Conspirituality

Click here to hear the full episode on Patreon. Second of Matthew’s two-part examination of why the hell questions of force, non-violent resistance with and without force, unarmed violence and property damage, and armed violence are so incredibly hard to talk about in a culture thick with spiritual and political bypassing. Are we capable of understanding the difference between morality and strategy? Part 1 focused on philosophy and psychology while today the focus will be on definitions and tactics. Together, both parts will push back on conspiracism about the identities, motives, and methods  of antifascists. Both will present slices of the rich discourse on violence and non-violence from antifascist history, including clarifying definitions of key terms. Both will open a space to think carefully about what intensities of self and community defense are both useful and tolerable in the fight against fascism.  Today we’ll get into the very thick weeds of how the “strategic nonviolence” research of Gene Sharp, Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan is framed as empirical, but may be way more about idealizing Gandhi than about facts on the ground. Huge list of references for each! Show Notes Stopping the Press: The Threats to the Media Posed by the Second Trump Term | The New Yorker What the FBI Has Done, and Kash Patel Could Do - Columbia Journalism Review  Hakeem Jeffries cracks down on Trump speech disruptions  Neo-Nazi Richard Spencer Got Punched—You Can Thank the Black Bloc | The Nation  Aamer Rahman: Is it really ok to punch nazis?  $16.5M settlement reached in class-action lawsuit over mass arrests during 2010 G20 summit | CBC News  Meditations at the ringed fence around G20 Toronto - rabble.ca  Remaining Human: A Buddhist Perspective on Occupy Wall Street - Michael Stone  Brief: The Outside Agitator Conspiracy Trope (w/Dr. Peniel Joseph) — Conspirituality  Anti-fascists linked to zero murders in the US in 25 years | Donald Trump | The Guardian  40 Ways to Fight Fascists: Sunshine  rules for radicals | saul d. alinsky  198 METHODS OF NONVIOLENT ACTION | — Gene Sharp She Interrupted a Town-Hall Meeting and Was Dragged Out by Private Security - The New York Times  Martin Luther King Jr. had a much more radical message than a dream of racial brotherhood  The Enigma of Frantz Fanon | The Nation Frantz Fanon and the struggle against colonisation | MR Online Frantz Fanon and the Paradox of Anticolonial Violence – Solidarity Frantz Fanon—a vital defence of violence by the oppressed - Socialist Worker Land and Freedom (1995 Ken Loach) [ENG Sub] (starting at the collectivization debate scene)  Full Spectrum Resistance — McBay  The Failure of Nonviolence | The Anarchist Library  Beyond Violence and Nonviolence | ROAR Magazine  Debunking the myths around nonviolent resistance | ROAR Magazine  Social movements and the (mis)use of research: Extinction Rebellion and the 3.5% rule  Responding to Domestic Terrorism: A Crisis of Legitimacy - Harvard Law Review  Domestic Terrorism: Definitions, Terminology, and Methodology — FBI  676 | United States Sentencing Commission Activists use 'Tesla Takedown' protests to fight job cuts by Musk and Trump | Reuters Tesla vehicles destroyed, vandalized since Musk began role at White House, authorities say - ABC News Anti-DOGE protests at Tesla stores target Elon Musk's bottom line | AP News Tyre Extinguishers: A Night Out with the Climate Activists Sabotaging SUVs Leaflet | Tyre Extinguishers  Tesla Stocks Tumble as Elon Musk’s Political Role Grows More Divisive - The New York Times Internal Memos: Senior USAID Leaders Warned Trump Appointees of Hundreds of Thousands of Deaths From Closing Agency  Beyond Violence and Nonviolence | ROAR Magazine  Violence Will Only Hurt the Trump Resistance | The New Republic  Why Not Riot? Interview with Author Ben Case - CounterPunch.org 10 Lessons on Filmmaking from Director Ken Loach BBC Taster - How to Make a Ken Loach Film Land and Freedom (1995 Ken Loach) [ENG Sub] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First of Matthew's two-part examination of why the hell questions of force, non-violent resistance with and without force, unarmed violence and property damage, and armed violence are so incredibly hard to talk about in a culture thick with spiritual and political bypassing. Are we capable of understanding the difference between morality and strategy? Part 1 focuses on philosophy and psychology while Part 2 focuses on definitions and tactics. Together, both parts will push back on conspiracism about the identities, motives, and methods  of antifascists. Both will present slices of the rich discourse on violence and non-violence from antifascist history, including clarifying definitions of key terms. Both will open a space to think carefully about what intensities of self and community defense are both useful and tolerable in the fight against fascism.  Part 2 gets into the very thick weeds of how the “strategic nonviolence” research of Gene Sharp, Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan is framed as empirical, but may be way more about idealizing Gandhi than about facts on the ground. Drops Monday on Patreon. Huge list of references for each! Show Notes Stopping the Press: The Threats to the Media Posed by the Second Trump Term | The New Yorker What the FBI Has Done, and Kash Patel Could Do - Columbia Journalism Review  Hakeem Jeffries cracks down on Trump speech disruptions  Neo-Nazi Richard Spencer Got Punched—You Can Thank the Black Bloc | The Nation  Aamer Rahman: Is it really ok to punch nazis?  $16.5M settlement reached in class-action lawsuit over mass arrests during 2010 G20 summit | CBC News  Meditations at the ringed fence around G20 Toronto - rabble.ca  Remaining Human: A Buddhist Perspective on Occupy Wall Street - Michael Stone  Brief: The Outside Agitator Conspiracy Trope (w/Dr. Peniel Joseph) — Conspirituality  Anti-fascists linked to zero murders in the US in 25 years | Donald Trump | The Guardian  40 Ways to Fight Fascists: Sunshine  rules for radicals | saul d. alinsky  198 METHODS OF NONVIOLENT ACTION | — Gene Sharp She Interrupted a Town-Hall Meeting and Was Dragged Out by Private Security - The New York Times  Martin Luther King Jr. had a much more radical message than a dream of racial brotherhood  The Enigma of Frantz Fanon | The Nation Frantz Fanon and the struggle against colonisation | MR Online Frantz Fanon and the Paradox of Anticolonial Violence – Solidarity Frantz Fanon—a vital defence of violence by the oppressed - Socialist Worker Land and Freedom (1995 Ken Loach) [ENG Sub] (starting at the collectivization debate scene)  Full Spectrum Resistance — McBay  The Failure of Nonviolence | The Anarchist Library  Beyond Violence and Nonviolence | ROAR Magazine  Debunking the myths around nonviolent resistance | ROAR Magazine  Social movements and the (mis)use of research: Extinction Rebellion and the 3.5% rule  Responding to Domestic Terrorism: A Crisis of Legitimacy - Harvard Law Review  Domestic Terrorism: Definitions, Terminology, and Methodology — FBI  676 | United States Sentencing Commission Activists use 'Tesla Takedown' protests to fight job cuts by Musk and Trump | Reuters Tesla vehicles destroyed, vandalized since Musk began role at White House, authorities say - ABC News Anti-DOGE protests at Tesla stores target Elon Musk's bottom line | AP News Tyre Extinguishers: A Night Out with the Climate Activists Sabotaging SUVs Leaflet | Tyre Extinguishers  Tesla Stocks Tumble as Elon Musk’s Political Role Grows More Divisive - The New York Times Internal Memos: Senior USAID Leaders Warned Trump Appointees of Hundreds of Thousands of Deaths From Closing Agency  Beyond Violence and Nonviolence | ROAR Magazine  Violence Will Only Hurt the Trump Resistance | The New Republic  Why Not Riot? Interview with Author Ben Case - CounterPunch.org 10 Lessons on Filmmaking from Director Ken Loach BBC Taster - How to Make a Ken Loach Film Land and Freedom (1995 Ken Loach) [ENG Sub] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lately a lot of folks (including us) have been doing the fascism comparisons. The questions we ponder this week: How long it takes for fascism to fully dig its roots in, how varied is the opposition along the way, and what role does the media play? Show Notes 165: Outrage Machine (w/Tobias Rose-Stockwell) 16 October 1919 | Hitler Archive Konrad Heiden  Fritz Gerlich, publicist and prophet – how did he resist the Nazis?  Fritz Gerlich  Nazi Germany’s Schriftleitergesetz: The End of Freedom of the Press - Arolsen Archives The illegal press – Verzetsmuseum   The Liberal Media Always Fails Against Fascism — Robert Evans  Can a news media that doesn’t really oppose fascism ever cover it well? Against Normalization: The Lesson of the “Munich Post” | Los Angeles Review of Books The Newspaper Axis: Six Press Barons Who Enabled Hitler Fascist-Sympathizing Newspaper Barons Were the Blueprint for Today’s Right-Wing Media Media's Failure in Times of Crisis: Election Coverage in the Interwar Period How Journalists Covered the Rise of Mussolini and Hitler | Smithsonian How Britain's Nazi-loving press baron made the case for Hitler | The Times of Israel Wahl-Jorgensen, K. (2016). Is there a “postmodern turn” in journalism? In C. Peters and M. Broersma (Eds), Rethinking Journalism (pp. 97-111). London: Routledge. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Subscribe for full episode The MAGA attack on government jobs, takeover of government agencies, and purge of supposed “DEI” and “woke” professionals has a long history in the US. Julian uses old-timey newsreels, biographies, and events in the public record to trace the lines from 1919 to today, making stops at the so-called Red Summer’s “race riots,” Red Scare communist panics, Hollywood Blacklist, and Lavender Scare that fired thousands for being presumed gay. Unrelated to any of this completely useless and repressive paranoid bigotry, actual Soviet spies were being apprehended and prosecuted—even then everything was not on the level. The prosecutors had their own hidden skeletons and shady bedfellows, even as they claimed the patriotic moral high ground. At the heart of this history is a lineage of men who never let truth get in the way of gaining, and wielding, power and cruelty. Julian uncovers a surprisingly direct lineage of dirty-tricks demagogue succession, from Woodrow Wilson to A. Mitchell Palmer, to J. Edgar Hoover, to Joe McCarthy, to Roy Cohn, to Roger Stone, to our current president. Editorial Note: The Paul Robeson clip that starts the episode is a re-enactment by James Earl Jones for the Zinn Education Project. It uses the transcript of Robeson’s 1956 appearance before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

MAHA's response to the measles outbreak has been horrific, though expectable. Yet RFK Jr's op-ed, in which he advocated for the MMR vaccine, ripped apart his coalition—briefly. Derek looks at the responses to Bobby's moment of clarity, then contemplates what MAHA really wants now that their champion is the bureaucracy. Show Notes Dr Jessica Knurick’s video Vitamin A For Measles: Kevin Klatt Measles is not a harmless illness — complications include brain damage, immune amnesia, and death Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week we’re looking at how folks who associated themselves with the magical and morbid QAnon memes about the “coming storm” that would destroy the Deep State have become that storm, mainly by talking about it, and are now in the position to congeal an even Deeper State characterized by more repression and control. They’re doing it both as conspiracists and as conspiracy theorists would predict: as rich guys pretending to be oppressed. This opens up the question of “Have we been here before in the US, and what happened?” The parallels are uncanny. In the late 1920s, Henry Ford had his car dealers stick copies of The Dearborn Independent newspaper in the glove compartments of new cars. That was the rag in which he published excerpts of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Today another auto baron, Elon Musk, busts out seigheils and posts Nazi memes whenever he likes. But only one of them got a White House office. Show Notes CDC Statement on Measles Outbreak US Health Secretary Kennedy calls for end to deadly Texas measles outbreak Copy of STORM is HERE Data  LIVE: Kash Patel’s confirmation hearing for FBI director  Kash Patel Wants to Work From Home for FBI. But Who Does He Live With? | The New Republic  Kash Patel privately agreed to hire an experienced deputy FBI director. Then Trump picked a loyalist | The Independent  How Dan Bongino Went From Infowars to FBI Deputy Director | WIRED  How Trump’s Justice Department has gutted the government’s ability to chase public corruption | CNN Politics  123: The Red-Pilled "Academic" Who Named Our Podcast — Conspirituality  Darkness Over All: John Robison and the Birth of the Illuminati Conspiracy — The Public Domain Review Conspiracy Theories Abounded in 19th-Century American Politics | Smithsonian  Wealthy bankers and businessmen plotted to overthrow FDR. A retired general foiled it.   Medical Mystery: What killed ‘Red Scare’ Sen. Joseph McCarthy?  FBI director considering having UFC train agents in martial arts, say people familiar with plan | Reuters  What We Know About the CIA's Midcentury Mind-Control Project | Smithsonian  FBI Records: The Vault — COINTELPRO On campaign trail, RFK Jr. pushes 'bonkers' theory about CIA's 'takeover of the American press' - ABC News   Richard Hofstadter’s “The Paranoid Style” Can’t Help Us Now  Rehabilitating McCarthyism  JFK, Richard Hofstadter, and the ‘Paranoid Style in American Politics’ Ford's Anti-Semitism | American Experience | Official Site | PBS Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Former "race realist" Richard Hanania recently published an article on The Free Press claiming that all those Nazi salutes the right is waving high in the sky is really "just trolling." Derek disagrees. Show Notes Enough — John Ganz I Can Explain Why the Nazi Salute Is Back — Richard Hanania Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is life worse for women now than in the 1950s? In a recent interview for The Free Press, author Louise Perry and journalist Bari Weiss muse on just how much women have lost since premarital sex was normalized, the pill reduced sex to consequence-free hedonism, and Roe v Wade rendered abortion as common as going to the dentist. Perry calls this “re-paganization,” delivering an eloquent longing for a lost golden age of female subservience as Weiss nods along and smiles. It’s all very heterodox. Or is it? No mention of the impacts of Project 2025, the dangerous ascendancy of Christian Nationalism, or the deadly crisis of women’s health in full swing. Julian analyses their conversation to pinpoint how digital new media dresses up traditionalist right-wing talking points as if they’re open-minded, edgy, and brave intellectual insights. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Trump has decreed it’s the Gulf of America, and Google agrees, at least for US users. Rep Buddy Carter has introduced HR 1161, the Red White and Blueland Act of 2025 to rename Greenland. And then, of course, there's making Canada the 51st state. Pay attention to shit like this: it's a magic spell. Trump is speaking in the old language of the Discovery Doctrine. That’s what we’ll excavate today. Show Notes Zizian Killing Spree and Arrests Zizian leader denied bail Roko’s Basilisk and Zizian beliefs/practices Feb 2023 Community Alert about Ziz on Less Wrong Project 2025 Observer Native America, Discovered and Conquered: Thomas Jefferson, Lewis and Clark, and Manifest Destiny — Richard J Miller Trump calls Canada a 'very serious contender' to become 51st state  H.R.1161 - 119th Congress (2025-2026): Red, White, and Blueland Act of 2025  DISCOURSE ON COLONIALISM Aime Cesaire Translated by Joan Pinkham  Biography - Burnum Burnum - Indigenous Australia  The fight to 'free' the Aboriginal flag Common Methods of Annexation | Snohomish County, WA Doctrine of Discovery: How the 500-year-old Catholic decree encouraged colonization  Speech Acts (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)  Mexico's President Sheinbaum threatens to take legal action over the Gulf name change : NPR  How Canada planned to invade the U.S. (and vice versa)  Poilievre says Canada is broken Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What do we worry more about: the far-right beliefs of trolls, or the coding skills of the trolls?  The split focus on Marco Elez and Elon Musk—are they Nazis, or hackers, or Nazi hackers?— highlight two prongs of emergent fascism. The ideological/aesthetic/psychological on one side, and the technocratic on the other. We can call them the manners and the machine.  First, Matthew unpacks a century-old thesis by an OG fascist that says totalitarian regimes take shape when both are working together, but that ultimately, the coup d’etat is about seizing control of the machine.  Then he rounds off with a rant about how easy it is liberal-centrist discourse about manners to distract from the reality of the machine. Why? It’s because in the absence of a clear analysis of how capital and power work—it’s in the sphere of manners—that liberals feel they have a fighting chance. But it’s also exactly where Musk and Elez and Vance and Trump can ignore them. Show Notes A Doomed Democracy | STANFORD magazine  The October Revolution - Introduction | Marx Memorial Library  Alexander Kerensky Dies Here at 89 - The New York Times  Curzio Malaparte | Italian Author, Journalist & Politician | Britannica  Reading the Eccentric Italian Writer Who Tried to Cover Up His Fascism ‹ Literary Hub  Curzio Malaparte: The Illusion of the Fascist Revolution  The Californian Ideology  The Californian Ideology Personified - Truthdig  Cyberlibertarianism: The Right-Wing Politics of Digital Technology on JSTOR  175: Diagonalism (w/William Callison and Quinn Slobodian) — Conspirituality  Opinion | Don’t Believe Him - The New York Times  Welcome to Neokayfabe — Abraham Josephine Riesman // Writer   40 Ways to Fight Fascists: Street-Legal Tactics for Community Activists — Spencer Sunshine Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Education / Public service alert: Matthew critically reviews six books that define fascist eras and recount how they have been opposed. A kind of “here we are, now what?” episode that hopefully interrupts the doomscroll with the sobriety of some practical considerations. Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny (2017) Robert Paxton, Anatomy of Fascism (2004) Paul Mason, How to Fight Fascism (2018) Mark Bray, Antifa: The Antifascist Handbook (2017) Curzio Malaparte: Technique de Coup d’Etat (1931) Spencer Sunshine: 40 Ways to Fight Fascists: Street-Legal Tactics for Community Activists (2021) Formats range from popular nonfiction to academic history to pragmatic field guide. Politics range from liberal to anarchist. More feminist and non-white sources to be reviewed soon. Show Notes On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder  Timothy Snyder’s Bad History | City Journal  Robert O. Paxton - The Anatomy of Fascism  Is It Fascism? A Leading Historian Changes His Mind. - The New York Times  How to Stop Fascism  Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook   Curzio Malaparte - The Technique Of Revolution  40 Ways to Fight Fascists: Street-Legal Tactics for Community Activists — Spencer Sunshine Joyful Militancy | The Anarchist Library  Let This Radicalize You | HaymarketBooks.org  Being Numerous: Essays on Non-Fascist Life — Natasha Lennard DISCOURSE ON COLONIALISM Aime Cesaire Translated by Joan Pinkham Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Raw Milk. Raw Water. Raw Meat. Mallory DeMille returns to break down the raw trend in wellness. We look at the science and cultural implications behind it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The eighth installment of Matthew’s Five Big Questions Posed to an Extremely Thoughtful Person.  Friend of the pod Blair Hodges joins Matthew to talk about how he’s transformed the teachings of his Mormon upbringing into inspiration for social justice, how he grapples with the limits of the nuclear family as he thinks about community building, and why James Baldwin is so important to him. Blair has degrees in journalism, religious studies, and disability studies from the University of Utah and Georgetown University. He’s currently working on a research project on the history of intellectual disabilities in Mormon thought. Show Notes Relationscapes—with Blair Hodges  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“You don’t get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, start a religion.” With those words, prolific sci-fi pulp fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard prophesied the course of his life’s work.  The 1950s saw the emergence of UFO- and alien channeling-based spiritual groups, as postmodern religious syncretism transformed supposedly ancient angels and demons into benevolent and/or terrifying aliens. No iteration of this fantasy has been more financially fruitful, culturally impactful, controversial, or bizarre than Hubbard’s brainchild: Scientology. In the latest episode of Roots of Conspirituality, Julian digs into the fascinating backstory of this prolific author, revered as prophetic by thousands, pursued as a fraud by the IRS for decades, described as a cult leader by church escapees, and called an abusive madman by his ex-wives. Allegedly… The religion is a complex blend of self-help psychology, elaborate pseudoscience, high-demand paranoia, and alien mythology that, at its height, commanded 100,000 members—and is still valued at roughly $2 billion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Given how much shit the zone is being flooded with right now, you might have missed Donald Trump screaming about the supposed mistreatment of white South Africans recently. Last week, he said “certain classes of people” were being treated “very badly.” The trigger was a bill signed by South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, a former anti-Apartheid activist, trade union leader, and successful businessman—three qualities Trump doesn’t really understand. Like the Trump administration, we have our own South African on staff—and he’s legitimately employed here! Julian grew up under apartheid and left the country due to it. Derek chats with him about what life was like growing up there, and he explains the confusion that Trump is injecting into the body politic. Show Notes Trump vs. South Africa South African president signs controversial land seizure law No Proof Elon Musk's Grandparents Belonged to Nazi Party Errol Musk Talks About Elon’s Maternal Grandparents Understanding What the 2025 Expropriation Act Means Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As of recording time, RFK Jr has not yet been confirmed to the HHS Secretary position by the Senate. That might change by publication date. But if we were setting odds on this confirmation, we’d say put your money on Bobby. So, WTF. Bobby Brainworms will be in charge of US public health, and its influence around the world. Our years of reporting on him have been defeated by the influencer noise of the MAHA Mamas. But we. Will. Carry. On. Julian reviews the misinfo docket. Derek runs down the bureaucratic implications. And Matthew speculates on just how perfect someone like RFK Jr would be as the domestic health figurehead of a fascist movement, if, you know, that were ever to be possible. Show Notes Some Cancers Rising Amongst Younger people Increased Lung Cancer from the 1960s to 80s. Lung Cancer Rates Today Smoking Suppresses Appetite and Results in Lower BMI for Some 64% of Adults in UK Overweight 65% of Australians Overweight Diabetes Was 1.8% in the US in 1960 11.6% of US Population Has Diabetes Risk of Alzheimer’s Doubles Every 5 Years After 65 30% of Smokers are Overweight or Obese A recent study did NOT show vaccines cause autism, but RFK Jr. keeps pushing the lie. “A New Academic Publishing Model”: Right-Wing Dark Money Group Launches Fringe Medical Journal Judge Orders White House to Unblock Funding for NIH, Others RFK Jr.'s financial disclosures reveal millions in both debt and income as he awaits HHS confirmation Racial ‘Sterility’ and ‘Hyperfecundity’ in Fascist Italy. Biological Politics of Sex and Reproduction in  History of fascism, reproductive rights offers lessons for today Are tyrants good for your health?  When the leader is ill—or addicted to cocaine, meth, steroids, or hormones Five Pseudosciences That Fueled the Nazis ‘Hitler Was Centre of Our Lives’: Confessions of Nazi Criminals’ Wives | History | Nuremberg. Casus pacis  Theodor Morell: Hitler’s Particularly Odious Physician  Public Health Under the Third Reich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Derek meditates on a recent conversation about the left-right divide between Ezra Klein and James Pogue. Show Notes MAGA’s Big Tech Divide: Ezra Klein Show Going Back to Cincinnati — James Pogue Inside the New Right, Where Peter Thiel Is Placing His Biggest Bets — James Pogue Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the spring of 2017, Jordan Peterson first went viral by writing this in Canada’s National Post:  I will never use words I hate, like the trendy and artificially constructed words “zhe” and “zher.” These words are at the vanguard of a post-modern, radical leftist ideology that I detest, and which is, in my professional opinion, frighteningly similar to the Marxist doctrines that killed at least 100 million people in the 20th century. Remember that horseshit, or things like it? Did you guffaw because he was obviously absurd? Did you try to reason with his stans online? Did you see him as a crank influencer, or a dangerous political figure?  Did you hope his ideas would be beaten down in the marketplace of ideas? Or did you seek him out at a public event and shout him down with a bullhorn? Today, word salad like this is everywhere—including in Project 2025, now driving the Trump admin.  Matthew visits the antifascist woodshed to investigate the liberal manners, free speech naivety, and lack of community alliances that dissuaded him from grabbing the mic during a Peterson Q&A in 2017 and shouting:  “Your ideas are fascist and you should STFU. You are endangering trans people with your bullshit. Why do you care about how they experience their bodies, you whining pervert? Why are you inciting hatred against young people who want a better world?” Because… look where we are now. Show Notes Read the Memo Pausing Federal Grants and Loans - The New York Times  President George H.W. Bush on political correctness (1991) The History of Political Correctness—Lind The Pitfalls of Liberalism — Kwame Ture The Forgotten History of the World's First Trans Clinic | Scientific American  Jordan Peterson: The right to be politically incorrect | National Post  Bill C-16, An Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code (gender identity or expression)  Jordan Peterson is trying to make sense of the world — including his own strange journey Postmodern Neo-Marxism — Jordan Peterson’s Shadow   Doug Ford met Jordan Peterson, appointment calendar reveals | CBC News  Why are the Proud Boys so violent? Ask Gavin McInnes — SPLC   Jordan Peterson revealed he once earned $400,000 a month Antifa by Mark Bray Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Edward Snowden is largely only a public name thanks to Glenn Greenwald’s reporting, for which he was one of the contributors to a Pulitzer Prize-winning series for The Guardian in 2014. For a while, Matt Taibbi was considered the heir to Hunter Thompson when his gonzo journalism tore open the 2008 financial crisis and gave the public the term “vampire squids.”  Yet in more recent years, both men have swerved right: Glenn became a darling on Fox News and Taibbi was recruited by Elon Musk as one of the Twitter Files “journalists.” How did that happen? We’re joined by journalist Eoin Higgins, whose new book, Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left, dives into the career arcs of both Greenwald and Taibbi, and how they confuse and distort right-left alignments. Show Notes Sharath Jois, Heir to Founder of Ashtanga Yoga, Dies at 53 - The New York Times Sharath’s Statement on Pattabhi Jois’s Assaults: Context, Links, Notes – Matthew Remski  Surviving Modern Yoga - North Atlantic Books  Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left Eoin Higgins Morning Brew | Bluesky Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Part 2 of Matthew’s sit down with sex-work veteran and social justice advocate Esme Providence Brown to discuss New Age / wellness antifeminist, Kelly Brogan, and how her craven politics bolster the permission structure for Trumpian misogyny. They track her political and aesthetic journey from labcoat wearer to wellness pole dancer to BDSM cosplayer—a spiral through deepening layers of appropriation, disavowal of responsibility, and cringe-tastic ideas. Esme concludes with some deep insights on what it means for artisanal BDSM to be stripped of its political and consent-culture context, and who Brogan’s “feminism is a psy-op” argument really serves. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices