously. One of them is in your piece, the takeaway for me isn’t: So evil happens and we just gotta deal, we just gotta love it away. There’s a part in your essay where you say: There’s evil in all the worlds and we must stand against it. You also say: “And are not the flames of violence fanned by those who enable violence, and is it not also evil to enable evil?” To me, that underscores the imperative of those who sense the danger and see the danger to be sounding the alarm in the way that you are using your art and your skill set to do that. So everyone has a role and everyone has a responsibility.

That isn’t saying that the audience is those who are full of the most vicious white supremacy, the most vicious misogyny, that you’re going to turn their thoughts around, but that everybody that’s on the sidelines looking at this, saying that they don’t want to stand with that, that they have a role to play, and that they have a responsibility in marshalling our power in the ways that we can to put a spotlight on this danger and build the collective strength that’s going to be needed to fight against it. That’s just one thing that I wanted to say. Then I did want to get your thoughts on what’s happening in Tennessee. First, I want to let you speak about what we learned about the banning, which was, I think, ten to zero, and what your thoughts on that were and what you think that is indicative of.

Tony Wolf 21:13

Sadly, it’s just the latest in a continuing trend of conservatives taking over school boards around the country, especially in the Midwest and South and attempting to assert their will to remove books from public school libraries; whether it’s elementary school, junior high school, middle school, or high school. The crux is, of course, all this fear mongering about Critical Race Theory. I think there was even an article recently I saw where some conservative Republicans introduced the thing, and they even use this language — didn’t they say something about “we want to prohibit anything that might make students feel uncomfortable?” On Twitter, people joke that they said the quiet part out loud. We see that in the social media sphere, but this was a case where they literally spell it out. We don’t want white students to ever feel uncomfortable when faced with social, economic, racial, socio-political, dark truths or difficult truths about American society, racial history.

It’s astonishing. I’m glad that Art Spiegelman, when he was interviewed today about it, said it has the breath of fascism about it, it has the breath of authoritarianism about it. The CNBC article that I read earlier today, he sent CNBC a piece of art he did years after Maus, and it was a bookmark he had drawn. It was like a bookmark for Maus. At the bottom, he wrote something to the effect of: Anyone who wants to tell you what books you should read, they should keep their noses out of your books. Meaning censorship and banning books and prohibiting books.

One of the things I mentioned in my essay, I haven’t heard as much in the last year or two — not only did Trump and Mitch McConnell and the Republican Party do so many terrible things racially and economically — but they engaged in quite a lot of anti-LGBTQ policies and sentiments. One of the things I did in this essay, because I’m an illustrator, I’m on Twitter, I follow this up. We’ve all seen political cartoons that have quoted all of the most obvious horrible things — It’s like the greatest hits of horrible things Trump has done. I remembered a tweet he did that was not highly publicized other than the day he tweeted it, where the Supreme Court ruled against his transgender ban, or the Supreme Court ruled in some way for LGBTQ+ rights, and Trump said: These decisions from the Supreme Court are like a shotgun blast in the face of conservatives. It’s like, that statement shouldn’t be up there with his worst statements. But he says 1000 horrible, incendiary, violence enabling statements.

Steve Bannon: Flood the zone with shit. That’s the Nazi fascist playbook. If we say 5000 terrible, insane things, the media is only going to report on the 10 worst, and the rest are just going to filter into the subconscious of society. And then as we’ve seen, Sam, then it normalizes. It normalizes because you can’t possibly write 16 op-eds about every single horrible thing the man said, or you’d run out of newspaper. One of the things that helps keep me sane is I really think a lot about 30-40 years from now, what will historians look back at this era and say? I think if we survive as a country, it will be even more clear to the future how dangerously close we are right now to fascism, to authoritarianism.

Can you imagine what a second term of Trump would be like? If the Republicans take the house next election cycle, I fear for this nation. Once again, I understand that Biden has flaws. I agree with most of those criticisms to some degree, but it is night and day. At least one side is trying. The other side is willfully trying to rip everything apart and promote a white supremacist nationalist narrative. The other thing I wanted to mention just real briefly: The last page of this six-page comics essay that I did, also thinking with an eye to history, I drew a panel sequence of three images at the end. It’s 9/11, it’s the gates of Auschwitz with “Labor Will Set You Free,” and it’s that famous or infamous photo of a point blank shooting in the Vietnam War. I give you these three images, and then I show Trump speaking at a podium with the CNN chyron: “Republicans acquit Trump of insurrection charge.”

I’m not saying Trump has killed people to the degree that Hitler has, or to the degree that the Vietnam War did, or 9/11. What I mean in that sequence is that in my estimation, this essay is my personal thoughts and you can believe whatever you want, Trump is very much the kind of historical figure who nudges and pushes forward mass destructive events. Imagine if the death toll from January 6 had been 100 people and not five. As awful as this is to theorize about, we might have more accountability, and we might have more people being put in jail. But it’s almost like because not that much physical harm or damage was done in terms of numbers, it’s very easy for the Republican Party to evade accountability. But the zealotry that fueled that is the same as any terrorist that most Americans would condemn. What are your thoughts?

Sam Goldman 26:42

I disagree. I think that Trump has a tremendous amount of blood on his hands. [Tony: Well, with COVID…] I think if you look at COVID alone, we’re talking about at least tens of thousands of deaths could be avoided. That is criminal. You look at Brazil, and there were efforts to hold Bolsonaro in Brazil accountable for deaths caused by COVID because of the pro death policies, including the conspiracy peddling of Bolsonaro, which is very similar [to Trump]. But we don’t have any legal initiative in this country pursuing crimes against humanity for the lack of COVID response for Trump. So, then you think about all that happens to immigrants…

Tony Wolf 26:44

The family separation policy.

Sam Goldman 26:51

The trememdous amount of death and suffering that was caused and the lasting threat. In some ways, I think it is a miracle that somehow over the four years that he was empowered, that there wasn’t a nuclear catastrophe. [Tony: Yes] We were lucky, but there’s no permanence in it. I did want to say about the banning of Art Siegelman’s Maus in Tennessee, there was a piece that CNN put up, an opinion piece by David Perry, and I thought this quote linked up really well with what you were saying [Tony: Yes] was “To ban Maus for being an uncomfortable read is, in fact, to be against teaching the Holocaust, regardless of the school board members’ protest to the contrary.” I definitely agree that it’s part of a larger movement, and I was glad to see Art speak out against it. I only saw a little snippet of his interview, but I’m glad he’s using the ‘F’ word. I’m glad that people are outraged about it. My question is where that outrage goes? Because right now we are in a situation where the most vocal, the most organized, the most passionate are those with the least sense of humanity and the least grounding in reality.

Tony Wolf 28:36

You mean on the side of the Republicans, conservatives?

Sam Goldman 28:39

There’s nothing conservative about it. We are talking about a straight-up, I will use the word Nazi, program moving forward at the school board meetings. And not just at the school board meetings, we see the mobs that are assaulting election officials that are going after healthcare workers. It’s everywhere. And those who we like to call the decent people, we’re being a little too silent. I’m not saying that we’re bad people, but we gotta make some noise because this isn’t just going to continue on the same path. We’re not dealing with regular politics. They are not civil. This is not about discourse. This is not about an argument. This is about, really, a mob mentality.

I’m not saying by any means that we become violent or that we mimic their tactics in any way. But I do think that we’ve got to stop making excuses for them. We’ve got to stop talking about how hard it is for them. We’ve got to stop with this economic grievance nonsense. It’s not what it’s about. We’ve gotta call it out for racism because that’s what it is. And I think that we gotta say straight up: using the ‘F’ word is not the worst of name calling. We’re calling it what it is. I basically think that we’ve got to make some people uncomfortable, because there’s no going back to normal. Any illusions that people have that we’re gonna go back to normal, it is going to go one way or another and if our side remains in a state of constantly conceding ground and the public square and discourse to those who want women slammed back to the dark ages, who want LGBTQ people erased from public society, who want the recodification of Jim Crow, all this shit, they’re gonna win. They’re gonna have it all.

Tony Wolf 30:28

I relate. It is the word that comes up in my mind very often: it is infuriating. We feel outrage and the famous saying: If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention. It is deeply, not only troubling, but for me, it’s very often infuriating. I volley back and forth between feeling more mired in frustration, but then I remember that all we can do is push back as hard as we can nonviolently. We must give as much pushback as we can, because pushback is the only thing that works. You and I are not in elected office. Even if we were some millionaire, Jeff Bezos or George Clooney, or whatever, everyone does not have as much influence as individuals. It really needs to be a large swell of collective protest.

Sam Goldman 31:17

As we close out our conversation — I could talk to you forever — the power of art, can you talk a little bit about how you see the role of the comics that you create, and art in general, in this moment, in terms of that collective, and how we can move people through art in ways that we may not otherwise be able to move people.

Tony Wolf 31:37

I’m a big proponent of the arts, and in many ways, I just feel like the arts gave me direction and saved my life in various ways; the visual arts, but I would say all the arts. It’s funny, the reason I say conservative and Republican, I always want to name those because sometimes in the political discourse, they’ll be like: Well, I’m a principled conservative. Sometimes the word conservative, in my mind, gets used as code for “Oh, I’m one of the good conservatives, I just want responsible fiscal policy or whatever.” But it’s so deeply distressing to me that pretty much all the conservatives were very willing to go along with Trump because it meant they would get what was in their goodie bag. I don’t want conservative to just be this like get out of jail free card for embracing all this awfulness. Like William F. Buckley: Oh, I’m just a polite conservative. You watch that William F. Buckley debate with James Baldwin, he’s devoid of empathy. It’s the case with a lot of these conservatives, just lacking in human empathy. This is my personal perspective.

In any case, I think the arts have power. Going back even to the 1800s, political cartoons — we still are aware of some political cartoons from the 1800s, from the 1900s — Thomas Nash, Boss Tweed, all these phrases, many of them were birthed, even the image of the elephant and the donkey. There’s a couple political cartoonists that I’ve seen in the last couple of years: Michael deAdder is doing a lot of great protest work about the Republican administration and Trump, and Jr. Duquette, he’s done so much, so many great works. I just think the arts tend to get stronger when the country is in danger. You did see more indie punk aesthetic, for example, push back during the Reagan administration. I lived through that, and this might sound silly or reductive, but I don’t think it is, the harder they try to clamp down on us, the more the arts respond and make statements creatively. Film, visual, plays, basically saying, we’re not going to stand for this. In fact, we’re going to say what we believe in, which is antithetical to this oppressive, conservative, fascistic, authoritarian movement. Even in the 80s, it’s always framed with: Well, we’re decent Americans and those other people, they’re the dangerous ones you have to watch out for. We are principled, Judeo-Christian, whatever. We’re the white people, and you don’t want those other dirty people, these people were characterizing as the other and as abnormal — that’s the big thing, especially in the 80s — anyone who is seen as abnormal or different, it’s very easy for Republicans to marginalize those people.

I still cannot even believe that something like the Moral Majority even existed. The phrase alone is hypocritical. I think the arts matter more than ever in times like this. We’ve all seen images, whether it be a comic or a cartoon or music, an album, plays. Larry Kramer, the gay activist on AIDS and everything, last year I was thinking a lot about activism, and there’s a terrific movie of a production of his play The Normal Heart.

Sam Goldman 34:57

So so so good.

Tony Wolf 35:00

Mark Ruffalo plays Larry Kramer, and Larry Kramer epitomizes what you were talking about. People need to get loud, and they need to be so loud that they can’t be ignored. You know that famous video — and I watched the original video to have Larry Kramer screaming the word plague over and over — watching it during COVID was also chilling on many levels, because here’s all the Republicans, most of the Republicans saying: Oh, COVID is not that bad, and they can’t shut down the business. It’s really staggering. The arts are not everything but they certainly matter, especially in times like this.

The other crazy thing, Roe v. Wade has been the law of the land for three decades roughly, Maus has been taught at all levels in schools for decades, since the 90s. Again it’s an example of what you mentioned, wanting to go backwards. Things that were accepted as useful parts of the mosaic of society, Republicans are now attempting to rip those out of society, and say these are not allowed anymore because they make white people feel uncomfortable. The Supreme Court often uses the word chilling in their dissents as a legal term; this has a chilling effect on free speech, or this has a chilling effect on this precedent. The word I think of a lot now is chilling. These are truly scary times. It’s easy for many of us to just go: I hope it’ll go back to politics as normal. Oh, well, what can we do? It’s very frustrating, because I feel that sometimes, too. How much influence do I have?

I don’t feel like I have all that much influence, but you still want your voice to be counted. If you were held at gunpoint and called to account for your life, who do you stand with? As much as the media promotes this both sides nonsense, which I think is very destructive and dangerous — most of the time I don’t think it’s useful — this really is: Whose side are you on? There’s a cartoonist from the 70s, I believe, named Stan Mac. He did a thing for the New York Times about a year ago, and I clipped it out and saved it. It’s basically equating the Republicans to fascists. He said: I will never goose step with them. I think it’s called It Can’t Happen Here, or It Can Happen Here, Can It Happen Here? It’s funny because sometimes people will say: Oh, you’re just being histrionic. They’re not fascists, and it’s not that bad. We are in some truly scary times. I’m not saying anything that most of your listeners or all of your listeners don’t already know. The arts matter. Certainly, I think they do. But a lot of people still don’t know that Born in the USA is a song about Vietnam and about criticizing America. They think Born in the USA is apple pie and Republican National Convention song.

Sam Goldman 37:44

I’m going to put in the Show Notes a link to the comic and I wanted to give you an opportunity if there’s anything you want to tell people in terms of your work, where to check it out, things that people might want to look into.

Tony Wolf 37:57

My name is Tony Wolf, I’m an actor and writer and illustrator. I do a lot of comic book creation, a lot of autobiographical comics. I’m on Twitter @TonyWolfness — the essence of me is my Tony Wolf-ness. My website is www.TonyWolfActor.com. I’ve done four comics for The New York Times that are weirdly enough about unique food history, or unique experiences with unusual foods, or beloved neighborhood community foods.

Most of all, really, I would just want to say: It can feel so frustrating, like we’re all alone, and what can I do in my apartment, or what can I do at my home. But whatever we can do, it’s that classic metaphor of we might all be small drops in a bucket, but many drops in a bucket leads to a very heavy bucket. In times like this, everyone just push back as much and as many different ways you can. Whether you have children or not, I do not, but I frequently think about could I look at my theoretical future children or grandchildren, whether I ever have them or not, could I look them in the eye and say: I tried to speak out, I tried to stand up for what I believe was right. Because I really think that’s where we are in the last six years, and maybe even going back to the Reagan years. It’s a dangerous time. I’m so glad for you, Sam, and for your work and your activism and for Refuse Fascism and so many other groups like it, because like you said, it’s volunteer, and we need this. We need people like this. We need organizations that push back. All we can do is push back as much as we can and in all the ways that we can come up with and think of.

Sam Goldman 39:42

To pushing back. To pushing back together. To pushing back for a world that refuses fascism. With that, I want to thank you, Tony, so much for sharing your time, your perspective with us. Folks will be able to go to the Show Notes and see some of these comics that we’ve been talking about.

Tony Wolf 40:00

Thank you so much. Yes, the essay is called Where Is Evil? and it’s at brokenfrontier.com. You can just type my name in, Tony Wolf, or there’ll be a link to it, you said. My last name is just Wolf before letters W-o-l-f. And hey, this essay is my thoughts, but I invite everyone to write an essay, make art, share your thoughts. I don’t have all the answers. I’m not a prophet, nor a philosopher. I’m just a guy with a train of thought, and the essay is my train of thought. Most importantly, I just want to encourage everyone to make stuff, make art, make protest, art, whatever you feel motivated and share your train of thought with us.

Sam Goldman 40:38

Yeah, definitely share it with us. Tag @RefuseFascism. Email us. And yeah, send it to too. I’m sure you’d want to see.

Tony Wolf 40:45

Yeah, please do.

Mark Tinkleman 40:47

That was Sam Goldman speaking with Tony Wolf. Sam wanted me to also share two emails she received this week.

First, from David, a listener in Texas: “Hello Sam, I think your podcast is one of the most informative and important sources out there with respect to informing the country against the neo–fascist movement, which is currently consuming the entire country. I’ve been saying all along that Texas, the state that I sadly live in, is basically a de facto fascist state. It is a laboratory for what their plans are for the rest of the country; i.e., a severe crackdown on civil and human rights, massive transphobic legislation, control over women’s bodies and the reproduction through forced pregnancies, draconian voter suppression measures, brown-shirted black-shirted gun laws, which encourage vigilantism and extralegal intimidation and terrorism against people of color, immigrants, liberals, progressives, intellectuals and anyone else that they hate, book banning/burning and control over critical thinking, enforcement of authoritarian brainwashing and the removal of conscience from the public schools. Anti-science, anti-fact anti-truth and anti-reality propaganda on an unbelievable scale, their blueprint for America. And something tells me it’s going to get a hell of a lot worse. It’s very frightening because I don’t see anyone, anyone at all standing up against this in Texas, let alone anywhere else in the United States. I don’t think I’m very hopeful about our future. What can I do? What can we do? Big Love.”

Well, David, you are doing something important each week you listen, share and discuss this show. But you’re right. Folks need to stand up and fight for the future. One way right now is to link up with RiseUp4AbortionRights, which is organizing nationwide actions on Tuesday, March 8th, International Women’s Day. Learn more, and join them by visiting RiseUp4AbortionRights.work. Sam will have more to say about your question, David, so keep listening.

And the second letter: “Hello, Sam. I’ve been listening to the Refuse Fascism podcast since early December. Now catching up on some of the earlier episodes, all of which are very interesting. I’ve listened to many interviews with Carol Anderson and wanted to tell you that your episode 50 was without a doubt, the best of them all. Professor Anderson has a distinctive communication style, more narrative than others, and most interviewers interrupt her before she finishes the complete point or concludes. Thank you for listening more than talking. It was a relief. Today’s episode with Coco Das and Dr. Anthony DiMaggio was really good. I appreciate his knowledge of historical right-wing media influence on the development of the Christofascist movement, something that is crucial to the understanding of how we came to be in this crisis. I would like to suggest a guest: Ann Nelson, the author of Shadow Network has done an in–depth investigation into the origins of the right-wing propaganda infrastructure. This includes the funders, the fascists, the religious right, and the grifters, taking advantage of a whole segment of the US population who’ve been primed to believe that Democrats are evil and that nothing they hear outside their information bubble is true. This propaganda Network provides an immediate source of reactionary right wings zealots for the next moral crisis, now including vaccine denial, and assaults on historical truth about slavery, etc. For me, her book explained so much. I know that many on the left have no idea how powerful the existing right-wing media is. We cannot fight what we do not know. Anne Nelson has a number of online interviews that you may be interested in. Her book is invaluable. It would be a great addition to the information provided by Dr. DiMaggio. Thank you for all you’re doing, Ann M.D.” Anne, we got you. Next week we’re bringing on Anne Nelson.

Mark Tinkleman 44:39

Thanks for listening to Refuse Fascism. We want to hear from you. Share your thoughts, questions, ideas for topics or guests or lend a skill. Tweet Sam @SamBGoldman, or you can drop her a line at [email protected], or leave a voicemail by calling 917-426-7582. You can also record a voice message by going to anchor.fm/refuse-fascism and clicking the button there. Want to support the show? It’s simple. Show us some love by rating and reviewing on Apple podcasts or your listening platform of choice, and of course follow Subscribe so you never miss an episode. Chip in to support our pod in content creation to help people understand and act to stop the fascists. You can donate by visiting RefuseFascism.org and hitting the Donate button Venmo Refuse-Fascism with Cash App Refuse Fascism. Thanks to Richie Marini, Lina Thorne and Sam Goldman for helping produce this episode. Thanks to incredible volunteers, we have transcripts available for each episode, so be sure to visit RefuseFascism.org and sign up to get them in your inbox each week. We’ll be back next Sunday. Until then, in the name of humanity we refuse to accept a fascist America.