“For those still resisting using the term, for insisting that America is not fascist, I keep thinking of that footage last week of all the people in the detention center in Texas in similar outfits, waving their arms at a camera in the sky, to protest the squalid conditions they are being kept in. There were children in that video. I don’t know how you look at that and don’t immediately think of the Holocaust photos we all grew up with. Sometimes I want to tell people who aren’t calling this shit fascist: Okay, go to that concentration camp and scream over the wall, ‘It’s okay! Don’t worry, this isn’t actually fascism!’”
Greetings from the Twin Cities. My bona fides: I'm staff for an education union. Worked in labor politics (member-to-member, not a lobbyist) for just under 20 years. I'm also a union member. The local I work for is very left-ish. I'm also a union member. I have lived in MN since the 80s. Raised my kid here. And I've been around the work since I was in my late teens.
I want to add what I think is important context to Mathias' assessment of what's happening here. I also want to be clear that I believe that MN was always the target, and that what happened in LA, Chicago, and Portland were test runs.
Minnesota is different from those places in a lot of ways. We're smaller, and more isolated. We're flyover country, which means folks don't pay much attention to us - think about how much national press attention we got for our 1/23 general strike outside of niche news outlets While people were going apeshit over how cold and snowy it was going to be, there was very little mention about how dangerously cold it was, and there were 50K people outside for hours here. The weather here (and not just winters) forces you to learn patience and to build stamina that goes deep.
A lot of the usual tribalism amongst labor and between labor, faith, and progressive orgs don't hold up here. There's still some of it, and a lot of us have been working to address that since 2018-ish. Yes, we still have gaps and problems. And unlike a lot of places, we're actually trying to address that. We're fundamentally a pro-worker state. (A union state too, but that's a little different).
When folks that aren't from here write or talk about MN, you'll often hear "a deep blue state, in a red part of the country". And precious little analysis goes into that.
We're standoffish people (it takes a while to get to know us), but we know who our neighbors are. We'll push out our asshole neighbor's care when it gets stuck, and we'll shovel a stranger's sidewalk. (Because we know that the weather here can kill you, and that regular ice can leave you with a broken leg). We value our parks - not just cool state parks, but the little city park down the block, and we have lots of those. Outside of our cities and farming communities, we are shockingly white. And we have been aggressively pro-immigrant for decades. (Ya think people come here for the weather?)
But I really think, in this moment, what has made the difference is COVID and the murder of George Floyd. These two events, showed us that we had a choice to make in how we move forward. They also broke a lot of right-wing brains.
Like a lot of cities, mutual aid groups came together here at the start of the pandemic. But those groups were really tested over the summer, especially after the National Guard was deployed in our streets. What a lot of people either forget, or never knew, what how fascists came to our state during the Uprising. A lot of folks don't know, or care, that it was a Boogaloo Boy that kicked off the destruction around the 3rd precinct. Many aren't aware that in our Black neighborhoods, folks set up patrols (sometimes armed) to protect their communities from real outside agitators. And - I think this is really important - folks don't understand that the legislative wins that Walz gets the credit for was actually only possible because of those coalitions I hinted at at the start of this.
We also learned a lot after the Uprising. Especially about how groups are marginalized and infiltrated. We learned to think more deeply about tactics, and keeping each other safe. And we didn't wait to see what would happen after the 2024 election. We knew we were going to be a target. Not just because of Trump's insane levels of entitlement, but because we lived through the response to us in 2020.
Basic organizing principles aren't just for getting a good contract. They translate pretty well to politics (if you actually focus on the politics and not just elections). One thing the boss knows is that if you want to break worker power, you go after the tightest, strongest one. You can break the weak unions, the business unions left and right, but you don't get rid of unionism that way. We may be a smaller population, but we are also deeply rooted in shared values and strong relationships in ways that larger populations are not. They have to break us here, if they want the rest of you to fall.
I spend a good part of each day anxious. I've cried every day in my car since the occupation started. I worry every day for kids that were already reeling from the pandemic who are now breathing in tear gas outside their school. I worry about what will happen when the leg session starts in two weeks (don't forget, we had our Speaker murdered, and another long-time state Senator badly injured). And every day, my fellow Minnesotans give me hope.
“America” has always been racist. This was true long before there was even a thought of the USA. But racism has never totally defined us.
“America” has always been authoritarian. This was true before the US, but of course “America” has also always been anti-authoritarian.
MAGA is fascist. But fascism does not totally define it as a morphing, growing, shrinking, and dangerous movement. The same is even more true of every individual who voted for Trump three times in a row, has had a Trump sign in their yard for 12 years, or styles herself as MAGA.
Shame plays an important role in the thoughts and feelings of MAGAism. So do guilt, fear, and rage. These types of emotions play an important role in fascism too, lest we forget that MAGAism is just one more form of fascism. It IS just one more form of fascism, and it won’t be the last.
I like to do visibility protests on corners where the traffic is forced to stop. I am not a quiet Quaker type protester. I like to push out my little sign (“Think Trump will Stop with Migrants?”) and make eye contact while I point at the sign and then point right back at them. I like to do that while making sure they can see my big sign hanging on my neck (“State Destruction led to the Holocaust/ Don’t think it didn’t!”) I like to get negative reactions. I probably like negative reactions better than positive ones.
And did I say I am not a Quaker? I don’t like to even let them think they can have the last word. If they call me a loser, I taunt them to tell the world what a winner they are. If they call me a retard, I beg them to show everybody how smart they are, how knowledgeable, how capable, how wise, how hygienic. On the street corner no one has YET been able to out “shit talk” me.
Oh, right… SHAME! If they say the right wrong things I do talk about shame. I ask them if their parents would be proud of them. Are their children? If they get loud, I get louder. I can just intone the single word “SHAME” like barefoot and sun-drunk prophet. Or I can sing to them, “IF you’re a Nazi and you know it, stomp your foot. If you’re a Nazi and you know it, don’t be afraid to show it, stomp your foot….” I tend to have more fun than they do.
I don’t hate the trumpers. I kind of like them. I’ve shaken hands with some after “abusing” them for a while. I’ve cheerfully held their signs that say “I am Charlie Kirk.” “Well, I’m way worse,” I’d say, “so of course I’ll hold this sign. I am Spartacus too.” MAGA ladies have asked me to take their group photo with one of their phones. I like them, but they know I can give them a hard time too. It’s not all in good fun, but it’s not all bad either.
My take on most trumpers is that they have been shamed all their lives. They’ve been tricked and manipulated. Trump acts out for them in a way that makes them feel good even as it makes them feel bad, kind of they way a triple snort of absinthe warms and numbs, lightens and weighs, uplifts and crushes down.
I know that if Trump wins, it will not really make them feel good for more than a minute or so. I know this just like I know how goading them to sputter with rage (or to reach for their gun) gives me only the most fleeting and momentary thrill.
"… if you’re in a bar, and a dude comes in shouting racial slurs and sieg-heiling, you understand that that dude poses an urgent threat in need of confronting. I think a lot of Americans in that situation would tell that Nazi to leave, and if he refused, *physically force* him to leave. … They always pose an urgent threat."
Name them, shame them, shun them, run them out. Not a moment's peace. Ever.
In regard to the last paragraph of this excellent interview, I think it’s a badge of honor to not be hired by The NY Times. I was a loyal subscriber to the Times for many years, but no longer.
Chris Hedges was fired from the NY Times 20 years ago. Hamilton Nolan and Chris Hedges are the best and bravest of the independent journalists we follow and support.
I noticed Mathias contributes to The Nation. I wonder if he's had the chance to ask Katha Pollitt why she signed the Harper's Letter. I mean, because she's a gullible, elderly coward, obviously, but I'd like to hear about that in her own words.
Great interview and I will definitely be buying this book, but Mr. Mathias’ take on free speech challenges my stance on it. I grasp the premise of denying a platform for Nazis or like minded groups. And it’s true that the facist right will do whatever to silence dissenting voices. But we all agree that is wrong. I also agree, however, that pundits do not need to remain neutral to be considered objective. When facist vitriol is spewed, it should be incumbent on whomever is presenting any facist propaganda to vehemently condemn it, whether it’s Rachal Madow or David Muir.
This article clarified that antifa's view of "fascism" in America, is essentially a conspiracy theory. It's all cherry picking and ascribing the worst motives to yield the narrative.
And let's not quibble over small groups of true fascists, racists, whatever. That's not the charge nor the focus of the accusation -- which is to smear the entire political right.
"I wrote recently for the Nation about how liberals and centrists and Democratic politicians have this annoying habit of saying that antifa doesn’t even exist—that it’s just an “idea” and that “antifa” is simply a shortening of antifascist. I just wrote a whole book about antifa. It exists"
!!!!
I was one of them until just now! And I'm a social democrat
So they actually EXIST? Organizationally...
Thank fucking GOD! this changes my thinking big time. There is something tangible to be part OF...
So basically antifa is TWO things. The SENTIMENT AND actual on the ground organizing and action
I mean the fact that he more or less admits to not knowing what antifa was before Charlottesville is very telling. The whole modern conception of antifa is broken because it's all generated by people who were not involved in any of these politics prior to the first Trump campaign.
When I was making my bones as an activist teenager in the 1990s, the idea that everyone would agree that antifa was simply an acknowledged positive good within the radical left would have been perceived as crazy. This guy betrays no understanding whatsoever that antifa was extremely controversial WITHIN THE RADICAL LEFT for most of the history of the term. Back in late '90s anti globalization organizing, in anti-Iraq war organizing, he presence of antifa and black bloc tactics were extraordinarily controversial, and no, not among the more moderate aspects of those movements, but precisely among the most radical among them. In particular, there was a long-standing and fervent critique that antifa reflected the worst kind of rich white kid radical activism, with many Black activists and other minority activists making the sensible argument that antifa tactics inevitably increased police violence in a way that was felt most acutely by minority activists on the ground, and not by antifa members themselves. That doesn't mean that we should have a simplistic attitude towards antifa now, that doesn't mean that antifa tactics should be rejected out of hand. But it does speak to the complete hollowing out of left theory and left history that has attended the move of the radical left into very online territory. Like, it's, it's worthwhile and necessary to point out that this lockstep assumption that everyone on the left has to accept antifa as being our beautiful righteous soldiers would have appeared comical to an earlier generation of more seasoned and more well-read activists. I say antifa tactics because that's what antifa is, a set of tactics, not a group, political party, or intellectual tradition. And all tactics are only as good as their application in a particular moment or protest or situation. But precisely because the radical left is now made up of people who learned about it on Twitter and Tumblr and has no access to radical history or theory at all, everyone just gloms onto the idea that we all have an obligation to support antifa tactics when in the past we had vastly more internal debate about these concerns. It's a real falling off.
And frankly, I just think this is indicative of implementations of your whole approach Hamilton you so often write with this same sort of moral binarism that suggests settled questions where the history of the left demonstrates only controversy and dispute.
Owing for the record Richard Spencer won. Trump is President now. We're living in the United States that you yourself call fascist. So I guess the fact that somebody punched him in the jaw at a protest didn't actually make the slightest bit of difference at all in the end. Did it?
Every time there is an upsurge in activity and many thousands of people join the ranks of the activist left, of course most newer people will have little understanding of leftist principles or history. The job of the old guard is not just to decry it but to do something about it.
Notice that only people with the morals of a sociopath insist on 'moral binarism'
A take I had a few years ago: ALL people from the kindest to the most vile know the difference between good and evil...right and wrong. Its their relationship and dedication to one side or the other that differs.
OF COURSE you can go into some interesting weeds playing infinite variations on the trolley car problem but most moral 'answers' to moral questions? Are REAL easy to see.
It’s why I don’t have much patience with tribal duopoly wars, nor left/right discourse beyond a pox on both houses. There is a moral component to capitalism, and it is, on the spectrum, almost always on the wrong/evil side of things. Hard as it might be, we must move beyond it as the dominate paradigm.
“For those still resisting using the term, for insisting that America is not fascist, I keep thinking of that footage last week of all the people in the detention center in Texas in similar outfits, waving their arms at a camera in the sky, to protest the squalid conditions they are being kept in. There were children in that video. I don’t know how you look at that and don’t immediately think of the Holocaust photos we all grew up with. Sometimes I want to tell people who aren’t calling this shit fascist: Okay, go to that concentration camp and scream over the wall, ‘It’s okay! Don’t worry, this isn’t actually fascism!’”
Exactly.
This is the most encouraging material I have read in weeks. Thank you.
Greetings from the Twin Cities. My bona fides: I'm staff for an education union. Worked in labor politics (member-to-member, not a lobbyist) for just under 20 years. I'm also a union member. The local I work for is very left-ish. I'm also a union member. I have lived in MN since the 80s. Raised my kid here. And I've been around the work since I was in my late teens.
I want to add what I think is important context to Mathias' assessment of what's happening here. I also want to be clear that I believe that MN was always the target, and that what happened in LA, Chicago, and Portland were test runs.
Minnesota is different from those places in a lot of ways. We're smaller, and more isolated. We're flyover country, which means folks don't pay much attention to us - think about how much national press attention we got for our 1/23 general strike outside of niche news outlets While people were going apeshit over how cold and snowy it was going to be, there was very little mention about how dangerously cold it was, and there were 50K people outside for hours here. The weather here (and not just winters) forces you to learn patience and to build stamina that goes deep.
A lot of the usual tribalism amongst labor and between labor, faith, and progressive orgs don't hold up here. There's still some of it, and a lot of us have been working to address that since 2018-ish. Yes, we still have gaps and problems. And unlike a lot of places, we're actually trying to address that. We're fundamentally a pro-worker state. (A union state too, but that's a little different).
When folks that aren't from here write or talk about MN, you'll often hear "a deep blue state, in a red part of the country". And precious little analysis goes into that.
We're standoffish people (it takes a while to get to know us), but we know who our neighbors are. We'll push out our asshole neighbor's care when it gets stuck, and we'll shovel a stranger's sidewalk. (Because we know that the weather here can kill you, and that regular ice can leave you with a broken leg). We value our parks - not just cool state parks, but the little city park down the block, and we have lots of those. Outside of our cities and farming communities, we are shockingly white. And we have been aggressively pro-immigrant for decades. (Ya think people come here for the weather?)
But I really think, in this moment, what has made the difference is COVID and the murder of George Floyd. These two events, showed us that we had a choice to make in how we move forward. They also broke a lot of right-wing brains.
Like a lot of cities, mutual aid groups came together here at the start of the pandemic. But those groups were really tested over the summer, especially after the National Guard was deployed in our streets. What a lot of people either forget, or never knew, what how fascists came to our state during the Uprising. A lot of folks don't know, or care, that it was a Boogaloo Boy that kicked off the destruction around the 3rd precinct. Many aren't aware that in our Black neighborhoods, folks set up patrols (sometimes armed) to protect their communities from real outside agitators. And - I think this is really important - folks don't understand that the legislative wins that Walz gets the credit for was actually only possible because of those coalitions I hinted at at the start of this.
We also learned a lot after the Uprising. Especially about how groups are marginalized and infiltrated. We learned to think more deeply about tactics, and keeping each other safe. And we didn't wait to see what would happen after the 2024 election. We knew we were going to be a target. Not just because of Trump's insane levels of entitlement, but because we lived through the response to us in 2020.
Basic organizing principles aren't just for getting a good contract. They translate pretty well to politics (if you actually focus on the politics and not just elections). One thing the boss knows is that if you want to break worker power, you go after the tightest, strongest one. You can break the weak unions, the business unions left and right, but you don't get rid of unionism that way. We may be a smaller population, but we are also deeply rooted in shared values and strong relationships in ways that larger populations are not. They have to break us here, if they want the rest of you to fall.
I spend a good part of each day anxious. I've cried every day in my car since the occupation started. I worry every day for kids that were already reeling from the pandemic who are now breathing in tear gas outside their school. I worry about what will happen when the leg session starts in two weeks (don't forget, we had our Speaker murdered, and another long-time state Senator badly injured). And every day, my fellow Minnesotans give me hope.
“America” has always been racist. This was true long before there was even a thought of the USA. But racism has never totally defined us.
“America” has always been authoritarian. This was true before the US, but of course “America” has also always been anti-authoritarian.
MAGA is fascist. But fascism does not totally define it as a morphing, growing, shrinking, and dangerous movement. The same is even more true of every individual who voted for Trump three times in a row, has had a Trump sign in their yard for 12 years, or styles herself as MAGA.
Shame plays an important role in the thoughts and feelings of MAGAism. So do guilt, fear, and rage. These types of emotions play an important role in fascism too, lest we forget that MAGAism is just one more form of fascism. It IS just one more form of fascism, and it won’t be the last.
I like to do visibility protests on corners where the traffic is forced to stop. I am not a quiet Quaker type protester. I like to push out my little sign (“Think Trump will Stop with Migrants?”) and make eye contact while I point at the sign and then point right back at them. I like to do that while making sure they can see my big sign hanging on my neck (“State Destruction led to the Holocaust/ Don’t think it didn’t!”) I like to get negative reactions. I probably like negative reactions better than positive ones.
And did I say I am not a Quaker? I don’t like to even let them think they can have the last word. If they call me a loser, I taunt them to tell the world what a winner they are. If they call me a retard, I beg them to show everybody how smart they are, how knowledgeable, how capable, how wise, how hygienic. On the street corner no one has YET been able to out “shit talk” me.
Oh, right… SHAME! If they say the right wrong things I do talk about shame. I ask them if their parents would be proud of them. Are their children? If they get loud, I get louder. I can just intone the single word “SHAME” like barefoot and sun-drunk prophet. Or I can sing to them, “IF you’re a Nazi and you know it, stomp your foot. If you’re a Nazi and you know it, don’t be afraid to show it, stomp your foot….” I tend to have more fun than they do.
I don’t hate the trumpers. I kind of like them. I’ve shaken hands with some after “abusing” them for a while. I’ve cheerfully held their signs that say “I am Charlie Kirk.” “Well, I’m way worse,” I’d say, “so of course I’ll hold this sign. I am Spartacus too.” MAGA ladies have asked me to take their group photo with one of their phones. I like them, but they know I can give them a hard time too. It’s not all in good fun, but it’s not all bad either.
My take on most trumpers is that they have been shamed all their lives. They’ve been tricked and manipulated. Trump acts out for them in a way that makes them feel good even as it makes them feel bad, kind of they way a triple snort of absinthe warms and numbs, lightens and weighs, uplifts and crushes down.
I know that if Trump wins, it will not really make them feel good for more than a minute or so. I know this just like I know how goading them to sputter with rage (or to reach for their gun) gives me only the most fleeting and momentary thrill.
We need more like you.
Like Groucho Marx, I wouldn’t want to associate (too much) with anybody too much like me.
"… if you’re in a bar, and a dude comes in shouting racial slurs and sieg-heiling, you understand that that dude poses an urgent threat in need of confronting. I think a lot of Americans in that situation would tell that Nazi to leave, and if he refused, *physically force* him to leave. … They always pose an urgent threat."
Name them, shame them, shun them, run them out. Not a moment's peace. Ever.
Definitely the left needs more delusional street corner crazy people cosplaying Chris Hanson, but targeting the Nazis.
In regard to the last paragraph of this excellent interview, I think it’s a badge of honor to not be hired by The NY Times. I was a loyal subscriber to the Times for many years, but no longer.
Chris Hedges was fired from the NY Times 20 years ago. Hamilton Nolan and Chris Hedges are the best and bravest of the independent journalists we follow and support.
MAGA looks like the advertisement buy now pay never
I noticed Mathias contributes to The Nation. I wonder if he's had the chance to ask Katha Pollitt why she signed the Harper's Letter. I mean, because she's a gullible, elderly coward, obviously, but I'd like to hear about that in her own words.
Great interview and I will definitely be buying this book, but Mr. Mathias’ take on free speech challenges my stance on it. I grasp the premise of denying a platform for Nazis or like minded groups. And it’s true that the facist right will do whatever to silence dissenting voices. But we all agree that is wrong. I also agree, however, that pundits do not need to remain neutral to be considered objective. When facist vitriol is spewed, it should be incumbent on whomever is presenting any facist propaganda to vehemently condemn it, whether it’s Rachal Madow or David Muir.
This article clarified that antifa's view of "fascism" in America, is essentially a conspiracy theory. It's all cherry picking and ascribing the worst motives to yield the narrative.
And let's not quibble over small groups of true fascists, racists, whatever. That's not the charge nor the focus of the accusation -- which is to smear the entire political right.
"I wrote recently for the Nation about how liberals and centrists and Democratic politicians have this annoying habit of saying that antifa doesn’t even exist—that it’s just an “idea” and that “antifa” is simply a shortening of antifascist. I just wrote a whole book about antifa. It exists"
!!!!
I was one of them until just now! And I'm a social democrat
So they actually EXIST? Organizationally...
Thank fucking GOD! this changes my thinking big time. There is something tangible to be part OF...
So basically antifa is TWO things. The SENTIMENT AND actual on the ground organizing and action
I mean the fact that he more or less admits to not knowing what antifa was before Charlottesville is very telling. The whole modern conception of antifa is broken because it's all generated by people who were not involved in any of these politics prior to the first Trump campaign.
When I was making my bones as an activist teenager in the 1990s, the idea that everyone would agree that antifa was simply an acknowledged positive good within the radical left would have been perceived as crazy. This guy betrays no understanding whatsoever that antifa was extremely controversial WITHIN THE RADICAL LEFT for most of the history of the term. Back in late '90s anti globalization organizing, in anti-Iraq war organizing, he presence of antifa and black bloc tactics were extraordinarily controversial, and no, not among the more moderate aspects of those movements, but precisely among the most radical among them. In particular, there was a long-standing and fervent critique that antifa reflected the worst kind of rich white kid radical activism, with many Black activists and other minority activists making the sensible argument that antifa tactics inevitably increased police violence in a way that was felt most acutely by minority activists on the ground, and not by antifa members themselves. That doesn't mean that we should have a simplistic attitude towards antifa now, that doesn't mean that antifa tactics should be rejected out of hand. But it does speak to the complete hollowing out of left theory and left history that has attended the move of the radical left into very online territory. Like, it's, it's worthwhile and necessary to point out that this lockstep assumption that everyone on the left has to accept antifa as being our beautiful righteous soldiers would have appeared comical to an earlier generation of more seasoned and more well-read activists. I say antifa tactics because that's what antifa is, a set of tactics, not a group, political party, or intellectual tradition. And all tactics are only as good as their application in a particular moment or protest or situation. But precisely because the radical left is now made up of people who learned about it on Twitter and Tumblr and has no access to radical history or theory at all, everyone just gloms onto the idea that we all have an obligation to support antifa tactics when in the past we had vastly more internal debate about these concerns. It's a real falling off.
And frankly, I just think this is indicative of implementations of your whole approach Hamilton you so often write with this same sort of moral binarism that suggests settled questions where the history of the left demonstrates only controversy and dispute.
Owing for the record Richard Spencer won. Trump is President now. We're living in the United States that you yourself call fascist. So I guess the fact that somebody punched him in the jaw at a protest didn't actually make the slightest bit of difference at all in the end. Did it?
Every time there is an upsurge in activity and many thousands of people join the ranks of the activist left, of course most newer people will have little understanding of leftist principles or history. The job of the old guard is not just to decry it but to do something about it.
Good grief. So Nazis who supported Hitler ‘won’? Good to know.
Moral ‘binarism’? Good grief.
Notice that only people with the morals of a sociopath insist on 'moral binarism'
A take I had a few years ago: ALL people from the kindest to the most vile know the difference between good and evil...right and wrong. Its their relationship and dedication to one side or the other that differs.
OF COURSE you can go into some interesting weeds playing infinite variations on the trolley car problem but most moral 'answers' to moral questions? Are REAL easy to see.
It’s why I don’t have much patience with tribal duopoly wars, nor left/right discourse beyond a pox on both houses. There is a moral component to capitalism, and it is, on the spectrum, almost always on the wrong/evil side of things. Hard as it might be, we must move beyond it as the dominate paradigm.
We’ll see - https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/01/27/imagining-the-end-of-capitalism/
hear hear
It IS binary. The right has chosen their path. You are either WITH them or AGAINST them.