From a review by Noah De Lissovoy (The University of Texas at Austin):
“Teaching Anti-Fascism brilliantly excavates the historical and contemporary sources of fascism in colonialism, anti-Blackness, and monopoly capitalism, and demonstrates that authoritarianism is embedded both in far-right movements and in the institutions of liberal democracy. Crucially challenging the hesitancy in education to confront fascist politics, Vavrus shows that multicultural teaching must take on an anti-fascist commitment in order to be true to its own values and vocation. For all who refuse the illusory consolation of ‘it can’t happen here,’ this book outlines a comprehensive program of critical and engaged civic education that we simply cannot do without.”
Then, Coco Das comments on the official start of the contest between Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump for top dog fascist as well as the fascist persecution of the courageous Indiana abortion doctor Caitlin Bernard. Follow Coco at @Coco_Das.
Refuse Fascism is more than a podcast! You can get involved at RefuseFascism.org. We’re still on Twitter (@RefuseFascism) and other social platforms including the newest addition: mastodon.world/@refusefascism
Send your comments to [email protected] or @SamBGoldman. Record a voice message for the show here. Connect with the movement at RefuseFascism.org and support:
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Music for this episode: Penny the Snitch by Ikebe Shakedown
Teaching Anti-Fascism
Episode 158
Sun, May 28, 2023 4:20PM • 43:36
Dr. Michael Vavrus 00:00
Anti-fascism seems to be ignored and there’s a discomfort with the word fascism. My approach has been to talk about elements of fascist politics. The Republican Party, for example, is consolidating the elements of a fascist Party. They are not opposed to undermining democracy to get their one way view out there. My purpose was to get educators who perceive themselves as progressive to speak out and acknowledge what is happening in their communities, in their state legislatures and nationally, and not to wish it away. I think that’s our real challenge, is to try to get the general public to see what is going on all around us.
Coco Das 01:08
Welcome to Episode 158 of the Refuse Fascism podcast, a podcast brought to you by volunteers with Refuse Fascism. I’m Coco Das, one of those volunteers and guest host of the show while Sam Goldman takes some much-needed time off. Refuse Fascism exposes, analyzes, and stands against the very real danger and threat of fascism coming to power in the United States.
In today’s episode we’re sharing an interview Sam Goldman did with with Dr. Michael Vavrus, author of the book Teaching Anti-Fascism: A Critical Multicultural Pedagogy for Civic Engagement.
But first, thanks to everyone who goes the extra step and rates and reviews the show on Apple Podcast or wherever you listen. If you appreciate the show and wanna help us reach more people who want to REFUSE FASCISM, be a gem and go WRITE A REVIEW and drop five-stars wherever you listen to your pods. Here are two from this week as proof we read every one.
Here is one from Youtube!
@cathieschau4266
Love Refuse Fascism; go Sam! Interesting episode. My blood pressure spikes when folks like Akin start picking apart the current threat — and almost say that Dems and fascist Repubs are really “the same” cuz capitalism. ??? I know we’ve all heard it many times before but 2024 really is THE doomsday election. I’m a pessimist about voting, now that the fascists are suppressing votes at every level, in every way possible. But I still think it’s vital to do whatever we can to crush the extremists in ‘24, to overwhelm them with enormous numbers of sanity votes. So I think it’s going to be super important to make young voters feel that urgency. Also, I want to know what we can do at the community level to disrupt the normalization of fascism. Please, give us some specifics. Is it time to demonstrate in the streets outside our county GOP offices? Also, does anyone rally anymore? I feel like people are more afraid now to gather in protest of anything, because GUNS and hatred. How do we throw a wrench into the fascist onslaught? How do we find help in doing that?
There are a lot of good questions in that comment and I’m going to try to address some of them in my commentary, but what do you all think? Send us your thoughts with the contact information I provide at the end of the show.
Please tell the people out there in Podcast Land why you listen and they should too. Subscribe/follow so you never miss an episode. And of course keep up all that great commenting/sharing on social media. Thank you to everyone on Patreon for supporting the show for $2 or more a month, thanks
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Now, as usual in these times we are living in, there is a lot to talk about regarding the accelerating fascist threat in this country, especially around the powderkeg 2024 election and the fascists going all out to seize back power by hook or by crook. This week marked the official start of the contest between Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump for Top Dog Fascist, or to the bottom of the fascist cesspool, with the aim of re-seizing the white house in 2024 and terrifyingly consolidating an enslaving, genocidal, violence and vengeance-fueled program against everyone they hate.
Everyone. Women. Black people. Immigrants. Trans People. Gay people. Democrats. DeSantis’s threat to make America Florida – to institute an all-out blatant dictatorship to suppress any education, thought, speech, or action that tells the truth about the history of this country, that embraces diverse communities, that separates church and state, that allows women to participate fully in society, or sees any of these people as fully human – IS bringing a proven track record in a fascist laboratory to the national stage. He is positioning himself to the right of Trump, but it’s clear that they will attempt to outdo each other in sheer lunacy, bigotry, and fascist lies.
DeSantis tried to innovate by collaborating with Elon Musk to bypass traditional media and make his announcement on Twitter Spaces. Plagued by technical difficulties, this ended up being an embarrassing failure. But had it succeeded, the press – which DeSantis was trying to eliminate from the conversation – might have been talking about how clever the idea was, about how DeSantis really figured out a key to reach the demographic of rabid Christian fascists, election deniers, white supremacist anti-LGBTQ women-hating Republicans who want a seemingly saner and more competent version of Trump. But this is not a contest of buffoon against buffoon.
It’s a contest of fascist against fascist, both getting air time, both advancing a truly hateful vision of society in which everyone must cower to the dictates of white supremacist, Christian fascist men. Quoting an article in the Economist, “DeSantis may wind up as just another speed-bump under … Trump’s relentless wheels. But more than any other Republican, he has extracted a coherent agenda from the jumble of Trumpian fears and hostilities, pointing the way towards a Trumpism without Trump.”
There were other news items to pay attention to this week. Most notably, the Indiana Attorney General’s months-long harrassment of Dr. Caitlin Bernard has come to a head. Dr. Bernard performed an abortion on a ten-year old rape victim after Roe fell and spoke out about it – not revealing any confidential patient information but courageously shining a light on the cruelty of abortion bans. As Jessica Valenti wrote about this case, “AG Todd Rokita has been using the power of his office to harass and punish Dr. Bernard under the guise of caring about the girl’s privacy. (Incredible for someone who wants to force a 10 year-old to give birth to argue that the doctor who treated her is somehow the issue.)”
Now the Indiana medical board, disingenuously ruling that Dr. Bernard violated her patient’s privacy, slapped her with a $3000 fine. It wasn’t a total victory for the attorney general. He didn’t succeed in getting her medical license revoked, but it is still a checkmark in the fascist playbook, another mechanism for silencing and shutting down any opposition to or defiance of fascist dictates.
With that, let’s hear Sam’s interview with Michael Vavrus.
Sam Goldman 08:47
I am excited to speak with, to welcome onto the show, Dr. Michael Vavrus. He’s a professor emeritus at the Evergreen State College. He teaches interdisciplinary courses focused on the intersection of education, history and political economy. His latest book is titled Teaching Anti-Fascism, a critical multicultural pedagogy for civic engagement. Welcome, Michael. Glad to be with you.
Dr. Michael Vavrus 09:15
Thank you for having me.
Sam Goldman 09:17
Can you first tell us a little bit about your book and what motivated you to write it in this moment?
Dr. Michael Vavrus 09:23
I hadn’t been planning to write the book. I was reading a lot, preparing for teaching, and then as things began to culminate with actions around the border, January 6th, I decided to go forward with this, and was able to get an Academic Press that would support it. There just was a confluence of events happening; misogyny, the militarization of the border, the larger society, demonizing of immigrants, other countries. It just seemed like it was coming together in a fascistic way, that traditionally the way critical multicultural education is presented, it wasn’t really capturing that.
So I thought that we really needed to dolly back a bit and look at what’s going on in the United States and globally from an anti-fascist perspective that would allow multicultural concepts, cosmopolitanism, etc., to be voiced under that. I found multicultural education, per se, as a discipline, limited in the way it approached issues. There wasn’t the interconnectedness. There is intersectionality, is widely used, but it doesn’t really get to the larger issues — especially around political economy, is what I had observed. So I wanted to push forward with that, and also thinking deeply about genocide and what that can mean. All of those events, coalescing in my mind, just had me go forward with the book.
Dr. Michael Vavrus 11:01
For listeners who aren’t in the education field, how can they understand the difference between what multicultural education is and the robust Anti-Fascist education that you’re advocating for? What might be some examples that could help people understand the difference?
Dr. Michael Vavrus 11:21
Progressive multiculturalism often deals with what’s called culturally responsive teaching. It reduces what’s going on in the classroom to cultural differences, acknowledging those. Those are all very positive, but it doesn’t really give a historical, political context of: Why are all these differences in the classroom? Why are some children marginalized in their communities? All of these issues that affect the classroom are overlooked.
In academia, there are studies after studies of replicating; it’s kind of like new studies and old wine bottles. Anti-fascism seems to be ignored, and there’s a discomfort with the word ‘fascism’. My purpose was not so much aimed at those who understand in the way those who subscribe to Refuse Fascism [do], but to get educators who perceive themselves as progressive, to move a bit more to the left, and speak out and acknowledge what is happening in their communities, in their state legislatures, and nationally, and not to wish it away. We can do the best teaching possible, but there’s these outside forces on the schools that I don’t believe are well acknowledged.
Sam Goldman 12:48
I really agree, and I think that’s an extremely helpful way of looking at it. I was thinking about some of the terms that we use broadly in society and that educators use in their classroom as well — whether you’re talking about at the high school level, or at the college level — words that aren’t very helpful. For example, the euphemistic word “extremism.” It means so many things, that it means nothing. That word, you can see in headline after headline and in course, after course, and hear it in the classroom. But the word ‘fascism’ is barely seen [DMV: acknowledging chuckle] in any opinion page, and seems to be basically outlawed in the news itself. I was wondering, how does that affect our society, when we don’t use the words that speak to actually what we face? And and how do you think we get past that?
Dr. Michael Vavrus 13:39
A little anecdote here; I was talking to some people who are not involved in education, who would vote Democratic, let’s say, and said: Oh, yeah, I don’t watch the news, because it’s all either left extremists are far right extremists. My comment was: Left? What are you talking about? I haven’t seen that on the mainstream news, especially about the left. And she answers: Oh, you know, on the left is the government, and on the far right, is these Neo Nazis. So, I was nearly speechless, because from this individual’s perspective: Oh, yeah, the government is the left. ?And I thought: Oh my gosh.
Also, I think the barriers to get to what you’re talking about: you’ve got Tik Tok, you’ve got Instagram, you’ve got social media influencers that are not paying attention to any of this. I think the task is huge for the left to break through this mis-education, wishing this is not going to happen, not believing the fascist politics and creep that we see right now that’s happening, and operating in some kind of bubble. My approach has been to talk about elements of fascist politics. It seems to have some traction in the sense that if you say ‘fascism,’ people go: Oh, wait a second, Mussolini, Hitler. Well, that’s true, but we don’t have fascism in the US — is what the response is.
I’ve tried to make it more of a wedge to say: Well, let’s look at the elements of what we would call the far right today. Let’s look at the elements of the Republican Party. I’m currently working with graduate students. Initially, so many of them said: Well, I just don’t like politics. I haven’t followed politics. Some are right there with it, but many just do not see the political nature of schooling and what they’re entering. In some regards my own teaching would inverse that little bubble. I say: My goal is for you to go into your teaching, your schools, with your eyes wide open. There has been a movement, but it takes a considerable amount of time to move folks in that direction.
That’s why I break it down to fascist politics. When I use extremism, it’s more like: Okay, if the mainstream wants to play that game, we’ll play with the far right. But I do agree with AOC, for example, when she says: Oh, do you think this is extremists? Okay, here’s what I’m proposing. Usually the politics are to benefit the average person, and that’s being called extremist. I mean, the language that’s used to describe what’s going on is inflammatory. The far right is very good at that. Trump talking about pink haired commies in schools, and other Congress critters talking about the Marxist influence in elementary schools. You say that to a classroom teacher, and they’re going: What are they talking about?
Since the 1980s, for sure, with “Nation at Risk,” when suddenly: Uhoh, something’s wrong with education. It becomes a national whipping post, so to speak, education. It’s in crisis. So if you keep saying it’s in crisis enough, then people begin to say: Oh, it’s really bad, we need to do something about it. It’s part of a long term [goal] to privatize education. I like to break it down into elements of fascism and fascist politics, rather than just saying “fascist,” although I do feel that the Republican Party, for example, is consolidating the elements of a fascist party, they just don’t have total control. It’s not a fascist regime yet. Personally, I feel that way, but for public groups that I address, other colleges, students and the like, I tone it down in a sense, because there’s almost a knee jerk reaction, like: Oh, fascists that’s too inflammatory. To bring people along, I use ‘fascist politics’ and the elements there.
Sam Goldman 18:02
What are the key elements of that fascist politics that people need to understand?
Dr. Michael Vavrus 18:07
I could go back to the mid 20th century, and see how it parallels in a 21st century version. I find that helpful. Obviously, it’s not exactly history repeating itself, there’s not going to be a mirror image, but one in particular, is the whole, what I call, “cultural racisms,” based on people’s religion, ethnicities, phenotype, racism based on physical features, skin color, hair shape and all of that. You had that with the Aryan Nation, for example, in Nazi Germany. Today, we have white supremist nationalism. I see that as a central gravitating point for far right Republicans — are going around this.
Within white supremacist nationalism, you have the Neo-Confederate sense of the Lost Cause. What is it that they think they’re losing? They’re losing white dominance, from their perception, because of our increasingly multicultural population in the United States. The people become racialized: This is a White nation. This is a Christian nation. The Christian identity movement and how that intersects with all of that. Evangelical Christians in their patriotism and anti-woman — we’ll just say — notion or submissive women approach.
Then from the French aristocrat, whose last name, unfortunately, is Camus, is the great replacement theory that’s been picked up, that: Uh oh, immigrants and people of color are going to replace the white population. So, this white anxiety that one could trace back to the eras of slavery; this fear that blacks are going to retaliate against whites. Well, why is that? There’s probably good reason for the treatment that’s gone on, especially of our black and brown populations. So, feeding into white supremist nationalism is this sense of anti-government sentiment, and demonizing government that, if things don’t go the way we want it, so to speak, then there’s violent alternatives.
We saw that on January 6th, we see the National Republican Chairwoman, legitimizing it by calling that day “legitimate political discourse,” the violence on that day. Trump, at his rally, plays music from those who have been incarcerated from January 6th, and says he’ll pardon them, and frames them as patriots. We have tens of millions of people who are gravitating to that point of view, and think: Yeah, that’s right, they were just tourists that day, so to speak, at the Capitol. And this notion of ethno-nationalism is nothing more than wanting an apartheid state, more than it already is.
Then, what I refer to as “misogynistic post-feminism,” that notion that somehow the gains of women have gone too far, and that feminism really didn’t benefit the larger society. Therefore, we need to stop those gains. We’ve gone too far. And women just need to support men. That is so central to the far right, and fascistic politics. It was in the mid 20th century, it is today. Women are supposed to play supporting roles. That doesn’t mean there aren’t some like representative Greene, out there, there are women, and we can think about Sarah Palin, who played right into the misogyny by telling folks to man up.
So women too, can play this misogynistic role. So, when I say misogynistic, it’s this hate of women, it’s violence against women. We see this with the incels, involuntary celibates, who feel that they’ve been thwarted in their sexual entitlement by women. So, this hateful speech that now is on social media — easily, one can find this now — it’s rampant. So these folks have places to go to express their misogynistic points of view, or like happened in Atlanta a few years ago, go in and just simply murder Asian women, predominantly Asian women. So what happens: You get the anti-Asian backlash that Trump helped to initiate by referring to the COVID-19 as the “Chinese virus,” giving it this title along the way.
Misogynistic violence has kind of morphed into, we also see women playing this role of what’s some of called “Security moms,” military wives, who are there to support their husbands and their children, and yes: We want a strong man to back us. Then this morphs into what we have today, Moms for Liberty, the difference being, Moms for Liberty is a well-financed, so called grassroots group, and they’re going to rescue their children from all these left wing educators in public schools, that I personally keep looking for along the way. And lastly, the element of when we get back to what I would call “cultural racism,” is the role of evangelical Christians and their absolutism.
There’s just no question that they just have a long history of promoting whiteness, capitalism, misogyny against women, their connections with the Ku Klux Klan. Historically, women played a prominent role in that with their children, also in the socialization that went on. And then the whole notion, evangelical Christians did not speak out against January 6th. They didn’t like the violence, but they are not opposed to undermining democracy to get their one way view out there. All of this has spilled into intense anti semitism, which a recent study says that anti semitism hate crimes are at their highest level since started keeping data since 1979. So, these things are going on right now around us, but if somebody just goes downtown to their local shopping mall, or walks through their neighborhoods, everything seems perfectly normal. I think that’s our real challenge, is to try to get the general public to see what is going on all around us.
Sam Goldman 25:00
Yes, that I think that is the challenge, both in and outside of schools, and especially at the campus level, that the silence is kind of deafening — not to discount those who are taking action, of course. I wanted to talk about Florida, because I think it’s a really good example. And by good example, I mean, bad example. [DMV: laughs] of a lot of what you’re describing. In Florida, it’s so clear, we desperately need anti-fascist education.
But part of fascism is attacking basic education as it stands; school libraries being wiped out, whole departments being gutted at the university level in Florida, basic topics that are part of primary education classrooms, like what is a family and families, you can’t talk about in Florida, if you want to talk about all families, black history, even history about the Holocaust, all these books, you can’t teach in the state, and then a totally hamstrung union in Florida. Because DeSantis has been so aggressive in going after the union, I just wonder how you see what’s going on in Florida to education and what the rest of the country should learn from this.
Dr. Michael Vavrus 26:13
The attack on teacher unions, what DeSantis calls “big unionism,” — I’ve yet to see a teacher union boss with a big cigar driving a big expensive car around. But that’s the image, and somehow they’ve got a grip on the schools, which is fantasy. But it’s part of a larger anti-union movement that’s gone on, surely, since the 1880s, to the 1930s, to our present moment, when we’re seeing a rise of unions outside education, and those battles going on. It’s not just teacher unions, its unions, its labor rights that capital cannot stand.
What’s the biggest cost the capitalists want to eliminate? It’s the labor costs. So this is one area to control labor and to have a docile workforce. Teachers, historically, were expected to support the status quo and not rock the boat. It’s not till the 1960s, the Supreme Court decision, that it’s okay for a teacher to write a letter to their newspaper that criticizes their school administration or school board. So, in some regards, this is recent history. With that in mind, one thing that, why Florida is an interesting laboratory here, is its own history.
From the 1960s into the 1990s, their main graduation expectations were two: to have functional literacy, and to teach how “Americanism” was preferable over communism; Americanism versus communism, and how America is a better place. It’s this American exceptionalism. DeSantis walks into this history here — that might be 25 years ago when that ended — but who was behind all that? Big corporate money, the American Legion, the auxiliary of retired military folks. Their push for Americanism, America first — going back to the racist trope of the 1930s, America first — and the mixing with the KKK there.
And now we have a Republican, since 2021, the far right, the American First caucus, which details all these points, but also goes after public education, as in a crisis. The censorship that’s going on in public schools, using Florida as an example, is you had this anti intellectualism in both Italy and Germany, and that led to a certain educational absolutism where there’s no debating issues. There’s one point of view, and there’s no debate. It goes against anything that we would think we would call critical thinking. And of course, there’s no place for multiculturalism, and looking at the differences that we have in society and learning from that. Along the way, that eliminates free speech.
The other is that militaristic indoctrination of young people. I remind our teacher candidates that in the 1940s, the Supreme Court said: No, you don’t have to say the Pledge of Allegiance in school. No, you don’t have to bow down to patriotism. But that is a huge push within schools. So, America First, Americanism, that’s the underlying thing to get into schools; to have this patriotic cadre. The growth of junior ROTC, these military grooming, where now, in some school districts, children were forced into it against Pentagon rules. It’s supposed to build character. Nevermind the number of sexual assaults against, especially young women, who were in ROTC being groomed –junior ROTC in high schools — marching around in uniforms, all of this.
The Nazis would have loved this. They would say: Hey, this is good. This is good for America. So, the fact that we do live in a militarized society, where the Pentagon can give so called surplus military weapons to school districts — I mean, we’re talking bazookas, M-16, M-14 rifles, military equipment — millions of dollars to school districts; Los Angeles School District is just awash and this weaponry. What for? They tend to go to low income schools, and schools of color. That’s where the recruiting is going on with Junior ROTC, and the like.
That is one of my major concerns, is this militarization has been so normalized, that to be patriotic, you have to support the military; we thank you for your service sort of thing. It really upsets me when I think: I’m sorry that that individual had to be in the military and do what he or she did. But can we just step back and see what’s happening around the world right now, with all our military bases around the world? When I bring up this point, people are: Oh, yeah, we have all these bases around the world. And I say, how many foreign military bases do we have in the United States? Well, of course, we have zero.
It’s inconceivable that the United States would have a foreign military base in the U.S. Yet it’s accepted that we would do this around the world. That’s the nature of empire. Fascism is always expansive, and wanting more territory and control, and neoliberal capitalism with austerity programs — austerity that wants to get rid of social services — is central to this current movement that’s going on. Schools are just an easy sight for the far right to latch on to right now, and to ignore the basic needs of the larger population; home security, food security, job security, income, security, all of these issues are what the average citizen really is interested in, but that’s not what’s being talked about by the mainstream right now, as I see it.
Sam Goldman 32:40
To close out our conversation, I wanted to end with action. What do you hope that young people on the campuses, people at large, what can we do to sound the alarm and to mobilize people to act?
Dr. Michael Vavrus 32:47
On the campuses, I would say, with various identity groups — which I think are important to have safe places — those groups, I would hope could expand beyond their groups and to reach out into the communities and start building stronger social movements, and have the strength to do that — to align with other identity groups, for example, be it a trans group on campus, black student caucus, for example, that they see. We come from different positions, but overall, we have similar goals.
I’m thinking of a recent webinar I was doing with doctoral candidates at a college, and in the q&a, a woman who’s in central Pennsylvania identified the questions they asked, at the end of it, she goes: We’re having, at our high school, a problem with racial slurs, do you have any recommendations? That’s a huge one. That’s only been going on for about 400 years — which I didn’t say. My first comment was: Well, I wouldn’t hold a general assembly to talk about it, because that would probably backfire. She answers: It did. That gave me pause, and I said: Well, you need to start with your teachers. The teachers need to suspend their normal curriculum. You need big conversations. We need adults to be in the room. We need to talk hard facts about race and racism.
And [she was] also bringing up about misogynistic comments from male students going on. I said: You really need to zero in with these young people, these adolescents at their formative stage, and talk in classrooms in small groups. So that’s, I would say, at the micro level of the school. I keep proposing that schools need to be zones of anti-fascism. By zones of anti fascism, it suddenly suggests: Oh wait, the school can’t do it alone. We can be shouting out the school windows and on the playground along the way. But no, I see those anti-fascist tentacles, in an ideal world, reaching out, going to that group in the community that’s pursuing what we might call a liberal agenda, but might be able to be brought along.
I see networking as important right now, and the left needs to do that, they need to do the grassroots work, because we don’t have big media, we don’t have a good social media presence with lots of funding behind us; we don’t have a major network like a Fox or MSNBC or CNN. Well, what’s the alternative? It’s gonna take grassroots work. In closing, I just want to go back and for us to remember the incredibly brave teachers in New York City’s teacher union in the 1940s, who said: We’re speaking out against racism and anti semitism — at a time when there was huge racism and anti semitism and support for the Nazis. You had teachers in the Deep South — if you can imagine, black teachers and what was happening in the 1940s — being able to speak out and beginning to frame their racism as part of fascism.
So, if teachers then could do it, under the real threats of death, I would hope that our teachers would not self censor themselves and go: Part of my teacher identity is not only serving my children, serving the families, but what that really means is serving that larger community, and I need to find ways to reach out. I think that teachers unions are the one vehicle that could serve that along the way.
Sam Goldman 33:02
Thank you so much, Michael, for coming and sharing your perspective, your expertise and your time. We’re going to link to the book in the shownotes, along with your website. Thank you so much.
Dr. Michael Vavrus 37:12
Thank you, Sam, and Refuse Fascism, for trying to get the word out there and your many beautiful and important broadcasts, especially around the anti abortion issues. I really appreciate that. Thank you.
Coco Das 37:27
When I hear Dr. Vavrus talk about the white anxiety rooted in slavery, and the rising fascist absolutism that is transforming every institution in society, I wonder what it would look like if all of these same institutions did become, in fact, anti-fascist zones. Recently, I was on a large public college campus, where one might never know what was going on in the world — that we are on a road to fascist consolidation, that 23 million women have been reduced to breeders and incubators, that over 500 Anti trans bills have been introduced or passed in recent months, that Biden and Putin are playing nuclear chicken.
I saw a campus of 40,000 students in a stranglehold between what the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian calls the “two new outmodeds”. It’s the fascists on the one hand, and destructive “woke” identity politics on the other that tries to carve out safe spaces and dictate who can talk about what. Of course, the fascism is the more silencing and destructive force, but both of these frameworks are unhinged from reality, and contributing to a situation where people are confused, demoralized, ignorant and passive. Going back to Kathy’s excellent questions from earlier: “Is it time to demonstrate in the streets outside our County GOP offices? Does anyone rally anymore? How do we throw a wrench into the fascist onslaught? And how do we find help in doing that?”
Collectively, we need to find answers to all these questions. For regular listeners of the show, how do you take out the understanding that you get from Refuse Fascism to people to break the normalization and accommodation? What kinds of creative bold actions — yes, outside of GOP offices, but all over the public square — can really puncture the air around this normalization, and reset the terms in society? What kinds of conversations are you having at family gatherings? What kind of artwork or postering campaign could we get out all over town? And are you struggling with people in and out of power in our institutions, to name this fascism and stand up to it?
For my part, speaking for myself have only and not everyone in Refuse Fascism, e need to plant a revolutionary pole, a pole of defiant resistance with the aim of overturning the system that has given rise to this fascism — the system of capitalism imperialism. Because, I have to ask, what kind of country allows fascism to come to power? What kind of system puts the humanity of women or black people or LGBTQ people up to a vote by a Christian fascist supermajority? What kind of society keeps laughing at fascist lunatics amassing so much power? instead of calling it a five alarm fire and mobilizing everyone to fight this in every way possible?
It is a dying rotten system. And we are in a situation where radical change of one form or another is coming. Will it be radically reactionary and enslaving with fascism consolidating? Or will it be radically emancipating through a real revolution? For more on this, I recommend people check out the talk by Bob Avakian called Something terrible, or something truly emancipating: profound crisis, deepening divisions, the looming possibility of civil war and the revolution that is urgently needed, at Revcomm.us, and watch the weekly RNL, Revolution Nothing Less show at YouTube.com/TheRevComms.
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 @SamBGoldman or you can drop her a line at [email protected], or leave a voicemail by visiting Anchor.fm/Refuse-Fascism and hitting the message button.
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Thanks to Sam Goldman, Richie Marini, Lina Thorne, and Mark Tinkleman 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. We’ll be back next Sunday. Until then, in the name of humanity, we refuse to accept the fascist America!
Welcome to Episode 158 of the Refuse Fascism podcast, a podcast brought to you by volunteers with Refuse Fascism. I’m Coco Das, one of those volunteers and guests of the show while Sam Goldman takes some much needed time off. Refuse Fascism exposes analyzes, and stands against the very real danger and threat of fascism coming to power in the United States.
In today’s episode, we’re sharing an interview Sam Goldman did with Dr. Michael Vavrus, author of the book Teaching Anti-Fascism, the critical multicultural pedagogy for civic engagement. But first thanks to everyone who goes the extra step, and rates and reviews the show on Apple podcast or wherever you listen. If you appreciate the show and want to help us reach more people who want to refuse fascism, be a gem and go write a review and drop five stars wherever you listen to your pods.
Here are two from this week, as proof we read every one Sam140171998 said: “Covers the most important topics, conversations you don’t hear on mainstream media. Important intelligent topics with great guests. Makes you think and want to get engaged.” Well thanks, Sam. And here’s one from YouTube, from @cathieschau4266: “Love Refuse Fascism; go Sam! Interesting episode. My blood pressure spikes when folks like Akin start picking apart the current threat — and almost say that Dems and fascist Repubs are really ‘the same’ cuz capitalism. ??? I know we’ve all heard it many times before but 2024 really is THE doomsday election. I’m a pessimist about voting, now that the fascists are suppressing votes at every level, in every way possible. But I still think it’s vital to do whatever we can to crush the extremists in ‘24, to overwhelm them with enormous numbers of sanity votes. So I think it’s going to be super important to make young voters feel that urgency. Also, I want to know what we can do at the community level to disrupt the normalization of fascism. Please, give us some specifics. Is it time to demonstrate in the streets outside our county GOP offices? Also, does anyone rally anymore? I feel like people are more afraid now to gather in protest of anything, because GUNS and hatred. How do we throw a wrench into the fascist onslaught? How do we find help in doing that?”
Well, Kathy, there are a lot of good questions in that comment, and I’m going to try to address some of them in my commentary. But what do you all think? Send us your thoughts with the contact information I provide at the end of the show. And please tell the people out there in podcast land, why you listened and why they should choose you. Subscribe and follow so you never miss an episode. And of course, keep up all that great commenting and sharing on social media.
Now, as usual, in these times we’re living in there was a lot to talk about regarding the accelerating fascist threat in this country, especially around the powder keg 2024 election, and the fascists going all out to seize back power by hook or by crook. This week marked the official start of the contest between Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump for top dog fascist — or to the bottom of the fascist cesspool, however you want to look at it — with the aim of re seizing the White House in 2024 and terrifyingly consolidating and enslaving genocidal violence and vengeance fueled program against everyone they hate; everyone, women, black people, immigrants, trans people, gay people, Democrats. DeSantis’ threat to make America Florida, to institute an all out blatant dictatorship to suppress any education, thought, speech, or action that tells the truth about the history of this country, that embraces diverse communities, that separates church and state, that allows women to participate fully in society, or sees any of these people as fully human is bringing a proven track record in a fascist laboratory to the national stage. He is positioning himself to the right of Trump, but it’s clear that they will attempt to outdo each other in sheer lunacy, bigotry and fascist lies. Now, DeSantis tried to innovate by collaborating with Elon Musk to bypass traditional media and make his announcement on Twitter spaces. Plagued by technical difficulties, this ended up being an embarrassing failure. But had it succeeded, the press, which DeSantis was trying to eliminate from the conversation, might have been talking about how clever the idea was; about how dissent has really figured out a key way to reach the demographic of rabid Christian fascists, election deniers, white supremacist anti LGBTQ women hating Republicans, who want a seemingly saner and more competent version of Trump. But this is not a contest of buffoon against buffoon. It’s a contest of fascist against fascist, both getting airtime, both advancing a truly hateful vision of society, in which everyone must cower to the dictates of white supremacist Christian fascist men. Quoting an article in The Economist: “DeSantis may wind up as just another speed bump under Trump’s relentless wheels, but more than any other Republican, he has extracted a coherent agenda from the jumble of Trumpian fears and hostilities, pointing the way towards a Trumpism without Trump.”
Coco Das 07:23
There were other news items to pay attention to this week. Most notably, the Indiana Attorney General’s months long harassment of Dr. Caitlin Bernard has come to a head. Dr. Bernard performed an abortion on a 10 year old rape victim after Roe fell and spoke out about it — not revealing any confidential patient information, but courageously shining a light on the cruelty of abortion bans. As Jessica Valenti, wrote about this case: “A.G. Todd Rokita has been using the power of his office to harass and punish Dr. Bernard under the guise of caring about the girl’s privacy. Incredible for someone who wants to force a 10 year old to give birth to argue that the doctor who treated her is somehow the issue. Now the Indiana Medical Board disingenuously ruling that Dr. Bernard violated her patient’s privacy slapped her with a $3,000 fine. It wasn’t a total victory for the Attorney General. He didn’t succeed in getting her medical license revoked, for example, but it is still a checkmark in the fascist playbook. Another mechanism for silencing and shutting down any opposition to or defiance of fascist dictates.”