Understanding MAGA as a Social Movement—With Bill Fletcher Jr.
Bill Fletcher joins Fighting Fascism to discuss organized labor, anti-fascist strategy, and why understanding MAGA as a social movement matters for confronting it.
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Understanding MAGA as a Social Movement w/ Bill Fletcher Jr. / Fighting Fascism
For this Labor Day episode we’re joined by Bill Fletcher, a longtime union organizer who’s spent the last several years working to build out the labor movement’s anti-fascist infrastructure. Bill has an important reminder for those of us who direct most of our anti-fascist energy against Trump and the oligarchy: MAGA isn’t some astroturf trick. It’s a genuine social movement representing some 25-30 percent of Americans, and any strategies that ignore this fact are missing something fundamental about today’s dangerous political reality. You can learn more about Bill's organization, Standing for Democracy, here.
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Supporters of President Donald Trump at an event in Marietta, Georgia, on July 22, 2026.
(Saul Loeb / AFP via Getty Images)For this Labor Day episode we’re joined by Bill Fletcher, a longtime union organizer who’s spent the past several years working to build out the labor movement’s anti-fascist infrastructure. Bill has an important reminder for those of us who direct most of our anti-fascist energy toward Trump and the oligarchy: MAGA isn’t some Astroturf trick. It’s a genuine social movement representing some 25 to 30 percent of Americans, and any strategies that ignore this fact are missing something fundamental about today’s dangerous political reality. You can learn more about Bill’s organization, Standing for Democracy, here.
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The Nation Podcasts
Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.
Does Staten Island Explain the Trump Age? w/ Ben Naddaff-Hafrey / Fighting Fascism
Staten Island is often referred to—by its inhabitants—as the Forgotten Borough of New York City. But who knew that in the 1990s, Staten Islanders literally tried to secede. Our guest this week, Ben Naddaff-Hafrey, is a journalist and senior producer for the Revisionist History podcast, and he’s created a brilliant new series called The Staten Island Problem that tells the history of this moment when New York City almost came apart.
Ben sees this story as an early example of the politics of resentment that dominates America today. To understand Staten Island is to understand the communities across our country that feel forgotten and disrespected, whose resentments Trump rode to power.
Oh, and obviously we also talk about how Staten Island—or Shaolin, as they call it—explains the Wu-Tang Clan, which totally fits perfectly well with the other themes and definitely isn’t just shoehorned in because it’s super interesting.
To get started on Ben’s series: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/revisionist-history/id1119389968?i=1000776007729
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