Matthew Remsky (11:48)
And cigarettes so I'm gonna play a lot of these clips today because I just couldn't believe my ears when I first heard this song. I knew instantly that I wanted to talk with Nathan because it was clear that this song came from this deep place in a part of the world that is too often and I think unfairly associated with right wing meanness. I didn't know he was also a dad of one kid with another on the way, so that was happy to find out about and not every episode is gonna feature an interview with a fellow anti fascist dad, but I think it's a good place to start because part of this project is about pushing against the many layers of manosphere baloney, ranging from, you know, Andrew Tate and his imitators at Fresh and Fit, you know, for example, to the maga brofluencers who podcasted Trump into the White House, to the more button down hand wringers who are trying to pull all the lost boys back into the respectable liberal culture of kinder capitalism, which is of course built on compromise and appeasement and the depressing belief that nothing will ever really change. So you might as well get your bag. But back to Nathan's work. There's a caption I read on his Instagram. He wrote, we didn't need an elegy, we needed a hymn. And here he's referring to the hillbilly Elegy, the 2016 breakout memoir by Vice President J.D. vance, where, you know, Vance kind of romantically exploits white working class struggles and trauma Appalachia to oversimplify the causes of poverty and substance abuse. And his point is to really promote a bootstraps narrative. It's not like he's calling for more social services or anything like that. And it was on the basis of this book that he sort of gained this white populist street cred. But then he turned around and surfed on that all the way out to Silicon Valley to sell out and become a class trader as a venture capitalist under the tutelage of America's very own Lex Luthor, Peter Thiel. But with Nathan, of course, we get a really different song, a song about yaleidarity, which is his term for the bonds of class and ethnic and all gender kinship that he says are the real source of hillbilly resilience. As one wave of industrialization and resource extraction have rolled through the hills one after the other. Now, what I didn't know before talking to Nathan was that he's also this kind of perfect bridge guest between the work that I've done on Conspirituality podcast and the vision I have over here. Because as you'll hear, Fox roots his politics of mutual aid and neighborly care and freedom in his childhood experience of being infringe charismatic Christian little independent churches. Now, we're really familiar with how that vibe can careen to the right and go south. And Nathan talks about this, frankly. But we also know that charismatic ecstasy can add jet fuel to the Christian ethno nationalism that helped put Trump into office. But nothing is ever one thing, is it? And what fascinates me about the power of spiritual traditions is that they can lead people into political chaos, but they can also lead people out of it. So as you're going to hear, Fox's account of speaking in tongues and healing miracles in these tiny little hillside churches showed him unexpected possibilities of self perception and growth. But also some places were overshadowed with dangerous unaccountability that, you know, meant that he needed to move on. But he also made that transition without throwing his old self away. And that's not easy to do. And now I think he's singing in a voice that his folks can hear and we can, too. Now, two more points before we get to the interview. In our conversation, Nathan mentions that we have to remember that all the holy rolling and speaking in tongues are actually the echoes of West African ecstatic worship remembered and celebrated by slaves and then absorbed over generations into their iteration of Christianity. So all the call and response singing, all the rhythmic clapping and stomping and spiritual jitterbugging and worship, none of it is originally about whiteness or wanting power. Now, the last thing, Nathan uses an old Jewish term a few times that I didn't ask him to define and I didn't follow up on. So here it is. The term is jubilee. In the Old Testament, the jubilee year was observed every 50 years, following seven cycles of seven years. So it's a sabbatical, basically. Now, what does the culture do during jubilee? Well, it frees slaves, it forgives debts, and it returns the land to original owners so that, you know, poverty cycles can be prevented and the land itself is left fallow to recover some of its nutrients. And I think Nathan thinks about music as a way to imagine what that year. Maybe you've also heard the phrase the year of the Lord. It's the same thing. But what that year, what that jubilee year would feel like, but permanently. Nathan, welcome to Antifascist Dad. It's so great to talk to you.
![Yallidarity (w/Nathan Evans Fox) [Introducing Antifascist Dad Podcast] - Conspirituality cover](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmegaphone.imgix.net%2Fpodcasts%2F244201b2-c360-11ed-8a91-97e8b69444b5%2Fimage%2FConspirituality_Show_Art__1_.png%3Fixlib%3Drails-4.3.1%26max-w%3D3000%26max-h%3D3000%26fit%3Dcrop%26auto%3Dformat%2Ccompress&w=1920&q=75)