This session opens part three of Surviving Autocracy — “Who Is Us” — covering the three short chapters 17 through 19: “A White Male Supremacist Presidency,” “Throw Off the Mask of Hypocrisy,” and “The Anti-Politics of Fear.” Nick Paro is joined by Tara Devlin and a guest who fits the material exactly: Kris Goldsmith, the veteran who infiltrated neo-Nazi groups and runs the reading list at veteransfightingfascism.org. Kris frames the Anti-Fascist Book Club not as a salon but as an organizing center — meet weekly, in person if you can, because relationships and community are the essential element of fighting fascism. The throughline across all three chapters is the same: the mask is off, and the panel argues that naming what’s underneath is the work.

Chapter 17 is where the panel lands hardest. Kris pulls Gessen’s capture of Marco Rubio’s 2017 tweet imploring Trump to call Charlottesville a terror attack by white supremacists, then sets it against the present: that same Rubio now runs the State Department implementing white-supremacist policy — barring people of color while fast-tracking white South Africans as refugees. “Marco Rubio has become a white supremacist,” Kris says, and treats it as the chapter’s whole point. The panel reads Charlottesville’s “fine people on both sides” as the tell everyone should have caught, noting that Republicans condemned it in tweets and then never spoke of it again. Tara names the mechanism Hal Sparks calls a normalization bias — the corporate press straining to crown Trump “presidential” at every fleeting moment of calm, sanding the abnormal into the routine.

Chapter 18 gives the episode its title and its sharpest exchange. Nick reads from pages 171-172 — Trump promised to change the American story, a balm for supporters who felt slighted by inclusion and political correctness, and the promise distilled to four words: you no longer have to pretend. He inverts it on the spot, arguing the honest version is that none of us should have to pretend to like an oppressive system. Tara refuses the comfortable framing that Nazis “moved into” GOP spaces — they came out of hiding, she says, the standing remnants of the KKK and the Confederacy that helped inspire the Nazis in the first place. Kris grounds the hypocrisy in history with Ona Judge, the woman George Washington enslaved and then hunted with federal marshals, rotating his enslaved people out of free Pennsylvania to reset the clock to their freedom. The panel’s verdict is blunt: confront that past plainly or never get past it, because “political correctness” was only ever a slur invented to politicize basic decency.

Chapter 19’s anti-politics of fear pulls the threads together. Gessen’s claim — that real politics means compromise and trade-offs, and that this regime has swapped it for scapegoating and fear that keeps the base unified — gets tested against the day’s news. Nick reads page 178, where Trump “reversed history and shrunk the circle of us,” and traces the word sovereignty from his 2017 UN speech into its isolationist, once-antisemitic lineage; Kris argues Trump confuses sovereignty with a zero-sum individualism in which cooperating with allies counts as losing, citing the withdrawal of a third of U.S. air power from Europe as Putin’s wishlist made real. The panel reads the 2026 World Cup as the fear chapter in real time — players handed “ICE training,” a top Somali referee denied entry, the Iranian team arriving in pins reading “186 for the girls.” Against all of it Nick offers the repair: stop treating Musk’s trillion-dollar SpaceX windfall as inevitable, nationalize what taxpayers already subsidized, and recognize that the large language models built on human work are aggregated intelligence we should draw dividends from — a universal basic income hiding in plain sight.

What this episode adds to the series arc is the pivot from cataloguing official cruelty to organizing against it. The hosts argue the antidote to manufactured us-versus-them is the thing the regime works hardest to break — community — and they make the case in the smallest, most repeatable terms: start your own local book club, talk to your neighbors, rebuild a shared reality one room at a time. Next week the club closes the book with chapters 20 through 22 and the epilogue, and in two weeks it picks up Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist on the premise the panel keeps returning to — that neutrality is not enough, and that silence is how we got here. As Nick signs off: e pluribus unum, out of many, one.

Books Mentioned

* Surviving Autocracy by Masha Gessen — Penguin Random House

* How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi — Penguin Random House

Thank you David A Henry, Christiane mccafferty, LPC, Cris Northern, KC, and many others for tuning into my live video with Tara Devlin and Kristofer Goldsmith! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Actions You Can Take

Check out our new shared community calendar:

* Broad Banner

Sign the Petitions:

* Demand Congress Subpoena Key Figures on the Epstein Case

* Mandate that ICE agents show their face and identification

Call your public servants on important issues:

* 5calls.org

Join the efforts to de-flock the States:

* deflock.me

Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

* Orders Project

* Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

Check out the new BroadBanner network and affiliate calendar!

You being here shows that you have already begun the process of unfurling new Banners and forging new Backbones for a more progressive America. Please, take the time to become a paid, or free, subscriber to the Network — supporting us all and ensuring everyone in America can hear these messages.

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Reach out to the team if you are interested in volunteering time, supporting, and building these community driven platforms:

* Submit feedback directly: Feedback Form

* Submit questions to: info@bannerandbackbone.com

Support and subscribe to Banner & Backbone!

This session opens part two of Surviving Autocracy, working through chapters 11 through 13 — “Language as a Weapon,” “The Power Lie,” and “The Tweet Trap.” Nick Paro frames the hour bluntly: it is all about words, how the regime uses them and how the rest of us might use them back. Tara Devlin takes Gessen’s core move and runs with it, that autocrats attack language first because if you can warp the words, you can warp reality. From there the panel indicts the press for laundering that assault under a “both sides” neutrality — what Tara, citing a conversation on Hal Sparks’ show, calls a normalcy bias that normalizes the abnormal.

The book’s sharpest idea in these chapters is the power lie, and Nick reads it straight from page 106: not the ordinary lie that hides the truth, but the bully’s lie that asserts dominance by daring you to deny what you plainly see. The panel tests it rather than just admiring it. Tara argues Trump isn’t smart enough to be doing this deliberately; Nick pushes back, insisting the word-salad is guided and that a decade of calling him stupid has been a strategic error — everything is on purpose, and downplaying the severity is its own risk. That disagreement is the episode’s most honest moment: two hosts who agree on the stakes splitting on whether the architect knows what he’s building.

Where the conversation earns its keep is in connecting the book to a way of living. Nick threads the power lie through his “intelligent masculinity” frame — defining good character as the refusal to outsource accountability and the discipline to live with consequences, the exact inversions of the MAGA posture that plays victim while wielding power. He corrects himself in real time after a viewer flags that trans men exist, modeling the accountability he’s preaching, and the panel turns to how the right weaponizes language against trans people specifically, from a Fox segment mocking James Talarico to Ken Paxton’s juvenile name-calling. The throughline holds: degrade the words and you degrade the shared reality a republic runs on.

What this episode adds to the series arc is a pivot from diagnosis to repair. The hosts argue the antidote to a curated reality is a rebuilt shared one — defining terms clearly, adopting something like FDR’s Second Bill of Rights, shrinking the executive, primarying complicit Democrats, and treating veteran service as an honor rather than a burden. The call to listeners is small and concrete by design: talk to the people around you in words they actually understand, because community is democracy at scale and a shared truth has to be rebuilt one conversation at a time. Next week the club continues through part two.

Books Mentioned

* Surviving Autocracy by Masha Gessen — Penguin Random House

Where to find resources

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

How to Access the material

We encourage you to read along with us, with get a copy of your own — we recommend these resources:

* Go to your local library and checkout a copy, if available

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

Start & Support Your Own Book Club

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

* Shop VFF for gear

Actions You Can Take

Sign the Petitions:

* Demand Congress Subpoena Key Figures on the Epstein Case

* Investigate Presidential Use of the Autopen for Pardons and Executive Actions

* Mandate that ICE agents show their face and identification

Call your public servants on important issues:

* 5calls.org

Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and de-flock the States:

* safedc.info

* deflock.me

Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

* Orders Project

* Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Support and subscribe to Banner & Backbone now for only $5 a month or $50 annually!

Anti Fascist Book Club Team

~ Nick Paro | Kristofer Goldsmith | Stephanie Wilson | Tara Devlin ~

Thank you Beth Cruz, Bluesin’ Bob, NeuroDivergent Hodgepodge, Sue Ploeger’s script to novel, Cris Northern, and many others for tuning into my live video with Tara Devlin! Join me for my next live video in the app.

This session takes the panel through chapters 5 through 10 of Surviving Autocracy, closing out part one of Masha Gessen’s argument. Two chapters drive the conversation: “Corruption” (chapter five) and the chapter on dignity (chapter eight). Nick reads directly from both, and the discussion keeps circling back to a single Gessen move — that the familiar vocabulary of democratic decline no longer fits what is actually happening. Tara opens the hour already living inside that thesis, describing a baseline of anxiety and rage, and frames focused anger as the engine of action rather than despair.

Gessen contends that “corruption” understates the Trump administration, because the word implies concealment — an official who knows they shouldn’t profit and hides it. The panel takes the book seriously and then pushes past it. Nick rejects Gessen’s framing that the opposite of corruption is transparency, arguing instead that corruption and transparency are not opposites at all: a regime can be hyper-corrupt in plain sight, and the openness is precisely what disarms people. That is the episode’s sharpest contribution — Nick extends the book rather than simply agreeing with it, insisting that doing the theft in the open is a deliberate test of what the public will tolerate.

Tara grounds the abstraction in history. She walks through George Washington declining a crown, the unpaid Continental Army, and the Newburgh conspiracy to argue that the founding wager was self-governance held to a higher standard — then contrasts that with a Coast Guard Academy commencement where, she says, the message to new officers was to get away with what they can. The dignity chapter becomes the connective tissue: Gessen’s split between the dignity of participation and the dignity of performance lets the panel name what a degraded politics looks like, from an antisemitic YouTube comment they block in real time to the “robber barons” label Nick prefers over Gessen’s “oligarchs” — because, he argues, the American disease deserves American words.

Where part one lands, by the panel’s read, is that naming is itself a fight. Robber barons over oligarchs, transparent corruption over hidden corruption, weaponized ignorance over mere stupidity — each relabeling is an attempt to make the machinery legible again so it can be resisted. The hosts tie that to concrete action: get money out of politics, track and support down-ballot candidates like the ones Tara is courting in Arkansas and Oklahoma, and keep reading. The episode ends on the series arc — part one is done, and next week the club opens part two of Surviving Autocracy.

Books Mentioned

* Surviving Autocracy by Masha Gessen — Penguin Random House

Where to find resources

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

How to Access the material

We encourage you to read along with us, with get a copy of your own — we recommend these resources:

* Go to your local library and checkout a copy, if available

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

Start & Support Your Own Book Club

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

* Shop VFF for gear

Actions You Can Take

Sign the Petitions:

* Demand Congress Subpoena Key Figures on the Epstein Case

* Investigate Presidential Use of the Autopen for Pardons and Executive Actions

* Mandate that ICE agents show their face and identification

Call your public servants on important issues:

* 5calls.org

Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and de-flock the States:

* safedc.info

* deflock.me

Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

* Orders Project

* Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Support and subscribe to Banner & Backbone now for only $5 a month or $50 annually!

Anti Fascist Book Club Team

~ Nick Paro | Kristofer Goldsmith | Stephanie Wilson | Tara Devlin ~

Thank you Honey Badger, Laura Nicole, Judith, and many others for tuning into my live video with Tara Devlin and Nick Paro! Join me for my next live video in the app.

The Anti-Fascist Book Club opens Book Five with the first four chapters of Masha Gessen’s Surviving Autocracy, and the experience is immediately disorienting. Gessen wrote the book about Trump’s first maladministration. Nick and Tara are reading it inside his second. The panel covers Gessen’s opening analysis — Trump as a hollow figurehead who turns money into power and power into money, the press flattened into “a view from nowhere,” and the normalization mechanisms that made the takeover legible as politics-as-usual. What the hosts return to, over and over, is that the book reads like a manual for the present because the present is a repetition. Tara names the dynamic that animates the entire conversation: the fascism got entrenched because Democrats kept extending presumption of good faith to people who had given them, “against all evidence to the contrary,” every reason not to.

That framing reorganizes the rest of the hour. Tara walks through Gessen’s argument that journalism collapsed into stenography — reporters beaten into having no opinion, expected to read the lies straight, while the bullying of the institutions does the actual work of regime construction. The corporate media, Tara argues, is in the boat it is in because Trump’s “I can say what I want when I want, when I want to” became something to be transcribed instead of something to be confronted. Nick agrees but pushes the responsibility further up. He pulls Obama’s transition statement — the “presumption of good faith in our fellow citizens” line — and calls it “one of the biggest lies in American history.” This is the panel’s editorial position, stated plainly: Obama and the Democratic Party had the constitutional powers and the bully pulpit to name the actual crimes Trump committed to take office the first time. They chose the high road. The country has been paying the bill ever since.

The pair then push on the language problem that Gessen’s book exposes — and which the panel argues the American left still has not solved. Nick objects to the loanwords. The right’s American billionaires are not oligarchs; they are robber barons. The threat is not Russian or Nazi by analogy; it is Confederate by direct lineage. Nick locates the second Trump administration squarely in the neo-Confederate inheritance of the modern Republican Party, treats January 6 as the long-deferred raising of the Confederate flag over the Capitol, and argues that calling Trump a “Russian asset” is descriptive but calling the regime “Confederate” is mobilizing. The panel pulls Bacon’s Rebellion into the same frame: the original American technology for breaking cross-class solidarity was race, and the same lever is still being pulled — Christofascist white supremacy positioned against everyone else, including the white indentured class that thinks it is being protected.

Where the book ends in 2020, the panel extends it into 2026. Gessen’s account of the Reichstag fire as an authoritarian template becomes the hosts’ framework for reading the Hantavirus emerging across the South, ICE at polling locations, and RFK Jr. seated at the head of what Nick rechristens “Health and Human Sacrifices.” The argument is careful and specific: the regime did not manufacture the virus, but it will manufacture the response, suppressing spread in white-majority areas and accelerating it elsewhere, then invoking pandemic to justify cancelling or restricting elections. The panel is not predicting from nowhere; they are reading the book’s analytical pattern forward. Gessen identified the move. Nick and Tara are flagging the moment. They want the audience to flag it too — loudly, repetitively, and in American vocabulary, because the corporate press will not.

The closing turn is the call the series exists to make. Surviving Autocracy is a diagnosis, not a rescue plan, and Part One offers no save. Nick is clear about what that means: “Nobody’s going to come save us but us.” The work, as both hosts frame it, is to talk constantly about what is actually happening, to name treason as treason and traitors as traitors, and to build the communities that authoritarian systems most need to sever. That is the through-line for the whole book club, and it is the thread the panel will pull for the next several weeks as they work the rest of the book.

Books Mentioned

* Surviving Autocracy by Masha Gessen — IndieBound

Where to find resources

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

How to Access the material

We encourage you to read along with us, with get a copy of your own — we recommend these resources:

* Go to your local library and checkout a copy, if available

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

Start & Support Your Own Book Club

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

* Shop VFF for gear

Actions You Can Take

Sign the Petitions:

* Demand Congress Subpoena Key Figures on the Epstein Case

* Investigate Presidential Use of the Autopen for Pardons and Executive Actions

* Mandate that ICE agents show their face and identification

Call your public servants on important issues:

* 5calls.org

Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and de-flock the States:

* safedc.info

* deflock.me

Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

* Orders Project

* Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Thank you Cris Northern, Ms. H, Sandra, TGKro, betsy5231, and many others for tuning into my live video with Tara Devlin and Nick Paro! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Support and subscribe to Banner & Backbone now for only $5 a month or $50 annually!

Anti Fascist Book Club Team

~ Nick Paro | Kristofer Goldsmith | Stephanie Wilson | Tara Devlin ~

The final episode of the Anti-Fascist Book Club’s discussion on “To Catch a Fascist” by Christopher Mathias zeroes in on the closing chapters, where Mathias traces how the right has systematized the branding of antifascism itself as a domestic terror threat. Part Three examines the mechanism: right-wing influencers led a well-funded, well-organized effort to make “antifa” legible as a terrorist organization, a campaign that has now moved beyond rhetoric into state apparatus. Nick Paro, Kristofer Goldsmith, and Tara Devlin wrestled with the book’s most urgent implications — that fascism thrives on isolation and identity capture, while authentic democracy depends on the opposite.

The discussion opens with a gut-punch story from the book: a young Patriot Front member who left the organization describes his terror at the loneliness that followed. His entire identity, his sense of belonging, his access to people who would house him and call him brother — all of it was tethered to the group. This becomes the connective tissue for the entire discussion. Tara seizes on it immediately: this is why separating people from MAGA, from white supremacist movements, is so brutally hard. It’s not just propaganda doing the work. It’s community. It’s identity. It’s the bonds that humans are wired to need. The group recognizes what the book makes clear: the antidote is building our own communities so compelling, so real, that they become the default rather than the exception.

Nick and Kristofer expand this into the context of American decline. Kristofer points to a structural catastrophe: the postwar suburbs destroyed what he calls “third places” — the bars, bowling alleys, pool halls where people of all types gathered without apology. American culture stopped engineering spaces for community, and extremist organizations filled the void. Young men in particular — isolated, searching for agency, lacking any forcing function that would connect them to others — are funneled into Patriot Front, Three Percenters, and the ecosystem around them. These organizations sell what the military sold Kristofer at eighteen: mission, purpose, community. The book documents this recruitment pipeline. The team makes clear that preventing it requires not de-radicalization programs but preventative community building. This is why the Anti-Fascist Book Club exists at all.

The panel also locates the book in a second, more immediate crisis: the state weaponization of the antifa label. Nick methodically walks through what Mathias documents. The Trump administration designated antifa as a domestic terror organization without legal authority — a move that “doesn’t actually mean anything” in law but everything in practice. Pam Bondi’s DOJ issued orders to prosecute it. More chillingly, the Trump administration pressured allied governments to officially designate domestic antifascist organizations overseas as international terrorist organizations, building a legal network that can be drawn back to Americans working in international spaces. For researchers, journalists, and transnational antifascists, this is a direct threat to civil liberties. The game is to create the apparatus — the international designations, the surveillance infrastructure — that can then be deployed domestically. The panel’s response is not panic but clarity: the actual threat comes from the right. Always has.

The third pillar of this episode is a withering critique of the left’s failure to match the right’s media strategy. Tara articulates what she’s been saying for years: the right won control of the national imagination by flooding every corner of culture — YouTube, podcasts, mainstream television — with their message. Small creators like Diamond and Silk got elevated to Fox News. The right understood that reaching people everywhere, all the time, was the strategy. The left does not do this. Progressives have the ideas, the facts, the moral clarity. But they do not have the funding, the organizational will, or the tribal loyalty to outreach at scale. This is not accident. It is choice. And that choice is killing democracy.

Nick brings the book back to the constitutional question at stake. He quotes Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from “Letters from Birmingham Jail” — “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” — and uses it as the spine for a larger argument about national identity. Americans have allowed themselves to become fractured into state-based identities, a fragmentation the right exploits relentlessly. But King was arguing for something else: the interconnectedness of all communities, the notion that Americans are never “outside agitators” but always neighbors. The Anti-Fascist Book Club provides one model: forcing functions for people to gather, to build relationships, to remember that they are not alone. The book’s final message, which the panel inhabits fully, is that antifascism is not an intellectual exercise. It is the work of building community stronger than the fascists can.

What Comes Next

* Surviving Autocracy by Masha Gessen — Indiebound

Books Mentioned

* To Catch a Fascist by Christopher Mathias — Hachette Book Group

* Letters from Birmingham Jail by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — King Institute

Where to find resources

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

How to Access the material

We encourage you to read along with us, with get a copy of your own — we recommend these resources:

* Go to your local library and checkout a copy, if available

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

Start & Support Your Own Book Club

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

* Shop VFF for gear

Actions You Can Take

Sign the Petitions:

* Demand Congress Subpoena Key Figures on the Epstein Case

* Investigate Presidential Use of the Autopen for Pardons and Executive Actions

* Mandate that ICE agents show their face and identification

Call your public servants on important issues:

* 5calls.org

Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and de-flock the States:

* safedc.info

* deflock.me

Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

* Orders Project

* Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Thank you Cris Northern, Noble Blend, Cathy Stein, Ms.Yuse, SammyD, and many others for tuning into my live video with Tara Devlin, Kristofer Goldsmith, and Nick Paro! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Support and subscribe to Banner & Backbone now for only $5 a month or $50 annually!

Anti Fascist Book Club Team

~ Nick Paro | Kristofer Goldsmith | Stephanie Wilson | Tara Devlin ~

Episode six of the Anti-Fascist Book Club’s reading of Christopher Mathias’ To Catch a Fascist centers on the chapter titled “The Fire Rises,” beginning around page 200, where Mathias traces the accelerationist movement’s path from internet subculture to political mainstream. Nick opens with the book’s account of how figures like Nick Fuentes — once fringe provocateurs whose rhetoric should have disqualified them from public discourse — were welcomed into Trump’s orbit during his first administration. The panel treats this not as history but as diagnosis, connecting Mathias‘ reporting directly to the week’s news: Pam Bondi’s firing as Attorney General, the Epstein Transparency Act violations, and the Supreme Court hearing a case against birthright citizenship.

What makes this episode sharp is the way Nick and Tara refuse to let the book’s analysis sit at arm’s length. Tara draws from Part Two of the book — the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, the doxing campaigns that exposed rally attendees as Republican staffers and military members, and the pattern of those same individuals later being arrested for domestic violence and CSAM. She places these facts against Trump’s “very fine people on both sides” framing, and the contrast does the work Mathias intends: the far right’s sickness isn’t aberrant, it’s structural. Nick extends the argument by connecting the chapter’s cultural analysis to the accelerationist pipeline — how abandoning the cultural space allowed movements like Trad Wives, looks-maxing, and Soft Girl aesthetics to flourish, and how conservative parents who screamed about radicalization were blaming trans people when the actual threat was accelerationist capture of their children.

The episode’s most sustained argument is about gendered power within the fascist apparatus. Nick traces a pattern: every woman removed from Trump’s administration is replaced by a man — Kristi Noem by Markwayne Mullen, Pam Bondi by an as-yet-unnamed male successor. The replacements aren’t just shuffles; they’re escalations. Mullen is described as even more performative than Noem, trading on a false masculinity that American culture is conditioned to accept. Nick connects this to “The Fire Rises” by arguing that accelerationists prefer male figureheads who can perform authority without scrutiny — the “trust me, bro” of fascist governance. The panel insists that while Bondi bears full responsibility for her choices, the systemic patriarchy that positions women as disposable shields for male accelerationists is itself a feature of the movement Matthias documents.

The conversation also addresses the cultural pipeline from rhetoric to policy, tracing how the “they’re eating the dogs” trope — which became viral TikTok content and a meme song — provided the cultural impetus for the Supreme Court to hear a birthright citizenship case. Nick argues this is the accelerationist playbook in action: normalize dehumanizing language through entertainment, then use the normalized hostility as political cover for stripping constitutional rights. Tara reinforces this by noting the double standard in how law enforcement treats right-wing versus left-wing protests, from Charlottesville to Zuccotti Park to January 6th. The episode closes with a live exchange with chat commenters about free speech and hate speech — a microcosm of the very cultural battle the book describes.

This second-to-last episode on To Catch a Fascist arrives at what feels like the book’s operational thesis: awareness without accountability changes nothing. Nick’s call for Bondi’s prosecution under the Epstein Transparency Act, Tara’s insistence that consequences must extend beyond individual scapegoats, and the book club’s standing invitation to start local chapters all point in the same direction — that community-building is not a supplement to anti-fascist action, it is the action itself.

Where to find resources

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

How to Access the material

We encourage you to read along with us, with get a copy of your own — we recommend these resources:

* Go to your local library and checkout a copy, if available

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

Start & Support Your Own Book Club

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

* Shop VFF for gear

Actions You Can Take

Sign the Petitions:

* Demand Congress Subpoena Key Figures on the Epstein Case

* Investigate Presidential Use of the Autopen for Pardons and Executive Actions

* Mandate that ICE agents show their face and identification

Call your public servants on important issues:

* 5calls.org

Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and de-flock the States:

* safedc.info

* deflock.me

Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

* Orders Project

* Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Thank you Beth Cruz, Pamela Williamson, Bart Emry, Stan Kelly, Irene Williams, and many others for tuning into my live video with Tara Devlin and Nick Paro! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

Check out the new BroadBanner network and affiliate calendar!

You being here shows that you have already begun the process of unfurling new Banners and forging new Backbones for a more progressive America. Please, take the time to become a paid, or free, subscriber to the Network — supporting us all and ensuring everyone in America can hear these messages.

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Reach out to the Banner & Backbone Media team if you are interested in volunteering time, supporting, and building these community driven platforms:

* Submit feedback directly: Feedback Form

* Banner & Backbone Media: info@bannerandbackbone.com

Support and subscribe to Banner & Backbone now for only $5 a month or $50 annually!

Banner & Backbone Team

~ Lawrence Winnerman | Nick Paro | Ellie Leonard | Melissa Corrigan, she/her | Shane Yirak | Walter Rhein | Stephanie G Wilson, PhD | Frederic Poag | Rachel @ This Woman Votes ~

In the fifth session on Christopher Mathias’ To Catch a Fascist, Nick Paro, Tara Devlin, and Kristofer Goldsmith open with a direct charge for the No Kings rally weekend: stop treating protest as the endpoint. Kristofer framed the Anti-Fascist Book Club as a “social lubricant that becomes social glue” — the goal isn’t just showing up, it’s using those spaces to connect with three people you don’t already know, make concrete plans to meet within a week, and hand them a printed copy of the Veterans Fighting Fascism AFBC leadership guide. The distinction matters: solidarity without community-building is just a feeling. Community-building at scale is democracy itself.

Nick anchored the book discussion in a passage from pages 116–117 on the alt-right’s deliberate targeting of neurodivergent and socially isolated young people. The book documents how the movement weaponized terms like “weaponized autism,” used Discord channels and gaming platforms to build pipelines, and deployed memes, cartoon characters, and pop culture parodies to recruit children in spaces that pro-democracy voices had largely abandoned. Kristofer added a specific mechanism: these communities use self-diagnosed neurodivergence as a rhetorical shield, framing racist behavior as a social processing disorder rather than a moral failure. Nick, speaking from his own experience with ADHD, pushed back directly — a diagnosis explains some things, but it doesn’t transfer your accountability to someone else. That distinction is one of the core tools parents, siblings, and trusted adults need to put in front of young men before the pipeline does.

The conversation moved through the mechanics of radicalization into the harder question Kris raised: what happens when the legal system fails to deliver consequences? He walked through the real cost of pursuing his own case against a neo-Nazi who hand-delivered a death threat to his mother’s home — 18 months, $40,000, and repeated continuances just to get one charge to stick. The process punished him as much as the perpetrator. He put it plainly: he had the man’s address within hours and could have handled it differently if he subscribed to militant antifascism. He’s not endorsing that path, but he’s asking the question honestly, especially as masked federal agents operate with documented impunity and the DOJ blocks FBI investigation into killings. Tara drew the parallel to Hans Litten, the German lawyer who took Nazi street violence to court in the early 1930s and ended up dying in a concentration camp after the regime took power. The lesson isn’t despair — it’s that legal accountability must be pursued aggressively and that the community around those efforts has to be larger than one person.

The episode closed on community as the structural counter to fascism. Tara cited research showing that strong, multiracial local networks are among the most effective documented defenses against authoritarian politics — connected people are harder to isolate and harder to scare. Nick extended that to the practical: take your MAGA-adjacent family members to a city they’ve never been to. Show them culture. Blow their minds in the best way. That work belongs to those of us with the social capital to do it safely — not to the trans people, LGBTQ+ community members, or marginalized groups who are already targeted. With the No Kings rallies the next day, the crew’s unified message was: go, but go with a plan, go to build something, and go to till the garden.

People, Orgs, and Terms Mentioned

People

* Kristofer Goldsmith — veteran, founder of Veterans Fighting Fascism and Task Force Butler, host of On Offense (Valor Media Network); infiltrated Patriot Front

* Christopher Mathias — author of To Catch a Fascist; HuffPost journalist; previously appeared on On Offense

* Nick Fuentes — named as an example of the alt-right pipeline operating in the open

* Hans Litten — German lawyer who cross-examined Hitler and prosecuted Nazi street violence in Weimar Germany; died in a concentration camp after the regime took power

* Dylann Roof — white supremacist mass murderer; referenced in context of the “Last Rhodesian” dog whistle and its use in extremist online spaces

* Paul Town — subject in the book; a case study in the targeted recruitment of neurodivergent people into white supremacist networks

* Renee Nicole Good — the first named victim of masked ICE violence in Minneapolis, MN

* Alex Pretti — the second named victim of masked ICE violence in Minneapolis, MN

Organizations / Programs

* Veterans Fighting Fascism (VFF) — Kristofer Goldsmith’s non-profit organization; hosts the AFBC reading list and leadership guide at veteransfightingfascism.org

* Task Force Butler — affiliated organization; resources and gear available at taskforcebutler.org

* Patriot Front — neo-Nazi organization Kristofer infiltrated; discussed throughout

* Anonymous Comrades Collective — anti-fascist research group cited in the book; documented the targeting of neurodivergent people

* Anne Frank Army — Midwest anti-fascist group quoted in the book on the tension between prison abolition and accountability for fascist violence

* No Kings Rally — nationwide protests scheduled for March 28, 2026; referenced throughout as the immediate action opportunity

* On Offense / Valor Media Network — Kristofer’s podcast and network

Terms / Concepts

* Militant antifascism — active, confrontational opposition to fascist organizing; Mathias subscribes to this in the book; the hosts engaged with it honestly without endorsing or dismissing it

* Prison abolition — the position that prisons should be eliminated; creates tension for anti-fascists who also want accountability for fascist violence; the book quotes Anne Frank Army on this directly

* Neurodivergence — umbrella term for cognitive differences including ADHD, autism spectrum, etc.; discussed in context of recruitment targeting and bad-faith weaponization by extremist communities

* Edgelording — transgressive humor used as a gateway to radicalization; described as an appeal to young men’s desire for autonomy and rebellion

* The Great Deplatforming — mass removal of alt-right figures from social platforms after January 6th; cited as a brief disruption largely reversed by Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter/X

* “Last Rhodesian” — Dylann Roof’s online handle; a dog whistle referencing the white colonial government of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe); used to signal ideology in plain sight

Where to find resources

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

How to Access the material

We encourage you to read along with us, with get a copy of your own — we recommend these resources:

* Go to your local library and checkout a copy, if available

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

Start & Support Your Own Book Club

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

* Shop VFF for gear

Actions You Can Take

Sign the Petitions:

* Demand Congress Subpoena Key Figures on the Epstein Case

* Investigate Presidential Use of the Autopen for Pardons and Executive Actions

* Mandate that ICE agents show their face and identification

Call your public servants on important issues:

* 5calls.org

Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and de-flock the States:

* safedc.info

* deflock.me

Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

* Orders Project

* Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Thank you Amy Gabrielle, Cris Northern, PamC, Beth the Baker, Ms.Yuse, and many others for tuning into my live video with Tara Devlin, Kristofer Goldsmith, and Nick Paro! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

Check out the new BroadBanner network and affiliate calendar!

You being here shows that you have already begun the process of unfurling new Banners and forging new Backbones for a more progressive America. Please, take the time to become a paid, or free, subscriber to the Network — supporting us all and ensuring everyone in America can hear these messages.

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Reach out to the Banner & Backbone Media team if you are interested in volunteering time, supporting, and building these community driven platforms:

* Submit feedback directly: Feedback Form

* Banner & Backbone Media: info@bannerandbackbone.com

Support and subscribe to Banner & Backbone now for only $5 a month or $50 annually!

Banner & Backbone Team

~ Lawrence Winnerman | Nick Paro | Ellie Leonard | Melissa Corrigan, she/her | Shane Yirak | Walter Rhein | Stephanie G Wilson, PhD | Frederic Poag | Rachel @ This Woman Votes ~

In the fourth session on Christopher Mathias’ To Catch a Fascist – Nick Paro, Tara Devlin, and Steven Acheson opened with a graphic and necessary reading from page 91 — the documented lynching of Mary Turner in 1918. Nick read the passage aloud with a content warning in place, and the crew used it as an anchor for the entire episode: the violence that built this country’s racial hierarchy was never fully confronted, and its consequences are still being vandalized out of public memory. Tara connected the dots between the removal of Turner’s memorial markers in 2020 and the broader erasure that the anti-DEI agenda now performs under a legal cover that feels more comfortable than a hood.

Steven brought the weight of a veteran’s perspective to the discussion of the KKK’s decline in membership. He pointed to the Rage Against the Machine lyric that crystallized the book’s argument for him — those who once burned crosses are now in the halls of power. Nick built on historian Linda Gordon’s argument from pages 98–99, reading directly from Mathias’s text: the Klan’s most durable victory was not rallies or robes but the Overton Window itself, shifting what passes for acceptable public discourse and encoding white nativist ideology into law. When the ideology is in the statute, the organization no longer needs the membership numbers.

The conversation moved from historical analysis to lived counter-organizing. Steven described blocking Westboro Baptist Church protesters outside a Madison Planned Parenthood by parking his truck on the median — not confrontation, but interference, wasting their time so they couldn’t do worse. Nick and Tara both named the visibility of everyday anti-fascists as a critical force: when your neighbors know who you are and they see that an anti-fascist looks like a normal person, you shift the social landscape. They drew a direct line between community presence, local food systems, CSA farming models, and the parallel infrastructure people need to reduce dependency on corporate supply chains that fascism is currently weaponizing.

The final stretch connected everything upstream. Tara named the Democracy Index downgrade of the U.S. press freedom score. Nick traced the attacks on Iran, fertilizer supply disruptions, and rollback of EV infrastructure as coordinated policy failures that disproportionately hammer the same rural farmers who voted for the administration executing them. The episode closed where it had to: the goal is not simply to stop one man or one party, but to destroy the conditions under which fascism can take root at all — so that the environment that produced a Trump or a Putin cannot re-emerge.

Where to find resources

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

How to Access the material

We encourage you to read along with us, with get a copy of your own — we recommend these resources:

* Go to your local library and checkout a copy, if available

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

Start & Support Your Own Book Club

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

* Shop VFF for gear

Actions You Can Take

Sign the Petitions:

* Demand Congress Subpoena Key Figures on the Epstein Case

* Investigate Presidential Use of the Autopen for Pardons and Executive Actions

* Mandate that ICE agents show their face and identification

Call your public servants on important issues:

* 5calls.org

Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and de-flock the States:

* safedc.info

* deflock.me

Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

* Orders Project

* Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Thank you Eric Lullove, PJ Schuster, Kevin Paquette, Olivia Janis, Bee's Free Verse/True Verse, and many others for tuning into my live video with Tara Devlin, Steven Acheson, and Nick Paro! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Support and subscribe to Banner & Backbone now for only $5 a month or $50 annually!

Anti Fascist Book Club Team

~ Nick Paro | Kristofer Goldsmith | Stephanie Wilson | Tara Devlin | Steven Acheson ~

In today’s 3rd Anti Fascist Book Club discussion into To Catch a Fascist, we opened not in the book but in Minneapolis — where Kristofer Goldsmith and Nick Paro had spent the previous week at the AbolishICE Live music event near the Alex Pretti memorial, organized in partnership with the Dropkick Murphys, local bands, Valor Media Network, The Save America Movement, and anchored by a brass ensemble called Brass Solidarity. What came through in that opening was about the direct lessons learned: Minneapolis is doing anti-fascism in real time, using mutual aid, community kitchens, rent funds, and sustained memorial culture to hold the line against an ICE occupation that has directly damaged the local economy. Kris framed it plainly — every American with the means to do so should plan a trip, support those businesses, and bring lessons home, because ICE is a fraction of its projected size and this is what expansion will look like everywhere.

When the group turned to the book itself, Kris grounded the conversation in the stakes of his own infiltration work. He explained that when he first entered Patriot Front, he assumed the word “Nazi” was being used loosely. It wasn’t — these were people debating national socialist philosophers, using words like “propaganda” and “self-radicalization” without irony, and pursuing genocide as an explicit goal, not an abstraction. Chapter seven’s thesis — that American white supremacy oscillates between masked periods and periods when masks aren’t needed — drove the episode’s central question: are we entering an era when ICE agents, like the Patriot Front members before them, feel socially and legally invulnerable enough to operate in the open? Kris argued that federal pardons cover federal law, which means state and local governments are the only remaining mechanism for accountability — and most of them are not stepping up — yet.

Tara Devlin named the structural problem enabling all of this: the paradox of tolerance. A society that extends liberal protections to movements whose explicit goal is genocide isn’t being principled — it’s being cowardly. She connected the normalization of fascist aesthetics and rhetoric to the failure of corporate media to draw clear lines, while pointing out that trans people are now being targeted in precisely the sequence the early Nazi regime used: first strip legal identity, then restrict movement, then remove the ability to vote. The Kansas driver’s license law came up as a concrete, present-day example of that sequence in action. Tara and Kris both pressed that the debate should never have been about what Trump said after Charlottesville — it should have been about the country refusing to tolerate Nazis at all.

Steven Acheson joined late in the discussion, bringing a rural Wisconsin ground-level view that sharpened the local organizing argument. An Army veteran, former organic farmer, and current local school board candidate, Steven talked about what it actually looks like to build community trust in a town of 800 where you weren’t born — coaching youth sports, being intentional about the language used with kids, finding common ground before introducing harder conversations. He pushed back on the idea that Wisconsin is a red state, describing it instead as a blue state gerrymandered into losing. His enthusiasm for gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong — the only explicit democratic socialist in the race — closed the episode on a concrete electoral note: education funding, fair maps, and candidates who know their communities from the inside are where the work connects local resistance to statewide change.

Where to find resources

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

How to Access the material

We encourage you to read along with us, with get a copy of your own — we recommend these resources:

* Go to your local library and checkout a copy, if available

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

Start & Support Your Own Book Club

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

* Shop VFF for gear

Actions You Can Take

Sign the Petitions:

* Demand Congress Subpoena Key Figures on the Epstein Case

* Investigate Presidential Use of the Autopen for Pardons and Executive Actions

* Mandate that ICE agents show their face and identification

Call your public servants on important issues:

* 5calls.org

Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and de-flock the States:

* safedc.info

* deflock.me

Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

* Orders Project

* Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Thank you Soso's World, Dannys, Laura Tompkins, Ms.Yuse, Donna Dupont, and many others for tuning into my live video with Tara Devlin, Steven Acheson, Kristofer Goldsmith, and Nick Paro! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

Check out the new BroadBanner network and affiliate calendar!

You being here shows that you have already begun the process of unfurling new Banners and forging new Backbones for a more progressive America. Please, take the time to become a paid, or free, subscriber to the Network — supporting us all and ensuring everyone in America can hear these messages.

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Reach out to the Banner & Backbone Media team if you are interested in volunteering time, supporting, and building these community driven platforms:

* Submit feedback directly: Feedback Form

* Banner & Backbone Media: info@bannerandbackbone.com

Support and subscribe to Banner & Backbone now for only $5 a month or $50 annually!

Banner & Backbone Team

~ Lawrence Winnerman | Nick Paro | Ellie Leonard | Melissa Corrigan, she/her | Shane Yirak | Walter Rhein | Stephanie G Wilson, PhD | Frederic Poag | Rachel @ This Woman Votes ~

This week on Banner & Backbone Media’s Anti-Fascist Book Club — Nick Paro, Tara Devlin, and Kristofer Goldsmith continued our discussion of To Catch a Fascist, by Christopher Mathias — and our most important takeaway is this:

The extremist movement in America is not fringe. It is organized.

For years, too many of us dismissed (and continue to dismiss) neo-Nazi and accelerationist groups as scattered, unorganized street thugs. But as Kristofer Goldsmith put it during our discussion:

“This book is everything I have wanted people to know for like five years.”

We reference both Chris and Kris’ reporting and experiences — showing how deeply networked these groups are, how they self-radicalize online, how they infiltrate institutions, and how they deliberately structure influence pipelines. Doing so brings our discussion through

* The radicalization pipeline in the “manosphere”,

* How extremist groups deliberately consume propaganda to harden ideology,

* Why law enforcement often cannot — and should not — infiltrate these spaces without cause,

* The role of citizen investigators, and

* The normalization of white nationalist policy at higher levels of power.

One of the most important themes we returned to was masculinity. These movements rely on a masked and performative masculinity — cosplaying strength while hiding behind pseudonyms, avatars, and coordinated anonymity. We confront it with transparency because the fight against fascism is cultural, digital, and institutional — and this book forces us to stop pretending otherwise.

Where to find resources

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

How to Access the material

We encourage you to read along with us, with get a copy of your own — we recommend these resources:

* Buy the book directly from the publisher: To Catch A Fascist

* Go to your local library and checkout a copy, if available

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

Start & Support Your Own Book Club

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

* Shop VFF for gear

Actions You Can Take

Sign the Petitions:

* Demand Congress Subpoena Key Figures on the Epstein Case

* Investigate Presidential Use of the Autopen for Pardons and Executive Actions

* Mandate that ICE agents show their face and identification

Call your public servants on important issues:

* 5calls.org

Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and de-flock the States:

* safedc.info

* deflock.me

Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

* Orders Project

* Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Thank you Ms.Yuse, Laura Tompkins, Shirley Figueroa, Elizabeth, ArtB3ing, and many others for tuning into my live video with Tara Devlin, Kristofer Goldsmith, and Nick Paro! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

Check out the new BroadBanner network and affiliate calendar!

You being here shows that you have already begun the process of unfurling new Banners and forging new Backbones for a more progressive America. Please, take the time to become a paid, or free, subscriber to the Network — supporting us all and ensuring everyone in America can hear these messages.

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Join the uncensored media at the 1A Collective.

Support and subscribe to Banner & Backbone now for only $5 a month or $50 annually!

Banner & Backbone Team

~ Lawrence Winnerman | Nick Paro | Ellie Leonard | Melissa Corrigan, she/her | Shane Yirak | Walter Rhein | Stephanie G Wilson, PhD | Frederic Poag | Rachel @ This Woman Votes ~

This week Nick Paro and Tara Devlin begin our reading and discussion into To Catch A Fascist — Christopher Mathias’ highly insightful “investigation into the rise of white nationalist and neo-Nazi movements in the United States, centered on the anti-fascists groups working to expose and stop these hateful factions” (Simon & Schuster).

* Buy the book directly from the publisher: To Catch A Fascist

Where to find resources

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

How to Access the material

We encourage you to read along with us, with get a copy of your own — we recommend these resources:

* Go to your local library and checkout a copy, if available

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

Start & Support Your Own Book Club

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

* Shop VFF for gear

Actions You Can Take

Sign the Petitions:

* Demand Congress Subpoena Key Figures on the Epstein Case

* Mandate that ICE agents show their face and identification

Call your public servants on important issues:

* 5calls.org

Join the efforts de-flock the States:

* deflock.me

Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

* Orders Project

* Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Thank you Cris Northern, Donna Dupont, Laura Tompkins, Cristin McQueen, Maggie Birmingham, and many others for tuning into my live video with Tara Devlin and Nick Paro! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

Check out the new BroadBanner network and affiliate calendar!

You being here shows that you have already begun the process of unfurling new Banners and forging new Backbones for a more progressive America. Please, take the time to become a paid, or free, subscriber to the Network — supporting us all and ensuring everyone in America can hear these messages.

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Join the uncensored media at the 1A Collective.

Support and subscribe to Banner & Backbone now for only $5 a month or $50 annually!

Banner & Backbone Team

~ Lawrence Winnerman | Nick Paro | Ellie Leonard | Melissa Corrigan, she/her | Shane Yirak | Walter Rhein | Stephanie G Wilson, PhD | Frederic Poag | Rachel @ This Woman Votes ~

This final discussion into Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s authoritative study, Strongmen: From Mussolini to the Present, brings together the Banner & Backbone Media’s panel — Nick Paro, Stephanie G Wilson, PhD, Tara Devlin, and Kristofer Goldsmith — for a conversation centered on how modern fascist movements weaponize masculinity, impose subservient femininity, hijack culture, and overburden bureaucracy — and how those systems ultimately collapse and fail when met with sustained, decentralized resistance. We connect Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s historical framework to our present-day, immediate threats: voter suppression efforts like the SAVE Act, the normalization of paramilitary intimidation, and the laundering of authoritarian cultural narratives through “trad-wife” and “soft-girl” aesthetics. Our conversation emphasized that fascism and authoritarianism don’t end on their own — they are dismantled through organized, coordinated, local, persistent pressure that imposes real social, legal, and political costs.

What Comes Next?

Next week we begin our reading and discussion into To Catch A Fascist — Christopher Mathias’ highly insightful “investigation into the rise of white nationalist and neo-Nazi movements in the United States, centered on the anti-fascists groups working to expose and stop these hateful factions” (Simon & Schuster).

* Buy the book directly from the publisher: To Catch A Fascist

Where to find resources

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

How to Access the material

We encourage you to read along with us, with get a copy of your own — we recommend these resources:

* Go to your local library and checkout a copy, if available

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

Start & Support Your Own Book Club

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

* Shop VFF for gear

Actions You Can Take

Sign the Petitions:

* Demand Congress Subpoena Key Figures on the Epstein Case

* Investigate Presidential Use of the Autopen for Pardons and Executive Actions

* Mandate that ICE agents show their face and identification

Call your public servants on important issues:

* 5calls.org

Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and de-flock the States:

* safedc.info

* deflock.me

Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

* Orders Project

* Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Thank you Melissa Corrigan, she/her, Cris Northern, Thea Hayes, Jack, Patrick Kenny, and many others for tuning into my live video with Stephanie G Wilson, PhD, Tara Devlin, Kristofer Goldsmith, and Nick Paro! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

Check out the new BroadBanner network and affiliate calendar!

You being here shows that you have already begun the process of unfurling new Banners and forging new Backbones for a more progressive America. Please, take the time to become a paid, or free, subscriber to the Network — supporting us all and ensuring everyone in America can hear these messages.

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Join the uncensored media at the 1A Collective.

Support and subscribe to Banner & Backbone now for only $5 a month or $50 annually!

Banner & Backbone Team

~ Lawrence Winnerman | Nick Paro | Ellie Leonard | Melissa Corrigan, she/her | Shane Yirak | Walter Rhein | Stephanie G Wilson, PhD | Frederic Poag | Rachel @ This Woman Votes ~

Today’s Anti Fascist Book Club with Nick Paro, Stephanie G Wilson, PhD, Tara Devlin, and Kristofer Goldsmith explored how strongmen use virility myths and fabricated national origins to legitimize and consolidate rule. Drawing from Chapters 6-8 of Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s authoritative study, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, our discussion examined how authoritarian leaders (and movements) use false, staged masculinity; sexual dominance; and ‘rebirth’ narratives to mask weakness, justify repression, and bind personal power to national identity.

Where to find resources

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

How to Access the material

We encourage you to read along with us, with get a copy of your own — we recommend these resources:

* Go to your local library and checkout a copy, if available

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

Start & Support Your Own Book Club

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

* Shop VFF for gear

Actions You Can Take

Sign the Petitions:

* Demand Congress Subpoena Key Figures on the Epstein Case

* Investigate Presidential Use of the Autopen for Pardons and Executive Actions

* Mandate that ICE agents show their face and identification

Support Ukraine:

* Donate towards generators

Call your public servants on important issues:

* 5calls.org

Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and de-flock the States:

* safedc.info

* deflock.me

Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

* Orders Project

* Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Thank you Sushipheliac 🍣🍥🍣, Cris, LeftieProf, GW B, Alissa Resch, and many others for tuning into my live video with Stephanie G Wilson, PhD, Tara Devlin, Kristofer Goldsmith, and Nick Paro! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

You being here shows that you have already begun the process of unfurling new Banners and forging new Backbones for a more progressive America. Please, take the time to become a paid, or free, subscriber to the Network — supporting us all and ensuring everyone in America can hear these messages.

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Join the uncensored media at the 1A Collective.

Support and subscribe to Banner & Backbone now for only $5 a month or $50 annually!

Banner & Backbone Team

~ Lawrence Winnerman | Nick Paro | Ellie Leonard | Melissa Corrigan, she/her | Shane Yirak | Walter Rhein | Stephanie G Wilson, PhD | Frederic Poag | Rachel @ This Woman Votes ~

This week’s Anti Fascist Book Club moves from how “strongmen” rise to how they rule. Using Chapters 4 and 5 of Strongmen by Ruth Ben-Ghiat, the discussion between Nick Paro, Tara Devlin, Stephanie G Wilson, PhD, and special guest Joe Plenzler, we examine propaganda, corruption, gendered violence, and repression as interconnected systems — not excesses. We emphasize that authoritarian power is maintained through narrative control, normalized brutality, and elite complicity — and that recognizing and understanding these systems is essential in resisting them.

Where to find resources

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

How to Access the material

We encourage you to read along with us, with get a copy of your own — we recommend these resources:

* Go to your local library and checkout a copy, if available

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

Start & Support Your Own Book Club

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

* Shop VFF for gear

Actions You Can Take

Support Ukraine:

* Donate towards generators

Call your public servants on important issues:

* 5calls.org

Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and de-flock the States:

* safedc.info

* deflock.me

Sign the Move-On Petitions:

* Investigate Presidential Use of the Autopen for Pardons and Executive Actions

* Mandate that ICE agents show their face and identification

Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

* Orders Project

* Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Thank you Soso's World, Cris, Stephanie Munoz, Eric Lullove, Independent Voter 1, and many others for tuning into my live video with Stephanie G Wilson, PhD, Joe Plenzler, Tara Devlin, and Nick Paro! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

You being here shows that you have already begun the process of unfurling new Banners and forging new Backbones for a more progressive America. Please, take the time to become a paid, or free, subscriber to the Network — supporting us all and ensuring everyone in America can hear these messages.

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Join the uncensored media at the 1A Collective.

Support and subscribe to Banner & Backbone now for only $5 a month or $50 annually!

Banner & Backbone Team

~ Lawrence Winnerman | Nick Paro | Ellie Leonard | Melissa Corrigan, she/her | Shane Yirak | Walter Rhein | Stephanie G Wilson, PhD | Frederic Poag | Rachel @ This Woman Votes ~

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

How to Access the material

We encourage you to read along with us, with get a copy of your own — we recommend these resources:

* Go to your local library and checkout a copy, if available

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

Start & Support Your Own Book Club

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

* Shop VFF for gear

Actions You Can Take

Support Ukraine:

* Donate towards generators

Call your public servants on important issues:

* 5calls.org

Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and de-flock the States:

* safedc.info

* deflock.me

Sign the Move-On Petitions:

* Investigate Presidential Use of the Autopen for Pardons and Executive Actions

* Mandate that ICE agents show their face and identification

Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

* Orders Project

* Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Thank you Beth Cruz, Cris, Cathy Stein, LeftieProf, Bebop, and many others for tuning into my live video with Stephanie G Wilson, PhD, Tara Devlin, Kristofer Goldsmith, and Nick Paro! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

You being here shows that you have already begun the process of unfurling new Banners and forging new Backbones for a more progressive America. Please, take the time to become a paid, or free, subscriber to the Network — supporting us all and ensuring everyone in America can hear these messages.

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Join the uncensored media at the 1A Collective.

Support and subscribe to Banner & Backbone now for only $5 a month or $50 annually!

Banner & Backbone Team

~ Lawrence Winnerman | Nick Paro | Ellie Leonard | Melissa Corrigan, she/her | Shane Yirak | Walter Rhein | Stephanie G Wilson, PhD | Rachel @ This Woman Votes ~

Today’s Banner & Backbone Media Anti Fascist Book Club (AFBC) — with Nick Paro Kristofer Goldsmith, Tara Devlin, and Stephanie G Wilson, PhD — returns for their 2nd discussion into Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s authoritative study, Strongmen: From Mussolini to Present, while discussing Chapters 1 and 2 — the chapters that explain how authoritarianism actually begins. Not with tanks in the streets, but with patterns.

From the opening moments of the episode, our discussion reflected the emotional and political weight Ben-Ghiat describes: exhaustion, anger, grief, and a sense that the world feels permanently “on fire or underwater.” That collective mood is a feature of authoritarian systems — one Ben-Ghiat identifies early on as a tactic, not a coincidence.

Exhaustion and burnout is a feature, not a bug.

Strongmen and the Cult of Personality

Several speakers returned to Ben-Ghiat’s analysis of early strongmen—particularly her discussion of Mussolini—as an example of how personal pathology meets institutional opportunity. The team emphasized that strongmen are rarely political geniuses; they are enabled by systems willing to overlook violence, instability, and cruelty in exchange for power or perceived order. This relates back to a quote from George Orwell’s 1984, where he introduces the Party’s slogan:

War is peace.

Freedom is slavery.

Ignorance is strength.

These themes resonated throughout the team’s conversation: fascism doesn’t succeed because one person is dangerous, but because elites, media, and political institutions decide to accommodate them.

That lesson became especially relevant as speakers discussed modern figures whose incompetence is often underestimated, even as their systems grow more sophisticated.

Cruelty Is the Point

A major thread of the show echoed one of Ben-Ghiat’s clearest lessons from Chapters 1–2: cruelty is not accidental — it is the point.

The team talked about how authoritarian movements rely on unrelenting cruelty to exhaust the public, fracture solidarity, and normalize abuse. This cruelty manifests itself through threats, harassment, disinformation, or institutional bullying, cruelty serves to signal dominance and discourage participation. Note how Kristofer Goldsmith wasn’t in the beginning of the discussion because he was on the phone with the FBI after a threat was made against his and his family’s lives.

The team noted that disengagement — often framed as self-care — is precisely what these systems are designed to produce. Ben-Ghiat’s work helped reframe burnout as a political outcome, not a personal failure.

Undermining Trust to Consolidate Power

Our discussion also dove deeply into Ben-Ghiat’s warning about the erosion of democratic trust. The team debated how strongmen hollow out institutions by attacking elections, media credibility, and the rule of law — all while still maintaining the appearance, or illusion, of democracy.

The team focused in on the need for precision — with out language and actions — because defending democracy requires strengthening trust without denying real institutional failures. Strongmen thrive in chaos and cynicism, but blind faith is not the answer either. We highlighted that transparent systems, accountable institutions, and active civic participation is how we go on offense for the cause of reclaiming democracy.

Class Solidarity vs. Authoritarian Loyalty

One of the clearest connections to Strongmen came through the discussion of class solidarity. Ben-Ghiat describes how strongmen redirect economic anger away from systems of extraction and toward scapegoats, replacing shared class solidarity with loyalty to a single masculine figure.

The team stressed that resisting this requires a horizontal alignment of people — recognizing shared struggles across political and cultural divides. We framed this not as abstraction, but as the learned lesson for organizing: fascism fractures communities; democracy depends on rebuilding them.

“You Are the Institution”

The team closed there discussion by returning to a theme implicit throughout Ben-Ghiat’s early chapters: authoritarianism advances when people wait for someone else to intervene — or more simply put, we are the change we’ve been waiting for.

We emphasized that institutions are only as strong as the people willing to defend and reclaim them. Journalism, legal accountability, local organizing, mutual aid, and civic engagement were framed as acts of patriotism — not heroics, but responsibilities.

The overall takeaway from today: there is no one coming to save us — we have to go on offense for democracy ourselves.

Where to find resources

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

How to Access the material

We encourage you to read along with us, with get a copy of your own — we recommend these resources:

* Go to your local library and checkout a copy, if available

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

Start & Support Your Own Book Club

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

* Shop VFF for gear

Actions You Can Take

Call your public servants on important issues:

* 5calls.org

Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and feed America:

* safedc.info

Sign the Move-On Petitions:

* Investigate Presidential Use of the Autopen for Pardons and Executive Actions

* A Petition to End the Shutdown and Restore Representation: Remove Speaker Johnson

* Mandate that ICE agents show their face and identification

Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

* Orders Project

* Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Thank you Neurodivergent Hodgepodge, Beth Cruz, Cris, P. J. Schuster, Kevin Paquette, and many others for tuning into my live video with Stephanie G Wilson, PhD, Tara Devlin, Kristofer Goldsmith, and Nick Paro! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

You being here shows that you have already begun the process of unfurling new Banners and forging new Backbones for a more progressive America. Please, take the time to become a paid, or free, subscriber to the Network — supporting us all and ensuring everyone in America can hear these messages.

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Join the uncensored media at the 1A Collective.

Support Banner & Backbone now for only $5 a month or $50 annually!

Banner & Backbone Team

~ Lawrence Winnerman | Nick Paro | Ellie Leonard | Melissa Corrigan, she/her | Shane Yirak | Walter Rhein | Stephanie G Wilson, PhD ~

On today’s Anti Fascist Book Club (AFBC), Banner & Backbone Media welcomes on our panel — Nick Paro, Tara Devlin, Kristofer Goldsmith, and Stephanie G Wilson, PhD — to begin their discussion into the 3rd book on the Veterans Fighting Fascism’s reading list — Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present. Strongmen is Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s landmark study into authoritarianism. The AFBC team explores how modern strongmen — from Mussolini to Trump — use carefully crafted personas of virility, rampant corruption, propaganda, and cooperation of the elites to consolidate power. The team connects these themes to current U.S. political dynamics — focusing in on Abrahamic Nationalists, tech-billionaires and the elites, and the erosion of democratic norms.

The major takeaway from today’s discussion: authoritarianism is not a single leader — it is a system. It spreads through the merging of political and personal identities, capturing the media infrastructure and distribution mechanisms, and the deliberate creation of instability — yet, authoritarianism is historically fragile. Strongmen fall when communities organize, effectively message, and reclaim democratic power at the local level.

The AFBC’s mission reflect this truth: we are building networks of informed, connected, and active citizens who will break the authoritarian cycle. Patriotism is both knowledge and action — this path forward requires long-term thinking, authentic leadership, and being courageous by telling and creating a better national story.

Where to find resources

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

How to Access the material

We encourage you to read along with us, with get a copy of your own — we recommend these resources:

* Go to your local library and checkout a copy, if available

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

Start & Support Your Own Book Club

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

* Shop VFF for gear

Actions You Can Take

Call your public servants on important issues:

* 5calls.org

Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and feed America:

* safedc.info

Sign the Move-On Petitions:

* Investigate Presidential Use of the Autopen for Pardons and Executive Actions

* A Petition to End the Shutdown and Restore Representation: Remove Speaker Johnson

* Mandate that ICE agents show their face and identification

Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

* Orders Project

* Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Thank you Cat, Beth Cruz, Cris, Donna Dupont, William Rochelle, and many others for tuning into my live video with Stephanie G Wilson, PhD, Tara Devlin, Kristofer Goldsmith, and Nick Paro! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

You being here shows that you have already begun the process of unfurling new Banners and forging new Backbones for a more progressive America. Please, take the time to become a paid, or free, subscriber to the Network — supporting us all and ensuring everyone in America can hear these messages.

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Join the uncensored media at the 1A Collective.

Support Banner & Backbone now for only $5 a month or $50 annually!

Banner & Backbone Team

~ Lawrence Winnerman | Nick Paro | Ellie Leonard | Melissa Corrigan, she/her | Shane Yirak | Walter Rhein | Stephanie G Wilson, PhD ~

Today on the Banner & Backbone Media Anti Fascist Book Club, our panel — Nick Paro, Kristofer Goldsmith, Evan Fields, and Stephanie G Wilson, PhD — dive into the final 3 chapters of Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny.

Before jumping into the main discussion, the team took some time to go over Nick Paro’s latest article where the team goes over the importance of doing our own, good journalism to bring easily digestible information to everyday citizens.

In the main discussion, the team goes into depth on the importance of:

* Being calm (and well informed) in the event of a terrorist event — as Snyder describes, fascism takes hold and advantage of managed terror events.

* Being a patriot — acknowledging that the work and efforts you are doing are patriotic because you are actively taking part in and being for democracy.

* Being courageous and willing to put yourself in spaces you have previously been afraid to fill — now is the time to make small acts of creativity and community building a habit — get comfortable being uncomfortable because you’ll be living in that state for a while.

What comes Next?

Next week, 12/12 at 12:30pm ET, the team begins their discussion into Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present.

Sneak Peek

Awesome surprise at the end from Kristofer Goldsmith as he announces, secret to you 🤫, a new addition to the Veterans Fighting Fascism webpage… Kristofer Goldsmith and Nick Paro have been busy working on new books for the reading list, now there is an entire playbook and learning series from Kris is now out — How to be Antifa.

Thank you Beth Cruz, Cris Northern, Jeanne Elbe, Sunny, Millicent, and many others for tuning into my live video with Stephanie G Wilson, PhD, Evan Fields, Kristofer Goldsmith, and Nick Paro! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Where to find resources

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

How to Access the material

We encourage you to read along with us, with get a copy of your own — we recommend these resources:

* Go to your local library and checkout a copy, if available

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

Learn More about starting your own in-person AFBC

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

Actions You Can Take

Call your public servants on important issues:

* 5calls.org

Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and feed America:

* safedc.info

Sign the Move-On Petitions:

* Investigate Presidential Use of the Autopen for Pardons and Executive Actions

* A Petition to End the Shutdown and Restore Representation: Remove Speaker Johnson

* Mandate that ICE agents show their face and identification

Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

* Orders Project

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

You being here shows that you have already begun the process of unfurling new Banners and forging new Backbones for a more progressive America. Please, take the time to become a paid, or free, subscriber to the Network — supporting us all and ensuring everyone in America can hear these messages.

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Join the uncensored media at the 1A Collective.

Support Banner & Backbone now for only $5 a month or $50 annually!

Banner & Backbone Team

~ Lawrence Winnerman | Nick Paro | Ellie Leonard | Melissa Corrigan, she/her | Shane Yirak | Walter Rhein | Stephanie G Wilson, PhD ~

Today’s episode of the Banner & Backbone Media’s Anti Fascist Book Club with Nick Paro, Tara Devlin, and Melissa Corrigan, she/her, is a deep dive into chapters 14, 15, 16, and 17 of Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny.

14. Establish a private life

It’s creating a meaningful and purposeful separation on public and private activity — it’s using our resources to offer collaborative tools and services that ensure our creators and friends are receiving the best tools for personal and familiar security.

15. Contribute to good causes

It’s about making a meaningful and repeated contribution to causes you, personally, find important. Those causes can and should include your favorite independent media networks and creators. Those causes can and should include your favorite charitable organizations.

16. Learn from peers in other countries

Take the lessons from countries which have fallen to totalitarian, authoritarian, dictatorial, and fascist governments. Learn the failings that led to the fall of the previous governments. Learn the lessons that led to overcoming those failures.

17. Listen for dangerous words

It’s pitting the masses against one another through targeted words, like terrorist and extremism, meant to evoke fear and danger — it’s taking the meanings of those words to consume and abuse powers. Our lesson is to take that power away through the proper usage of words — it’s flooding the zone with pro-democracy, pro-constitutional, and pro-freedom messaging.

Extras

* The Orders Project — a non-partisan program created by the National Institute of Military Justice to assist military personnel in understanding their options when faced with orders they believe may not be legal.

* Support Senator Tammy Duckworth’s bill, S. 2198 - Military in Law Enforcement Accountability Act, which greatly restricts when Active Duty Service Members can be allowed to perform Civilian Law Enforcement duties.

Where to find resources

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

How to Access the material

We encourage you to read along with us, with get a copy of your own — we recommend these resources:

* Go to your local library and checkout a copy, if available

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

Learn More about starting your own in-person AFBC

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

Actions You Can Take

Call your public servants on important issues:

* 5calls.org

Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and feed America:

* safedc.info

Sign the Move-On Petitions:

* Investigate Presidential Use of the Autopen for Pardons and Executive Actions

* A Petition to End the Shutdown and Restore Representation: Remove Speaker Johnson

* Mandate that ICE agents show their face and identification

Thank you Courtney 🇨🇦, Pat, Gloria Brewer, LeftieProf, Brenda Schaefer, and many others for tuning into my live video with Melissa Corrigan, she/her, Tara Devlin, and Nick Paro! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

You being here shows that you have already begun the process of unfurling new Banners and forging new Backbones for a more progressive America. Please, take the time to become a paid, or free, subscriber to the Network — supporting us all and ensuring everyone in America can hear these messages.

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Join the uncensored media at the 1A Collective.

Support the efforts to Unmask Law Enforcement.

Support Banner & Backbone now for only $5 a month or $50 annually!

All profits will be dedicated to uplifting powerful voices and renewing American democracy.

Banner & Backbone Team

~ Lawrence Winnerman | Nick Paro | Ellie Leonard | Melissa Corrigan, she/her | Shane Yirak | Walter Rhein ~

Today’s Banner & Backbone AFBC continues the discussion into Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny with a deep dive into chapters 11, 12, and 13. The panel — Nick Paro, Kristofer Goldsmith, Stephanie G Wilson, PhD, Tara Devlin, and Melissa Corrigan, she/her — spend the majority of the discussion talking about the importance of investigation, doing your own journalism, and applying those practices to in-person interactions.

This is turning words into actions — it’s going on offense — it’s actively engaging in community building through personal relationships and authenticity.

It’s the Banner & Backbone community — you all are turning your words into actions by being involved, engaged, willing to learn, and spreading that knowledge to others.

Knowledge is power; however, that is only half the battle — power is useless without direction. We at Banner & Backbone — with the support of our colleagues and community — offer a pro-democracy, pro-dignity, pro-life, pro-freedom direction to restore integrity, service, and ethics into U.S. society.

Where to find resources

* 5calls.org

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

How to Access the material

We encourage you to read along with us, with get a copy of your own — we recommend these resources:

* Go to your local library and checkout a copy, if available

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

Learn More about starting your own in-person AFBC

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

Actions You Can Take

Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and feed America:

* safedc.info

Sign the Move-On Petitions:

* Investigate Presidential Use of the Autopen for Pardons and Executive Actions

* A Petition to End the Shutdown and Restore Representation: Remove Speaker Johnson

* Mandate that ICE agents show their face and identification

Thank you Beth Cruz, Deborah, E West, Patrick Kenny, Millicent, LeftieProf, and many others for tuning into Banner & Backbone’s live video with Stephanie G Wilson, PhD, Melissa Corrigan, she/her, Tara Devlin, Kristofer Goldsmith, and Nick Paro! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

You being here shows that you have already begun the process of unfurling new Banners and forging new Backbones for a more progressive America. Please, take the time to become a paid, or free, subscriber to the Network — supporting us all and ensuring everyone in America can hear these messages.

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Join the uncensored media at the 1A Collective.

Support the efforts to Unmask Law Enforcement.

Support Banner & Backbone now for only $5 a month or $50 annually!

All profits will be dedicated to uplifting powerful voices and renewing American democracy.

Banner & Backbone Team

~ Lawrence Winnerman | Nick Paro | Ellie Leonard | Melissa Corrigan, she/her | Shane Yirak | Walter Rhein ~

On today’s episode of Banner & Backbone’s Anti Fascist Book Club, featuring Nick Paro, Tara Devlin, Stephanie G Wilson, PhD, and Melissa Corrigan, she/her, the team continue their deep-dive discussion into Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny. This conversation focuses in on chapters 8-10 — Stand out, Be Kind To Our Language, and Believe In Truth.

The Full Discussion

* Episode 5: Do Not Obey Tyranny

* Episode 6: Taking Institutional Responsibility

* Episode 7: One Party Without Responsibility

* Episode 8: Be Aware of Paramilitaries And Reflective If You’re Armed

Where to find resources

* 5calls.org

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

How to Access the material

We encourage you to read along with us, with get a copy of your own — we recommend these resources:

* Go to your local library and checkout a copy, if available

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

Learn More about starting your own in-person AFBC

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

Actions You Can Take

Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and feed America:

* safedc.info

Sign the Move-On Petitions:

* Investigate Presidential Use of the Autopen for Pardons and Executive Actions

* A Petition to End the Shutdown and Restore Representation: Remove Speaker Johnson

* Mandate that ICE agents show their face and identification

Thank you Shane Yirak, Rick Herbst, Noble Blend, Beth Cruz, Patrick Kenny, and many others for tuning into my live video with Stephanie G Wilson, PhD, Melissa Corrigan, she/her, Tara Devlin, and Nick Paro! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

You being here shows that you have already begun the process of unfurling new Banners and forging new Backbones for a more progressive America. Please, take the time to become a paid, or free, subscriber to the Network — supporting us all and ensuring everyone in America can hear these messages.

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Support the efforts to Unmask Law Enforcement.

Support Banner & Backbone now for only $5 a month or $50 annually!

All profits will be dedicated to uplifting powerful voices and renewing American democracy.

Banner & Backbone Team

~ Lawrence Winnerman | Nick Paro | Ellie Leonard | Melissa Corrigan, she/her | Shane Yirak | Walter Rhein ~

Today’s episode is the next in our deep dive into the lessons outlined in Timothy Snyder’s book, On Tyranny. The focus is on chapters 6 and 7 — Be wary of paramilitaries and Be reflective if you must be armed — and the team brings together a highly pertinent discussion on the paramilitary being created in the U.S. as the government remains shut down. These efforts are focused on bankrupting and closing all social programs which support a nation’s populace — creating an environment of desperation where the only option is to “join President Trump’s D.C. Task Force” — a paramilitary under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security.

This “task force” is specifically targeted as “Trump’s D.C. Task Force” — it is marketed as a video game. Visit safedc.gov to see the propagandized webpage. There is a lot to unpack with this propaganda; however, the team at Banner & Backbone are not backing down — we are going to take peaceful and patriotic actions through coordinated, online team + live chat events.

Thank you Shane Yirak, Tom Kudla, P. J. Schuster, Rachel Hendricks, Donna Dupont, and many others for tuning into today’s live book club on Banner & Backbone with Stephanie G Wilson, PhD, Melissa Corrigan, she/her, Tara Devlin, Kristofer Goldsmith, Shane Yirak, and Nick Paro! Join us for our next live video in the app.

Where to find resources

* 5calls.org

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

How to Access the material

We encourage you to read along with us, with get a copy of your own — we recommend these resources:

* Go to your local library and checkout a copy, if available

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

Learn More about starting your own in-person AFBC

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

You being here shows that you have already begun the process of unfurling new Banners and forging new Backbones for a more progressive America. Please, take the time to become a paid, or free, subscriber to the Network — supporting us all and ensuring everyone in America can hear these messages.

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Melissa Corrigan’s reporting on the Norfolk, VA Case is made possible by the support of Centered America & Banner & Backbone.

Support Banner & Backbone now for only $5 a month or $50 annually!

All profits will be dedicated to uplifting powerful voices and renewing American democracy.

Banner & Backbone Team

~ Lawrence Winnerman | Nick Paro | Ellie Leonard | Melissa Corrigan, she/her | Shane Yirak | Walter Rhein ~

On today‘s Banner & Backbone Antifascist Book Club, our panel — Nick Paro, Kristofer Goldsmith, Stephanie G Wilson, PhD, Melissa Corrigan, she/her, and Tara Devlin — continue their deep dive into Timothy Snyder’s book On Tyranny with a conversation into the lack of accountability within a single-party state, the understanding that the U.S. does not have free or fair elections, and going on offense is the only way to stop authoritarianism in its tracks.

To catch up on the prior episodes, checkout:

Thank you Ellie Leonard, Shane Yirak, Jerry Ashton, Noble Blend, Deeanna Burleson, and many others for tuning into my live video with Stephanie G Wilson, PhD, Melissa Corrigan, she/her, Tara Devlin, Kristofer Goldsmith, and Nick Paro!

Join us every Friday at 12:30pm ET for a new episode of the book club.

Where to find resources

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

How to Access the material

We encourage you to read along with us, with get a copy of your own — we recommend these resources:

* Go to your local library and checkout a copy, if available

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

Learn More about starting your own in-person AFBC

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

You being here shows that you have already begun the process of unfurling new Banners and forging new Backbones for a more progressive America. Please, take the time to become a paid, or free, subscriber to the Network — supporting us all and ensuring everyone in America can hear these messages.

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Support Banner & Backbone now for only $5 a month or $50 annually!

All profits will be dedicated to uplifting powerful voices and renewing American democracy.

Banner & Backbone Team

~ Lawrence Winnerman | Nick Paro | Ellie Leonard | Melissa Corrigan, she/her | Shane Yirak | Walter Rhein ~

Join us next Friday, 10/2 at 12:30pm, for our next episode and a continued discussion into Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny.

Where to find resources

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

How to Access the material

We encourage you to read along with us, with get a copy of your own — we recommend these resources:

* Go to your local library and checkout a copy, if available

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

Learn More about starting your own in-person AFBC

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

You being here shows that you have already begun the process of unfurling new Banners and forging new Backbones for a more progressive America. Please, take the time to become a paid, or free, subscriber to the Network — supporting us all and ensuring everyone in America can hear these messages.

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Support Banner & Backbone now for only $5 a month or $50 annually!

All profits will be dedicated to uplifting powerful voices and renewing American democracy.

Banner & Backbone Team

~ Lawrence Winnerman | Nick Paro | Ellie Leonard | Melissa Corrigan, she/her | Shane Yirak | Walter Rhein ~

What happened today?

Today on the Anti Fascist Book Club, members of the Banner & Backbone team — Nick Paro, Melissa Corrigan, she/her, and Ellie Leonard — alongside our guests Stephanie G Wilson, PhD and Tara Devlin — begin our discussion into Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny. Our discussion focuses in on the book’s Prologue and first chapter/historical lesson — Do Not Obey in Advance.

Obeying fascism is advance never works — it always leads to further appeasement and oppression.

What comes next?

The team returns on 10/17, at 12:30pm ET, for our continued discussion into Timothy Snyder’s book, On Tyranny, as we further explore the lessons of Defend institutions and Beware the one party state.

How to Access the material

We encourage you to read along with us, with get a copy of your own — we recommend these resources:

* Go to your local library and checkout a copy, if available

* Bookstore.org

* ThriftBooks.com

Learn More about starting your own in-person AFBC

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

* Task Force Butler

Contributor Links

* Tara Devlin

* Stephanie G Wilson, PhD

* Ellie Leonard

* Melissa Corrigan, she/her

* Nick Paro

* Banner & Backbone

Thank you Tom Kudla, Michael Catlett, Independent Voter 1, Beth Cruz, Cat Wilson RN, and many others for tuning into my live video with Stephanie G Wilson, PhD, Melissa Corrigan, she/her, Ellie Leonard, Tara Devlin, and Nick Paro!

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

You being here shows that you have already begun the process of unfurling new Banners and forging new Backbones for a more progressive America. Please, take the time to become a paid, or free, subscriber to the Network — supporting us all and ensuring everyone in America can hear these messages.

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Melissa Corrigan’s reporting on the Norfolk, VA Case is made possible by the support of Centered America & Banner & Backbone.

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All profits will be dedicated to uplifting powerful voices and renewing American democracy.

Banner & Backbone Team

~ Lawrence Winnerman | Nick Paro | Ellie Leonard | Melissa Corrigan, she/her | Shane Yirak | Walter Rhein ~

On Today’s episode of the Banner & Backbone Anti Fascist Book Club — Nick Paro, Melissa Corrigan, she/her, Shane Yirak, and Ellie Leonard — welcome on our special guest and historian, Stephanie G Wilson, PhD, to complete our discussion into What is Fascism? by going through the final section — Grievances.

This summary of fascism was written over 2 years ago by Kristofer Goldsmith and Task Force Butler. It is the perfect primer on identifying what fascism is, how it arises, and the needed ingredients.

What comes next?

Join us next week, 10/10 at 12:30pm, as we begin to dive into Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny — a guide and tool for us to learn from, actively applying the lessons to our own lives.

Thank you Noble Blend, Brandi H, Beth Cruz, P. J. Schuster, Independent Voter 1, Kay Smith, and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Contributor Links

* Stephanie G Wilson, PhD

* Ellie Leonard

* Melissa Corrigan, she/her

* Shane Yirak

* Nick Paro

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

You being here shows that you have already begun the process of unfurling new Banners and forging new Backbones for a more progressive America. Please, take the time to become a paid, or free, subscriber to the Network — supporting us all and ensuring everyone in America can hear these messages.

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Support Banner & Backbone now for only $5 a month or $50 annually!

All profits will be donated to charities and foundations supporting Epstein victims or dedicated to renewing American democracy.

Banner & Backbone Team

~ Frederic Poag | Lawrence Winnerman | Nick Paro | Ellie Leonard | Melissa Corrigan, she/her | Shane Yirak | Walter Rhein ~

Today was an super relevant reading in our book club as we examined Loyalty. As Pete Hegseth has called to convene hundreds of generals in Washington DC, it’s not a wild assumption that this could be a gathering to gauge the level of loyalty from the highest military leaders, or even to unequivocally demand it. The world is watching.

Catch us next week as we dive into Grievance. From the text:

The fulcrum for the exercise of power, control, and the demands of loyalty is shared grievance. A fascists’ core motivating principle is the idea that “they have done this [insert grievance] to “us,” and now “we must not only protect ourselves,” but “we must fight back to preserve and reclaim what is rightfully ours!

If you’d like to read along, here’s the link: taskforcebutler.org/what-is-fascism

What’s next?

* On 10/3, we will complete the reading and discussion of What is Fascism? by Task Force Butler.

* On 10/10, we will begin our reading and discussion of On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder.

Contributor Links

* Nick Paro

* Melissa Corrigan, she/her

* Shane Yirak

Thank you Ellie Leonard, Yolanda D., Mike Harkreader, Beth Cruz, Dmitry, Yanni Hamburger, Brushy 🦝📚, Susan J, Carrie, and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

You being here shows that you have already begun the process of unfurling new Banners and forging new Backbones for a more progressive America. Please, take the time to become a paid, or free, subscriber to the Network — supporting us all and ensuring everyone in America can hear these messages.

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Support Banner & Backbone now for only $5 a month or $50 annually!

All profits will be donated to charities and foundations supporting Epstein victims or dedicated to renewing American democracy.

Banner & Backbone Team

~ Frederic Poag | Lawrence Winnerman | Nick Paro | Ellie Leonard | Melissa Corrigan, she/her | Shane Yirak | Walter Rhein ~

How did we get here?

Veterans Fighting Fascism, Antifascist Book Club

We are following the example of friend of the network, Kristofer Goldsmith, to provide every one of us with the knowledge and tools needed to go on the offensive against authoritarianism. The mission of the Book Club is to educate, organize, empower, and communicate practical resources and organization tips to transform knowledge into action.

Reading List

To prepare for each week, please read the selected book(s) and come prepared with questions!

Where to get your books?

* Get locally: check your local library!

* Order online: bookstore.org

September 26th:

* Continuing our discussion on What is Fascism? by Kristofer Goldsmith

* Together, You Can Redeem the Soul of Our Nation by Representative John Lewis

October 3rd:

* On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder

Guest Links

* Kristofer Goldsmith

* Task Force Butler

* Veterans Fighting Fascism

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

You being here shows that you have already begun the process of unfurling new Banners and forging new Backbones for a more progressive America. Please, take the time to become a paid, or free, subscriber to the Network — supporting us all and ensuring everyone in America can hear these messages.

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Support Banner & Backbone now for only $5 a month or $50 annually!

All profits will be donated to charities and foundations supporting Epstein victims or dedicated to renewing American democracy.

Banner & Backbone Team

~ Frederic Poag | Lawrence Winnerman | Nick Paro | Ellie Leonard | Melissa Corrigan, she/her | Shane Yirak | Walter Rhein ~

How did we get here?

Veterans Fighting Fascism, Antifascist Book Club

We are following the example of friend of the network, Kristofer Goldsmith, to provide every one of us with the knowledge and tools needed to go on the offensive against authoritarianism. The mission of the Book Club is to educate, organize, empower, and communicate practical resources and organization tips to transform knowledge into action.

Reading List

To prepare for each week, please read the selected book(s) and come prepared with questions!

Where to get your books?

* Get locally: check your local library!

* Order online: bookstore.org

September 19th:

* What is Fascism? by Kristofer Goldsmith

* Together, You Can Redeem the Soul of Our Nation by Representative John Lewis

September 26th:

* On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder

Thank you Caro Henry, Independent Voter 1, Megan Johnson, Kristin Freeman, Christina Harris, Michael J. Sheridan, Vera Snow, JaAmerican P, KarLee, Carrie, and many others for tuning into today’s Banner & Backbone Antifascist Book Club, let today by Melissa Corrigan, she/her and Nick Paro!

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

You being here shows that you have already begun the process of unfurling new Banners and forging new Backbones for a more progressive America. Please, take the time to become a paid, or free, subscriber to the Network — supporting us all and ensuring everyone in America can hear these messages.

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Support Banner & Backbone now for only $5 a month or $50 annually!

All profits will be donated to charities and foundations supporting Epstein victims or dedicated to renewing American democracy.

Banner & Backbone Team

~ Frederic Poag | Lawrence Winnerman | Nick Paro | Ellie Leonard | Melissa Corrigan, she/her | Shane Yirak | Walter Rhein ~