Yallidarity (w/Nathan Evans Fox) [Introducing Antifascist Dad Podcast]
Hey everyone… special drop today: the inaugural episode of Matthew’s new side project, Antifascist Dad Podcast.
Matthew sits down with songwriter Nathan Evans Fox to talk about kinship, Appalachia, and the viral hymn that’s resonating across communities. Nathan shares the roots of his concept of yallidarity—solidarity rooted in labor, joy, food, music, and taking care of one another.
They discuss the myths and realities of Appalachia, the erasure of labor history, and the dangers of “bootstrap” individualism. Nathan tells about his upbringing in fringe charismatic churches, the connections between charismatic Christianity and Trump-style politics, and how faith traditions can nurture resilience—or be co-opted by empire.
They dig into Nathan’s viral “Hillbilly Hymn”: why the cops disappear when Jesus returns, why kinship always beats bootstraps, and how to imagine an abolitionist future that doesn't erase culture but reorients it toward joy, justice, and care.All theme music by the amazing www.kalliemarie.com.
Show Notes
Everything Nathan Evans Fox
Gaza Sumud flotilla: How Israel breaks international maritime law | Israel-Palestine conflict News | Al Jazeera
Gaza-bound flotilla rejects Israeli claims of Hamas funding | Euronews
Contact Restored with Global Sumud Flotilla after Israeli Interference - Palestine Chronicle
The Sabbath Year and the Year of Jubilee
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
30 agents ready to go with shotguns and rifles and you five six white people pushing me in the car.
I'm going, what the hell?
Basically, your stay-at-home moms were picking up these large amounts of heroin.
All you gotta do is be seeing the packet.
Don't have to open it, just accept it.
She was very upset, crying.
Once I saw the gun, I tried to take his hand and I saw the flash of light.
Listen to The Chinatown Sting wherever you get your podcasts.
The Chinatown Sting.
Hey everyone, it's Matthew here with a special episode drop.
Back in January, we here at Conspirituality Podcast boosted Derek's side project called Clarity Labs, which is the official podcast of Cyrus Health.
This is the 501c3 that he's building to combat health misinformation.
So he's got eight great episodes out there for you, uh, and you can download them on whatever pod app you have.
And today we are boosting my new side project.
It's a podcast called Anti-Fascist Dad.
It launched just last week.
It's also available on your favorite podcast app.
And if you subscribe, a new episode will come to you every Wednesday morning at 6 a.m.
Eastern.
And today we've got episode one called Yolidarity with the singer Nathan Evans Fox.
Now I think Julian is cooking up his own project too, and when that's ready, we'll do the same for that because we'll continue to work together and follow our skills and our instincts.
And as always, we thank you for your support.
So a fascist, a bigot, and a misogynist walk into the dining room at Mar-a-Lago.
And the maitre d'says, diming alone again, Mr. President?
Thank you.
I'm Matthew Remski.
That was an anti-fascist dad joke.
This is the Anti-Fascist Dad podcast.
It's episode one, which means I should probably talk about why I'm doing this.
It's because generations of bullies grow up to be generations of fascists, and here we are.
But also there's a deep heritage of anti-fascist young people and families and communities that have faced all of the problems that we are facing now.
And they learned how to keep each other safe while fighting back.
So that's what I focus on with my kids, and that's what I want to do here.
And today I'm really honored to say that my inaugural guest is fellow anti-fascist dad Nathan Evans Fox.
He's an Appalachian songwriter and labor advocate.
And he's here to talk about Yolidarity.
But I'm also gonna have him walk through the verses of his viral hillbilly hymn.
Here's one of them.
When the Lord comes back, Richard and Gotta act mean to be treated fair, all the livings are into our bodies return as heirlings.
Could already come a time or two, and they kill him like they tend to do.
So I'm praying for the mighty fall, no use in prayer at all.
So that's coming up.
Now I've got some opening show housekeeping for you because as our favorite fascist uncle says.
It's like I don't know how you can go out and protest the structure of the entire economic system if you can't keep your room organized.
Yeah, thanks, Jordan.
Okay, so housekeeping.
Welcome to all new listeners of all ages.
And I want to make a special shout out to the Conspirituality Podcast family, including my colleagues Derek and Julian, where for the last five years and over hundreds of episodes now, we've grown a really loyal following.
I've learned a lot of skills.
We've all learned a ton together, and I wouldn't be doing this without that ongoing support.
And I hope that this new project adds some value and hope to your ear and heart and family and chosen family culture from a more explicitly activist angle, as we all think about what to do about the problems we understand pretty well at this point.
Now you can find me on Blue Sky and Instagram and YouTube and also, oh, TikTok.
Didn't expect to tell you that.
Uh But I recently went viral talking about Ezra Klein using Buddhism to derail an argument about revolutionary history made by Tanaheese Coates.
So that was interesting.
You can catch me there.
All of the links for that stuff are in the show notes.
And also I'm spinning up a Patreon to make this sustainable.
That link is in the show notes too.
And I want to say that my aim with Patreon is to use it as a temporary paywall for material I really want to be freely available.
So today, you know, you'll hear the first half of my interview with Nathan Fox, and then you'll be able to catch the second half on Patreon right away, because it's already up there.
And it will be exclusive there for about two or three weeks.
And there will be other early access pieces like that as well.
So I'm really looking forward to this.
Really fantastic guests, and a little news every week balanced between alarm bells and freedom bells.
And also, lastly, in the show notes, you will see a pre-order link for the book that this podcast is inspired by.
It's called Anti-Fascist Dad, Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times.
The publication date is April 26th, 2026, which seems like a long way away, but it's not in book publishing terms.
And if you pre-order, I'm told that this really helps a lot.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Segment one, Fascist Squish and Anti-Fascist News of the Week.
Okay, so this will be a regular segment that spotlights three ongoing news themes.
So stories of rising or existent fascism, stories of liberal politicians or mainstream journalism rolling over for bullies, and then also stories of folks who are actually fighting back using the whole rainbow of tools developed by anti-fascists over the past century.
Just a note on timing.
The interviews for this podcast are evergreen.
That's the way I've planned them out.
And I'll do my best in these segments to make them timely.
But for this one, the dynamic I'll describe is very fluid and things will surely have changed by the time of publication.
So for the week ending October 8th, the news in fascism, although this is now part of a two-year horrible story, the global Sumo Flotilla is a civilian convoy of 44 sailboats with folks from over 40 countries,
including well-known figures like Greta Tunbere, but also many who are totally new to direct action, carrying aid to the starving survivors of the Gaza genocide, which is ongoing.
They are still in international waters, but nearing Gaza after a harrowing journey that began in Barcelona and picked up boats along the way in Italy and Tunisia.
Over the past week, they've reported attacks and harassment from drones, likely sent by the IDF, which have dropped incendiary devices and chemicals on or around the vessels, damaging rigging and causing minor injuries.
The attacks are intended to intimidate, it seems, but the flotilla is sailing on.
As I record this, Israel has changed its characterization of the flotilla from being a social media stunt to now claiming it has evidence that this internationally funded fleet is linked with Hamas.
So the subtext here is the IDF making a case for using deadly force against these unarmed boats filled with flour and baby formula.
Symbolic aid is Hamas.
In the squish category for this, I'm just going to lump in all the governments representing the citizens on the flotilla who have at the most provided lip service in support.
The intent of this mission is to open a humanitarian corridor to Gaza by sea.
And these people are putting their lives on the line, daring The IDF to harm them and to force international action.
And so far, it's mostly crickets, with one notable exception, or a few.
One of them is, and this is the anti-fascist news category.
Italian dock workers have staged a 24-hour general strike, but then also ongoing demonstrations and work slowdown actions in defense of the global Samood flotilla following drone attacks on the boats in Tunisian waters.
These union-led actions have gained traction across Italy in terms of popular support, and this politically complicates the government's pro-Israel position.
So it's a real moment of workers' solidarity with a colonized people, or as my guest Nathan Evans Fox might call it, yolidarity.
When the Lord comes back, I'll do my best to share my okra and cigarettes break every law.
I can't respect leave some tall grass for all the critters rest.
When the Lord comes back, I'll do my best to share my growth and cigarettes, to share my own cigarette.
So I'm gonna play a lot of these clips today because I just couldn't believe my ears when I first heard this song.
I knew instantly that I wanted to talk with Nathan because it was clear that this song came from this deep place in a part of the world that is too often, and I think unfairly associated with right-wing meanness.
I didn't know he was also a dad of one kid with another on the way, so that was happy to find out about.
And not every episode is going to feature an interview with a fellow anti-fascist dad, but I think it's a good place to start because part of this project is about pushing back against the many layers of Manosphere baloney, ranging from, you know,
Andrew Tate and his imitators at Fresh and Fit, you know, for example, to the MAGA brofluencers who podcasted Trump into the White House to the more button-down hand wringers who are trying to pull all the lost boys back into the respectable liberal culture of kinder capitalism, which is, of course, built on compromise and appeasement and the depressing belief that nothing will ever really change, so you might as well get your bag.
But back to Nathan's work, there's a caption I read on his Instagram.
He wrote, We didn't need an elegy.
We needed a hymn.
And here he's referring to the Hillbilly elegy, the 2016 breakout memoir by Vice President JD Vance, where you know, Vance kind of romantically exploits white working class struggles and trauma in Appalachia to oversimplify the causes of poverty and substance abuse, and his point is to really promote a bootstraps narrative.
It's not like he's, you know, calling for more social services or anything like that.
And it was on the basis of this book that he sort of gained this white populist street cred.
But then he turned around and surfed on that all the way out to Silicon Valley to sell out and become a class trader as a venture capitalist under the tutelage of America's very own Lex Luther, Peter Thiel.
But with Nathan, of course, we get a really different song.
Uh, a song about yolidarity, which is his term for the bonds of class and ethnic and all gender kinship that he says are the real source of hillbilly resilience, as one wave of industrialization and resource extraction have rolled through the hills one after the other.
Now, what I didn't know before talking to Nathan was that he's also this kind of perfect bridge guest between the work that I've done on Conspirituality Podcast and the vision I have over here, because as you'll hear, Fox roots his politics of mutual aid and neighborly care and freedom in his childhood experience of being in fringe charismatic Christian little independent churches.
Now, we're really familiar With how that vibe can careen to the right and go south.
And Nathan talks about this, frankly.
But we also know that charismatic ecstasy can add jet fuel to the Christian ethno-nationalism that helped put Trump into office.
But nothing is ever one thing, is it?
And what fascinates me about the power of spiritual traditions is that they can lead people into political chaos, but they can also lead people out of it.
So as you're going to hear, Fox's account of speaking in tongues and healing miracles and these tiny little hillside churches showed him unexpected possibilities of self-perception and growth.
But also some places were overshadowed with dangerous unaccountability that, you know, meant that he needed to move on.
But he also made that transition without throwing his old self away.
And that's not easy to do.
And now I think he's singing in a voice that his folks can hear, and we can too.
Now, two more points before we get to the interview.
In our conversation, Nathan mentions that we have to remember that all the holy rolling and speaking in tongues are actually the echoes of West African ecstatic worship, remembered and celebrated by slaves and then absorbed over generations into their iteration of Christianity.
So all the call and response singing, all the rhythmic clapping and stomping and spiritual jitterbugging and worship, none of it is originally about whiteness or wanting power.
Now, the last thing, Nathan uses an old Jewish term a few times that I didn't ask him to define and I didn't follow up on.
So here it is.
The term is Jubilee.
In the old Testament, the Jubilee year was observed every 50 years following seven cycles of seven years.
So it's a sabbatical basically, Now, what does the culture do during Jubilee?
Well, it frees slaves, it forgives debts and it returns the land to original owners so that you know poverty cycles can be prevented.
And the land itself is left fallow to recover some of its nutrients.
And I think Nathan thinks about music as a way to imagine what that year, maybe you've also heard the phrase the year of the Lord is the same thing.
But what that year, what that Jubilee year would feel like, but permanently.
Nathan, welcome to Anti-Fascist Dad.
It's so great to talk to you.
It's good to be here.
Okay.
Um, I have uh one big question up top for you, which is what is Yolodarity?
And can anyone take part in it?
Yeah.
Um, yes, everyone can take part in it, but you gotta act right.
Oh.
Um, and uh an acting right is not saying there's a lot of rules.
It's that you have to be um just about loving your neighbor and about making kin and uh and making sure everybody gets to eat.
And so it's really saying, like anywhere where you feel a kind of kinship with the best parts of southhiness, which are that like we have great food, we have lots of twang, we have great music, we have a history of resilience.
Um where you feel some kinship with that, you got people that you can have fun with, um, and also people that will take care of you and that you can take care of.
That's the olivedarity.
That's theolidarity.
I'm glad that you mentioned resilience because I want to come clean on at least my stereotypes because let's do it.
I grew up in Toronto and you know, very urban environment.
The first awareness I had of Appalachia wasn't bad, but it did come through the old photographs by Walker Evans of people in poverty.
And I could tell that the pictures were empathetic.
And that's his purpose there.
But the main message I got was despair.
I didn't get resilience.
I didn't get like this long history of labor organizing.
I didn't get, you know, this Vibrancy of church life.
Why do you think the strengths of this part of the world get obscured?
Gosh, where do you even begin?
There's a lot of intersections there.
The first is that Appalachia has a meaningful history of labor struggle.
Yeah.
And the first thing that North American culture wants to do, especially in the US, is erase that culture and suppress that and not teach it in our textbooks and do everything they can to kind of distance that from being kind of widely accessible.
Because you get into the history of labor and you start to really muck up the ways that power gets sorted out.
Yeah.
And the kinds of loyalties that people have.
And the other thing is that I think Appalachia is one of the places.
I mean, it is a place where there is there has been significant abandonment by the powers that be in the US.
And at the same time, I think that there's this kind of perfect victim narrative that people want to spin about Appalachia.
Appalachia is the oldest mountain range in the world.
This is something that like people feel like when you're there, you feel it in your spirit.
There's a kind of there's a weight of time there.
And I think that it's treated as kind of America's Eden.
Like this is the place that is the origin.
And so it's kind of this like prelapsarian white person that lives there.
Now that's all a stereotype, and it's and it's nonsense.
Right.
But I think that like you see this with JD Vance and Hillbilly Elogy.
If you can be the person that lives in Appalachia, and you can be the white person there, then you can claim what real American suffering is and what real American oppression is.
And it's not racism, it's not classism.
It's just these suffering little white individuals.
Um I think like contending around uh like doing things to kind of portray the despair of Appalachia is in a way about kind of spinning what a perfect white white victim is and who we actually have to care for in the US.
And it's a it's a complete myth.
So the Appalachians like America's kind of um mythic battleground.
Well, you know, I heard you say that folks from Appalachia didn't need an elegy, which is what JD Vance gave them, but a hymn.
And so that's what you gave them, right?
Like that's what you offered.
Well, first of all, he's the man's a complete fraud.
Um he's not from Appalachia.
Um, and his and his story, I'm gonna be honest, is not um so terminally unique that it justifies his politics.
Um plenty of people have have lived his story or something close to it, and uh, and haven't turned out to be venture capitalists who are um hell-bent on right wing authoritarianism.
Uh I would say probably most people have not turned out that way.
Right.
And yeah, and that the kind of the notion of an elogy is kind of like something is passed and something is lost.
And Appalachia's always been here, but Appalachia is just going to be more diverse and more toothy and more resilient than I think um a politician who has tremendous access to capital wants it to be.
He's coming out of the nurturance of the perfect white victim narrative, but then he's also saying the way in which you transcend it is by what, going to Silicon Valley or something?
Yeah, it's all of his bootstrap stuff.
Right.
When to me, the history of what is best about the South and about Appalachia is that there's been these systems of kinship.
And I don't mean just like like your blood family, even though for some people that's what it is, but it's just places to kind of go and be fugitive folks who will make sure that you're fed and taken care of when you're striking in a mill town.
Right.
Um, and they're not like there's this kind of part of the history of labor struggle is that people had ways of going and sustaining each other when the people in the mill, when the bosses in the mill were were just squeezing everyone for everything that they had.
Um it was never bootstraps community.
It was never like individualism that got people through.
It was always these kinds of systems of of what I call kinship, just people looking out for each other, where that's neighbors or blood family or or whatever it is.
A lot of that is in the song and the framework is that I suppose kinship is on full display when Jesus comes back.
And so, well, I mean, first of all, um what's your religious background and and and how did you visualize or conceptualize this this song as a hymn?
Asking how religious background is like open in Pandora's box.
Okay.
I grew up, so I guess I guess for some like important background, I grew up in some really niche fundamentalist, charismatic, unaffiliated movements, not even like churches.
So in in Appalachia.
So um like we weren't like snake handle or anything like that.
Although we could talk about how snake handle is like the most metal way you could be a Christian.
Um that's a whole nother conversation.
Amazing, yeah.
Talking in tongues, out-of-body experiences, demon possession and deliverance and healing miracles, things like this.
Um, and I don't really feel the need to litigate the reality of any of that.
I don't know.
It felt real when I was a kid.
I've moved on from it.
Yeah.
Um, but that's my background.
And there was a lot of really terrible things that happen in those communities that I will never go back to.
Um, I think I like the reason that I am kind of uh atheistic now is is more like political and moral than it is experiential.
Um that's a great distinction.
Yeah.
Like I like I get my best work done not belonging to those communities and not being made legible by them.
Um some people get their best work done in those communities.
Right.
Um, like the Montgomery bus boycott would have been really tough without the mutual aid that was provided by churches and the kind of motivation that that kept people up for a year.
Um so there's, you know, so I'm not going to paint with too broad of a brush, but that's my background.
One of the good things I really liked about that, um, and being in these kinds of like just really messy kind of underground kind of charismatic movements was that truly anybody could be there.
I mean, the folks that had the wildest life story were also hanging out with like the chiropractor who had the jet skis on the lake.
Um, and everybody was welcome, and they were just messy, like I could be seven years old and roll into church and be like, God told me this, and I could just shout it at everybody, and they'd be like, Amen.
And and there was just space for everybody to be who they were.
Um, and it was all organized around the fact that we all spoke in tongues.
We all spoke in a language that none of us um could understand, like didn't communicate to anyone.
We didn't even have an interpretation for it, which made the Baptists mad.
They all thought all the Baptists in town thought we were possessed by demons.
Um that was also funny.
But you were but it was okay that that you all would show up and speak in tongues, and that was just what it was.
And there didn't have to be like a translator or anything like that.
No, you could just do it.
You just show up and be as weird as you want to be.
And there's a space, and part of the thing that's really cool is like you would have all these like dads and khakis show up and out in the world, they've got to be like men on their job, and they're like dancing with ribbons and they're crying, man, and they're getting all this this gender expression out that they can't get out anywhere else, but they can be effeminate for God.
I was gonna say it sounds like a pride parade.
It no, I mean, I mean, it is now they'd be so mad to hear you say that.
Yeah, but and well, and the other thing is too, you know, I tell people like the first thing I was ever closeted about was my religion because like I had like when I started to really like develop a lot of like queer friend groups, it was like I felt a big connection just around like what it is to hide this thing that is really unique about yourself from all the people who think you're possessed by a demon in town.
Incredible stuff.
Um, and all the people who don't think you know, don't think you're normal for it.
So that's my religious background is that and that's the thing that I out of all the things I've sorted through, that's the thing that I cherish most.
And I don't think that those communities did a good job of lifting that part up and making that the thing that like really um was valued in those communities, but that's the thing that I took away from it because I think it gave me this kind of like good balance of like to use some words that somebody reintroduced, like I'd forgotten about them because they're like $10 words, but like this bounce of libertarianism and communitarianism.
Yeah, where like you get to be wholly who you are, and I'll leave you alone, let you cook, and also we're together doing that, and we're taking care of one another.
It sounds like it would be extremely hard for any collection of underground charismatic movements to build a kind of I don't know what you would call it, like an institutional framework for bringing that out to a larger level.
Like it seems to be defined by weirdness and a certain amount of isolation and maybe maybe sort of opposition to the to the broader culture.
There is, yeah.
And I, you know, I I was talking to some other folks recently um who pointed out that like a lot of these the kind of weird little communities and movements that are a part of have become I mean they they're they are still more institutionalized now, but a lot of them have found a way to kind of seep into also like the Trump administration.
Yeah, right.
Um so they've they found claims on power, and I think one of the things that's tough is that the folks that are trying to understand like the religious culture of the people in power because it really does motivate a lot of this stuff.
Yeah, um, they don't have a framework for it because it's very it's so like fluid and it's so kind of hybrid, and it's not about like the here's four principles, it's about yeah, here's all the weird stuff you can do, and it's just vibes.
Um, it makes it very hard to pin down and critique, and also they don't care about critique, they care about expressions of of like charismatic expressions.
You know, this makes me want to ask you whether you've got any thoughts about somebody like Paula White who you know can speak in tongues in relation to let's say a military event.
In the quarters of heaven, in the quarters of heaven, victory, victory, victory, victory, victory, victory, victory.
For angels are being released right now, angels are being dispatched right now.
Hamanda at the ata rakate bata sanda ata ambo osa tata rita eka bag.
I'm wondering the extent to which that charismatic energy is there a really concrete connection between uh her charisma and her politics, or is that volatile?
One of the things that I think is important when you talk about I'm really getting the weeds here, but one of the things that's important when you talk about charismatic Christianity is that it came here um through folks who had retained through black folks who had retained some of the traditions uh of West African religion and spirituality.
Right.
And so um, and they had done this despite uh despite enslavement.
And so, and then white folks found this, and so it kind of entered the the culture through um class connections and affinities, but then it ended up being kind of like this system of resilience about resisting um all of America's the ways that they erase culture, the ways that America puts a tax on your soul just to live here, there's a kind of stress.
Um and it and all of the systems of resilience and power that people had developed to be oppositional to enslavement to settler colonialism to racism to Jim Crow to all these things, ended up all that power ended up being transferred um or finding its way uh into the establishment and into the powerful who put that to use for whiteness.
So I think I think that's part of the narrative.
Part of the other thing too is that you know, when there's no point of account, I'm really getting the weeds here.
That's okay.
But when there's when there's no understanding of like theology, there's no understanding of intellect, it's kind of anti-intellectual, and and it's just vibes-based.
Yeah.
And there's a lot of that that I do like, don't get me wrong.
But the thing is that then it's very hard to have critical conversations about like why what is what is making you return to this loyalty instead of that.
And so it ends up being a really great way to obscure all of the kind of cultural loyalties you have.
So it's a great way of never talking about race, never talking about gender, never talking about sexuality.
Um, because you have to be kind of critical and self-reflective around those things.
When you look at the kinds of communication and loyalty that people have to folks like Trump, um, they're like, well, it's it's this and that and the other, and it doesn't make any sense.
And a lot of like a lot of like, you know, hoity to coastal liberals want to call out the contradictions, and it's like that's not the point.
If you've ever been in those congregations in those like almost like proto-evangelical churches and those kind of like charismatic, unaffiliated spots, um, you learn the kind of loyalty and you learn the kind of like flexibility around accountability and around like understanding and following leadership that you see modeled in the way that that Trump is is leading people in the way that people are receiving him.
So like I think I think Trump is like America's prosperity gospel, charismatic president.
Like I think he's the kinds of ways that he communicates and the kinds of following that he expects and that people give to him was modeled in a lot of these um in a lot of these like backwater churches first.
Well, then in the song Jesus comes back and he wants to do something different.
When the Lord comes back and gonna be no cops, you can cook your own, you can smoke crubs, all the boys going away, the birdie things when the Lord comes back.
The cops go away.
Why do the cops go away?
I'm just gonna I'm just gonna go through kind of line by line.
Well, because the cops kill Jesus.
I mean, it's that simple.
Uh it's yeah, it's like it's really that simple.
And and uh, yeah, I mean, I'm I'm an abolitionist at heart, and uh and and so the it's also about the kind of world that can be possible um where you don't have to have the cops, where there's enough housing, there's enough transportation, there's also enough capacity to look out for one another that like we can be one another's security, and we also don't put people in the kinds of um lifelong conditions that drive them to do antisocial things.
Next line.
Uh this one really gets me uh because I think it it runs really deep.
Uh why doesn't Jesus make you prove anything when he comes back?
Well, because uh because Jesus just walked among us.
I think you know, people forget like there were no creeds, no confessions until after Jesus died.
When you're when you're in the presence of a friend, you don't profess your friendship.
You just you just be, and they accept you and you accept them.
And there's a kind of like I think people get caught up on on proving their loyalty to Christianity instead of just being who they are.
There's a kind of humanism that gets lost by for by a lot of Christians.
It makes me think of how you know, growing up Catholic myself, there was a lot of things one had to do on a daily, perhaps even hourly basis to prove something about yourself in the shadow of the church.
It is it's a psychic weight that you have to carry to constantly feel like to to always internalize that voice that's like, am I measuring up instead of just being like, I'm accepted, I'm I'm with a bud, I'm with my homie.
The broader context that I hear in that line is that you know, capitalism is making us prove things all the time, like every day.
I mean, it's I hate to say, you know, you you kind of all these terms get beat to death by all the people that want to preach it, but it's the truth.
Yeah.
There's all these internalized systems that say like you've got to measure up in this and that way.
And it ends up just being like, you just can't, it just makes it harder to to know your own creaturiness and your and just yourself as you are and not um and not as you are is kind of like your worst critic and worst editor.
Okay, so relatedly, maybe on the masculinity tip is uh what kind of guy, because I think there's some cultural context here that I'm missing.
What kind of guy drives fast in a big truck?
Drives fast in a big truck.
Well, you I mean, one of your lines is I'm gonna drive real slow.
Yeah.
Uh I'm gonna go wherever the spirit goes.
And then later on it says, uh When kingdom comes along for nothing, it's just a long tape, a mess of beans and honey bones, the trucks are small, the trains are late, the men pick up their dinner plates, saying nobody sees it, the debts are fake.
The guns are all for shooting clays, the guns are up big trucks driving fast.
That's just um that's just people who have who have bought into um the militarized rat race of American society.
Um, you know, there's such a it's it's the truth.
I have yet to find somebody who disproves it.
That kind of like big truck culture.
Um, and not just kind of like I like trucks, but like I have to have this, I will sacrifice things in my life to get this.
Yeah.
People will complain about their Duramax payment, and they don't need they don't even do Duramax stuff with it.
Um it's it's like it's it's about I mean, getting back to proving it, it's about proving your masculinity.
Um, it's about feeling like you have a place in this kind of in in the chaos of American culture in a in a in a culture that like is built on the erasure of of everyone's roots.
Um and so you just go looking for anything that will give you some ground in.
Uh and it ends up just kind of making you a little aggressive uh and off-putting, And it and it costs you so much money and stress.
And I wonder if the aggressive and off-putting quality is the direct consequence of realizing you've been duped and you can't really admit it, right?
It's like you're putting all this money in, you're filling up the gas tank, and what are you actually getting out of it?
Like, does it actually really does it give you the oomph that you want?
Yeah.
Now, and I also say this trucks are fun.
Don't get me wrong.
They're very they're very fun, but they're not anybody's entire personality.
Yeah.
Um, and the need to be, you know, the the need to like the need to tailgate in the right lane with your high beams on while I've got my kid in the car and and I'm going like above speed limit.
Um, yeah.
That reveals something about the driver more than it reveals something about me.
Well, do they know it's it's Nathan Fox uh in front of them?
Like do you have a bumper sticker on with Hillbilly Him on it?
That's what it is.
They're targeting you.
Yeah, it's all the hammers and sickles I've got all the hammer and sickle vinyl wrap I've got on my car.
Yeah.
Okay.
So next question is uh a mess of beans and honey buns.
Yeah.
Uh what kind of beans?
I want to know.
Yes.
And are the honey buns uh made in an iron pan?
So uh the beans are penta beans.
All right.
And there's definitely some cornbread and some chow chow.
Okay.
Um what's chow chow?
I've never heard that.
It's like uh it's like a relish that can sometimes be a little spicy.
Okay.
But you just, you know, you just put all that cornbread and all that chow chow in there, and you get all these little bits.
Yeah.
Uh and it gets all in the bean juice.
Um and then the honey buns, they're not, they're not homemade.
They're from the they're from the convenience store down the street.
They're definitely the you just they're all wrapper and they got a little chemical taste to them.
Cause those things are good.
They're they're treats.
Okay, so if they're individually wrapped, like you they're just at the counter.
Yeah, yeah.
They're just it, and and somebody just bringing them in, just throwing them on the on the table, and you just hear all the the cellophane just crinkling.
The crinkling.
Yeah.
It's like audio sprinkles.
Um, well, I mean, it brings up, I mean, maybe the beans are cooked with bacon, but I wanted to ask if Jesus coming back if if he's a vegetarian.
Oh, so this is a good see now.
See, part of my my religious upbringing, we didn't eat.
We did the Bible diet, so we ate like, I call it like Christian kosher, just to also get at how um culturally kind of inappropriate some of the stuff was.
Okay.
Um, but like, so we didn't eat pork, uh, which growing up in North Carolina is diabolical to not eat pork or catfish.
Wild work.
Um just because there's a lot of it.
We're yeah, we're hog country.
Like we produce so much hogs.
Um, hogs and tobacco.
That's what we do.
Um, but so I'm not opposed to meatless beans.
I've kind of come to in a way appreciate some meatless beans.
Yeah.
Um, I gotta think that Jesus is okay with now, he's, you know, I don't know.
I'll have to consult.
But I would imagine it I would imagine he would come back Jewish.
Um, and so we would we'd probably not be doing bacon, but we might put some kind of beef fat in there.
But I think he would be cool with like my mom all putting bacon in her thing.
I think graciousness uh and accepting gifts is gonna be part of the thing.
Yeah.
He'll understand cultural difference.
You know, I need to circle back because now I'm remembering that you said trucks are fun and there's nothing wrong with trucks, and you have another line that I wasn't gonna ask you about, but now I have to, which is that all the guns are for shooting clays.
Yeah.
And I think that's in the same register, which is you know, this is gun culture, but we use guns in very particular ways, and it's really fun to shoot clays.
It is.
Yeah, I think like so, like I on the one hand, I say like I have an abolitionist mindset.
Abolition is also just about like nurturing the things that you already have that keep people alive.
Like abolition is deeply constructive.
Um, it's abolition in the sense of like you weed the garden so that the nutrients are freed up for the seeds.
Yeah.
Um so there's a lot of me, that's like part of the song is like I I'm so tired of hearing about these kinds of apocalypse visions that are about um radically erasing our culture and radically erasing um society because they're kind of annihilationist.
And instead, I just want to make it clear that like the the remaking of society in the form of Jubilee and liberation can just be changing around how we do things.
Like we don't have to be, we don't have to be different people, we just have to act differently.
And and you know, there will be some things that eventually fall by the wayside, and so far as people identify with their racism.
Like if if you're part of like, you know, uh a right wing group, you'll probably end up having to that have to stop that.
Um, but that's not who you really are anyway.
Like that's that's you proven a thing.
Um, and you won't have to prove a thing.
And so the guns, it's like we don't have to get rid of our single use plastic honey buns.
Um, I mean, we'll we'll have to get we'll have to deal with the plastic.
But like we won't have to get rid of the fact that we like these stupid little honey buns.
We won't have to get rid of the fact that we like shooting guns.
We won't have to get rid of the fact that we like that we like trucks and we find them useful in our day-to-day life.
Um they'll just be integrated into a way of living that makes sure everyone's fed and that we have fun and we have joy and that people are cared for, um, and that our our way of life is not oriented towards perpetuating violence.
Okay, so that is half of my conversation with Nathan Fox, another anti-fascist dad.
Of course, we didn't discuss parenting, maybe we'll do that on a follow-up episode.
But you'll find the rest of our conversation on Patreon right now, along with some other bits and pieces of context.
And we get a little bit more personal in the second half because we're rolling off this pretty jagged line in the song where he sings that when the Lord comes back, you ain't gotta act mean to be treated fair.
And so we talk about how the generosity of hillbilly culture comes from a survival muscle, which when it's under the stress of forever work or forever war can also flex mean.
And I have some of that in my family history as well.
And then he finishes up with some great advice for young people who want to serve their world with music.
All right, so that's a wrap on episode one, except for maybe a drum roll.
Fascist dad of the week.
And of course, it's gotta be JD Vance for the inaugural episode, especially given the subject today.
There's a few fashy dad clues about this guy.
There was that famous podcast episode in which he talked about Trump calling him to offer him the VP position, and his seven-year-old boy was in the room and trying to show him some Pokemon cards, and so he told him to shut the hell up.
And, you know, then he's laughing about that on the podcast.
And the thing is, if you're admitting that in front of a million people, there's probably more going on.
But, you know, what we do know in the public space is that this guy's biggest contribution to Trump's re-election campaign was to spread this defamatory and racist rumor about Haitian immigrants stealing and eating dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio.
And it was a rumor that resulted in bomb threats and hospital closures.
And then he had the gall to go on CNN three weeks before the election and give the game away.
The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I start talking about cat memes.
If I have to memes create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm gonna do.
Now, later in the interview, he tried to finesse that slip up by saying the stories were real because they came from his constituents, but none of them were verified, and the town's sheriff's department said outright that it was all a lie.
And it's one thing to be evil and spineless, but it's real fascist dad stuff to look you straight in the eye and say, yeah, I'm gonna lie to you because nothing matters to me more than power.
So congratulations, JD.
I wish I had a prize for you, but I think your own empty feeling of grandiosity is gonna have to do.
I'm Matthew.
That's it for this week.
And I'll see you over on Patreon for Nathan Fox Part 2 or next week back here with grad student and activist Sarah Rasik on Encampments Against Genocide.
