4. Courage in Resistance w/ Ben Case

# Antifascist Dad Podcast — Episode 4: Courage in Resistance w/ Ben Case **Host:** Matthew Remski **Guest:** Ben Case **MATTHEW:** How many Black bloc folks did it take to punch Richard Spencer in the face? Okay, let me see: one to organize the community gardens; one to infiltrate the local Proud Boys Signal chat; one to manage the bail funds; one to write letters to protesters in jail; one to gather medical supplies for the local tent city; and one to write up the childcare schedule for the strategy meetings... I’m Matthew Remski. That was an antifascist dad joke—did you get it? Antifascist courage takes lots of people working together, doing many different things, and physical defense or deterrence is only one tiny part—if it’s necessary at all. That’s what we’ll talk about this week with scholar of civil resistance movements and retired Muay Thai fighter **Ben Case**, author of *Street Rebellion: Resistance Beyond Violence and Nonviolence* (2022)—an excellent book. We’ll be talking about the meaning and application of physical courage in antifascism, and all the ways it can develop. But first, housekeeping: it’s hard to protest the structure of the entire economic system if you can’t keep your room organized. You can find me on **Bluesky** and **Instagram** under my name, and on **YouTube** and **TikTok** as **@antifascistdad**, where I post three to four mini-essays a week. My **Patreon** is **antifascistdadpodcast**. It’s a temporary paywall for what I believe is essential educational content. Today you’ll hear the first half of my interview with Ben Case; Part Two is already up on Patreon. In the Part Two segment, after the interview, I usually offer reflections on the guest, but in this case I dig into the Graham Platner morality play out of the Maine Senate primary, and what it does—and doesn’t—tell us about anxieties of masculinity intersecting with online alienation in the age of fascism. That Patreon segment will be exclusive for two to three weeks. Another series of temporarily paywalled episodes is **Antifascist Dad Basics** on YouTube, a workshop series on key terms we can’t avoid if we want clear conversations about fascism and how to fight it. The first one has just gone public—I’ll link it in the show notes. Lastly, you’ll see a **pre-order link** for the book this podcast is based on and supports: *Antifascist Dad* (North Atlantic Books), publication date **April 26, 2026**. Okay—Fascist Squish and Antifascist News of the Week. **[CLIP]** **REPORTER:** “Mr. President, if you’re declaring war against these cartels and Congress is likely to approve, why not just ask for a declaration of war?” **TRUMP:** “Well, I don’t think we’re going to necessarily ask for a declaration of war. I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. We’re going to kill them. You know, they’re going to be, like, dead.” **MATTHEW:** Let’s start there, because it relates to this week’s conversation about fascist violence and how to oppose it. Say what you want about Trump, but here he’s honest: he’s saying he’s just going to kill people. If you recall the “imperial boomerang,” this is it—going in all directions at once. Killing random civilians in Venezuela is of a piece with rounding up random immigrants in Democratic-led cities. Let’s check in on the squishes. Here’s a **Financial Times** headline: “We’re going to kill them: Doubts grow over legality of US strikes in Caribbean.” The lede says critics accuse the Trump administration of carrying out extrajudicial killings of alleged drug traffickers. So—doubts grow over the legality of murder? There are dead bodies. Was hitting personal speedboats illegal, or are those just “accusations from critics”? Similarly, **The New York Times** ran: “A Mystery in Trinidad as Bodies Wash Ashore After US Strikes.” Note: Trinidad is seven miles off the coast of Venezuela—so yeah, a real whodunit. The lede: “The U.S. campaign targeting what it says is drug trafficking from Venezuela has exposed Trinidad to the fallout: unidentified bodies with burn marks and missing limbs showing up in its territory.” This wins a prize for passive voice and strange construction. “What it says is drug trafficking”—so don’t bother fact-checking—and Trinidad is “exposed to the fallout,” as if we’re talking about a nuclear accident. In the antifascist category, shout-out to two related groups. First, the neighborhood watch groups in Chicago who come out daily to chase, obstruct, and verbally confront ICE agents, often causing the goons to retreat. Men and women show up—often more women than men—sometimes in their PJs, using their phones assertively, sometimes cussing blue streaks I’ve never heard before. Previewing my discussion with Ben Case, he basically says—paraphrasing—you can talk about capital-P Protest, but demonstrations are theater for the actions citizens can take when the time comes. They demonstrate that we can do things. That is the crux of people power. Relatedly, in **Venezuela**, shout-out to women invited into civil defense teams in expectation of a Trump invasion. They’re taking roles in medical support, communications, and food distribution. We’re seeing video of housewives, teachers, and retirees lining up to join local defense brigades—civilian women in uniform with semis, performing rescue drills, crowd-management, and first-aid simulations. I came to Ben Case’s work through threads from two guests so far. Last week’s guest **Mark Bray** pointed me toward Case while legacy media was labeling student encampment confrontations as “violence,” while refusing to call Israel’s attack on Gaza genocidal. And on May 2, **Joe Biden** gave a press conference amplifying that confusion. It’s useful to the state if these things are blurred. Here’s what he said: **[CLIP — BIDEN]:** “Let me be clear. Peaceful protest is protected. Violent protest is not… Destroying property is not a peaceful protest. It’s against the law. Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations—none of this is a peaceful protest. Threatening, intimidating, instilling fear is not peaceful protest. It’s against the law.” **MATTHEW:** If you listen carefully, Biden avoids calling vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, and shutting down campuses violent **per se**, but his opening frames those actions as violent and contrasts them with “peaceful.” He also names threatening and intimidation—which, if beyond First Amendment protections, can be illegal. But what he was often referring to were shouting matches where pro-Israel supporters reported feeling afraid—and then the creep begins: slogans like “Globalize the Intifada” get painted as “violence,” maybe even illegal. That label from above gave Democratic governors license to send militarized police at unarmed encampments with armored vehicles, tear gas, breaching rams, water cannons, and “non-lethal” munitions that can be lethal. It was horrible to watch, compounded by liberal discourse punching down on students: they broke rules, broke windows, were rude—so the public would turn against Palestinians. “Students should be nonviolent,” they said—the term carrying enormous moral weight. This was May 2024—eight months before Trump’s second inauguration; now, nine months into term two, we’re in mass-demonstration territory: people picketing Tesla dealerships (with a few Cybertruck vandalism incidents), members of Congress assaulted outside ICE facilities within their oversight, clergy hit by rubber bullets and pepper balls, National Guard camped in D.C., neighborhoods using ICE-tracking apps to come out and confront masked kidnappers. There are many forms of public antifascist resistance, and many questions about solidarity and material protection for the vulnerable; about what works; about purpose, pressure, risk; about courage versus deference. That’s why I wanted to have **Ben Case** on. He’s a longtime antifascist organizer and researcher—and a retired professional Muay Thai fighter—so he knows physical space, confrontation, courage, patience, and bravery. In *Street Rebellion: Resistance Beyond Violence and Nonviolence*, he offers rich ethnography—interviewing protesters about what non-armed protest actually looks and feels like, where it’s effective, where it isn’t, and what lessons of courage and solidarity people learn. On **Conspirituality** a few months back (I’ll link it), Ben and I dug into how the logic of “strategic nonviolence” signals there’s an expert class that “knows what works,” and it “always” happens to be nonviolent. Leading the technocratic wave is **Erica Chenoweth**, who with **Maria Stephan** (2011) argued nonviolent campaigns were twice as effective as violent campaigns. Case examined their definitions and data. He found they sidelined anti-colonial literature and used flawed data that failed to distinguish **armed** violent resistance (military force) from **non-armed** violent resistance (civilian force). They ended up classifying actions like rioting, property destruction, and sabotage as **nonviolent** if they didn’t involve firearms or cause 1,000+ casualties. How does this land in concrete examples? In Spring 2024 encampments, nothing—from property damage to scuffling with riot cops, vandalizing monuments, chanting “From the river to the sea”—would count as “violent” under Chenoweth & Stephan’s definitions. Even burning cop cars, smashing bank windows, or open fistfights with Proud Boys wouldn’t be “violent” per that 2011 study. Without clarity, the moral clout of “nonviolence” obscures this. Chenoweth rode that work to a powerful perch at Harvard’s Kennedy School and has acknowledged substance in Case’s critiques. But the popularization of a strategic-nonviolence outlook has led many liberals to believe civil resistance is only effective if people absolutely avoid the very actions the dataset obscured: throwing things, property damage, de-arresting, even rioting. Case makes clear: movements we think of as “nonviolent” almost never are. They’re messy and emotional, and they often feature various levels of forceful resistance that can catalyze broader support and galvanize dignity and will. That’s useful to keep in mind as authorities and pundits throw around “nonviolence,” and expend energy on tightly scripted, permitted parades like “No Kings Day”—benign, low-risk outlets that erase the historical synergy between forceful and non-forceful tactics, including MLK’s growing militancy and friendship with Kwame Ture. The liberal counter-argument is that parades offer accessible entry points for kids, elders, and others—useful for recruitment and building bandwidth. Both points are reasonable. It’s an exhausting but productive argument—if we listen across lines. As Mark Bray said, a range of tactics and intensities work together. We need all of it: rallies, demonstrations, protests, direct action—each according to abilities, to each situation’s needs. A realistic understanding of where violence comes from, and what “nonviolence” means in our bodies in real time, is a great place to start. With that, here’s Part One of my conversation with **Ben Case**. --- **MATTHEW:** Ben, welcome to Antifascist Dad. Great to have you. **BEN:** Thanks for having me. Great to be here. **MATTHEW:** Big question first: what does it mean to be physically brave as an antifascist, and does everyone have access to that? **BEN:** As I see it, bravery is being willing to risk yourself for something or someone you care about—sometimes in unknown ways. Courage is like a muscle: it gets stronger when we practice it. The flip side is you can injure a muscle through overuse or misuse; there’s a difference between bravery and foolhardiness, and sometimes you can’t tell until afterward. Part of bravery can be pushing that line. We all have different capacities to risk different things. Bravery shows up differently in different moments—you can feel it when it’s there. Rising fascism forces too many situations where we have to activate those courage muscles. That can strengthen us, but easily lead to overuse and burnout. We can’t change the context, but we can be aware of it. Since you said “physical bravery”: in a sense, all bravery is physical—we do everything in bodies. Using your voice, signing a union card, joining a picket line, or putting your body between ICE agents and community members—these differ in **degree**, not **kind**. So yes, everyone has access to physical bravery in different ways. Practice helps us do it more and better. Everyone can take risks for their communities. **MATTHEW:** Maybe “physical bravery” is a false distinction—since we do everything with our bodies. People who don’t feel that kind of courage likely access another kind. **BEN:** Yes—and different kinds of courage can lead to others. The more we practice—especially not alone, but with others, in conversation—the better we get. **MATTHEW:** Practical question related to your research and bodies in physical spaces. This is the era of ICE thugs kidnapping people off the street; 800 National Guard troops in D.C., stopping people for no reason; cops dragging anti-genocide protesters by the hair. Sometimes community members thwart interventions by putting bodies in the way. From your experience, what physical preparations and precautions should young people consider when they head out to protest or feel they must protect community members? **BEN:** Physical training matters. I was a professional Muay Thai boxer in what feels like a previous life, and I stay involved as a coach and official. Consensual, contact training normalizes the feeling of physical impact on our bodies. With consenting partners and good training, we normalize being pushed, hit, and hurt—sometimes injured—so we can better control adrenaline when it happens in the street. If someone gives me a violent shove, the adrenaline spike isn’t the same because I’m used to it. I can check in, stay aware, distinguish hurt versus injury, and adjust in the moment. That helps you stay honest with yourself about what you’re doing and where your values are in the moment. Are you changing something physically here? Is this for spectacle—and if so, is this a **good** moment for spectacle? Spectacle isn’t always bad; sometimes it’s crucial. Training helps you stay in conversation with yourself and others when scary things happen. **MATTHEW:** The keynote is normalization—so you’re not surprised and reactive, even when being physically assaulted. **BEN:** Exactly. Example: I was arrested in a protest where cops outnumbered protesters. Someone got grabbed and swung on a cop—punched him in the head. Terrible idea. That’s pure fight-or-flight. It only increases charges and police violence. With more experience, people can control instincts that will hurt us in that situation. **MATTHEW:** Another point: knowing the difference between being grievously injured versus restrained and in pain—and responding appropriately. I’ve seen the hyper-flexion wrist-lock arrest tactic—“pain compliance.” It looks extremely painful but is supposed to be calibrated not to injure. Training gives insight into what’s actually happening. **BEN:** It comes from martial arts. In theory it’s calibrated—but I wouldn’t trust an average officer to calibrate correctly in the moment. They have adrenaline, emotions, politics, constraints; many aren’t well-trained. We’ve seen “calibrated” chokeholds kill people. Still, if that’s happening, knowing your body and how to adjust can keep you present and thinking. **MATTHEW:** Moving to your history of street rebellion: many of us grew up thinking perfect protest never involves confrontation with counter-protesters or police. Where does that come from? **BEN:** A whitewashed story of the Civil Rights Movement—black-and-white images of dignified, peaceful marches in suits, clever signs—and then “society changed.” Those things happened, but excerpting them out of context erases sit-ins (deliberately disruptive), arrests, assaults, and the broader landscape of urban uprisings and imperial wars. When that one tactic gets taught as “what protest is,” we inherit the myth that orderly, polite marches make change. **MATTHEW:** I remember the suits and “We Shall Overcome”—the dignity of the outcome, not the messy process; the dogs and batons enter later. **BEN:** Exactly. Different contexts produce different dignities: the dignity of a peaceful march **and** the dignity of physical rebellion against repression. For a great treatment, see Elizabeth Hinton’s *America on Fire*, which centers urban rebellions as core to Black-led resistance against white supremacy. **MATTHEW:** In your book, South African protesters distinguish “little violence” and “big violence.” What did they mean? **BEN:** A student told me: throwing rocks or bottles at security while being pushed off campus is “violent,” but it’s not comparable to systemic, racialized poverty driving the movement—or to fee hikes that shut Black students out of higher education. That’s **big** violence—structural or symbolic violence. The word “violence” contains multitudes. When we use it for protests, we can confuse a shove with mass incarceration—or genocide. These are categorically different. **MATTHEW:** And when they’re conflated, consequences are severe. In Spring 2024, Biden framed campus actions as “violent”—occupations, broken windows, graffiti, disrupted classes—crossing into “unacceptability,” erasing that the subject of protest was carpet bombing an occupied territory. **BEN:** Right. On the discourse level, it traps us into arguing, “No, pushing isn’t violent,” which common sense rejects. If we must classify actions as “nonviolent” to be good, we lose the frame. Carcerally, the aim is to link graffiti to terrorism via slippery slope; once labeled terrorism, you’re outside the rule of law. That has severe consequences for people and for our ability to sanction a system sending our tax money to bomb hospitals, kill journalists, and starve children. **MATTHEW:** Back to 2017: a Black bloc protester punched Richard Spencer on Inauguration Day. First, what is Black bloc? And was that punch defensive, protective—what kind? **BEN:** Black bloc is a tactic: people dress in black, cover faces—an anti-surveillance method making it hard to ID individuals. It emerged with autonomous left movements in Europe in the ’80s and spread widely. It looks imposing and overlaps with antifascist organizing. Spencer—who popularized “alt-right”—was on camera being interviewed when someone ran up and punched him. The moment was meme-ified and widely celebrated because people recognized he was opening the door to fascist violence and state violence. Even if you dislike physical violence in theory, fascists threaten us with physical harm; sometimes a physical response is demanded. In “little violence” terms, that punch was offensive—he wasn’t attacking anyone in that moment. In “big violence” terms, it was defensive—meant to shut down someone advancing big violence. It was effective for that individual; it marked the beginning of his fade from public life. **MATTHEW:** Longer term: does that moment trigger backlash or smarter replacements? **BEN:** Things are getting worse regardless. Assessing any single action by whether it solved everything is the wrong lens. If there were one person you could punch to fix society, sure—find them. That’s not how it works. Actions like that can be part of a much larger constellation of collective and individual actions. As for joy: rather than moralizing “should you feel joy,” notice that people **did** feel it. That tells us about society—privatized healthcare in the Luigi Mangione case; in Spencer’s case, a widespread awareness and hatred of rising fascism. It doesn’t mean “everyone punch everyone”; it means contentious actions involving “little violence” have always been part of political struggle—especially given current levels of state violence and what’s likely if people don’t stand up. **MATTHEW:** In Part Two we’ll get into grittier details: punching Richard Spencer—consequences and responsibilities of direct, forceful actions. Ben talks frankly about what combat sports taught him about political conflict. We discuss physical and spatial self-knowledge and resilience. He points out that the ability to read adversaries during conflict can matter as much as strategy—and that sometimes dignity requires acting without guarantees. That’s a wrap for Episode Three—except for (drumroll): **Fascist Dad of the Week**. As I said, in Part Two I’ll talk about Graham Platner and his Nazi tattoo. But do you know who hasn’t begun to reckon with a bunch of right-wing tattoos? **Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth**—Fascist Dad of the Week. He’s got a very large crusader cross on his chest and **“Deus vult”** on his right bicep. The cross can represent the five wounds of Christ or the spread of the gospel to the four corners of the earth; in a militant context it’s a crusader emblem, linked to holy-war imagery. “Deus vult” (“God wills it”) was a medieval crusader battle cry justifying religious warfare against Muslims—and it’s been adopted by far-right and white-nationalist groups as a slogan of militant Christian identity and Islamophobia. This three-times-married guy with seven kids is directing the buildup we mentioned in the Caribbean. I’m Matthew. That’s it for this week. I’ll see you over on **Patreon** for Ben Case Part Two—or next week back here for a special solo episode where I’ll review a new book by multimillionaire mayor, Democrat whisperer, and podcast junkie **Scott Galloway**. Take care of each other.