14. How to Talk to Your Son About Fascism w/ Craig Johnson

EP. 14 Anti-Fascist Dad Podcast: How to Talk to Your Sons About Fascism Host: Matthew Remski Guest: Craig Johnson Matthew Remski: Hey everyone, my name is Matthew Remski. This is the Anti-Fascist Dad Podcast. And you know what? I'm skipping the anti-fascist dad joke this week; I'm just not feeling it. This is episode 14, "How to Talk to Your Sons About Fascism" with Craig Johnson. Yeah. So, I wrote this book with young men in mind specifically because young men are the primary target for fascist movement and also because young men are specifically susceptible and vulnerable to fascist messaging and fascist ideology. So that's coming up. A reminder that you can find me on Blue Sky and Instagram under my name and at YouTube and Tik Tok as Anti-Fascist Dad. And the Patreon for this show is @ anti-fascist dad podcast where subscribers get early access to every part two of these main feed episodes. So, I'm putting this episode together on the day after the pointblank execution of legal observer Renee Nicole Good by an as yet unidentified ICE agent in Minneapolis. So, that's my opening sentence, but I just want to pause and note that given the crystal clear video footage of the moment, it feels disorienting to utter it with an awareness that the most powerful people in the world—those who can carry out a murder like that with impunity—are denying it. In this climate, it feels like those of us who wish to utter the plain truth are almost in a posture of supplication, uttering acts of faith, speaking what we saw over and over again into the void in the hope that we will keep the possibility of truth alive. And where do we say what we need to say, well, I'll get to the home in a moment, but in my conversation with historian of fascism, Craig Johnson today, we'll be talking about how young people learn and find community online in ways that make them vulnerable to fascism. A lot of that complexity turns around the chaos multiplier of the internet itself. Now, today, even as federal agents are unrolling the yellow tape around Renee Good's maroon Honda pilot smashed into that utility pole—it's a family minivan with stuffed animals in the glove compartment—our screens are delivering instantaneous propaganda from the government and incredibly weak and squishy headlines from major publications. To take just one example, in the first 24 hours, the New York Times told the world that the facts of the murder were "in dispute," that local officials were "contradicting" Christy Gnome and the president while also repeating the lying statements of various Department of Homeland Security spokespeople without fact-checking them. And it was by toggling back and forth between news platforms and social media feeds that I was able to see something a little bit more clearly for the first time. For all of the problems with Instagram and Tik Tok misinformation, and I'm really familiar with these from years of writing about online conspiracy theories, these spaces remain available for regular people to say what they see directly and passionately. Yes, people get their accounts nuked. Yes, things get taken down. Yes, you have no control over what is allowed to stay on the platform, but many things get through. And now, I know I've trained my algorithms to show me this, but there are all of my people—an endless stream of regular folks speaking directly into the camera saying ICE murdered this woman. And so I want to keep that capacity for honesty and directness in mind as I also think about what Craig and I discuss about the internet being a primary recruitment zone for fascists because nothing is ever one thing. Now, something I've been thinking about a lot since the news broke is about my role as a caregiver to our two sons and how they're inevitably going to come across the news of Good's murder and likely in a fragmented or superficial format. Like they might read a headline over somebody's shoulder or over my shoulder. The older one sometimes hears fragments of news stories from the YouTube commentators that he likes. They might come across an AI short on YouTube that basically stitches a bunch of mainstream sources together like Frankenstein at a fast clip and then offers a he-said-she-said gloss in a cold and sterile AI voice. But they're going to know that it's a deep story. And so my thoughts are on how I can slow it all down and provide honesty, support, and hopefulness as we discuss the murder of a 37-year-old woman. And this brings me back to the moment that I started this project because our older son asked me on the day after Trump's second election win, "What's going to happen now?" So the first thing in preparation for this conversation—and I don't know when it's going to happen—but the first thing that I turn to is the need to regulate myself to take a deep breath to prepare to reflect and absorb and listen carefully to the feelings that come up from the kids but also from me as we discuss the facts because there's going to be outrage, there's fear, there's confusion, there's sorrow, sadness, grief. There might also be some early defensive ironical cynical deflection which I think is perfectly healthy but it can also avoid the gravity. I believe my job as an anti-fascist parent is to share in those feelings but to not stoke them or exacerbate them to let them be what they are but then at the same time to hold a longer history within me that says yes we should expect the police in a fascist state to murder our neighbors and we should remember they've been doing that for a long time. So I think the first solid ground in the discussion is to establish what the internet can't, which is slowness, the ability to unpack facts and emotions in a space of security. And that solid ground is next to a visceral reality that Renee, as I said, was 37, a parent like so many other people they know, and the type of person you might look up to because it looks like she had the courage to stop her car and say something or to videotape these thugs. And I don't think you can share a moment like that without it hovering in the air behind you that you're just like her. You would absolutely stop your car to yell at thugs taking your neighbors away. Maybe you've even proven this by your willingness to be really loud or rude at protests. So, there's a waypoint there to pause at and to acknowledge, yes, that could have been me. That could have been your mom. It could have been one of your parents and then we'd be gone today. But I think that connecting that identification with this shared will to do something good to make a bet that we weren't yet at the get-shot-in-the-face level of fascism is also important. And I think I would really hover on the doing-something-good part because we don't know enough about Renee to know her intentions in that moment. But there is a deep dignity in doing anything to protest or obstruct that ICE raid and the dignity increases as the danger increases. So, as I plot out this conversation in my mind, I wonder if that focus on dignity might lead to a discussion of how hundreds of people then turned up on that street within an hour of the shooting to protest and mourn together. People who knew Renee are likely already at her house checking in on family or kids. They're setting up GoFundMe things and so on. So, the video is showing you these cold, desolate pictures of a smashed minivan and a bloody airbag and then it's playing the clip of the shots over and over again. But what's actually happening now behind all of that or through all of that or in the present moment is a huge network of people are starting to reach out to each other. They're starting meal trains. They're organizing. They're doing something because everyone knows how much this hurts. Everyone knows it is wrong. Everybody rises up in their souls against fascism. And that's what's coming from Renee Nicole Good's blood on that street. And lastly, I also always think about the mental health cost of doing all of this for the parent who wants to do anti-fascism because all of these moments in which you have to be a safer world for the kid than the world can be for the kid are moments in which you have to mute your own dread. And that has to go somewhere or it will come out sideways. And you know, without getting too wellness woo on you, I think stuff like this makes us ill over time. And so we have to take care of ourselves when we have private moments. Okay. So today I sit down with Craig Johnson to talk about why fascist movements so deliberately target boys. And his core argument is that fascism has always depended on young men to do its dirty work and that traditional western masculinity—which is organized around power, domination, speed, and violence—creates a particular opportunity and vulnerability. So, this isn't about boys being inherently biologically fascist. It's about how certain gendered expectations are exploited ruthlessly. So, we spent some time discussing the internet, which is where this recruitment happens. Because platforms like YouTube, Tik Tok, Instagram, Discord, they aren't just places for jokes and gaming, they're dense, concentrated ecosystems where a small number of creators reach massive audiences and fascist ideas slip in through humor and transgression and irony, often disguised as jokes. Craig says that racist, sexist, or anti-semitic memes are like ambivalent social signals because if you laugh at the joke, you can prove you belong. But when adults react with anger or panic to this content, it can deepen that effect by confirming the fascist narrative that these ideas are forbidden or oppressed or that your parents don't understand you. So the moment a kid brings a meme to a parent is this critical crossroads. We also talk about how the most effective response isn't punishment or dismissal ever, but curiosity and care. Because if you ask a child to explain the joke and how it makes them feel, then you can talk about how it makes you feel and then suddenly you're talking honestly about why cruelty can feel funny and these are all ways of slowing the process down. And we wrap up by wondering whether the same speed and humor that drive cruel viral content could ever be harnessed for empathy and justice and whether figures like Mr. Rogers could survive on Tik Tok. So those questions hang over the rest of our conversation which is now available on Patreon in episode two. Hey Craig, welcome to Anti-fascist Dad. Craig Johnson: Hey, how are you? Matthew Remski: I'm doing pretty well. Thank you so much for taking the time. So listeners will know from my little intro you've got this great book out called How to Talk to Your Son About Fascism. And it's written for parents and caregivers. But today I want to talk about the kid and youth culture that you describe in it. But I want to talk in a way that all ages can really grasp because this is a family show. We can curse and so on, but we want everybody to be able to understand. Craig Johnson: PG-13. Matthew Remski: All right. So, first off, why did you focus on boys? Now, are we talking about assigned at birth boys? Are boys inherently or essentially vulnerable to fascism? Are we talking about sort of like core traits of sex and gender? Craig Johnson: So, I'm primarily talking about cis boys. Primarily we're talking about boys who were assigned male at birth. There is a chapter in the book that's talking about trans kids, non-binary kids. But for them, talking about fascism is more like a warning as opposed to like an inoculation or a vaccination. The reason that fascism specifically appeals to cis men is there's a couple reasons. One of them is that fascism needs young men in order to do dirty work. They need them to go out and be violent and to try to take up space, to try to take over streets and to try to yell at people and scream at people and make people scared. They want that. The reason that they want young men to do that is that young men are steeped in western masculinity and western masculinity believes in—promotes, really—this affinity to power, speed, violence, domination, control. And so the closer that a person is to traditional masculinity or the more susceptible they are to it, the more susceptible and closer they are to fascist messaging. Fascism has always been the most male of all political movements that I'm aware of, certainly in the modern world. Matthew Remski: So we know who the audience is. Now let's talk about where they are or where they interact and that means talking about the internet which you spend a lot of time on. So we're talking about YouTube, Tik Tok, Discord spaces. I mean I guess the first question to ask is are these politically neutral spaces for kids? Craig Johnson: Yeah, I mean the simple answer to that is no. I would argue that there is no politically neutral space of any kind. Especially when we're talking about adolescence, you know, adolescents are not children. They care about, they believe in things. They encounter political messaging and they're beginning to be adults who have opinions about politics and opinions about real serious issues. The big thing here is that you as a parent, you as a caregiver, you might hear about them being on a Discord server, you might hear about them browsing TikTok and you think like, "Oh, it's just the internet, it's not real." Or like, "Oh, they just look at stupid crap, it's just funny videos or whatever." Look at those videos, listen to some of those podcasts, watch some of that YouTube content. A lot of it has the same type, the same valence of transgressive humor that older folks listening might recall from weird shows in the 90s—a Simpsons or a South Park even more likely. Matthew Remski: Right. Right. Craig Johnson: Transgressive comedy is big among young people and it has been, I think, possibly forever. And so the idea that a 12-year-old might be shown a joke that they know is not okay to repeat, but that makes it funnier, that makes it more fun for them. Of course, we can't be surprised by that. What's happening now that's different from the 70s, 80s or 90s is that those jokes are being shared not just to be funny, but in order to signal political ingroup. The idea is that if you laugh at these transgressive jokes—a racist joke, a sexist joke, an anti-semitic joke—that can draw you into the world the right way. And that's what we're seeing today, both in an organized fashion with content creators who came out and supported Donald Trump, but also in a disorganized fashion. It's just become part of how internet culture works. Matthew Remski: And there's just no sort of universe in which it's not an influential set of spaces. It's not like walking around in your neighborhood where you have the chance to have and develop your own thoughts about the world, is it? Craig Johnson: No. Online culture works very differently, especially as it stands now. One of the main differences between online culture today and online culture back in the 90s or early 2000s is that it is significantly more concentrated. So a lot of what kids do is that they go to one of like four to five apps—Instagram, Tik Tok, YouTube—and those systems produce extremely high viewership for relatively small numbers of people. This means that the content that they see is a lot more aggregated. It's a lot more concentrated. It's a lot more common. There is a counter-measure to this, which is a discord server. The equivalent there in oldie-time internet terms is a forum. There are a bunch of niche little discord servers about niche little things. Most of them are perfectly innocuous—dozens of knitting discord servers that are probably really nice and pleasant. Matthew Remski: And healthy to be in. Craig Johnson: Yeah, exactly. Online community is community just like any other. Many of them are good. Some of them, however, contain the seeds of something much more heinous, which is fascist messaging, fascist organizing or things that might lead to that like anti-semitic, racist, or sexist content. Matthew Remski: And it's intentional. Because you and other researchers have found that fascist organizations and actors actively infiltrate online spaces to recruit young people. What's the evidence for that? Craig Johnson: Yeah. Some of this evidence is by watching these videos and just seeing them. Other evidence is even more clear. We have archived posts, video evidence, we have interviews with actual Nazi content creators. A perfect example would be a guy named Anglin who founded the Daily Stormer, which is the largest openly neo-Nazi website on the internet. And he is on record saying like, "Yeah, my goal is to get the 10-year-olds. I want adolescent boys to see fascist content that they don't know is fascist content. I want them to be duped by it. They just think a meme is funny. They just think that something is like a silly kooky little thing. Instead, they are getting associated with fascist content without knowing about it." Matthew Remski: And not just algorithmically closer, is it that the jokes themselves have some sort of content hook that lead the viewer to consider the sort of next transgressive thing funny as well. Craig Johnson: Absolutely. They do them as jokes that start out not appearing to be about Nazism or fascism. Instead, the idea is that it's a joke that if you told your mom, she would say, "Well, don't say that. That's not okay." They want adults to get mad at kids for encountering this content because if the adults get mad, then the kid will go, "Aha, the fascists were right. My parents won't let me think these things. These thoughts are oppressed. I'm oppressed." It's an insidious and brilliant way to get young kids to identify with fascism before they even know what it is. Matthew Remski: So, that moment of the kid bringing the meme to the mom or to the dad and saying, "Hey, isn't this funny?" that's a crucial moment. Because it's at that point that the caregiver can say, "Actually, let's talk about what that means," versus dismissiveness. Craig Johnson: Yeah, that is a key moment, a real crossroads. Your knee-jerk reaction might be disgust, worry, fear, or anger. Instead, you've got to really hitch up your parenting bootstraps and say to yourself, "Okay, now's the time to be calm and cool about this." He doesn't understand these things; it's my job to teach him. And I can't teach him by being mad at him. The way to do it is to approach it through curiosity and care. When your kid gives you a meme and you think it's a pretty heinous one, the thing to do is to say like, "Oh, I don't understand that. Please explain this to me." Matthew Remski: Yeah. "I don't get the joke. Can you explain the joke to me?" Craig Johnson: And then they might explain it and you'd say like, "I don't think that that's funny; that made me sad instead." Matthew Remski: Let me run another sort of avenue by you, which is that the reason that cruelty here is—if the meme is, let's say, ableist or fat-shaming—people often want to laugh about things that they feel uncomfortable about or ashamed of. When people laugh at the disadvantaged, they're really trying to make themselves feel better about their own normalcy or status. Is that something you came across? Craig Johnson: Oh, absolutely. It's a time to talk to a kid about why this is appealing to you. Is it because this is something you're scared of? Something you're curious about? Sometimes kids think a word is funny just because it's a word they know they're not supposed to say. Thinking about it in terms of comedy, at its worst, is punching down. Kids have some cruel bones in their bodies and as parents, it's part of your job to try to temper that. Matthew Remski: Well, this is the thing that I kind of want to get to, which is that the humor and the speed seem to be a winning recipe for things going viral. So I wanted to ask you though whether you can imagine a Tik Tok style content genre in which humor and speed were bound up in the opposite, like empathy or a desire for justice? Is that possible? Craig Johnson: That is an extremely good question. I know that there's a lot of viral content out there that's like about a man giving flowers to everybody in the park or people saving a dog—that stuff is sometimes equally viral. When it comes to hacking these kinds of systems that often produce really destructive or cruel viral content to instead produce something that's palatable and human, that can be hard. Because virality and internet fame in general is fast and hard-hitting; everybody's a shock jock. I don't know how Mr. Rogers would do on Tik Tok. Matthew Remski: So that's the show, folks. Thanks for listening. In part two with Craig Johnson, which is now up on Patreon, we pick up our discussion on how fascism is made to look cool and how that might be sabotaged. Take care of each other.