Antifascist Dad Podcast

In the months following Lula's second-place finish in the first round of Brazil's 2026 presidential election, a WhatsApp channel run by André Janones grew from about 50,000 followers to more than 10 million, and Lula came back to beat Flávio Bolsonaro.

I talk with João Biondi, a Brasília-based writer, content creator and storytelling specialist, about what the Exército do Lula felt like from the inside: the daily missions, the rule never to engage the opposition, the 24-hour livestream that took over the "Dark Saturday" before the vote, the fandom AI memes, and the reclaiming of the green-and-yellow soccer jersey from the far right.

I open by connecting the campaign to Sarah Stein Lubrano's work on why argument rarely changes minds, and to the mini-manual of Janonism. We close on whether this kind of mobilization can outlast a single election based on a critical binary choice.

João Biondi is a writer and content creator from Brasília, Brazil. He has an International Relations degree and is also a Storytelling Specialist. He analyses fashion, film, art, and the semiotics that build the symbiotic relation between pop culture and politics. You can find João on social media using the tag @ojoaobiondi.

Patreon subscribers can hear my conversation with Lav Mrenovic on the Serbian student movement, up now.

Bluesky: matthewremski.bsky.social

Instagram: @matthew_remski

YouTube: @antifascistdad

TikTok: @antifascistdad

Patreon: antifascistdadpodcast

Order Antifascist Dad

Subscribe to Antifascist Dad Podcast (all platforms)

SOURCES

Mini-Manual of Informational Insurgency (or Janonism), English PDF

Agência Pública: With Janones's "army," Lula achieves an unprecedented comeback

Paraíba Business: From 50,000 to 10 million, how Janones changed the digital race

SBT News: Exército do Lula reaches 10 million WhatsApp followers

SBT News: Lula gets his first cellphone and calls for 10 million in the digital "army"

Diário do Nordeste: TSE technical review finds no reported fake news on the Exército do Lula channel

Editora Record: André Janones, Janonismo Cultural

Sarah Stein Lubrano, Don't Talk About Politics (Bloomsbury)

Antifascist Dad Episode 10: Don't Talk About Politics with Sarah Stein Lubrano

MIT Press: Max Haiven, The Player and the Played

This week's Patreon coda applies Lara Sheehi's model of psychic intrusion — confusion, fear, exhaustion, and despair — to both the CASE report and the lived experience in the U of T Gaza encampment.

I look at Émile Durkheim's "social effervescence," Ben Case's "contentious effervescence," Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, and Carla Bergman and Nick Montgomery's Joyful Militancy, while tracking how state-backed reports and direct repression work together to disorient, frighten, exhaust, and demoralize anti-genocide organizers.

This coda revisits conversations with encampment organizer Sara Rasikh and with Daniel Sailofsky on the Jewish Faculty Network's fight against the CASE report's flawed methodology, and then closes with Sheehi's reframing of repetition compulsion. It's not personal failure that repeats. It's but power and oppression. Reversing that repetition is a daily practice.

Bluesky: matthewremski.bsky.social

Instagram: @matthew_remski

YouTube: @antifascistdad

TikTok: [@antifascistdad]

Patreon: antifascistdadpodcast

Order Antifascist Dad

Sources

CASE (Campus Antisemitism and Student Experiences) report – Canada.ca

Flawed by Design: JFN's response to the CASE report

Episode 44: Psychic Militancy w/ Dr. Lara Sheehi – Matthew Remski's Substack

Episode 2: Gaza Encampment w/ Sara Rasikh – Antifascist Dad Podcast

Episode 42: Keep the Little Flame Alive w/ Carsie Blanton – Matthew Remski's Substack

Episode 27: The Proto-Fascism of "Trust Me" Carney w/ Leftie Jane – Apple Podcasts

Bill C-9, the Combatting Hate Act – Department of Justice Canada

Street Rebellion: Resistance Beyond Violence and Nonviolence, by Benjamin S. Case – Firestorm Books

Joyful Militancy: Building Thriving Resistance in Toxic Times, by Carla Bergman and Nick Montgomery

Next week, from November 6 to 8, the Marxist-Leninist Alliance of Workers and Students is hosting Seeds Beneath the Snow, a three-day anti-imperialist symposium in Toronto, with an opening keynote by Ajamu Baraka. Today I sit down with AWAS founding members Sabine Fernandez, a former migrant care worker and PhD candidate in Critical Disability Studies at York University, Talia, a Master’s student in engineering, and Mahyar Mohaghegh Dolatabadi, a PhD candidate in political science at York who researches Iranian capitalism.

We discuss why anti-imperialism is a crucial topic to discuss, especially in election season, what Marxism-Leninism means to them in 2026, vanguardism and the potential limits of spontaneous movements like Occupy, why social revolution needs engineers, and how they navigate vibes-based myths about who "working people" are, and what they value. 

I also asked them how they came to their values and commitments.

Sources
Seeds Beneath the Snow: An Anti-Imperialist Symposium (Eventbrite)
Alliance of Workers and Students
Peter Kropotkin, An Appeal to the Young (1880), Marxists Internet Archive
Mao Zedong, On Contradiction (1937), Marxists Internet Archive
Radhika Desai, Geopolitical Economy (Pluto Press)
Vincent Bevins, If We Burn (Hachette)
Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics (Verso)

SOCIALS

Bluesky: matthewremski.bsky.social

Instagram: @matthew_remski

YouTube: @antifascistdad

TikTok: @antifascistdad

Patreon: antifascistdadpodcast

Order Antifascist Dad

Subscribe to Antifascist Dad Podcast (all platforms)

Max Haiven's The Player and the Played: From Gamed Capitalism to 21st-Century Fascism argues that financialization has trickled down into our personal lives, turning each of us into a speculative player in a maze of unwinnable games: education, housing, fitness, relationships. When we realize the game is rigged, we can lose our minds, but our rage can be redirected away from the ruling class and onto scapegoated "cheaters": migrants, trans people benefits claimants, DEI hires.

Max walks me through his three-part model of manifest, latent, and microfascism, and why 21st-century fascist group activity looks more like a Fortnite lobby than a Nuremberg rally. We get into Silicon Valley's Dungeons and Dragons-derived worldbuilding, the fragility of fascist friendship as seen in the QAnon collapse, the problem of who owns the platforms we play on, and the distinction between revenge fantasy and an avenging imaginary. 

Before the interview: a note on Olivia Chow's re-election and the Bradford campaign's Victory app.

Now on Patreon: "The Anti-Imperialists Come to Town," ahead of the Seeds Beneath the Snow symposium in Toronto, November 6–8.

Sources

The Player and the Played, free open access edition (MIT Press Direct)
Billionaires & Guillotines board game by Max Haiven (Pluto Press)
Revenge Capitalism by Max Haiven (Pluto Press)
On Microfascism: Gender, War, and Death by Jack Z. Bratich (Common Notions)
Everything to Play For by Marijam Did, open access edition (OAPEN)
Kingdom of Play by David Toomey (Simon & Schuster)
The Score by C. Thi Nguyen (Penguin)
Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed by Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff (Penguin)
Sarah Stein Lubrano, author of Don’t Talk About Politics (London Review of Books contributor page)
Casual Games for Protesters by Paolo Pedercini and Harry Josephine Giles (Molleindustria)
David Graeber, “On the Phenomenology of Giant Puppets,” in Possibilities (The Anarchist Library)
Seeds Beneath the Snow: An Anti-Imperialist Symposium, Toronto, Nov 6–8 (Eventbrite)

Socials

Bluesky: matthewremski.bsky.social

Instagram: @matthew_remski

YouTube: @antifascistdad

TikTok: @antifascistdad

Patreon: antifascistdadpodcast

Order Antifascist Dad

Subscribe to Antifascist Dad Podcast (all platforms)

Michael Löwy is a veteran Marxist sociologist and ecosocialist, and a long-time scholar of revolutionary movements. I spoke with him on October 15, two days before the October 17 national mobilization in France.

I asked Michael how the high school uprising compares with May 1968, and he described a mass movement that began from concrete material conditions: missing teachers, schools without furniture, crumbling walls, and classrooms ill-equipped for deadly summer heat.

This movement has grown into a broader revolt against a government that refuses to tax the rich while it increases funding for the military.

We discuss why the street rhetoric is antifascist, why he finds the government’s attempt to blame La France Insoumise not credible, and why schools and tenant unions show that class struggle extends beyond the factory.

He tells me how he supports the students blockading the university across from his apartment, and gives his advice to parents. For more timeline and context, scroll back to Episode 52 with Danielle Duncan.

Socials

Bluesky: matthewremski.bsky.social

Instagram: @matthew_remski

YouTube: @antifascistdad

TikTok: @antifascistdad

Patreon: antifascistdadpodcast

Order Antifascist Dad

Subscribe to Antifascist Dad Podcast (all platforms)

Sources

International Viewpoint: Michael Löwy author profile
Institute of Advanced Studies, University of São Paulo: Löwy curriculum vitae
Maire-Info: movement origins at Créteil
Caducée: 2026 heat wave excess deaths
24 heures: student loses hand at Lens
Public Sénat: Matignon on LFI; Retailleau on banning LFI
La Gazette France / AFP: LFI mayor Bally Bagayoko and the students