Reading in the Time of Monsters 012 - Antifascism and Criticism

EDIT- I sent out a minorly glitchy version of this. But this one should be good.

On this episode, I talk about what antifascism might add to critical perspective. People commonly treat the antifascist attitude to criticism as, basically, a limiting factor, that you’re not supposed to like or enjoy works by artists you might otherwise be in the streets protesting against. Maybe I’ll get more into the specifics in a later episode, but as far as actual practicing antifascist organizers such as myself go, this is not the case. Rather, it’s the application of ideas to practice and the lessons drawn from practice to ideas. Left-leaning intellectuals ignore this at their peril, as we’ve seen in the embarassing spectacle of the hosts of Dissent’s “Know Your Enemy” podcast failing to know when a 23-year-old forum fascist, Nate Hochman, was taking them for a ride, and completely failing to own up to it when the extent of how badly they were duped was revealed after Hochman was fired from the DeSantis campaign for posting memes. The ways in which left intellectuals fail to engage with antifascism might be harmful for the left… but it’s damn sure harmful for my ability to take these people seriously. What do they care? They still get paid.

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