Rev Left Radio - The Hands That Crafted the Bomb: The Making of a Lifelong Antifascist

Episode Date: March 12, 2024

Josh Fernandez joins the show to discuss his new biography "The Hands That Crafted the Bomb: The Making of a Lifelong Antifascist". Together Josh and Breht have a wide ranging conversation on antifascism, teaching, prison, organizing, parenting, drug and alcohol abuse, and much more.  Check out the book HERE Check out an article about Josh from The Real News HERE -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Follow Rev Left on Insta Support Rev Left Radio and get access to multiple bonus episodes a month

Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. On today's episode, I have on Josh Fernandez, author of the new book, The Hands That Crafted the Bomb, The Making of a Lifelong Anti-Fascist. It's a really interesting sort of biography, autobiography of Josh and his life as somebody who struggled with drug and alcohol abuse, somebody who has been engaged in anti-fascist politics, somebody who has faced professional backlash because of his politics, and the book is incredibly well-written and engaging. Once you start reading it, it sort of sucks you in. I really enjoyed the book, even if you obviously don't know who Josh is. His writing is really good, and the book itself is a really fascinating glimpse into a really

intense life, good, bad and ugly, and a very, very intense life. He's super cool dude. we had a super cool conversation, and so I'm going to share it with you today. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Josh Fernandez, with his new book that just released by PM Press, The Hands That Crafted the Bomb, The Making of a Lifelong Anti-Fascist. Enjoy. Hey, I'm Josh Fernandez. I'm a anti-fascist organizer. I just came out with a book on PM Press called The Hands That Crafted the Bomb, The Making of a Lifelong Anti-Fascist. And it basically chronicles my life until my work investigated me for anti-fascist organizing. And their attempt was to fire me. So the book kind of goes back into my past.

and relives all kinds of crazy experiences leading up to that incident. I live here in Sacramento, and I'm a writing professor. Nice. Yeah, very cool. A person of many talents. I really enjoyed reading the book. Again, the book is called The Hands That Crafted the Bomb, The Making of a Lifelong Anti-Fascist. Of course, we will link to it in the show notes. Encourage people to check it out. To maybe start this conversation, there's so much to get into here. but can you tell us a little bit about why you wanted to write the book? And also I'm interested in some of like your literary influences. Yeah, sure. So I wanted to write the book. I actually started out as notes just while I was going through this investigation that my work was doing, I just started writing all these notes. And it was basically just to quell my rage because I was so pissed that they were putting me through this investigation where they thought I was trying to lead students into deep.

dangerous situations. And so it really just started out as these rageful notes. But after the investigation was over, I started crafting it into a book. So it took me about a year to write the book after writing all those notes. And who are, I know you're an English professor. I know you have obviously knowledge about, you know, literary traditions and history. Do you have any particular literary influences? it's kind of funny because i've been thinking about this a lot

when i was really little i just started to read everything that i thought was like a counter perspective so i remember when i was 13 i read marks i read carl marks and i had no idea what it was about like there's no way i could have understood what it was about but I just knew it was kind of badass and that like a lot of people disagreed with it yeah so so like that was kind of my entry point into into reading um and then you know I started reading I started reading people like Celine um and I was really into that kind of like weird

voyage kind of writing and I didn't realize later until later that Celine was like a full-fledged fascist oh man yeah so so that got to turn me off and I was I've always been trying to find like the perfect author but you know growing up I read just a lot of you know regular stuff like Hemingway and and Charles Bukowski and things like that um and so I kind of formed my writing style based on people like that and Dennis Johnson. And it wasn't until, you know, I got into college where I started to really broaden my horizons in the literary genres. Nice. Yeah, no, when I was reading your book, I literally had down written Bukowski because I got a little bit of, you know, nothing like overwhelming or anything.

But I got a little hint of Bukowski in some of your writing for sure. I even had Henry Miller written down as a possible literary influence. just for that earthy no holds barred this is the you know the the the nuts and bolts of my life even when it's at its absolute messiest and that sort of reminded me of those two authors in particular sure yeah i can see that well you know you're in your book you jump around in your own in your own um sort of lifespan and you go to the present you go back to the past so i guess we could probably do that with this interview as well and one of the questions that i wanted to sort of ask and that you've already touched on is like the the the centrifugal force around which your book orbits is this sort of backlash you're getting from your employers related to your anti-fascist organizing so can you kind of lay out that that controversy what happened why how the backlash started etc and then we can kind of jump around into other aspects of your story yeah so i got

hired for a full-time teaching position which was a tenure track um and so during that tenure track process um you're it's almost like you're on probation um and that was sort of during like Trump presidency time where a lot of my students were coming into my office and they just didn't feel safe on our campus which is like a majority white campus and a lot of brown and queer students were like gathering in my office like what can we do

so we ended up starting a chapter of the campus anti-fascist network which is basically just a club it's like a campus club just like any other club where really we just sat around and kind of communed. But the administration got wind of that and really started to come down on me. So their purpose was to take away my tenure

before I could actually get it. So they put me through this investigation that lasted a year. Damn. And what was the conclusion of that investigation? It was unfounded. So yeah, it was crazy because they would like pull students out of classrooms.

They pulled professors out of classrooms, staff, faculty, all kinds of people out of classrooms for an entire year. And I don't know how much money they wasted with that lawyer and the investigation firm, but they must have wasted like hundreds of thousands of dollars conducting this whole thing. And it ended up being like this 130-page document at the end. And really, the basis was just unfair. founded in big bold letters. Now, it was just your sort of the anti-fascist organization that you had on campus, or did they go deeper into your past to some of the other stuff you've done outside of the

arena of being a teacher or anything involved with the campus? No, I'm so glad they didn't go into my past because I would have been completely screwed on that. But it was really just anti-fascist organizing, and they like, they went through all these news clips of like protests in the area to like see if I was there and some of them I was there with with students and we were just like literally protesting with signs and stuff so the investigator wrote that in her report she's like yeah they were there but it was just they were just waving signs and and protest is still legal in this country so there's nothing they could do about that you

know yeah yeah it's an interesting thing because I was um myself you know I started off even before the show, um, doing anti-fascist organizing locally and actually the show grew out of local organizing on the ground here in Omaha, um, because we're trying to think of like extending our political education arm of our new organization that was sort of fundamentally about, or at least originally started with anti-fascism and evolved into like mutual aid and various other things. But, you know, before Trump and the protests that ensued in those coming years afterwards, you know, to be an anti-fascist is sort of like a take. for granted it wasn't a scary word or it wasn't like a you know a hot topic of debate in fact

i remember i'm in the trump years like all the old like CNN and fox news hosts and stuff having to like pronounce antifa for the first time and not being able to do it so it was like it was so much out of the popular mainstream cultural zeitgeist in the u.s to even really know what antifa was or anything like that but with the trump uh the trump era and all the pro protests that ensued. There was now a calculated effort, particularly by the political right in this country, led, of course, by Trump to demonize anti-fascism and to make it into, you know, a scary, violent sort of thing when, you know, when you really get down to the nuts and bolts of it, it's like, we oppose fascism. Isn't that what everybody should be doing? So I'm, it's kind of a

curious little shift. And I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on that, on that shift as somebody who was in anti-fascist organizing for many decades before it became a popular American mainstream thing. I mean, to be fair, sometimes I have trouble pronouncing Antifa. I don't know how to like, is it Antifa or Antifa? I think both work. Yeah, it just depends on my mood. But yeah, it's so weird because just that cultural divide in our country, it's almost cliche to talk about now um like the divide in our country as if there wasn't always a divide yeah but everything was so heightened after so like just this culture war that's that's being waged is like everything you do is magnified times 10,000 so like anti-racism is magnified times 10,000 and like organizing is

magnified it's just so weird so like yeah it's just an awkward situation because anti-fascism is is almost a given but the fact that the word has been politicized in this weird way it like now it means a different thing and it's like this cultural connection that's like good or bad and and people see the word anti-fascist and they think they know everything about who you are and what you do yeah yeah and i assume that backlash you faced by the administration was of course part and parcel of that of that moment in time in which antifa was being like you know purposefully demonized and turned into this big threat even though literally you're just hanging out and like building community with one another on campus which should be totally down the middle

of the line of what is acceptable on any college campus right yeah totally and the thing is like we didn't check your membership card or anything we didn't like and we didn't like and we We had conservatives show up, and we had actually, like, alt-right conservatives show up and, like, do their little curious questioning thing. And, like, nothing happened to them. They'd sit there and get bored out of their minds because we were just, like, making zines or whatever. But the administration really thought they were going to come into my classroom and see me teaching in Black Block or something like that.

Which never happened for the record. Yeah. I remember, because you kind of talk about your earlier life, and I remember, like, in the 90s, like, the neo-Nazi movement, like, it certainly was there. It was sort of dovetailing with the militia movement in the 90s, the anti-government, right-wing reactionary movement. But there was still a sense in which, like, fascist and neo-Nazis were sort of like a spectacle. Like, you would see him on, like, Jerry Springer, and everybody in the audience would, like, hate the Nazis, and they'd come out and they'd be just, like, assholes. And it was just sort of like an absurd. spectacle, but there was no, and maybe I'm wrong because I sort of, you know, was pretty young in the 90s, but it felt like something has shifted in recent years, where it's not that there's never been a fascist or neo-Nazi presence in the United States by any means, but that especially like post-Charlottesville, things have really escalated in a new way. And still to this day, you see groups like Patriot Front, I mean, just this week, right, marching through major cities,

flying swastika flags. And I just wonder if you think that that, that fascism, and the way it's organized, has changed in your lifetime, especially given your experience as an anti-fascist over many years. Are we living in a time of like a renewed resurgence of fascism? Are there more fascists now or more organized fascist now than the were in the past? Do you have any beat on that? Yeah. When I was younger, it was way different because it was just boneheads, like neo-Nazi boneheads at shows. And so like because my world was so small and I, was just a little kid you know it was a huge problem but i think in the grand scheme of things really like nazi boneheads weren't a problem um as much in the 80s the fact that like nowadays

they're really kind of wisening up and attaching themselves to the republican party um is a huge problem and yeah it's if you've looked at trump's uh what is it america 20 25 plan or whatever it is. I mean, it's really to develop a Christian nationalist nation. And so, like, these are all words that neo-Nazis love to hear. And they're organizing around these buzzwords that conservatives are using. And that's why we're seeing a resurgence of these groups, and they're not looking like scary neo-Nazi boneheads anymore.

They're wearing, you know, they're dockers. and then they're all organized with their white shirts and their flags and they do these banner drops. And it seems like there's a lot of them. So, yeah, they're really trying to sort of blend in with school boards. They're trying to blend in with city councils. They're showing up at city council meetings. Yeah, they're organized and they're growing. And it's becoming part of the fabric of our nation once again.

Yeah. I think you really hit on something when you talk about the sort of institutionalization of these movements where, as before, it's not that there weren't reactionaries or right-wing asshole Republicans. There always have been. And even Democrats, for that matter. But it's this like the marriage of like the more street movements, like the proud boys and their relationship with Trump and like, yeah, the influence that these now explicit fascists of various sorts are having on mainstream Republican politics. I think that is something that is relatively new, at least in its overtness. And it's kind of that, like you were saying, that Richard Spencer, David Duke, innovation, where you move away from like the bonehead aesthetic, the prison tattoo, Nazi aesthetic, and you move more into like a polite society, you know, hair and clothing style and approach that seems very reasonable and seems kind of moderate and its aesthetic, but is all the more dangerous for that reason. yeah absolutely and it doesn't help that the neo libs and the democrats are are kind of like you know just let them have their say this is this is free speech and there's we don't want to um we don't

want to like resort to their level uh by by causing any harm or anything um that that doesn't help squash the movement so it's we have enemies on both sides now yeah and and the republicans have no qualms about doing that with the left. So I just recently saw like a truth social post by Trump who's talking like if I get if I get elected again, we're going to get rid of the Marxist. We're going to get rid of the socialist and communist. And he even interestingly said the fascists. So he mixes Marxism, communism and fascism up. And it's a weird little rhetorical move he makes where he tries to combine them into like one threat even though he's like explicitly fascist and, you know, flirting with fascist rhetoric and and his so many.

Many of his supporters are obviously incredibly willing to embrace a fascist sort of figure, but he rhetorically tries to tie that into the left. But that idea that Trump will just come out and say, yeah, when I'm president, we're going to get rid of the socialist and the communists and the Marxists. And then Dems and liberals are like, you know, they have their right to free speech and they can organize, you know, as long as they aren't hurting anybody. And in fact, you going out there and fighting them in the streets is also really bad. And that's not Democratic.

and it's just like one of these formations is ready for a fight and the other one absolutely is ready to get steamrolled yeah absolutely yeah and what you said about like how he sort of puts fascism into that package it is a brilliant rhetorical move because they're putting in the same package like the word woke like people who are woke those are the new fascists right And so, like, everyone who listens to that kind of rhetoric is like, yeah, this is the new fascism. So the word fascism has changed now to include anti-fascists and people who are, quote, unquote, woke. Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's talk a little bit about, like, your childhood, because I'm very interested.

Like, you've seen like you've always had this sort of radical streak within you. And I'm wondering about your childhood, maybe your childhood experiences. with racism or childhood traumas that might have played a role in, like, developing your political and social consciousness and pushing you in this direction of not only opposing fascism intellectually, but willing to go out there and actually confront fascists in some meaningful way in the streets. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I grew up as a Mexican kid in Boston, Massachusetts, which is awkward in itself. Enough said, yeah. Yeah, it sort of pushes you into this other zone automatically. but I always found people who were like me

other black and brown kids who were into hip hop and breakdancing and things like that and I you know I listened to a lot of rap music with really revolutionary lyrics and then I started getting into punk music so like that was always in me I always wanted to do something different

but there was always something in me that like I wanted to look out for people who were being left out that's something that's like been constant in my life even when I sort of fell off the path of anti-racist organizing I always wanted to look out for the people who were who were being left out so that came from a very early age

and like my parents were not there for me in the way that I needed them to be. So I really looked toward the punk scene to give me guidance. And so that's really where a lot of my revolutionary tendency came from. Was it in that punk scene that you began to actually sort of develop a explicitly anti-fascist politics and the militancy that goes along with it? Because I know in the 90s, early 2000s, in the 80s, a lot of anti-fascist organization and work was sort of centered around various music scenes and the attempt to keep Nazis out of those

music scenes. So is that sort of true for your development as well? Yeah, although I didn't know it at the time. I didn't know that it was like militancy or I didn't know that it was political. It was really just survival. Like I'm a little kid and I'm young and I'm skinny and I don't know how to fight, yet I'm going to all these shows with all these boneheads circling around in the pit and like fighting people, right? And so I really just wanted to go to shows without being picked on. And so like the formation of anti-racist action was in Sacramento was really just a reaction to this horrible neo-Nazi problem we had at all the shows. And so that's, that's where the militancy came from.

Yet, I didn't know it was militancy. It was really just like, I want to go to these shows and get these boneheads out of here. Yeah, I've certainly have, you know, I enjoy punk music and always have, but I've never gotten super deep into the genre. I've always been sort of more of a hip-hop-oriented guy. But what sort of bands back in the day would bring out the bonehead types? Are there some bands that would bring them out more than other bands? It was pretty much all of them.

And like, so when I, when I moved to Davis, California, we'd have bands playing all the time, like Operation Ivy, Green Day, before they were Green Day. They were called Sweet Children, Econocrist, all these bands that were like explicitly left wing. And, you know, they talked about unity and anti-racism. Every one of those shows, Boneheads would be at. And there was one show where Green Day got chased out of South. Sacramento by Boneheads. So, like, yeah, they just went to all the shows because, one, they wanted to, they liked shows. They're fun.

But another, another reason was they wanted to recruit. And, and that was like a really ripe grounds for recruitment at the time. So, yeah, they were at every show. It didn't matter what the genre was. They were there. Now, in your, in your book, you tell many, many anecdotes. and stories very some of them insane stories about about aspects of your life so maybe i'll ask you throughout this interview a couple of times to give us a story or two that jumps to your mind but

in the context of anti-racist action and and you know fighting back against boneheads or is there is there a particular story that that jumps to mind that you could indulge us with i mean there was the like the one i was super proud of which was in the book was was just the one where like It was my first ARA March and like I was super scared because boneheads actually showed up to like counter protest our march and I and I was able to take a full Coke can and lob it at this bonehead's head and it split his eye open and like I was so proud I was super scared but I was so proud of myself and like I feel like I won that day even though. I didn't. I was I was really proud of myself but yeah there were just so many stories of like just going to shows and like

you know getting bullied by neo-Nazis and just getting smacked around and like that feeling of not being able to do anything about it because you don't know how to fight and you're small was just it was so humiliating yeah yeah so then that's the next

question is because you were small on it first you didn't know how to fight how did you develop that that capacity to fight and then what eventually pushed you into a more formal and structured forms of like mixed martial art fighting yeah so so i i didn't learn how to fight but i did learn how to organize like you know my friend eragorn at the time was like really good at organizing um kids together and so like i didn't need to know how to fight if there were 30 kids because that's scary to have 30 kids coming after you

no matter how small we are or how lanky we are how scared we are if there's 30 of us and four boneheads we're probably going to win especially we have weapons hidden in the bushes so that was the first experience

I got with like organizing a community and like you know never going into a fight just by yourself that's what I learned about about community and ARA and then it wasn't until way later until I sort of came back into the movement when there was a neo-Nazi rally here in Sacramento where I met all these people who were actual fighters like MMA fighters and they were already

doing this self-defense collective and so I started just taking their classes and really enjoying like structured learning and sparring and things like that. And so we started doing that. And that's really how I started learning to fight, which was in like 2015 or so. And was that explicitly MMA or did you start with boxing or Jiu-Jitsu or anything in particular? Yeah, it was MMA. It was really just like a really stripped down MMA. So we would do we would do jujitsu we would do kickboxing boxing um and things like that yeah like i i always have loved sports and over the last several years i've gotten very much into weight training and in building muscle and um extending my athleticism especially as i get deeper into my 30s i you know i take my

health more seriously and i want to be a sort of robust person going forward and i've always flirted with the idea of of trying to do jiu jiu jitsu or learn one of the martial arts in particular even boxing anything like that and I sort of have been held back because I don't have health insurance and sort of always have worried about you know catastrophic costs of some sort of injury that I could possibly get but I'm wondering if you have a pitch that you would make to some people out there not that everybody is going to be interested or even should be interested in such a thing but what about it is is edifying what lessons do you learn from it like you know like with with weight training for example it's like you develop this this

discipline you develop this sense of perseverance overcoming discomfort confronting discomfort etc and those things can can transfer to other areas of your life i'm wondering what you find to be like the most worthwhile thing about really getting into something like mixed martial arts and what it does to the to the mind and body over time yeah so so um on top of doing the self-defense collective i actually joined a traditional jiu jitsu gym um and It's not a leftist gym. And in fact, one of the instructors is like a pretty obviously conservative dude. But he sees my tattoos and stuff and he asks me questions about leftist things.

And like, you know, he's pretty cordial. But going to a gym and learning techniques and sparring and using the techniques with other people and being very close to other people and, like, struggling with other people does something to the brain chemistry that makes you stronger. And not just stronger physically, which it does, but mentally you're stronger.

And you feel a deeper connection to people when you're done. So for me, Jiu-Jitsu, even though the people I'm rolling with aren't leftists and they're, you know, I probably wouldn't hang out with them in any other situation. when we're done sparring, I feel very much more connected to humanity.

And it's this very human, raw sort of thing that, like, you don't even need to be good at Jiu-Jitsu. You don't need to be athletic. I've seen people come into that gym, you know, way overweight, really unsure of themselves, and they start taking the classes and, like, you can see it in their eyes that they're different people after a month.

And it's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's like everything about it is like it's almost this distilled human experience that I think everyone should at least try for a month to see if they like it. Yeah. I would assume it builds confidence, but also a calmness that can come with confidence. It's, you know, like you'll often hear things like people who train this way. They're, they tend not, there's always exceptions, but they tend not to be going out in the public, looking for fights or being a super sort of aggressive person. because they have this healthy outlet for that aggression and that development. And then they have a certain sort of respect for what they're able to do such that they're not, you know, like the guy that gets drunk at the bar and has a huge ego and wants to show everybody what he can do sort of thing. It seems like in the best case scenario, it sort of fundamentally humble someone over time because to get into a mixed martial arts, especially from a complete amateur perspective, means getting your ass kicked over and over and over and over again before you start learning the, the base. right yeah definitely and you'll notice like the the black belts the people are really good have dedicated their lives to it are just the most calm even tempered people you'll meet

so there's something to that yeah now there's like you mentioned a conservative sort of guy that you that you um spar with or that is at your gym and certainly like you know there's a full spectrum of people like i have no problem um you know being interested in and talking to and even having friendships with people who are conservative, et cetera. But of course, there is eventually a line where you're crossing over into fascism, Nazism, racism that can't be tolerated at all. Do you ever, have you ever come across those sorts of dudes in that environment? Because I know even in Europe, especially in Europe,

it's really popular with the far right to have these sort of neo-Nazi MMA training gyms and a lot of a culture built around, centered around these gyms. for that reason. I'm not saying that you've experienced that in particular, but is there a certain sort of guy from the far right that is gravitated to this sort of thing that you have to sort of navigate as somebody who's also interested? Yeah, I mean, Jiu-Jitsu, especially because it's sort of traditionally a very conservative crowd that gathers toward Jiu-Jitsu. So I've seen like a lot of sort of militia types, but not necessarily any neo-Nazis. but you know i just i my philosophy is i just treat everyone as a human um who i want to connect

with until they they do something weird yeah so that's kind of that's kind of my philosophy with everything is like if i see you on the street i'm going to try to connect with you because you're a human and that's it and especially because like i teach in a prison now yeah and so like i'm teaching literal neo-nazis with like swastikas on their forehead kids. Yeah. And so, like, it's sort of changed the way I interact with people on a day-to-day basis. So, yeah, that's a fascinating aspect. And I had that down. It's something I wanted to get into. I guess we can get into it now. You've spent time in jail as both an inmate and a teacher. And, yeah, you talk about as a teacher, just straight up Aryan Brotherhood type dudes, dudes with swastika

tattoos on their stomach. Can you tell us a little bit about that environment, some of the challenges you face teaching inmates and what you what you find rewarding about that process yeah i mean honestly i haven't really had any challenges teaching inmates you know my first experience in there my student who sat up front was like a full-on neo-nazzi and like we were just looking at each other's tattoos like we were both from different planets because i have three arrows on my neck and he knew what that meant and obviously he had swastikas on his face and i knew what that that meant but like you know I go in there as someone who wants to teach them writing and I think just the way I am with people it's it's pretty disarming so like they see a guy with like full

tattoos all over and they're like okay we can relate to this guy and and so like that's how the relationship starts and like I don't judge them for their crime I don't judge them for the way they look their tattoos or any of that and that comes across so like really what happens is this classroom uh full of respect for each other um and and like the mission is to learn how to write and that's what it becomes the challenge comes from like going into the prison and dealing with the guards and like all of the rules and like hearing the way the guards speak to the inmates that's that's the hardest part of my job is sort of navigating that. Even putting on my like Department of Corrections name badge every day is sort of a struggle

because I'm like, damn. I almost feel like a traitor in some sense, but I think it's, I feel like it's for the greater good, but I don't know. Yeah, of course. I mean, I would argue you're going in there as a teacher to help build their literary skills and their ability to write. You're not going in there as a CEO or as a cop or anything like that. So I think you're actually doing really good and important work. But I am what kind of wondering if your engagement with the jail and prison system from both sides of it, like what insights you glean, you talk about just how the inmates are treated by the COs in prison,

I'm wondering, yeah, if your engagement with the prison system at all has sort of opened your eyes to certain aspects of it that certainly need reform at the very least. Yeah, I mean, the whole thing is really sad. I meet some of the most brilliant people who are locked up and who are never getting out and whose skills and their wisdom would be really well utilized out here and because they've made a mistake

like a horrible mistake sure when they were you know 16 17 years old they're never going to be able to contribute to this world that we live in and there's a problem there there's a huge problem there I've done so much bullshit in my life that, like, maybe I should be locked away. But I just kind of lucked out and I'm not.

But so, yeah, there's a, there's a problem. There's a problem with the term rehabilitation. There's not a lot of rehabilitation going on in there. It's really this perpetuation of a lack of humanity and like this vicious cycle of control that doesn't lead to any kind of rehabilitation. so you know the fact that they have programs in there they have college in there is good but it's still not enough to to actually rehabilitate as they say yeah and the whole system is fundamentally dehumanizing and like you say yeah you make a mistake early in life especially if you're

from a poor black or brown community in particular and then you're locked away for the rest of your life in in a cage it's that's absolutely brutal there is like at some level like reforms only get you so far because the very premises of the system is so rotten to its core that it's sort of inhuman by definition. Yeah, yeah, that's true. Yeah, that's true. And it's really easy to forget about people who are locked away when you're out here. Like, it's something we just don't have to think about. So I think we need to do a little bit better at educating people about, like, what happens in there and how rehabilitation actually works. Yeah.

Another huge aspect of this book is sort of centered around trauma and the various responses to it. In particular, you know, you have huge swaths of the book where you talk about your, you know, a very excessive alcohol and drug use. And, you know, I have a separate podcast that we do with another friend of mine who's an active recovery right now. He's like 50 days sober where we really focus on addiction and the mechanics of addiction and mental health, et cetera. So it's something that I am interested in personally. I have lots of addicts in my personal life as well. I'm wondering, you know, if childhood trauma is attached at all to your drug and alcohol use and if you can kind of just let listeners know some of the stuff

that you cover in your book with regards to drug and alcohol use and how you sort of try to get your life on the right track. My father was an alcoholic and an addict, and he ended up having schizophrenia. So from a very early age, I understood what that was. And you kind of think, like, well, if your father did it and you had such a bad time with him, why would you go into that same path? But addiction is weird that way. You kind of just do what you see.

and the fact that I gravitated toward drugs was really because I was so full of rage and one of the things that would quell my rage was was drugs and alcohol and so really it was a and the thing was like drugs and alcohol for me were so fun and I can still look back at those days and be like damn those were some good time you know what I mean and like like I'd start drinking in Sacramento and somehow I'd wake up in an alleyway in San Francisco and I'd be like, yeah, that was a good night. But really, I had to figure out a way to quell my rage. And I tried a lot of things. I tried AA. I tried NA. You know, I spent time in jail. But really what it was was like

physical exertion of my body and also learning to balance the things i love um those those things really helped me stay away from from drugs and alcohol so like you know starting to run every day was something that was so important for me to to stop uh using um you know being able to like have a relationship uh with my with my girlfriend who then became my wife learning to study academics you know that really helped me so it's like it wasn't one thing it was this balance this like very delicate balance of things so like if one thing goes out like if i hurt my leg and i can't run anymore i can fall on all this other stuff like writing uh so that like my own all of my chips aren't put into one thing because if if that

happens then i'll go right back to drinking and drug use Was there a moment in your life where you can kind of, you know, this is kind of cliche, but you know, some often people do talk like this, that there is a rock bottom moment or a period of time where you finally got sick of it and you knew you had to put your life on a different track or this wasn't going to end well. Is there a particular event or was it sort of a buildup over time? It was a buildup because every time I thought I was at rock bottom, I would hit a new rock rock. I remember I remember I lived in Carson City. Nevada and I was writing for this motorcycle magazine. I was an editor there and like I just I went on

this bender that was like it was it was whiskey and cocaine and I remember one night I was in a bar hanging out with like the guy who owned the bunny ranch brothel. Yeah. And like it was just wild and I just ended up I don't know what I was I think I was drinking and driving or something. something. And I got pulled over and I ran away from the cops and I ran into a church to hide. And I just ended up sleeping in the church all night long. And I thought that was my rock bottom. Because I woke up in a church and there was like a priest chewing me away. And I'm like, well, there's my rock bottom. I don't think I've ever had a weird or shittier experience than that. But like it got worse. It just kept getting worse. And I'd, you know, I'd tell my girlfriend,

I'm like, oh, I'm going to stop drinking. And I'd stop drinking for a day or two. um so yeah it just really got worse and worse and worse and i'd get better and then get worse so it really wasn't a linear process by any means how did it eventually turn and and do you have a certain sort of streak of sobriety at this point yeah i mean i i really sort of i started running i think running was like the thing that i did that i was like i can't drink while I run. I tried. I tried to like, I tried to like drink and run.

And I remember running around the park and like it was cold in the morning and I remember running and I was drunk and I'd have this big like breath cloud around me that smelled like pure whiskey. Oh man. I just remember people running by me like looking at me like, oh my God, this guy's a mess. But I couldn't do that. And so I had to stop drinking so much. um and so really i got interested in running because it made me feel good at the end and i realized

like i couldn't really run if i was drinking so i'd quit drinking um you know my my fiance at the time was like uh really encouraging me to stop drinking so it all kind of came together at the end where i was like okay i do have a career and like career options in academia so i could probably like stop doing some of the stuff I'm doing and focus on that. A very slow process. I'm kind of interested in that transition because there's parts of the book where it just seems like your life is so sort of chaotic and out of control. And yet at the same time, there's this, you know, this development of yourself to become

a teacher at even the college level. So was this sort of an overlapping thing where you were beginning on that path of becoming a teacher, also struggling with this sort of chaotic life? and then eventually the chaotic life sort of settled down and you moved more vociferously into the teaching profession, or how exactly did that process occur? Yeah, I remember my first college class, I remember sitting there still high on methamphetamine. Damn. And just sitting there, like buzzing around the room.

So, yeah, it was definitely an overlap, but that very same professor saw my writing and she's like, you gotta do this and she put all this trust into me and she would like let me watch her house while she was away and I was still an active drug addict um but the fact that she trusted me and like gave me responsibilities really made me want to do better um and so so while I was trying to clean up I was still like failing at that but in the back of my mind I'm like People believe in me. They think I can do it. I think I can do it.

I just have to get my shit together. So, like, that's sort of what started the process of me moving toward academia and really getting serious about my studies. What age around was that transition for you, more or less? It was in my late, my, like, mid-mid to late 20s. Okay. Yeah. So I started a little late because I dropped out of high school and had to do all the stuff to get back on track but um yeah it took me a while and was it was it always english for you

that attracted yeah it was it was always english and it was never going to be anything else like it's so funny because i really stopped going to school at around sixth grade yeah so like i didn't really do any kind of school i don't know how i passed anything i mean obviously i didn't pass high school but um so i i don't know any math Like, I don't know any, to this day, I can't do math. I can't do anything. I can write, but that's it. So, like, if that didn't work out, I don't know what I'd be doing.

Yeah, that's wild. Now, I know we have lots of people that listen, and just because of the nature of humanity, there are people out there that probably are in active addiction or have somebody in their life who is an active addiction. And I know it's sort of a big ask, but I'm wondering if there's somebody out there listening who might have been in a position you were in, in your teens or 20, you know deeply addicted to various substances whatever it may be would you what what advice would you give somebody who is struggling and looking to sort of get out of that that sort of life um you know so for me it was just it was running something physical so you know depending on on what your

ability is or what what your body type is or or anything just do something that exhilarates you that's physical um and then start a routine with it because that's that's sort of like really what made my mind switch from addict to athlete and so for me it was just a routine of doing something that really physically drained me and looking forward to that feeling every day and realizing that I couldn't use and have that feeling so I had to stop using other than that I really relied on my friends I have some really good

friends who were not using and who really supported me they weren't like feeding my addiction but they were just lending an ear and coming to visit me even at my worst but I know not everyone has that so

you know you could always reach out to me if you find my social media or you know i that's one thing i like to do is just listen to people who are who are active addicts and sort of maybe trade some ideas around but finding a non-judgmental person um like my older sister was for me it's really key so i think all of those things um also finding something that you're good at and just focusing on that and realizing that like you can't

do anything else that harms your body if you want to accomplish that goal. That's the one thing. Like, I really wanted to be a writer so badly. I really wanted to publish. That was like the one dream I had. And so I realized, like, I couldn't be a degenerate and do that. Yeah, I'll link to your social media's in the show notes as well. So people out there that might want to reach out or, you know, get some help in that regards can. And I totally agree with your with the idea of putting all that energy into something particularly physical if possible because it just that positive spiral that it starts with your mental health when you become physically active can really help you sort of lift out of the mind state that you might be in

when you're when you're actively using and I have this little phrase is like when in doubt get out of your mind and get into your body and that works for me not only with regards to any sort of addiction but like even just mental health issues anxiety depression to sit there and ruminate to sit there and let your mind devour itself can be really unproductive and be a downward spiral and sometimes literally i remember in the depths of a deep depression several years ago where i got so desperate that i literally just like put on my shoes and i wasn't even into running or anything but i just ran desperately out of my house and around the block just because i needed some sort of physical stimulation to just rip me out of my really morose um you know mental spiraling

And yeah, it wasn't the silver bullet. Of course, you have to keep coming back and find something that works for you. But in that moment, the fact that my body was just in such a desperate place that I just started running, like I was trying to run away from my problems, literally. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. It's so primal and kind of weird, but like, yeah, that's such a good saying because, yeah, it's the physical that really kind of like stops your mind from that death spiral. Absolutely. And I think there's like an evolutionary component there because, you know, thinking back on the long history of human beings and their development over tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of years to not be active, to just sit, you know, in one space be sedentary. It was sort of, it was anti your survival. And so there is this sense in which we are wired to be active. And that could be a million different things that, you know, you don't have to jump out of the couch and become a world club. class athlete, but just that physical daily activity of any sort is so crucial to us as an animal that when you're not doing that in and of itself, that can be something that can start to

generate feelings like depression, anxiety, et cetera. Yeah, definitely. And like, yeah, when I say like I'm a fighter, I'm not a good fighter. Like, when I, when I spar with my friends who actually are pursuing MMA careers, they kill me. They beat me up every single time and I will never win against them but it's not like being good at something that helps me control my addiction it's just the physical exertion exactly exactly um and yeah and of course and when you're in that realm like to not compare yourself to others just compare yourself to yesterday um the moment the moment whether you're in weightlifting or sport or anything the moment you start saying i want to be like that person or you know i'll never be as good as this person i think you're sort of in a bad place and i think it's just like

am I improving? Am I pursuing excellence in my own personal version of it and be less concerned about what others are doing? I think that's a helpful mind state as well. But I do wonder, I've talked to lots of addicts in my life. And like I said, we even have a show where we mostly focus on that. And I've heard mixed things about AA and NA. For some people, it's an absolute lifesaver. For others, it was not helpful at all. In some instances, it was counterproductive. You were talking earlier about having good sets of friends, a sort of community that had your back, even if it is just like one person in your life

who's willing to be there for you, not be an enabler, but be a sort of support system. Some people that don't have that, they find that in AA and NA. Do you have any personal thoughts on those two things? Did you have a good experience with them, or did you find them unhelpful ultimately? For me, I found them unhelpful,

but I could see how people, like especially I'd a sponsor in NAA, um and he was all about it and like the thing was though he made his entire life about it like his entire personality was derived from n a and like for fun on nights he'd like get a bunch of friends together and they'd cruise n a meetings and stuff like that and like that just wasn't the life for me at all i didn't i didn't want to i didn't want to base my life around my addiction i just wanted to leave my addiction entirely. So, like, yeah, for me, N.A. didn't work.

And I remember my first N.A. meeting, there was this lady who told this story. She was like an older white lady who told this story about, like, she was so into cocaine that one night she did a bunch of coke, and then her nose started bleeding, and then she started eating her blood just to taste cocaine again. Jesus. I was like, dude, this is not where I want to be right now. I don't want to hear this story. It's making me like, yeah, it just, it didn't like click for me that way.

So, like, I had to find something else. But, yeah, I used to be pretty down on A&NA, but now I'm just like, you know, if it works for you, fine. But it didn't, it didn't really click with me. Yeah. And that's pretty common. But, yeah, for some people, it does work. And, of course, if that's you, then awesome. But it's certainly worth, worth trying.

if you are an active addiction and maybe maybe it'll catch on it and a lot of it does depend on which sort of one you go to right you could have many in one city and some are absolutely terrible some are more conducive to to you know your situation and so just it's worth exploring if you haven't yes absolutely but another thing that stood out in your in your book and obviously resonates with me as a father is your shift into fatherhood and that that perspective shift that it gave you but also some of the backlash you get from family members with regards to how you're raising your kids, right, this fear that you're raising them. As you put it in the book, I think something like to be like far left extremists or something. Yeah, right. Can you talk about fatherhood,

how it changed you, sort of what it's taught to you and navigating some of those challenges with family? Yeah, I mean, it's taught me the ultimate patience and this sense of like responsibility for other people you know really my only job i think as a parent is to raise kind children who go out into the world with a sense of like ferocity so i just want them to be kind to other people um you know i'm i'm not big on even though i'm a college professor i'm not big on academics like i feel like once you find a passion you can you can really hone in on on academics but as long as you're getting through but being kind to everyone you meet along the way i feel like that goes really far so um you know my kids know my politics and you know we talk

about racism we talk about um organizing and things like that and you know all the stuff stuff that i do but um you know i i want them to have their own brains i want them to have their own ways of thinking and and their own you know their own conclusions that they reach based upon the world we live in um so so yeah that it's you know and and i really feel like creativity is a huge part of my life and i want my kids to be creative i want them to be creative with like everything the way they interact with the world, the way they, you know, write, with the way they look. Like, I want them to look any way they want. And so, yeah, so, you know, coming from a family that's very conservative, except for they're like Democratic conservatives, which is even weird. They just don't

understand any of it. They're like very traditional. You have to do these certain things in order it to be a good person and I'm not doing any of those things so they think I'm not a good person have they read the book or have any willingness to read the book I don't know like my parents I don't I haven't talked to them in a long time so yeah they kind of cut me off of of any kind of communication my sisters have read the book and they love it I think it's like you know really sweet and fair you know I don't I don't you know I'm very hard on myself in the book It's not some book where I just congratulate myself on a job well done. But it does really try to analyze, like, what went wrong.

And, like, you know, it wasn't the fault of my parents. And, like, I don't think that really comes across in the book that, like, I'm blaming them for anything. It's just the way I was raised. They thought it was right. But, yeah, so I'm not sure if they've read it. And I don't think they will read it. Yeah, you seem to, in the book, you seem to have, like, genuine compassion. for them, like trying to understand where they're coming from and sort of allowing them to be, you know, to have their own opinions, even though they are sort of abrasive in certain ways.

So, yeah, I thought I thought your depiction of your relationship was a very human and compassionate one that took into account their flaws without being harshly judgmental in any way. Right. Yeah, that's what I, that's what I was going for. Beautiful. Well, we're coming up on an hour here. Is there anything else about the book that you wanted to talk about anything that maybe took you by surprise when you were. were writing the book or just any perhaps even story that you would want to tell from the book or anything like that? Well, I'd like people to read it and sort of base their opinion on on anti-fascism after reading it. I think there are a lot of people and maybe they're listening who are sort of like on the fence about anti-fascism and what it means. And I'd like them to read the book just to see but um you know when the first editor edited this manuscript she said she's

like you know people are going to be really mad at you after they read this book and i was like who's going to be mad and she's like everybody she's like you don't let anyone off the hook in this book so um i kind of thought about that and i'm like yeah i guess that's true like no one gets off the hook easily um but i feel like if it's written in a in a real way i don't think anyone does get off the hook because we're all flawed and we're all these contradictory people who you know maybe we try to do the right thing but we don't always do the right thing and um the point of the book is like you know you you can learn that's the only thing you can do is learn yeah and as long as you're actively learning and actively trying to be compassionate, then then you should be okay.

So, yeah, I'm sort of interested to see how people react to the writing. Yeah. I really enjoyed the writing genuinely. I found a core tenet in the text to be this humility that you display yourself. And it's incredibly humanizing. You know, one of the things about, especially in the last several years, anti-fascism, as we were saying earlier in the conversation is that there is this concerted attempt to demonize people who are engaged in that activity or that have those politics. And even, you know, being a socialist or an anarchist or a communist in American society is already taboo, already anathema. And many people don't know anybody in their lives that are like that, which makes it much easier to dehumanize those people.

And once you start down the path of dehumanizing entire groups of people, well, we know where that can lead. And so one of the things that I try to do with the show, and I think you do really well with this book, is to fully humanize, you know, these politics through your own person, right? To show people that you can disagree with me. You can not have the same opinions. You could judge me for my life. But I'm a human being trying my best. And I feel I found that when I'm talking to people who are, you know, their politics give them every reason to be hostile towards me as somebody who is, you know, a self-described socialist, Marxist, et cetera, I find that when they can connect to my human side first, they're much more willing to listen to my political views and much

more willing to not necessarily dehumanize the next person that identifies as such, because now they have somebody in their head who they personally know, who is that as well. And they might not agree with it, but that's a human being. And I think that in and of itself can be progressive. Yeah. What was that word you use, anathema? Anathema? Yeah. That's a good one. I got to look that up and then start using it. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show.

I really appreciated the book. I really appreciate you taking an hour of your time to come on and talk with us. Can you let listeners know where they can find you and your book online? And let us know if you have, do you have any other future projects or a future book on your mind that you want to start working on soon? Yeah. So I'm working on a couple books right now, a book of fiction and then a, a non-fiction book about running. But, yeah, this book, The Hands That Crafted the Bomb,

you can find at p.m.press.org. And they have an event schedule, so you can see the events that I'm doing in support of the book. And P.M. Press has tons of titles, you know, politics, poetry, fiction, all kinds of stuff. So if this book isn't your cup of tea, there's tons of stuff over on P.M. Press.

so check it out. And do you have any social media or anything you want to share with folks? Instagram 3 underscore arrows is where I usually post stuff. Sweet. All right. I will link to the socials. I will link to PM Press's release of your book and their event schedule. People can reach out to you on Instagram if they want to touch base with you, to ask you a question, anything like that.

And yeah, thank you so much. Let me know when you come out with any other work in the future. I'd love to have you back on. and I really appreciate you taking time with us today. Appreciate you. Thanks so much.