Conspirituality - Bonus Sample: Antifascist Woodshed 2.1 (Punching Nazis?)
Aired: 2025-03-17
Duration: 04:59


=== Punching Nazis with a Question Mark (04:34) ===

[00:00:03]  Hey everyone, welcome to Conspirituality, where we investigate the intersection of conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience, and authoritarian extremism.
[00:00:12]  I'm Matthew Remsky.
[00:00:13]  We are on Instagram and threads at ConspiritualityPod, and you can access all of our episodes ad-free, plus our Monday bonus episodes on Patreon or just our bonus episodes via Apple subscriptions.
[00:00:24]  So this is a bonus episode.
[00:00:27]  It's called Anti-Fascist Woodshed 2.1, Punching Nazis with a question mark.
[00:00:32]  So hey, Patreon subscribers, thank you so much for your support and your feedback.
[00:00:37]  So if you haven't listened to part one, it dropped here on Patreon and on the main feed this past Saturday, and I encourage you to scroll back and listen to that first.
[00:00:46]  It focuses on clearing out the philosophical and psychological cobwebs that turn every discussion about how to resist fascism into a discussion about manners and decorum and spirituality.
[00:00:57]  And one focus was on a short episode in the life of my late friend, the Buddhist teacher Michael Stone, in which I tried to illustrate how the morality of nonviolence through a reductive reading of Gandhi can promote an unrealistic idealism among those who
[00:01:12]  aren't really thinking about the strategic goals of direct action.
[00:01:17]  And I invoked the notion of political bypass.
[00:01:20]  So in this episode, and on that note, I'm going to lean into the work of political scientist Ben Case.
[00:01:32]  To talk about how the psychological confusion over violence and nonviolence is rooted in a false binary of poorly defined terms that has been retrenched by an empirical claim from within the strategic nonviolence discourse that gained popularity in 2011.
[00:01:49]  Political scientists Erica Chenoweth and Maria Steffen essentially claim to have validated that version of Indian history that imagined that independence was secured through pure nonviolence.
[00:02:02]  Case shows that they
[00:02:05]  could only make that argument by ignoring a huge range of forceful or violent actions within resistance movements like rioting that fall below the definitional thresholds of their data set.
[00:02:19]  Case troubles the commitments of Chenoweth and Stephan and their main forebear, Gene Sharp, by showing how their arguments are generally stripped clean of political direction and that a lot of the research has actually been funded by the Department of Defense or U.S. foreign policy think tanks.
[00:02:36]  But I'm not going to end the episode on intrigue.
[00:02:40]  I'm going to end by dipping back into the positive social psychology of resistance by looking at how anti-fascists Above all, have valued working together.
[00:02:51]  And I'll do that by talking about two very cool movies.
[00:02:55]  New ad for an unexpected site for people taking 490 West this morning in downtown Rochester.
[00:03:00]  Take a look at this graffiti with the words, Who will kill Elon?
[00:03:05]  Likely in reference to Elon Musk.
[00:03:08]  It's on the 490 East off-ramp bridge to Howell Street.
[00:03:11]  We've reached out to New York State Police, the Department of Transportation, and the FBI since Musk is a federal employee.
[00:03:18]  We're waiting on a response, and we'll update you once we learn more.
[00:03:21]  So maybe you remember my opening last time with comedian Peyton Vanist saying, I'm not saying somebody should do it.
[00:03:29]  Well, this graffiti really finishes the thought, and it's popped up in a lot of places.
[00:03:35]  Coinciding with a growing number of protests at Tesla dealerships from small events in Decatur, Georgia to hundreds showing up at a Manhattan showroom resulting in six arrests.
[00:03:46]  Portland is a predictable hotbed with marches of a hundred but also one showroom targeted by gunfire that damaged three vehicles and shattered windows.
[00:03:57]  Lucy Grace Nelson allegedly attacked a dealership in Loveland, Colorado several times using Molotov cocktails and spray-painting Nazi cars on the building.
[00:04:08]  People have firebombed or sabotaged charging stations in Massachusetts and South Carolina.
[00:04:14]  And overall, there's been an uptick in reports on attacks on cyber trucks.
[00:04:19]  Predictably, reporters are regularly using violence and vandalism interchangeably, often neglecting to note that in all of the direct actions so far that I've mentioned, there

=== Head to Patreon (00:36) ===

[00:04:32]  You've been listening to a Conspirituality bonus episode sample.
[00:04:37]  To continue listening, please head over to patreon.com slash conspirituality where you can access all of our main feed episodes ad-free as well as four years of bonus content that we've been producing.
[00:04:54]  You can also subscribe to our bonus episodes via Apple subscriptions.