I sit down with historian of fascism Craig Johnson to talk about one of the hardest and most urgent questions facing parents right now: how do we talk to our sons about fascism in a world where so much political socialization happens online, fast, and without supervision?

I open the episode in the shadow of the killing of Renee Nicole Good by ICE—and how disorienting it feels to say what we plainly saw while powerful institutions deny it. As a parent of two sons, I think out loud about what it means to slow things down, to regulate myself first, and to create a space where fear, grief, anger, and dignity can all be held without panic or cynicism.

Johnson argues that fascist movements have always relied on young men to do their dirty work, and traditional Western masculinity—organized around power, domination, speed, and violence—creates a gateway. Boys aren't inherently fascist, but gendered expectations are easily exploited.

We talk about how platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Discord are dense ecosystems where irony, transgressive humor, and memes function as social signals. Racist or sexist jokes are designed to pull kids in quietly, and how adult outrage can sometimes backfire by confirming the fascist story that these ideas are “forbidden.”

When a kid brings a meme to you, that moment is a crossroads. Punishment and shutdown don’t work. Curiosity, care, and asking a child to explain the joke can slow everything down and open space for honesty.

Picking it back up with historian of fascism Craig Johnson with the question of why fascism can feel cool—especially online—and how we might interrupt that appeal without fighting on fascism’s terms. But fascism isn't just pretending to be cool: it’s popular, aesthetic, and subcultural, and it sells itself through speed, power, transgression, and a sense of newness.

There's a tactical dilemma: how to puncture influencers like Andrew Tate or Nick Fuentes without reinforcing their own status metrics (looks, dominance, sexual access). Craig feels, for instance, that jawline mockery backfires, and why we have to keep the critique on what actually matters: cruelty, exploitation, and fascist politics.

No one organizes alone: tactics are collective, context-dependent, and always strategic. We close on coalition-building and why real, lived diversity makes fascist lies harder to sell.

I end with a brief coda on talking with my kids about the attack on Caracas.

• (00:04:20) - How to Talk to My Son About the Renee Good
• (00:09:55) - Why Fascism Targets Boys
• (00:12:36) - Are Boys Particularly Vulnerable to Fascism?
• (00:14:39) - Are These Political Spaces Safe for Kids?
• (00:23:15) - How to Talk to Your Child About Social Media
• (00:28:10) - Hacking Virality

What makes art politically dangerous to fascism—and why does empathy now count as transgression?

Today I'm joined by art historian, educator, and curator Sarah Jaffray for a wide-ranging conversation about modern art, fascism, and the politics of perception. Starting from the Nazis’ infamous “Degenerate Art” campaign, Sarah traces how artists in the aftermath of World War I deliberately abandoned realism, narrative, and institutional aesthetics in order to resist authoritarian power.

We explore why fascist movements obsess over image control, why abstraction and disorientation can be politically subversive, and how artists make the invisible visible—in part by slowing us down and drawing out deeper levels of attention. We discuss Dada, Surrealism, New Objectivity, Otto Dix, and George Gros alongside contemporary struggles over AI-generated art and outcome-driven creativity.

We talk a lot about time: the time art requires, the time empathy needs, and the way authoritarian systems try to eliminate both. Sarah argues for art as witness, process, and lived testimony in the face of political dehumanization.

Part Two of this conversation, available now on Patreon, continues into practical guidance on aesthetic freedom and creative survival under pressure.

Antifascist Dad is out on April 26! You can preorder here.

About — Sarah Jaffray

Barron, Stephanie, ed. “Degenerate Art”: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1991.
https://www.getty.edu/publications/virtuallibrary/0892362651.html

Bauhaus-Archiv Museum für Gestaltung. “Bauhaus History 1919–1933.”
https://www.bauhaus.de/en/das_bauhaus/21_history/

Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” 1935.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm

Dixon, Paul. “Uncanny Valley.” Encyclopaedia Britannica.
https://www.britannica.com/science/uncanny-valley

Dix, Otto. “War (Der Krieg), 1929–1932.” Dresden State Art Collections.
https://skd-online-collection.skd.museum/Details/Index/334771

Evans, Richard J. The Coming of the Third Reich. New York: Penguin, 2003.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/297974/the-coming-of-the-third-reich-by-richard-j-evans/

Gross, George. “Background and Biography.” Tate.
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/george-grosz-1188

Harrison, Charles, Francis Frascina, and Gill Perry. Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction: The Early Twentieth Century. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300055191/primitivism-cubism-abstraction/

Hitler, Adolf. Speech at the opening of the Entartete Kunst exhibition, Munich, July 19, 1937.
English excerpts reproduced at:
https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/entart.htm

Holbein, Hans (the Younger). “The Ambassadors....

• (00:02:03) - Vanity Fair's Anti-Fascist Portraits
• (00:07:17) - Interview
• (00:08:22) - What Makes Transgressive Art Impactful?
• (00:11:04) - In the Elevator With Art That's Transgressive
• (00:12:59) - Art in the Age of AI
• (00:18:34) - Art and the Uncanny Valley
• (00:22:51) - The Shift in Modern Art History
• (00:30:12) - The Degenerate Art Exhibition

Happy New Year, everyon! This is Part 2 of my conversation with Richard Gilman-Opalsky on the “Communism of Love."

Love isn’t something to trade, measure, or deserve, and this makes it incompatible with capitalism, and how it gets distorted into obligation, sacrifice, and unpaid, gendered domestic labor.

We talk about improvisation in music, parenting, and politics. Suppressing improvisation is rooted in an obsession with control, predictability, and rigid developmental maps—hallmarks of fascist thinking. Against that are openness, uncertainty, and experiment as conditions of human flourishing.

We talk family and education, where communistic relations already exist in partial, uneven ways. What would it mean to de-privatize care—while recognizing, as bell hooks warned, that family is not a reliable site of love for everyone?

Richard Gilman-Opalsky at UIS

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Preorder Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times

• (00:03:01) - Piano Lessons & Improvisation
• (00:04:23) - Jazz against the Fascists
• (00:07:58) - Anti-Fascism and Humanism
• (00:13:56) - The Right to Not Control Love
• (00:23:44) - The Right to Deprivatize Love
• (00:31:00) - The Communism of Christmas