I'm back with Part 2 of my conversation with Dale Beran, turning to what happened to the people he followed while reporting on early 4chan, and what it means to grow out of a life shaped by anonymous online worlds.

Some were able to step away as their offline lives improved, but others remained tied to screens in cycles of addiction.

I also share how Dale’s work has helped me talk with my own kids about online culture, bullying, and the attention economy, as a form of inoculation against extremism and despair.

This episode ends with an informal report on how conversations about online spaces are going in this antifascist house.

It Came from Something Awful: How a Toxic Troll Army Accidentally Memed Donald Trump into Office —Beran

All theme music by the amazing www.kalliemarie.com.

Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times (North Atlantic Books, April 2026).
Preorder: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/807656/antifascist-dad-by-matthew-remski/

Instagram: @matthew_remski

TikTok: @antifascistdad

Bluesky: @matthewremski.bsky.social (Bluesky Social)

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AntifascistDad

• (00:00:08) - Boys and Men of 4chan grow up and move on, or don't
• (00:04:12) - Stuck in Screens
• (00:11:31) - The Alt-Right and Accountability
• (00:21:30) - Are Parents Too Protective?
• (00:26:38) - Ideas for 12-Year-Old Me
• (00:32:36) - How We're Talking to Our Kids About the Internet

An audio essay on how to talk with young people about the Epstein files from an antifascist perspective. How to hold questions without amplifying sensationalism. How to name harms amidst the absence of accountability.

Also: fragmented Epstein File discourse could trigger a QAnon-style wave on the left, unless adults provide steadier sources, context, and care.

Occult Features of Anarchism | The Anarchist Library

All theme music by the amazing www.kalliemarie.com.

Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times (North Atlantic Books, April 2026).
Preorder: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/807656/antifascist-dad-by-matthew-remski/

Instagram: @matthew_remski

TikTok: @antifascistdad

Bluesky: @matthewremski.bsky.social (Bluesky Social)

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AntifascistDad

• (00:04:44) - Talking To My Kids About Epstein
• (00:15:28) - QAnon 2.0

As he laid it out at Davos, Carney’s prescription for avoiding fascist chaos is more of the same conservative capitalism that accelerates fascism: tax cuts, deregulation, fast-tracked investment in oil, AI, and minerals, and new trading blocs with the more stable “middle powers.”

He’s not talking about or taking action domestically to support labour unions, redistribution, social safety nets, or anti-racist and democratic protections.

Carney’s calm, paternal style makes his status quo vision emotionally appealing to liberals seeking stability. Antifascism cannot be a gentler version of domination. We don’t need a kinder patriarch inside the sweatshop. We need politics and parental figures that lead us out of it.

CODA: Alex Pretti was a hero, but the straightforward normalcy of his decent actions tell us something about the contested territory of masculinity in this fascist era.

Notes:

Terror, Love and Brainwashing: Attachment in Cults and Totalitarian Systems
Jessica Hauser (friend of Alex Pretti) statement.

All theme music by the amazing www.kalliemarie.com.

Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times (North Atlantic Books, April 2026).
Preorder: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/807656/antifascist-dad-by-matthew-remski/

Instagram: @matthew_remski

TikTok: @antifascistdad

Bluesky: @matthewremski.bsky.social (Bluesky Social)

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AntifascistDad

• (00:00:08) - Carney's New Medicine, Same as the Old
• (00:06:21) - Trudeau and Mark Carney: Secure Attachment?
• (00:20:43) - Alex Pretti: The Normalcy of Heroism

Writer Dale Beran visits to discuss the far-right online subcultures he documented in his excellent 2019 book, It Came from Something Awful: How a Toxic Troll Army Accidentally Memed Donald Trump into Office.

I ask whether the cohort of alienated, terminally online young men still exists and whether it lost power after gaining it. TLDR? The specific 4chan generation has aged or splintered, but the type endures, and its ideas have been mainstreamed—especially through Elon Musk’s transformation of Twitter into a platform that rewards provocation and misinformation.

Did these young men ever face a real ideological fork? Do they regret that meme-friendly scapegoating traveled faster than deeper structural explanations? We also whether the left should start meming harder.

DALE BERAN is a writer and artist whose work has been published in McSweeney’s, Quartz, The Huffington Post, The Daily Dot, The Nib, and The Baltimore City Paper. He has a BA in classics from Bard and a JD from Fordham. He lives in Baltimore.

All theme music by the amazing www.kalliemarie.com.

Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times (North Atlantic Books, April 2026).
Preorder: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/807656/antifascist-dad-by-matthew-remski/

Instagram: @matthew_remski

TikTok: @antifascistdad

Bluesky: @matthewremski.bsky.social (Bluesky Social)

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AntifascistDad

• (00:02:34) - From Something Awful
• (00:11:19) - Anti-Fascists Dad on The Alt-Right
• (00:19:19) - The Left and the Far Right
• (00:24:45) - The Memes on the Shooting
• (00:28:19) - On Mediums and the Left
• (00:38:06) - 4chan: Anonymity and the Alt-Right

I'm back with Rev. Angela Denker, discussing antifascist faith under pressure. Angela names the misogyny threaded through white Christian nationalism—from “submission” theology to the contempt aimed at women who refuse it—and explains why the killing of Renee Good landed as specifically gendered terror. We talk about the double-bind of ministry: how churches can be both sites of harassment and, in places like Minneapolis, hubs of women-led resistance and care.

Then I ask Angela to “translate” an antifascist Jesus for nonreligious young people by riffing on familiar parables—the Prodigal Son, Workers in the Vineyard, and the Talents—as lessons about mercy, economic fairness, and the moral danger of hoarding. The conversation turns to the hardest question: where nonviolence meets its limits, and how Lutheran traditions wrestle with power, resistance, and the realities of state violence.

I close with reflections on Bishop Rob Hirschfeld’s call for clergy to “get their affairs in order” and what that kind of embodied witness implies about capitalism, solidarity, and the spiritual scar tissue we carry.

Notes:

Disciples of White Jesus: The Radicalization of American Boyhood | Broadleaf Books

All theme music by the amazing www.kalliemarie.com.

Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times (North Atlantic Books, April 2026).
Preorder: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/807656/antifascist-dad-by-matthew-remski/

Instagram: @matthew_remski

TikTok: @antifascistdad

Bluesky: @matthewremski.bsky.social (Bluesky Social)

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AntifascistDad

• (00:00:08) - Mother and Minister in Minneapolis
• (00:02:03) - White Christian Nationalism
• (00:04:32) - Building Ministry Away from Misogyny
• (00:10:19) - The Prodigal Son
• (00:12:12) - Workers in the Vineyard
• (00:13:47) - Parable of the Talents
• (00:18:27) - Jesus and the Problem of Nonviolence
• (00:28:16) - Hirschfeld's Advice to the Christian Clergy
• (00:33:44) - Theological Scar Tissue

Carney’s recent speech at Davos really is as important as everyone’s saying it is. But in my view, it’s not important for the obvious truth we just heard him confess, but for the lessons it provides about the deep contradictions and hypocrisies of liberal politics, and how when it pretends to stand up to fascism it’s really asking that the capital order return to an era of better optics. Carney told a truth about neoliberalism that conceals a bigger lie about capitalist inevitability, and how pulling this off with the affect of a more benevolent patriarch can be really attractive and distracting.

Part two, available now on Patreon, explores Carney’s masculinity and paternal political style in depth. Does he offer secure attachment?

Notes

ICE taps Canadian firm for 20 armoured vehicles despite Trump trade war | Globalnews.ca

‘Deeply troubling’: Canadian legislators call for halt to ICE armored vehicle sale after report by The Independent

Leadnow. “Stop the Contract: No Canadian Weapons to ICE.”

“Principled and pragmatic: Canada’s path” Prime Minister Carney addresses the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting

The Power of the Powerless

ECONOMIC WARFARE. (Hansard, 17 January 1940)

All theme music by the amazing www.kalliemarie.com.

Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times (North Atlantic Books, April 2026).
Preorder: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/807656/antifascist-dad-by-matthew-remski/

Instagram: @matthew_remski

TikTok: @antifascistdad

Bluesky: @matthewremski.bsky.social (Bluesky Social)

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AntifascistDad

• (00:00:07) - Mark Carney Is Not Your Anti-Fascist Dad
• (00:03:14) - Roshel Selling Armored Vehicles to ICE
• (00:08:31) - Havel's Power of the Powerless
• (00:19:31) - Carney's Policies
• (00:25:16) - A Kinder Father Figure?

Picking it back up with historian of fascism Craig Johnson with the question of why fascism can feel cool—especially online—and how we might interrupt that appeal without fighting on fascism’s terms. But fascism isn't just pretending to be cool: it’s popular, aesthetic, and subcultural, and it sells itself through speed, power, transgression, and a sense of newness.

There's a tactical dilemma: how to puncture influencers like Andrew Tate or Nick Fuentes without reinforcing their own status metrics (looks, dominance, sexual access). Craig feels, for instance, that jawline mockery backfires, and why we have to keep the critique on what actually matters: cruelty, exploitation, and fascist politics.

No one organizes alone: tactics are collective, context-dependent, and always strategic. We close on coalition-building and why real, lived diversity makes fascist lies harder to sell.

I end with a brief coda on talking with my kids about the attack on Caracas.

Notes:

How to Talk to Your Son About Fascism — Johnson

Fifteen Minutes of Fascism — Johnson's podcast

All theme music by the amazing www.kalliemarie.com.

Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times (North Atlantic Books, April 2026).
Preorder: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/807656/antifascist-dad-by-matthew-remski/

Instagram: @matthew_remski

TikTok: @antifascistdad

Bluesky: @matthewremski.bsky.social (Bluesky Social)

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AntifascistDad

• (00:01:07) - Does Fascism Pretend to Be Cool?
• (00:10:23) - Andrew Tate and the Politics of Influence
• (00:18:17) - Does the Left Have a Natural Immunity to Fascism?
• (00:25:16) - Anti-Fascism: The Transgressive Value of Slog
• (00:29:19) - On the Strategy of Protest
• (00:32:48) - On Diversity and Anti-Fascism