Antifascist Dad Podcast

I sit down with Kevin Skerrett, a pension researcher who spent thirty years as a Senior Research Officer for CUPE and co-edited The Contradictions of Pension Fund Capitalism. We trace how Canadian pension funds went from holding government bonds to becoming some of the world's most aggressive private-market investors. We start with the nineteenth-century labour movement's demand for a universal, state-provided pension, and follow the mid-century turn toward employer-specific, financialized plans in the US, before tracing the same shift through the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan and the Canada Pension Plan. Kevin walks me through his own disillusionment negotiating joint union trusteeship in the 1990s, OMERS' role in privatizing Nova Scotia schools, and CPP Investment Board's involvement in privatizing Rio de Janeiro's water system under Bolsonaro. We close on what a $30 billion OTPP surplus could fund if fiduciary law required something other than maximum return. Up now on Patreon: my interview with Chiara Padovani, running for Toronto City Councillor in Ward 5. Bluesky: matthewremski.bsky.social Instagram: @matthew_remski YouTube: @antifascistdad TikTok: [@antifascistdad] Patreon: antifascistdadpodcast Order Antifascist Dad Sources Kevin Skerrett, OMERS AC board bio The Contradictions of Pension Fund Capitalism (Cornell University Press / LERA, 2018) Kevin Skerrett interview on pension fund capitalism, rabble.ca Chiara Padovani, 2026 campaign, Toronto & York Region Labour Council

Part two of my conversation with Dr. Lara Sheehi about her outstanding book From the Clinic to the Streets, focusing on how the "psychic intrusions" of confusion, fear, despair, and exhaustion function as tools of imperial and state power that  disconnect people from movements. We review a 1970  interview with Ghassan Kanafani, whose refusal to accept "dialogue" as a neutral premise models what Sheehi calls psychic militancy. She also reframes grieving as reality-testing and divestment from power's narrative, contrasting it with Mark Fisher's diagnosis-without-tools "capitalist realism." Sources From the Clinic to the Streets: Psychoanalysis for Revolutionary Futures — Pluto Press Psychic Militancy Podcast Lara Sheehi — Palestine Book Awards Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicization without Political Consequences — Anton Jäger, Verso Books Occult Features of Anarchism — Erica Lagalisse, PM Press "Rejecting the Conversation Between the Sword and the Neck" — Verso Books, on the 1970 Kanafani/Carleton interview PFLP Ghassan Kanafani, Richard Carleton interview COMPLETE Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? — Mark Fisher Socials: Bluesky matthewremski.bsky.social Instagram @matthew_remski YouTube @antifascistdad TikTok [@antifascistdad] Patreon antifascistdadpodcast Order Antifascist Dad

Since October 7th, young people who have joined antifascist and anti-genocide organizing on campus have faced one of the most disorienting accusations available: that their solidarity with Palestinians is antisemitic. This week I talk with Daniel Sailofsky, a University of Toronto prof and member of the non-Zionist Jewish Faculty Network, about what it was actually like inside the U of T encampment — Shabbat services, multifaith prayer, Zionist agitators trying to provoke a reaction — versus how it was covered in the press. We dig into the federal government's CASE report (Campus Antisemitism and Student Experiences), published in August. Its respondent were recruited through avowedly Zionist organizations, it had no safeguards for verifying identity, and its definitions of anti-Zionism and antisemitism were absolutely melted. Is this conflation of terms the last rhetorical weapon defenders of a genocide have left? Bluesky: matthewremski.bsky.social Instagram: @matthew_remski YouTube: @antifascistdad TikTok: [@antifascistdad] Patreon: antifascistdadpodcast Order Antifascist Dad Sources/resources https://www.danielsailofsky.com/  Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund https://www.pcrf.net/ https://decolonizepalestine.com/myths/ Decolonize Palestine, a simple and clear site that demystifies a lot of Israeli propaganda CASE (Campus Antisemitism and Student Experiences) report – Canada.ca Flawed by Design: JFN's response to the CASE report Episode 44: Psychic Militancy w/ Dr. Lara Sheehi – Matthew Remski's Substack Episode 2: Gaza Encampment w/ Sara Rasikh – Antifascist Dad Podcast Episode 42: Keep the Little Flame Alive w/ Carsie Blanton – Matthew Remski's Substack Episode 27: The Proto-Fascism of "Trust Me" Carney w/ Leftie Jane – Apple Podcasts Bill C-9, the Combatting Hate Act – Department of Justice Canada Street Rebellion: Resistance Beyond Violence and Nonviolence, by Benjamin S. Case – Firestorm Books Joyful Militancy: Building Thriving Resistance in Toxic Times, by Carla Bergman and Nick Montgomery The Wretched of the Earth, by Frantz Fanon – Grove Atlantic

Part two of my conversation with Ayman Makarem picks up where we left off: with Lebanon and Israel as co-developed colonial entities. We trace how the 1943 National Pact locked in a sectarian power-sharing system that functions as elite class rule dressed up as pluralism. The contradictions led to both the 1975 civil war and the 2019 uprising. We discuss Moshe Dayan, whose own words lay out, decades in advance, the occupation strategy Israel would go on to execute in South Lebanon. We discuss Hezbollah's 2023 anti-gay moral panic and its contradictory entanglement in Syria, but how disarming Hezbollah won't end Zionist aggression. Ayman concludes with some concrete advice for listeners in the Global North: solidarity means building socialist power at home. SOURCES Israel's Long War on Lebanon: A Joint History of the Zionist and Lebanese Entities Israel's Long War on Lebanon (video essay) Free timeline link Ayman Makarem on Patreon Ayman Makarem on Bluesky SOCIALS Bluesky matthewremski.bsky.social Instagram @matthew_remski YouTube @antifascistdad TikTok [@antifascistdad] Patreon antifascistdadpodcast Order Antifascist Dad/

My guest today is militant Lebanese Arab clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, Dr. Lara Sheehi, here to unpack her book From the Clinic to the Streets: Psychoanalysis for Revolutionary Futures. Following Frantz Fanon's decolonial legacy, Sheehi argues mainstream psychology's fixation on the nuclear family as the origin of the psyche obscures how white supremacy, settler colonialism, and capitalism actually shape our inner lives — turning the family into the site where structural power gets animated and made to feel like love.  We discuss her critique of "specialization," the hoarding of clinical knowledge to pathologize suffering and enforce adaptation, and its counter, "despecialization" — the process of handing tools like disavowal, identification with the aggressor, and the reality principle back to ordinary people. Part two continues on Patreon: antifascistdadpodcast. Source From the Clinic to the Streets: Psychoanalysis for Revolutionary Futures — Pluto Press Psychic Militancy Podcast Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine — Routledge/Amazon listing Lara Sheehi — Palestine Book Awards Depressive position (Melanie Klein) — Melanie Klein Trust As We Have Always Done — Leanne Betasamosake Simpson U.S. psychoanalysts apologize for labelling homosexuality an illness — CBC News Socials: Bluesky matthewremski.bsky.social Instagram @matthew_remski YouTube @antifascistdad TikTok [@antifascistdad] Patreon antifascistdadpodcast Order Antifascist Dad