Checking The Barometric Pressure of Creeping Fascism, with Ejeris Dixon

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain minor errors.

[00:00:00] Cayden Mak: What is up, everybody? Welcome to Block and Build, a podcast from Convergence magazine. I’m your host and the publisher of Convergence, Caden Mock. On this show, we’re building a roadmap for the movement that’s working to block the impacts of rising authoritarianism while building the strength and resilience of the broad front that we need to win.

[00:00:27] Before we get started, I want to thank Lisa [00:00:30] Veniklasen for joining us this week as a Movement Legacy subscriber. If you’d like to join her, I invite you to join our subscriber program. Convergence Magazine is an independent publication that relies on the generosity of our readers and listeners to create the rigorous, thoughtful takes that you’ve come to expect from us week in and week out.

[00:00:46] You can become a subscriber. At ConvergenceMag. com slash donate. Any amount helps, either as a one time donation or a recurring monthly or annual subscription. This week on the show, I’m joined by the principal of Ijeri Labs, Ijeris [00:01:00] Dixon. Ijeris recently launched the Fascism Barometer, a podcast and resource hub working to educate communities already feeling authoritarian impacts about what fascism is and how we can stop it.

[00:01:10] We’ll explore the history of the creeping fascist trend in our society and politics, and how we all should think about our relationship to state power in 2025. Before that, I’m going to talk to Joohyun Park, a Movement Media colleague at The Real News, and organizer with Nodeutdol, about what’s been unfolding in South Korea since the unsuccessful coup attempt by President Yoon [00:01:30] Suk yool on December 3rd.

[00:01:32] But first, these headlines from this week. Now that authorities have taken the alleged shooter of the United Healthcare CEO, Luigi Mangione, into custody, the internet has absolutely exploded. Between pillorying the mainstream media for whitewashing Brian Thompson to reading the tea leaves of Mangione’s social media history, folks have been busy.

[00:01:52] It’s the wild speculation about his political commitments, though, that have been making me itch. Something that I’ve noticed is that a lot of folks seem to want to sew [00:02:00] him neatly into some kind of ideological box. But I’m gonna be honest with you, the 26 year old Mangione, who’s Ivy League educated, working in the tech industry, playing trending video games, is actually just a guy.

[00:02:13] Even looking at Mangione’s Goodreads, his log of what he’s read and what he thought about it, exposes that for the most part, he’s reading New York Times bestsellers. While we might describe some of his posts on social media as vaguely right wing, and his self understanding as the main character is [00:02:30] certainly inflated, he isn’t somebody who is meaningfully radicalized in any particular direction, he doesn’t seem to have a theory of social power, and he really isn’t that unusual, I think, for 26 year old guys in the United States.

[00:02:43] Mangione isn’t the avatar of some kind of new class solidarity, nor is he A kind of harbinger of class traitors to come. He’s just proof that neoliberalism is touching us all. Increasing precarity through the undermining of organized labor and the financialization of literally everything, [00:03:00] like for instance healthcare, has made life really expensive and uncertain for lots of people outside of really just the ultra mega wealthy.

[00:03:07] Maybe instead of trying to force him into a neatly predetermined ideological narrative, we should tell the story of this profound hollowing out of what it means to be a society, and also why someone might think it would change the system by shooting one CEO. Also in a surprising turn of events, the rebel coalition fighting the Assad regime in Syria forced the dictator out on Sunday, the [00:03:30] culmination of just a few weeks of intensified fighting that also saw the collapse of Assad’s support from Russia and Iran.

[00:03:36] Syrians celebrated the fall of the dictatorship while also bracing for the uncertainty to come. In addition to liberating the prisons, huge swaths of people were out in the streets earlier today, joyously celebrating during Friday’s call to prayer. What remains to be seen is which of the many rebel factions of the coalition that have ousted Assad will fill that power vacuum, and how.

[00:03:57] And now to our first guest. Previously on the show, we [00:04:00] have talked about how mass turnout in the streets in Seoul led to the failure of President Yoon’s attempt to implement martial law in South Korea and stage a coup. While it seems like a lot of the Western media has really moved on from this story, complications, further details, and continued protests continue to unspool as the nation deals with the fallout.

[00:04:20] And Learns more about what President Yoon’s intentions were. My first guest today is Jo Hyun Park. They continued movement media coverage of the story this [00:04:30] week, publishing a great piece today at the People’s Dispatch titled, Was South Korea’s Coup an Attempt to Restart the Korean War? I’m really excited that we can get a little bit deeper into this story and to what those of us living in the United States should take in terms of lessons from this threat to democracy abroad and also fold into our own movement work.

[00:04:51] Jihoon, thanks so much for joining me today and for covering the story. 

[00:04:55] Ju-Hyun Park: Absolutely. Thank you for having me on, Caden. 

[00:04:58] Cayden Mak: So something somewhere I want to [00:05:00] start is actually before December 3rd, because I think something that a lot of US media missed in the run up to those events were that this increasingly hostile stance that the UN government was taking towards North Korea.

[00:05:11] Could you tell us a little bit about that? And also what the US stake and involvement was in that? 

[00:05:17] Ju-Hyun Park: Absolutely. So some listeners may be familiar with the rapprochement that was underway on the Korean peninsula about a decade ago under the government of Moon Jae in who was the predecessor to the current [00:05:30] president, Yoon Seok yol.

[00:05:31] Now, Under President Yun, the inter Korean relationship has completely collapsed, and I don’t think that’s a hyperbolic statement at all. He ran on a platform of adopting a military strategy that would allow South Korea to launch preemptive strikes on North Korea, which he adopted pretty much the moment he came into office.

[00:05:50] Last year, he also took the very bizarre step of declaring North Korea, his government’s so called principal enemy, and has since then a [00:06:00] stance on reunification that is very contradictory to the viewpoint that was advanced by progressive South Korean governments and by the government of North Korea over the last past half century.

[00:06:11] The formula for unification has always involved peaceful reunification, an independent process that’s free from foreign influence, and probably one that ends up in some kind of power sharing agreement between two governments. The model that the U. Yoon Seok yol has promoted instead is called reunification [00:06:30] by absorption.

[00:06:30] It’s the idea that South Korea should effectively annex North Korea, dissolve its socialist state, and then implement capitalist rule over North Korea instead. So obviously this has been incredibly provocative, but The issues have not only been from the standpoint of policy, there has also been the problem of increased military activity and aggression.

[00:06:50] Last year there were more than 200 days of war games on the Korean peninsula between the militaries of the United States and South Korea. Under Yun, South Korea has also [00:07:00] started to enter what is called the JAKIS trilateral alliance. JAKIS stands for Japan, Korea, United States. This is a major breakthrough from the Because while South Korea and Japan have long been allies of the United States, they have always, they have also had incredible problems with one another stemming from Japan’s colonial rule of Korea in the first half of the 20th century.

[00:07:22] What president Yoon did was to essentially steamroll over the demands of survivors of that colonial period in order to push through the this new [00:07:30] military alliance. So as a result, the geopolitical situation in Northeast Asia has also changed, where you now have the emergence of a much more unified U. S.

[00:07:39] led military bloc than in the past. And this has, of course, provoked a response. It was something like one or two months after the Washington Declaration, when this Japan U. S. Korea alliance started to really come together. That North Korea also entered a strategic comprehensive partnership with Russia, which of course has been covered extensively in the U.

[00:07:58] S. media. [00:08:00] Has not really been explored in terms of understanding why that is and how it relates to U. S. policy in the region, which Yoon Seok yol has been absolutely instrumental in advancing. 

[00:08:10] Cayden Mak: Awesome. Thank you. Yeah, it seems like the this escalation the U. S. alliance, I also think has been undercovered in the U.

[00:08:17] S. media. It’s not the sort of causal relationship there is not being explored. I imagine a lot of our listeners have seen the images and video that came out on December 3rd about the mass protests in the streets and seen some of the [00:08:30] story but a lot has been happening since then, obviously.

[00:08:33] Could you lay out a little bit about what has been revealed both in Korean civil society, but then also to members of the national legislature since December 3rd? 

[00:08:43] Ju-Hyun Park: Absolutely. So understandably, given that there was just a coup attempt, there have been pretty much daily emergency hearings in the National Assembly, which is South Korea’s legislature with various lawmakers probing exactly what happened on the night of December 3rd, how [00:09:00] much planning went into it, and what else we can know about on that night.

[00:09:06] What is starting to come to light is that there are increasing signs that President Yoon was seeking to initiate some sort of war with North Korea for the purpose of declaring martial law. Now, there are a number of claims that have been made and I want to take the time to properly take everyone through what’s been said so far.

[00:09:25] The first instance was on December 7th when A lawmaker came forward citing [00:09:30] an anonymous military source saying that the ex Foreign Minister not sorry, not the Foreign Minister, the ex Defense Minister who is now under arrest had attempted to issue an order for a direct strike on North Korea back in November.

[00:09:44] This was something that the military has since denied. However, there have been some other reports coming forward as well. So in October of this year, North Korea reported for the first time that South Korean drones had violated their airspace, and they were actually able to produce photographs [00:10:00] of a number of crashed drones that bore a very strong resemblance to models that are known to be used by the South Korean military.

[00:10:06] At the time, the South Korean military Did not confirm or deny, but simply said that they could not confirm whether the reports were true. And this was very quickly buried as well in the U. S. media. And, of course, the spotlight shifted back to North Korea a couple weeks later, when the decision was made to detonate some of the roads and bridges connecting North and South Korea at the DMZ.

[00:10:29] What is [00:10:30] now coming to light again from lawmakers citing anonymous military sources is that this was an order from the South Korean military to attempt to violate the airspace of North Korea and trigger some form of conflict. The And then there are some other specific details that have come to light as well.

[00:10:47] This Sunday, there was a container fire on a South Korean military facility that was housing drones and launchers. And the military has since explained that was due to electrical issues, but lawmakers are alleging that this is a cover up attempt instead. [00:11:00] Now, what may be the most shocking allegations put forward are being put forward by lawmaker Kim Byung joo, who is actually a former four star general in the South Korean army.

[00:11:12] He is saying that he has received word from multiple military sources that on the night of December 3rd, when the martial law order was declared, that the elite South Korean special forces HID unit, which is the South had operatives in Seoul who were ready to help carry out arrests and potentially assassinations.

[00:11:29] [00:11:30] That has been followed up by the testimony of a noted South Korean independent journalist named Kim Ho Joon. And I will note here that Kim Ho Joon is someone who is known to have been targeted on the night of December 3rd. There were South Korean military deployed to his studio that has been confirmed.

[00:11:46] He has now come forward saying that he has received warnings and tips not from a military source actually, but from someone in all he was willing to say was a friendly embassy of a country, that has diplomatic [00:12:00] relations with South Korea, saying that the actual full extent of the plan was to have special forces clad in North Korean uniform commit an assassination of Yoon Suk yo’s party leader, Han Dong hun.

[00:12:15] And the plan would have been to then dispose of these uniforms and have them discovered at a later time so that this the killing of Han Dong un could then be pinned onto North Korea. Kim Ho jong has also said that himself and a number of other politicians would have been [00:12:30] targeted for essentially a kidnapping at this time by these soldiers clad in North Korean uniforms to make it appear as if they had gone turncoat.

[00:12:39] And as if the opposition had betrayed the country. So these are obviously some really stunning and shocking revelations. He’s also brought forward other details, such as there may have been a plan to even kill us soldiers in an attempt to drag the U S into the war. What I will say, after sharing all of this is that, this is an active investigation.

[00:12:57] We are, receiving these testimony in real time. [00:13:00] There’s still evidence that has yet to come to light. It has to be corroborated, but there is a picture coming together of clear motive and intent for a plan to start a war with North Korea as part of the coup attempt. And it’s something that is going largely uncommented within the English language media.

[00:13:17] Cayden Mak: Yeah. This is some pretty explosive stuff and some really it’s almost like comic book, like it’s explosiveness, right. But like ambition and scope of this. Do you, One of the things I wonder [00:13:30] is, like, how are, like, folks regular folks in South Korea responding to this news?

[00:13:35] Have you seen people commenting on this in Korean language media? What is the sort of conversation there? Because I know people are still in the streets in Seoul and elsewhere. 

[00:13:45] Ju-Hyun Park: The critical testimony from Kim Ho Joon just came out this, on Friday morning, Korea time, so not much time has passed.

[00:13:53] I myself woke up this morning and saw this testimony, so I’ve mostly been getting caught up and making sure that [00:14:00] there is some that, there’s some corresponding coverage of this in the English language. Because I think it’s important that, even though we are still dealing with claims that have yet to be fully confirmed, that there is some there’s some archive that we can point back to, right?

[00:14:13] Particularly as the situation evolves. But I think, What we can say very safely is that millions of people have mobilized for a reason, right? Martial law is something that is within the living memory of South Koreans, and it’s something that people take very seriously because of the brutality of that period, [00:14:30] because of the disappearances, the torture, the massacres that were committed.

[00:14:33] If folks have heard of the Gwangju Massacre, which occurred in 1980, I would point out that there are people alive today who are still looking for the bodies of their loved ones who disappeared in those crucial days, right? So this is not something that is considered part of Korea’s ancient history at all.

[00:14:48] And I think while there are a range of opinions about North Korea, what is very common for a broad segment of the population is not wanting war, right? So to hear that the president may have attempted to manufacture some kind [00:15:00] of war, possibly including one that What it brought in the United States, which, could not have been any kind of limited conflict, but would have certainly had a very high risk of spiraling into a regional or even a global war.

[00:15:11] I think that is something that, as more details come to light, we’ll certainly be seeing a stronger response from, particularly from South Korea’s progressive organizations, which do have a very strong anti militaristic stance. 

[00:15:22] Cayden Mak: Yeah that’s helpful. Thank you. And then I guess my last question for you is especially those of us who don’t speak Korean, who are [00:15:30] part of U.

[00:15:30] S. social movements, who are interested in international solidarity and committed to global peace. What do you think we should be paying attention to in the coming weeks? What are the things that you’re tracking and where can people learn more? 

[00:15:42] Ju-Hyun Park: So what I’m paying attention to personally is these investigations in the National Assembly.

[00:15:47] I think it’s very important that people in the U. S. have an eye on this and understanding that, folks may not be able to keep up with the developments in real time, but it is something that we need to be paying attention to because we should be asking the [00:16:00] question, what did Washington know?

[00:16:02] And, essentially, when did they know it? The U. S. military holds operational wartime command over South Korea’s military. They’re very strongly and tightly integrated fighting forces. I would refer people to the work of the journalist K. J. Noh, who’s done an excellent job of discussing Why it is exactly that it’s just very unlikely that the U.

[00:16:20] S. military didn’t have some kind of advance warning because even just to move South Korean soldiers within the peninsula requires very close [00:16:30] communication between the two militaries, only for the purpose of avoiding accidents, right? So this is something that I think folks need to be paying attention to, and particularly this detail around the allegation of a plot to kill U.

[00:16:41] S. soldiers. If there were U. S. officials who even had an inkling that could be the case and did nothing. I would dare to say that, that would be grounds for treason, right? So I think it’s explosive. Yeah, exactly. So I definitely think it’s something that, folks need to keep their eye on.

[00:16:56] I know that, there are a lot of struggles unfolding at the moment. People are not having [00:17:00] an easy time and there’s many causes for justice that need to be pushed forward. All of those causes for justice. Also depend on us not having World War Three or any kind of nuclear conflict with nuclear powers.

[00:17:13] So I think that, this is something that if folks have not been previously paying attention to, I would urge you to find out more to continue paying attention to what’s being put up. 

[00:17:22] Cayden Mak: Yeah. I appreciate you making the time to talk with us and for all of your work bringing this story to like English language, U S [00:17:30] media.

[00:17:30] We’ll put a link to the people’s dispatch story in the show notes so people can learn more. Is there any place that people should follow you, Joohyun? 

[00:17:37] Ju-Hyun Park: Sure, you can follow my Twitter. It’s Hermit underscore Hwarang. Hwarang is spelled H W A R A N G. And I would also encourage folks to follow Norutol, N O D U T D O L.

[00:17:48] That’s an anti imperialist organization that I’m part of, which is made up of folks from the Korean Diaspora, and a lot of the work that we do is focused on unpacking and uncovering these issues of U. S. imperialism in the peninsula, and [00:18:00] really exposing the constant barrage of U. S. war maneuvers that are being 

[00:18:04] Cayden Mak: Perfect.

[00:18:05] Thank you so much, and take care. We appreciate it. 

[00:18:07] Ju-Hyun Park: Thank you. Take care. 

[00:18:09] Cayden Mak: My next guest is Ejeris Dixon. As I said previously, Ejeris has a new show, a new podcast that they’ve started making called the Fascism Barometer, which is part of a larger project to track the ascent of authoritarianism here in the U.

[00:18:25] S. And I’m excited to talk to Ejeris today about that project. And also I think this [00:18:30] question about how folks who are Prison abolitionists should be thinking about state power in this coming period, because it’s something that I’ve been thinking a lot about and it’s something that we think a lot about here at Convergence Magazine.

[00:18:43] Ajaris welcome to Block and Build. It’s nice to see you. 

[00:18:47] Ejeris Dixon: It’s so good to be here. Thanks for having me, Caden. I’m really excited. 

[00:18:52] Cayden Mak: Excellent. I’ve heard you say elsewhere, and this is something that’s really consistent with our editorial line at Convergence, is that we’re living in this culmination [00:19:00] of five, even, we might say six decades at this point, of fascist strategy in this country.

[00:19:07] Could you lay out a little bit of that history and talk a little bit about what as US flavored fascism in our history? 

[00:19:14] Ejeris Dixon: Sure, you come with the easy questions, right? So

[00:19:20] I’m like, here we go. No I’ll start with this is my kind of this is my assessment from my understanding and my best guess, because I see myself as a kind of [00:19:30] a person who is really interested in fascism, right? And so I think there’s We see roots of politics that we would call fascist throughout U.

[00:19:39] S. history, right? And so we can go even further back than five and six decades. And I think it’s also useful to start by just defining fascism because people use the term but maybe are like, we can get into the space of where it’s like, everything we dislike is fascist, and we need to actually get a little bit more, [00:20:00] we get a little more crisp than that.

[00:20:03] And it’s one of the reasons I started the project. When I’m thinking about fascism, I’m thinking about a kind of ultra nationalist, anti democratic far right movement, but a movement where people see themselves as where the kind of majority sees itself as the victim, right? And it’s fighting against marginalized communities and democratic practices and policies for its survival, right?

[00:20:26] So like fascists believe that democracy has failed [00:20:30] them and allowed for their victimization, right? So it’s this piece around and so that’s why they seek to eliminate both democracy and marginalized communities to return to this. It’s often fictitious past. And so we, Mussolini first started the fashion the fascist party in 1920, but there’s a lot of fascism that’s even earlier in, in U.

[00:20:52] S. history and really black indigenous communities of color have often lived underneath the fascist and supremacist states. So [00:21:00] I like to talk about fascist movements. Versus fascist governments versus fascist societies and see them as a progression. And all of us who have done movement, building work, organizing, if you understand how movements work, sometimes we only, they’re thinking about movements on the left, but there are also movements on the right.

[00:21:18] And so as they gain power, then this is what they can. There was an article I wrote a while ago that talked about the cornerstone speech in 19, in 1860, and it’s the [00:21:30] speech that the vice president of the confederacy gives that really talks about what, why the constitution wasn’t racist enough. And essentially, no, I mean it, why the Constitution wasn’t racist enough, and why in this It’s not absurd, 

[00:21:47] Cayden Mak: but I understand I believe it.

[00:21:49] Ejeris Dixon: Yeah and why the Confederacy is necessary to that the cornerstone of true government in this country should be that Black people are not equal to white people, and that [00:22:00] slavery is natural, normal, and appropriate, right? So we can go All the way back there. And there are lots of ways where white supremacist policies, fa anything, things that we would call fascist now really were inspired by what was happening in the US. So then you have this interplay between kind of progressive advances and fas the growth of fascist movements. So you see like the rise of the Ku Klux Klan post reconstruction, right?

[00:22:27] And that you can see as like evidence of [00:22:30] fascist. movements, gaining power, moving into some forms of governance when you start to look at Jim Crow laws, for instance. And then you have pieces where actual like Nazis came to the US to study Jim Crow laws, to go back to Germany, to you to create the Nuremberg laws, which were the laws that kind of started to separate Jews, Jews disabled folks gypsies, like all kinds of different communities and all but a lot of that was predicated [00:23:00] on their learnings here in the US.

[00:23:02] And Rachel Maddow actually does a very good job in like prequel and a bunch of podcasts on talking about this like interplay, like the founding of the American Nazi Party. See party Nazi rallies that happened at Madison Square that people were like, oh, the last time a fascist rally before the MAGA rally happened was in the 1930s.

[00:23:23] So we keep having these tethers. You have you can keep pushing. Tenets of Nazism in [00:23:30] McCarthy’s movements. You see it in COINTELPRO and in the way that kind of j Edgar Hoover’s. sought to like, eliminate movements, eliminate a black messiah, all of those pieces.

[00:23:42] And then I was watching this documentary recently on the history of Christian nationalism, because I was like, I want to get, I want to get more crisp on Christian nationalism. And it was talking about really, about it as a rebrand of kind of segregationist movements, right? And so there was this history [00:24:00] of As schools were getting integrated, then in the South, there would be these creation of kind of white Christian churches, and then there were some lawsuits around those, and it was in defense of like white Christianity, because recognizing that The power of segregationists, it was like a losing, it was a losing game, right?

[00:24:19] Like they were not going to be able to rule as segregationists, but they could create, so the Christian right is a rebrand of segregationist forces people, [00:24:30] policies, all of that. And that takes us to like the first time people said, make America great again, which we can locate within like kind of one of Ronald Reagan’s campaign, and then there’s, Like Bill Clinton used the phrase, Hillary Clinton used the phrase, but so we’ve got these tendrils and of fascism that go all the way back. But the what I’m really interested in is yes, we’ve got fascism all the way into the founding [00:25:00] of this country, but fascism is a process, right?

[00:25:03] Like defining it, locating it, is actually slippery, and it’s why this barometer piece is really important to me, because my hunger was, where are we? Where are we on the barometer? What does that mean for our safety? What does that mean for our people? What does that mean for our organizing?

[00:25:20] Because the tactics shift depending on the tools that they have, the power that they have amassed. So whether you call them Christian [00:25:30] Nationalists, White Supremacists, White Nationalists, like whatever you call them, this tendency to both eliminate Democratic practices and policies and like targeted and marginalized people.

[00:25:42] It’s got a really long history and we’ve produced a lot of it. And yeah. 

[00:25:48] Cayden Mak: Yeah. No, I think that’s really useful also, because I think you’re right that there is a way that mobilizing fascism as like this sort of like the F [00:26:00] word that we like call our enemies this, but we don’t necessarily have a sort of grounded analysis is like maybe one of the worst tendencies of the sort of like clickbait information economy, right?

[00:26:12] And that I also think the other thing that you laying out this history made me think about too, is that so much of the, which I think is just like a largely useless debate about whether or not the first Trump administration was or was not a fascist government. One of, one of the places that I think that, um, useless [00:26:30] argument spins its wheels in is the fact that fascism does Like this insight that it is a process, right?

[00:26:37] And that fascism in different places in different times is going to look different because it’s like any good sort of like ideology or movement that is like effective at capturing power. It can adapt to the conditions in which it finds itself, and the conditions are also, they’re economic, they’re cultural, they’re about the balance of forces and then I think that [00:27:00] that work, and that work that you were doing with the Fascism Barometer, and also previously with that Fascism 101 series is super helpful for people who are actually trying to understand what the hell’s actually going on here 

[00:27:11] Ejeris Dixon: yeah, like there was those debates were so annoying and unhelpful and in some ways demobilizing, right? Because the the reason the word fascism was meaningful for me to use is what people understand around how you organize against [00:27:30] it, right? You don’t collaborate with fascists. You defeat fascists means you need like fascists try to move quickly, fascists try to put our people in jail, fascists try to enact violence on our people.

[00:27:43] But when we’re calling it other things that sound safer that may one day evolve into fascists. fascism. So there was, like me and Tarso my friend Tarso would who’s at Political Research Associates, we had a lot of conversations about it. And yep. And [00:28:00] eventually, we landed and Tarso was like the truth is, you don’t actually, you only want to be a premature fascist.

[00:28:04] And I was like, sure, I’d rather y’all call me premature than all of us in the, the same detention camp, me being like, I guess I was right.

[00:28:12] Like a thing you so don’t want to get wrong, you’d rather be premature. I’d call me alarmist, but the thing is that. The barometer is newer, but I’ve been obsessed with fascism and how to distill it for our folks since 2016, mostly because anytime something dangerous comes [00:28:30] with a term or a concept that I find hard to define, I throw myself into it.

[00:28:35] Like long history as an organizer, long history in political education. And therefore I’m like, it’s not good if there’s something that’s dangerous out there that we are having trouble defining, organizing around, and contesting. So I saw the need to distill fascism as an, as two, as a way to support our communities to organize against it, right?

[00:28:57] And so That’s where it was. [00:29:00] So since 2016, I’ve been writing articles. I’ve been facilitating workshops. And so that’s how I ended up in the Fascism 101 configuration. Ash had me at Highlander. Speak on where we were at in the timeline of fascism. And that was like a year or two before fascism 101.

[00:29:19] Me and me and Linda had, me and Linda Burnham had met at a gathering where I was also like doing a talk on fascism. Cause the other issue is that it’s not an issue. It’s a. [00:29:30] growth edge for our movements. We’ve got a lot of research about the right wing. We don’t have a lot of information for organizers and targeted communities on what we need to do to change to contest with the rise in power.

[00:29:43] And the reports only help us if they’re distilled, right? If they’re distilled into what we workshops if they’re distilled into five ways you can pivot your campaign if they’re you know, but because otherwise the information is like washing over us and the psychology of fascism Is really like [00:30:00] our bodies our spirits our systems are going to do anything to stay grounded in the face of fear right, so the normalization it’s designed to be overwhelming. And so therefore like like it happened during the first Trump administration, something terrible happens and then you get used to things being consistently terrible so you don’t actually react with the urgency or the pivots you need and you’re organizing.

[00:30:22] And so yeah, it’s this ambitious project that is constantly evolving around just offering us a lot [00:30:30] of, offering us a lot of tools on how we describe fascism, what changes under fascism, what it means. And what my hope is each episode, we take a little bite out of the mystery. And to make it more clear.

[00:30:43] And the challenge in every episode, and I think the challenge to all of us in general, is to stop throwing around words that are actually really important. To start distilling the, distilling really critical concepts, speaking in plain language, because I also was like, I [00:31:00] want this to be something that my mom understands.

[00:31:03] I because she needs to. Because I want this to be something that I can easily talk about with my cousins, with my family, because all of those folks care about politics may talk about it differently than we do at a meeting or a leftist convening.

[00:31:18] But What we’re seeing right now is the need to organize broader and bigger bases, to mobilize more and more of our people to oppose what’s happening. And [00:31:30] that starts with understanding it clearly. I might have just talked way too much, but 

[00:31:35] Cayden Mak: No, I’m picking up where you’re putting down. Also, because I think that, what you’re saying also, to me, gets to the heart of obviously I am a leftist media producer, so I’m constantly thinking about what is our responsibility as independent media in this time to be talking about this stuff in ways that the folks who listen to the show obviously are more likely to be, like, already involved in social [00:32:00] movements, thinking about stuff, but, like, how can I be making shows, how can we be publishing articles that are easy for them to share with the people in their lives to be like, it’s going down for real.

[00:32:10] This is not right. It’s actually happening. It is happening here, and I think that there’s Obviously an important role for folks who are doing these like deeper, more technical dives to play, but that more and more we do need media that’s going to talk about the like [00:32:30] concepts in terms and framed in ways that like make sense to people and make sense to the impacts they have on their everyday lives.

[00:32:37] So I feel like that’s like super fucking critical in this time. 

[00:32:42] Ejeris Dixon: Yeah. And it’s, media is the new tool for me. There’s a lot I’m learning here and it’s actually really exciting. Like I’ve been a person who’s just I did organizing for a really long time. And then I did support to organizing.

[00:32:53] And I’m just like, I want this podcast to live in people’s back pocket. I like imagine it as a thing where it’s I want to hang [00:33:00] out with you while you’re doing ditches. Or on your commute, or while you’re doing laundry, or and I want it to be, and the tone is important then, because I don’t want to freak you out so bad, but I want to give you something you can chew on, and then have the resources where it’s like, Was that interesting?

[00:33:17] Awesome. This is how you can get involved. And I want it to be a tool for organizations and their members, right? So that most organizations do not have time to take up a anti fascism political education project. And [00:33:30] they shouldn’t have to. You’re doing enough. So here’s an episode. Here’s a sample agenda.

[00:33:34] Here are some here are some other pieces. And and that’s what I’m really excited about using media to do. I’m coming to this as a longtime political educator and like a person who’s learning a lot about the power of yeah, popular media, progressive media. And I’ve got dreams.

[00:33:52] I want, I don’t know, I want cartoons. I want short video. I want all these different things to make it easy and [00:34:00] understandable. And to your point on the reports, my, the latest thing I’m working on is a checklist, like a checklist on fascist progression, where you can just be like, check. And so you can have a sense of what’s happening in your area.

[00:34:15] Because in the time that we’ve all been talking about this, in the time that we had this debate, we moved from fascist movements to fascist state capture. Okay. in both localities and federally, right? And it’s important to say, okay, [00:34:30] that changes things. That changes things. And that does get into this conversation around the state and governing power and all of those pieces.

[00:34:37] But, I do know, 

[00:34:39] Cayden Mak: unfortunately. That’s a really good segue though. One of the things I really wanted to talk to you about is because I’m aware of your history working on transformative justice and in this sort of like abolitionist movement work that is about this sort of like very hands on trying to figure out how we build a real alternative [00:35:00] starting with folks that we’re closest to in, in our movements and in our social spaces.

[00:35:04] But one of the things I think that has been. Frustrating to me is like trying to figure out how we have a conversation about state power and about governing power in this moment, where I think that people are, there’s like this sort of Pollyanna ish impulse to be like we voted them out before, we can vote them out again.

[00:35:23] And then on the one hand, and on the other hand, there’s this fuck it, we don’t fuck with the state, we don’t think about it at all. And there’s [00:35:30] obviously something that needs to be in the middle, that is about a real reckoning. With the state and state power. But that is also realistic about the tools that we have at our disposal.

[00:35:40] And I’m so I’m very curious given your movement history, how you are thinking about how our movements need to be relating to state power right now. Not a small question, but let’s get into it. 

[00:35:53] Ejeris Dixon: Yeah, you took the Yeah, I was like, Kaden, you said the toughest questions. Let’s do it.

[00:35:58] It’s So yeah [00:36:00] I think I’ll start with just talking about my own history. I started in economic justice organizing, right? I started in racial justice, economic justice organizing. I’ve done police reform work and I’ve done abolitionist work. I’m a dabbler. So I’ll start there because I’m also, yeah.

[00:36:16] And for me, it’s also sometimes I understand things better when I touch them, right? To know Oh, not into it, not into this. And I. have loved the transformative justice work. I feel it is really critical. But I also I’m [00:36:30] not an anarchist, right? I believe in forms of government. I believe that liver liberatory governance is possible.

[00:36:36] I do not know what it looks like. I also think that there are there’s a difference between visions and where we’re going and where we want to be and where we are. And and as a strategist and as a tactician, so for me, I think like I was having a conversation with a friend and a friend was like saying, Oh, maybe we need to contend for governing power.

[00:36:56] I was like, How are we going to like power is how you dismantle. So we need to [00:37:00] actually talk about power in general. So there is this thing that’s happening right now where folks are like, we’ve had backlash before, we’ve had We’ve survived before, and we’ll survive again. And I’m like, yeah, we’re missing the parts around some people survived. Like some people survived so that we can get here. And the level of courage, the level of strategy that’s needed, the bar is higher, right? The bar is higher now. So we will absolutely [00:37:30] need I see my work around abolition, transformative justice, and fascism as really clear to me because I see them as the for and the against, right?

[00:37:39] And I want a world where people have what we need. I want a world where we can transform violence, maybe even not experience violence as a survivor of violence. And I know that fascism cuts off our ability to do those things, right? And at some point, it’s very hard to focus. So I’m not one of those people that it’s like, things have to get worse for us [00:38:00] to break through.

[00:38:00] And I actually think that those philosophies can be really irresponsible, especially for people like us, right? Who are the in team, first, second team to go, right? And so, and that’s historical, right? The communities that are targeted first. The questions on how I think that abolitionists need to build power and we see that in also our ability to stop cop cities and our ability to do the defund like all of these pieces involve power.

[00:38:27] It doesn’t mean that like we don’t [00:38:30] have to say that our folks have to run for office like that might be upholding too much of the same. But I’ve never won a campaign where I didn’t have an ally who was in for some form of government Where we talked about the line and also if we are trying to transform a society We’re trying to transform a society which means we’re going to talk to people who like who have our Experiences and who are like I’ve met a lot of people Who also did?

[00:38:56] Police reform work who did anti police brutality work that wasn’t [00:39:00] abolitionist that then came like there is a political education process. And therefore, I think In that tenor, we have to build power, we and some of our folks are going to build governing power. Some of our folks are going to build electoral power.

[00:39:14] My goal is like, how do we keep the connective tissue between all of us who are building towards a just transition? to actually get there. As opposed to, again, we don’t need to be fighting over fascism versus authoritarianism. And we don’t need, [00:39:30] because no one has dismantled the state yet, I actually think there are things that we can work on together that both end fascism and build more liberatory futures for all of us.

[00:39:42] And we’ll figure it out because Yeah, I have, and it might be that what I, to do the things I’m talking about, it does talk mean ending racialized capitalism. It does mean ending like police and prisons. And maybe it does mean ending concepts of states, but I’m pretty sure that the [00:40:00] liberated state could be a step on the journey.

[00:40:02] And that’s where I see myself. And there has been this There’s a debate in abolitionist organizing around the state or not. And there are some people who are like, there’s no way to be, there’s no way to abolish police and prisons if you believe in state or governments. I’m not one of them, right?

[00:40:22] But it doesn’t mean I can’t collaborate, work with, or really recognize all the other pieces we have in common. And I’m [00:40:30] also like, you know what? Prove me wrong. Prove me wrong when we get there. But right now but right now these fascists are coming. Our folks are on the line and the number one thing we need to build is power, right?

[00:40:45] I’ve been saying a lot to folks that right now our offense is defense, that the amount of power that we build, growing the size of our bases, figuring out the community protections, strategies, but [00:41:00] also figuring out like, how are people taking back, the House, the Senate? How are people taking back both, like, how forms of governance in their own states?

[00:41:09] And how are we also building the alternatives? These things, I don’t think there’s enough of us to spend our time in the debate. Cause I actually think there’s really, there there’s plenty of work that we can build where we align and that’s, if there’s a practice we need right now, it is the practice of like finding the thing we agree on and building it.[00:41:30] 

[00:41:30] and continuing and staying in principled struggle around what we don’t, but that I think it’s a sign of political immaturity that we cannot afford to disengage from each other, because who else is coming to save us but us? There’s nobody else. The Dems ain’t gonna do it, right? Right? We’re seeing that the way that they’re talking about how woke is the basically all the communities that we’re both from as the problem. So we already see [00:42:00] that when shit gets hard who are they willing to throw out? So if we are not in a plan to say, you know what, yeah, we have a disagreement around the state.

[00:42:10] But we have an agreement about Cop City, we have agreement about this jail that needs to go. We have an agreement about the fact that we need larger base and larger power. We can do these things simultaneously. Everything does not have to be perfect. perfectly aligned from the outset to build power and to build the survival projects that we need and to [00:42:30] build the kind of people power that we need to win.

[00:42:33] Totally. That’s my take. 

[00:42:35] Cayden Mak: There’s, look, that is a take. The other thing, there’s a couple of things that brings up for me. And one of them is that I do think that Trust and accountability do get built through doing stuff together, right? There’s only so far that talking about ideas will build the trust that you need to like make that next leap, right?

[00:42:56] That they’re actually like, in order to have skin in the game [00:43:00] with one another, we have to be engaged. in organizing projects. We have to be engaged in mutual aid or blocking the next cop city because they’re building one here in Northern California. They’re building, they’re doing it everywhere.

[00:43:14] Working for a free Palestine, whatever it might be that those are the things, those are the activities in which mutual accountability and trust actually get built beyond yelling at each other on the internet, which I obviously, as a podcaster, this is my [00:43:30] business. 

[00:43:30] Ejeris Dixon: No, it’s part of it. Yeah. It comes with the situation.

[00:43:36] And we also, yeah the impact of the pandemic and continued impacts of the pandemic on our ability to collaborate with each other and our ability to like work on projects together, that is shifted, but it’s also shown us all the ways that kind of disabled communities have been organizing for quite a while.

[00:43:53] But what we there, it, the safety you need to debate and not do. is [00:44:00] not the safety we have anymore. And that is and that realization will come into different people’s movements, organizations, like bodies, at different points in time. But I really, and it’s different than saying these conversat it’s not saying these conversations aren’t important.

[00:44:20] It’s about can we, they’re very like, can we have this conversation while we do the work together? Because I know when in like, when I was doing [00:44:30] transformative justice work that included base building, which like was rare at the time, because it was like, I don’t know, 10, 15 years ago, not people didn’t it.

[00:44:38] At the door, someone doesn’t very rarely do you knock on someone’s door and they say, I’m an abolitionist, too. I would like to join, what they say is, what they say is yeah, I think violence is a problem. Yeah, I think police are a problem, too. I don’t know if what you’re saying makes sense to me.

[00:44:56] But I like that. you all are doing [00:45:00] something to help. And let’s continue the conversation, right? So it’s really about establishing what is the, what are the, what’s needed to enter? What’s needed to be in the process together? And how do we continue to have these conversations? Because I would rather have this conversation around governance, as we’re building something more liberatory for each other.

[00:45:21] Let’s have the debate then, right? Let’s have the debate then, because that, because really what we’re talking about at that point is the scale at which we think [00:45:30] we can hold liberation. And that’s a really interesting conversation in time and place. 

[00:45:36] Cayden Mak: Yeah, that is a very interesting question, when you actually get into the meat of what that process looks like.

[00:45:44] Exactly! It also makes me think about some conversations we’ve been having on this show that I think also point to the fact that getting free is also, and transforming our society is also a process of transforming ourselves, and that Being willing to [00:46:00] be transformed requires us to be not just like trying to convince each other of things, but rather to be in motion together and be in practice together, which I think is like such a different orientation to the relationship than it is then trying to persuade.

[00:46:17] Persuasion is like a piece of the pie, but it’s actually maybe a smaller piece than we’ve been led to believe by the sort of the way that like, poli Big P politics is traditionally done in this country or the way that [00:46:30] commentators and pundits have convinced us that politics needs to be done.

[00:46:33] Yeah. And then I think what I’m hearing and really in what you’re saying is a lot of that work and actually a lot of the work of transformative justice and of abolition is about being open to both transforming others and transforming oneself through the process of winning real concrete goals.

[00:46:51] Ejeris Dixon: Like we are building things that we know, we are still figuring out the four, right? We know that we want we know how much of [00:47:00] harm and violence is about people’s needs for resources. It’s about education. It’s about the relationships that people are in. It’s also about capitalism. It’s also about racism.

[00:47:12] It’s also about homophobia, transphobia. It’s about all the isms, right? And so there is this piece where the way I was taught organizing and more specifically outreach is that there is a big piece like, because a lot of us come into the work because we’re [00:47:30] impressed about how good of a talker we are, right?

[00:47:32] Like how we can spin the words and make people listen and all this stuff. And and really early on, it was like, this is about your listening skills. This is about your listening skills and that I believe both like every good Organizing project and very every good political education project is touched shifted and changed by the people we’re engaging with Because if we’re because that’s also how people feel power and build power and exercise [00:48:00] power By having the agency to make those decisions changes in a way that what are, why are people upset about our electoral process?

[00:48:06] One of the reasons why is because they feel like they, they don’t matter within it. That nothing changes no matter what they do, right? That I’m against what’s happening in Gaza. I’m against these, nothing changes no matter what we do, but you’re supposed to represent me. You’re supposed to, and you’re supposed to represent these values and these politics.

[00:48:25] So let our organizations, let our workshops, let our, let all of our projects be [00:48:30] sites where we can hear, listen, build, shift, and change. 

[00:48:34] Cayden Mak: That’s beautiful. That’s that is so rich. And it feels like this is the thing, like this is it. 

[00:48:40] Ejeris Dixon: It’s the goal. And the hardest thing about this next moment is that.

[00:48:46] Danger and fear are going to make it harder for us to listen to each other, are going to make like it’s going to be the line between self preservation or self defense and selfish are going to become murky, [00:49:00] right? Like in all, but all of that is worked out. amongst people and in relationship, right? But it is gonna be like that.

[00:49:08] Yeah, 

[00:49:08] Cayden Mak: like on top of all of our like, trauma and grief and weird vibes from eight years ago being completely reactivated in different ways. 

[00:49:15] Ejeris Dixon: Reactivated and what it, no, what it means, like we just did an episode around safety, right? And it felt really important that in the conversation about safety we delineated safety from abandonment.

[00:49:27] And about because for some [00:49:30] people right now, their first step is how do I get out of here? And we wanted to shift that conversation to like, how do we all make it? And if you have the resources to get out of here, this there may be a point where that step is where flea is the move.

[00:49:48] But right now it’s like, how do we wrap each other in protection and keep moving towards the goal? 

[00:49:53] Cayden Mak: That’s great. 

[00:49:56] Ejeris Dixon: This is great. 

[00:49:57] Cayden Mak: Yeah, it’s been so nice to talk to you. Is [00:50:00] there anything else that you want our listeners to know? Is there any other stuff that you’d like to leave folks with this week?

[00:50:06] Ejeris Dixon: I think that to the extent that we can, I want folks to fortify themselves for what’s coming. I think there are some urgent things to do right now, depending on your own positionality around folks are, folks are gathering their health care needs they’re gathering stuff for trans health care, they’re also gathering stuff for reproductive health care there are certain things that critical right now.

[00:50:29] [00:50:30] But there’s another piece that’s really just about take a breath so we can be clear together and we can make the moves we need. So I think that’s what I want. We’re going to need, we’ve always needed each other to survive. We are going we, so many of us know that we are the people that get ignored, discarded, left behind, and so I think what’s really, what I want people to know is we, there’s also a piece around how we get our bodies, and our [00:51:00] spirits and our brains ready to build the collaborations we need under scarier times.

[00:51:06] Because it’s possible and we’ve done it. And while everyone did not survive, someone did survive for us to be here. And and we want to make sure that that as many of our folks make it through what’s coming so that we can build, so that we can get to those liberated futures.

[00:51:21] That’s all I got for you. That’s all. NBD. 

[00:51:25] Cayden Mak: That’s all. A little more. Where can people, where can listeners find [00:51:30] you find more of your work, hear more from you? 

[00:51:32] Ejeris Dixon: Yes. So people can go to the fascismbarometer. org to learn all about the pod. They can also check me out at eGeriLabs and I also have my own website.

[00:51:42] So there’s like a bunch of projects you’ll be hearing you’ll be hearing more from me and really it’s just but honestly, like doing the work. is also how we connect with each other. So I’m excited to see people in all the work. 

[00:51:56] Cayden Mak: Excellent. Thank you so much. Take care. I’ll talk to you soon.

[00:51:59] Thank you. [00:52:00] Bye. My thanks again to Johyun Park and Ejeris Dixon for joining me today. Johyun’s piece, With South Korea’s Coup and Attempt to Restart the Korean War, is available to read at peoplesdispatch. org, and we will put a link to that in the show notes. You can also check out Ejeris The Fascism Barometer.

[00:52:16] wherever you get podcasts and find more resources at their website. Again, we’ll put lots of links in the show notes. This show is published by Convergence, a magazine for radical insights. I’m Caden Mock and our producer is Josh Elstro. If you’ve got something to [00:52:30] say, please drop me a line. You can send me an email that will continue.

[00:52:33] Consider running on an upcoming Mailbag episode at Mailbag at ConvergenceMag. com. And if you’d like to support the work that we do at Convergence bringing our movements together to strategize, struggle, and win in this crucial historical moment, you can become a member at ConvergenceMag. com slash donate.

[00:52:48] Even a few bucks a month goes a long way to making sure our independent, small team can continue to build a map for our movements. I hope this [00:53:00] helps.