Conspirituality Podcast: Antifascist (Autistic) Christianity—Simone(e) Weil (Part 1)

Host: Matthew Remski
Episode Date: September 20, 2025
Timestamps: [01:04] – [47:09]
Note: Intro, ads, and outro skipped. This summary covers only the substantive content.

Episode Overview

In this “Brief,” Matthew Remski explores the life, activism, philosophy, and neurodiversity of French anti-fascist philosopher Simone Weil (pronounced "Vey"), and makes the case for understanding Weil through the lens of autism. Drawing parallels to Greta Thunberg, Remski considers the interplay between Weil’s spiritual and political commitments and their embodied, neurodivergent experience. The episode is the first of a two-part series that situates Weil as a radical figure in the lineage of antifascist Christianity, blending deep biographical details with philosophical insights highly relevant to today’s moment of crisis.

Key Themes and Discussion Points

1. Framing: Antifascism, Christianity, and Neurodiversity

• Series Context: This is part of Remski’s ongoing “Antifascist Christianity” and “Antifascist Woodshed” series, previously covering figures such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
• Timeliness: The episode is contextualized by recent events, such as the Gaza flotilla and reactions to Greta Thunberg’s activism ([01:15]-[03:30]).
• Greta Thunberg as a Modern Parallel: Remski contrasts Thunberg’s “uncompromising honesty” and resistance to social niceties with both right-wing and liberal attacks, noting her refusal to separate climate justice from social justice.

  “[Thunberg] has a structural analysis and she focuses on the profit motive and the failure of markets… Most broadly, liberals don't like it when she insists that normal was already a crisis, but normal being a crisis is not something she would be able to turn away from. This is a basic observation in autistic culture.” ([03:00])

2. Introducing Simone Weil: Biography and Social Location

• Neurodiversity and Gender Identity: Remski chooses to use “they/them” pronouns for Weil, arguing they were “clearly non-binary, which is not uncommon among autistic people. They rejected gender expectations in every manner.” ([07:55])
  • Weil’s family called them “our son number two.”
  • Weil often used the masculinized “Simon” as a signature.
• Life of Embodied Antifascism: Weil’s activism began in childhood—refusing luxuries, giving up sugar in solidarity with warfighters, and organizing labor as a teen.

  “They found it impossible to abide suffering in others, especially related to food or bodily comfort, and they had to somehow partake in that. They had to take it on themselves.” ([09:20])

• Physical and Social Challenges: Weil’s life was marked by physical hardships, burnout, and social obstacles that Remski frames as inseparable from their neurodivergence.

3. Activist Credentials and Uncompromising Morality

• Street Cred: Weil engaged directly in labor organizing, spent time in Berlin with Marxists, fought with anarchists in the Spanish Civil War, and joined the French Resistance.
  • Survived dangerous war expeditions, but “didn't want her handling a rifle, given their clumsiness and her very thick glasses... Vey's service was ended by a severe foot injury—not from shrapnel, but stepping in a pot of boiling oil.” ([14:50])
• Defiance Against Orthodoxy:
  • Criticized Orthodox Russian Communism, earning Trotsky's ire.
  • Remski reflects:

    “Trotsky was living a contradiction, and they sniffed it out. They were warning him—they could see what was coming, as sure as they could see fascism on the rise in Germany.” ([17:10])

  • Trotsky called Weil’s views “revolutionary melancholia.”
• Resistance Networks: Advocated for mobile frontline nurses, offered rations to colonial laborers, and even proposed to be parachuted into occupied France—a plan Charles de Gaulle called “insane” ([19:30]).

4. Weil’s Philosophical Insights

• Attention as Generosity:
  • Defined “attention” as “the rarest and purest form of generosity,” fundamental to prayer and care: “Compassion involved paying attention to an afflicted man and identifying oneself with him in thought.” ([21:56])
• Obligation vs. Rights:
  • Critiqued the foundation of the French Revolution in terms of rights, proposing instead that it should be rooted in obligations.

    “Obligations are derived from the earthly needs of the body and the human soul, which they considered sacred… Obligations are characterized by the imperative to give something.” ([24:10])

  • Saw rights as transactional, tied to ego and power; obligations were unconditional.
• “Decreation”:
  • Coined by Weil as a process of stripping away the ego to make room for the other—a kind of spiritual self-release, not self-annihilation.
• Rootedness (“Enracinement”):
  • Explored the human need for community, history, and cultural rootedness.
  • Warned that capitalism and the pursuit of money “destroy human roots wherever it is able to penetrate,” drawing connections to Marx’s thought on alienation.

    “The fascist has been deracinated from cultures of care. Of course, he has to invent a past and a country to imagine it in.” ([30:30])

5. Writing, Action, and Alienation

• Embodiment over Abstraction: Remski insists Weil’s import lies more in their lived, bodily activism than in their writings, cautioning against how “the world of books and live streams and social feeds and commentariat bears a strange and inscrutable relationship to the realities it is trying to observe and address.” ([33:15])
  • Quotes author Sarah Stein Lubrano: “It’s really actions, relationships, lived experiences, and robust democratic infrastructure that are the true drivers of political change.” ([35:00])
  • Weil was “never interested in the professional career of words and writing… obsessed with living their life and improving material conditions for the suffering.”
• Hypergraphia and Neurology:
  • Weil’s prodigious, fragmentary writing described as a coping and “survival strategy deployed to process the overstimulation of moral and political action.”
  • Noted they suffered from migraines, which Remski connects to his own experiences of “hypergraphia,” referencing temporal lobe epilepsy and its symptoms ([39:00]).
  • Writing was difficult; their hands were "disproportionately small... frequently swollen and painful" ([41:15]).

6. Posthumous Publication and Editorial Framing

• Posthumous Legacy: Weil published no books during their lifetime; much of their writing was collected, edited, and shaped by others—including family, Catholic philosopher Gustave Thibaud, and Albert Camus after their death.
  • Remski contends the philosophy industry “basically colonized Weil’s work for raw materials.”
• Editorial Shaping & Misinterpretation:
  • Mainstream presentation—e.g., T.S. Eliot’s introduction—emphasized Weil’s eccentricities and paradoxical “temperament,” sometimes at the expense of their radical context.

    “…for one who had never met Weil spotlighted their difficult, violent and complex personality. As he put it… [attributed] these to an excess of temperament rather than a flaw in intellect.” ([44:10])

  • Tension remains between understanding Weil as a personality versus seeing the necessity of personal sacrifice and embodied theory.

7. Autism, Ableism, and Legacy

• Neurodiversity and Ableism:

  • Remski draws on a conversation with autistic academic Jude Mills:

    “The weird avoidance of this topic by others is palpable. They get really squirmy when I talk about it...” ([13:55])

  • Discusses the harm of masking and the ableist tendencies of liberal institutions to depoliticize or depathologize autistic perspectives.

• Definition of Love:

  • In one of the episode's most moving moments, Remski quotes Weil:

    “Belief in the existence of other human beings as such is love.” ([46:18])

    • He underscores the radical anti-fascism that inheres in accepting otherness and difference as such.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Thunberg and Autism:

  “[Thunberg] has a structural analysis and she focuses on the profit motive and the failure of markets. And she challenges the foundational beliefs of liberal Western society... normal was already a crisis, but normal being a crisis is not something she would be able to turn away from.” ([03:00])

• On Academic Ableism:

  “Academia is full of [undiagnosed neurodivergents]… I've lost count of the people who've tried to convince me that giving myself a label is misguided. Or people who will say massively ableist things like, ‘you're clearly high functioning or I wouldn't have known.’ And her retort to that is, ‘Yes, because I’m masking like fuck for your benefit.’” – Jude Mills ([13:55])

• Philosophical Gems from Weil:

  • “Attention alone, that attention, which is so full that the I disappears is required of me.”
  • “Religion insofar as it is a source of consolation is a hindrance to true faith.”
  • “Man can only gain control over nature by obeying it.” ([42:35])

• On Editorial Colonization:

  “The philosophy and theology industries basically colonized Weil’s work for raw materials.” ([43:05])

• On Love and Anti-fascism:

  “Belief in the existence of other human beings as such is love. That as such is doing a lot of work. I think it means understanding that the other is absolutely, unchangeably other, that they exist and should exist as other, a belief that that otherness is real and okay as it is. And this begs the question for me of how on earth would fascism rise in a people who felt that in their bones?” ([46:18])

Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:04] – Episode framing, series context, and Thunberg reference
• [07:55] – Pronoun choice for Weil, gender, and neurodiversity
• [09:20] – Childhood activism and embodied solidarity
• [14:50] – Weil’s activism in Berlin, Spain, and criticism of Trotsky
• [21:56] – Philosophy of “attention,” obligation before rights
• [24:10] – Obligations vs. rights, critique of liberalism
• [30:30] – Rootedness and critique of alienation under capitalism
• [33:15] – Praxis vs. abstraction; Klein’s “mirror world”
• [35:00] – Sarah Stein Lubrano’s critique of marketplace of ideas
• [39:00] – Remski’s neurological reflections and hypergraphia
• [41:15] – Physical difficulties and compulsive writing
• [43:05] – Editorial handling of Weil’s work
• [44:10] – T.S. Eliot’s introduction and editorial misframes
• [46:18] – Weil’s radical definition of love as a form of antifascism

Final Thoughts & Teaser for Part Two

Remski ends by promising in the next installment to further explore the interplay between Weil’s neurodiversity, spiritual practice, and antifascism—specifically, the legacy and challenges of embodying radical otherness and difference, and how writing and action intersect for those marginalized by dominant social, gender, and neurotypical expectations.

Useful for:
Anyone interested in antifascism, philosophy, autism/neurodiversity, spiritual activism, Simone Weil, or critical responses to ableism and liberalism—this episode provides a deeply informed and impassioned lens on a singular historical figure relevant to today’s struggles.