I posted a short reflection to TikTok last week, and it landed harder than I expected. It’s about the emotional double-life I believe many of us are living: one foot in the adult world of political vigilance and despair, and one foot in the child-world of curiosity, play, and care.

Today I’m expanding that theme and pairing it with another challenge: how suspicion-driven Left analysis shapes our emotional availability, our social trust, and our parenting. How do we balance vigilance with openness? How do we keep our melancholy from becoming our children’s inheritance? And how do we stop feeling like orphans in a world where radical elders have been scattered, suppressed, or lost?

I’d love to hear your experience with this:

• Best way: send me a voice memo on Signal @antifascistdad.71. Try to keep messages under 2 minutes!
• You can also DM me on Bluesky and Instagram, or join me on Patreon @antifascistdadpodcast where my DMs are open.
• I’m also on TikTok and YouTube @antifascistdad.

Preorder link for Antifascist Dad (North Atlantic Books, April 2026)

Just a coupla antifascist Canadian dads having a chat about stuff.

In this special crossover episode, I join Cory Johnston of the Skeptical Leftist podcast for a conversation about cult dynamics, fascism, antifascist parenting, masculinity, and how to support kids with empathy in a collapsing world.

We talk about parenting in a political emergency, how to avoid overwhelming kids with adult anxieties, and how to build trust-based conversations about power, policing, misinformation, and existential fear. We get into masculinity, emotional repression, the unpaid labor of women, the politics of care, and how becoming a co-parent radicalized me more deeply than any book ever could.

We also spend time on atheist/religious alliances, liberation theology, body-image capitalism, surviving neoliberal time-pressure, and how to nurture political imagination without drowning in guilt or fatalism.

Our interview on YouTube.

Cory's Linktree.

My book to preorder.

• (00:00:07) - The Skeptical Leftist Podcast
• (00:01:07) - Matthew's Short Bio Rant
• (00:05:03) - On Parenting and the Left
• (00:10:13) - What is Anti-Fascism?
• (00:24:37) - Anti-Fascism & Conspirituality
• (00:29:59) - Democracy on Liberation theology
• (00:41:39) - On Becoming a Parent
• (00:49:04) - What Is Healthy Masculinity?
• (00:59:59) - How Do You Raise Your Kids With Empathetic Awareness?
• (01:08:51) - Emotional maturity and the police
• (01:19:45) - White Privilege and the Problem of Personal Responsibility
• (01:25:32) - Time Management
• (01:33:17) - Where Can People Find Antifascist Dad?

In Part 2 of my conversation with Cy Canterel, we keep digging into how people form identity, belief, and belonging inside the swirl of irony, nihilism, and digital performance that defines so much of contemporary life.

We explore the psychology of online radicalization—what actually pulls people toward fascist aesthetics, what ambivalence can teach us about resistance, and how the very same infrastructures that feed alienation can also host creativity, solidarity, and care.

Also: more on the Graham Platner story as a living case study in fluid online identity: how meaning shifts, how people change, and how communities can choose to interrupt cycles of rage instead of reproducing them.

And an epilogue on taking the 13 year-old to the Toronto Anticapitalist Book Fair in the old Tranzac Club, where I used to hang out more than 30 years ago.

Cy's Website

Cy's Substack: Abstract Machines

• (00:00:07) - A Dare Wrapped In a Joke Wrapped in a Void
• (00:02:49) - The Psychology of Extremist Identity
• (00:05:30) - Noxious Views in the Online Culture
• (00:08:30) - Can You Change Your Own Mind?
• (00:09:57) - The Narrative of Who Is Graham Platner
• (00:12:53) - Do Narratives Promote or Decrease Ambiguity?
• (00:22:40) - The Problem With The Revolutionary Imagination
• (00:25:16) - Cy Cantarel on Being Nihilistic at 14
• (00:29:43) - Anti-capitalist book fair at the Tranzac Club

I sit down with Jesuit priest and liberation theologian Father David Inczauskis, S.J., who has been helping lead faith-based protests at Chicago’s Broadview ICE Detention Center. We get into the lived meaning of community life, the risks and necessities of nonviolent resistance, and why liberation theology is suddenly back at the center of the global Catholic conversation.

Before we talk, I take about ten minutes to get clear — personally and ideologically — about my own evolving relationship to Catholicism, anticapitalism, and antifascist organizing. If you’ve ever struggled with the contradictions of religious institutions while still feeling pulled toward their radical roots, this may resonate.

We also close with Fascist Dad of the Week, featuring the tragic anti-heroism of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, whose devotion to a decrepit sex criminal seems to grow deeper with every press conference.

David's excellent podcast on Liberation Theology

Liberation Theology Primer on Conspirituality

YouTube: https://youtube.com/@antifascistdad
TikTok: @antifascistdad
Instagram: @matthew_remski
Bluesky: @matthewremski.bsky.social

Join the community and get all Part 2 episodes + extras on Patreon:
https://patreon.com/antifascistdadpodcast

Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times
North Atlantic Books · Coming April 26, 2026

just say the word.

• (00:00:45) - Intro
• (00:11:48) - Inczauskis on Faith and the Left
• (00:13:47) - Mass and the Future of Nonviolence
• (00:15:29) - Jesuits Bring Communion to Immigrant Detainees
• (00:18:12) - Liberation Theology
• (00:23:26) - Jesuits live a community life
• (00:28:56) - An Objective Assessment of the Catholic Church
• (00:40:09) - Catholic Church Attempt to Bring Communion to Detainees
• (00:47:29) - Karoline Leavitt Lying About Trump's Relationship With Jeffrey

I sit down with feral scholar and TikTok analyst Cy Canterel to explore one of the strangest and most opaque zones of contemporary politics: the swirling online subcultures where memes, irony, nihilism, and fragmented identity collide with rising fascism.

Cy brings a rare combination of systemic thinking, psychological insight, and lived experience as an autistic researcher who understands outsider culture from the inside. Together we trace how today’s meme-driven environments blur the lines between subculture and politics, and why attempts to “decode” online radicalization so often miss the mark. What looks like political ideology is often a shared subcultural language. What looks like a manifesto might actually be a dare, a joke, or an attempt to create meaning in the void.

We talk about the very ambiguous case of Tyler Robinson, alleged killer of Charlie Kirk, and why the bullet-casing engravings left behind point less toward a stable ideology and more toward the chaotic, dare-based dynamics of online subcultures. We also begin unpacking the emerging story of Graham Platner, and why he has become a Rorschach test for liberal and left anxieties.

Cy argues that online extremism is not distortion of human nature, but a predictable outcome of alienation, platform incentives, and a society that doesn’t give people — especially young men — stable roles, narratives, or futures. But she also insists the internet itself isn’t broken. The tools could be used for creativity, care, and community; they’ve simply been captured by the wrong incentives.

If you’re a parent, educator, caregiver, or anyone trying to understand what’s happening to young people online — and what can actually intervene in these dynamics — Cy’s insights are super helpful.

Cy's Website

Cy's Substack: Abstract Machines

• Subscribe on Patreon for Part 2 and full archive access:
https://www.patreon.com/antifascistadpodcast

• Preorder Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times (April 26, 2026)

• Follow me on Bluesky: @matthewremski.bsky.social
• Follow me on Instagram: @matthew_remski
• Follow on YouTube & TikTok: @antifascistdad

• Rate & Review — it helps this project reach more people!

• Share this episode with educators, caregivers, or anyone trying to understand online radicalization.

• (00:00:00) - A Dare Wrapped in a Joke: The Memosphere
• (00:02:50) - Zoran Mandani Wins
• (00:11:17) - Cy Canterel on the Internet and Political Radicalization
• (00:18:35) - Autism and Internet Studies
• (00:24:14) - What Looks Like Politics Is Often a Subculture
• (00:35:29) - The Confused Politics of Far-Right Groups
• (00:40:37) - What do men become vulnerable to in isolation, particularly on the Internet
• (00:45:50) - Fascist Dad of the Week

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

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

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

Subscribe on YouTube at @antifascistdad for weekly mini-essays and the Basics series; the first Basics installment is now public.

Join the Patreon for Part 2s, early access, and paywalled bonus briefs.

TikTok and YouTube @antifascistdad.

Pre-order the book that this project supports — Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times (North Atlantic Books) — pub date April 26, 2026.

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

Street Rebellion: Resistance Beyond Violence and Nonviolence

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

Venezuela Military Personnel

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

The Success of Nonviolent Civil Resistance | ICNC

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Note: This review is also available on YouTube.

How many wellness brofluencer podcasters does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Three: one to film it, one to sell the “ancestral light protocol,” and one to warn bulbs are “seed oils for your eyes.”

In this longer solo episode I dig into Scott Galloway’s Notes on Being a Man (Simon & Schuster, published Nov 5). Galloway is everywhere—NYU Stern prof, serial entrepreneur, and podcast mainstay—and his new book will land loudly with U.S. liberals searching for ways to “win back men” from Trumpism. I read the book closely—praise where it’s due, pushback where it matters—and make the case that while Galloway offers genuine, sometimes moving reflections on love, fatherhood, and responsibility, his framework ultimately shores up the liberal-capitalist status quo that keeps feeding the conditions in which authoritarianism grows.

Across the hour, I map Galloway’s 44 “notes” into five big buckets—reframing masculinity, capitalist pep talk, productivity metaphors, pro-family traditionalism, and the kinder-gentler counterweight to manosphere alpha tropes—and test how each plays in the current political economy.

I highlight where the book’s affective power (memoir + confessional humility) outpaces its thin endnotes and limited policy imagination; where “protect, provide, procreate” functions as a sticky brand more than a credible gender theory; and where straw-man takes (on “toxic masculinity,” college, participation trophies) obscure structural realities.

I also dig into the contradictions: the book’s bootstrap sermons versus its tender late-chapter wisdom on loyalty and unconditional love; the patriotic gloss versus the missing history; and how a spirituality of private consolation can soothe readers without moving them toward material change. If you’re a parent, teacher, organizer—or just a listener trying to make sense of “men’s crisis” content without getting pulled rightward—this breakdown offers context, citations to chase, and a rubric for reading similar books with both empathy and rigor.

Find me on YouTube and TikTok as @antfascistdad. Part 2's and extras on Patreon.

Brief: Galloway and the Mooch: The Lost Boys of Capitalism (Pt 1)

• (00:00:00) - Anti-Fascist Dad Podcast
• (00:01:01) - Scott Galloway's Notes On Being A Man Review
• (00:06:53) - Notes on Being Scott Galloway
• (00:08:32) - Galloway's Insecure Thoughts
• (00:16:37) - Notes on Being a Man Review
• (00:27:29) - Galloway's Race and Justice Ideas
• (00:29:01) - Guru Galloway
• (00:32:13) - Protect, Provide, Procreate
• (00:38:59) - Masculinity
• (00:44:39) - Our Kids Don't Need College
• (00:50:42) - The Problem With Meritocracy
• (00:56:07) - Sexual
• (00:59:39) - Galloway's Bootstraps
• (01:09:13) - Elder Wisdom?

Hello everyone! Part 2 opens with reflections on Mark’s balance between public scholarship and private parenting, then moves into his distinction between liberal history and fascist propaganda—the moment when sourcing gives way to myth. We discuss how protest slogans can be misread yet remain essential to antifascist diversity and vitality, and end with Mark’s hope for new generations unburdened by despair but grounded in struggle, truth, and imagination.

Bray, Mark. Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook. Brooklyn, NY: Melville House Publishing, 2017.

Bray, Mark, and Robert H. Haworth, eds. Anarchist Education and the Modern School: A Francisco Ferrer Reader. Translated by Mark Bray and Joseph McCabe. Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2019

Meet the Portland protest frog that started a movement - YouTube

‘I’ve definitely had spicier tamales,’ says Portland ICE protest frog that got pepper sprayed by federal agents - oregonlive.com

ICE Agents Shoot Pepper Spray into Protester's Frog Costume Air Vent

Antifa expert at Rutgers University flees US amid death threats

He Wrote a Book About Antifa. Death Threats Are Driving Him Out of the US | WIRED

Antifa expert at Rutgers University says he is moving to Spain because of death threats

Rutgers Expert on Antifa Flees to Spain After Death Threats - The New York Times

Antifa Expert to Flee with Family to Spain Following Death Threats | Democracy Now!

Designating Antifa as a Domestic Terrorist Organization – The White House

You can pre-order Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times (North Atlantic Books | April 26 2026)

• (00:00:10) - Why You Can't Exile Anti-Fascism
• (00:01:46) - American politics of individualism
• (00:03:58) - How Fascism Became Explicit in Education
• (00:13:53) - Anti-Fascist Protest and Direct Action
• (00:22:41) - How to Build a More Radical Movement
• (00:25:16) - What Makes You Hopeful For Your Kids?
• (00:35:20) - The Kids of Anti-Fascism