Banner and Backbone Media

Anti Fascist Book Club | To Catch A Fascist - 2026-04-03

Banner & Backbone Media — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 19:28:44 GMT

Book In Review

Episode six of the Anti-Fascist Book Club’s reading of Christopher Mathias’ To Catch a Fascist centers on the chapter titled “The Fire Rises,” beginning around page 200, where Mathias traces the accelerationist movement’s path from internet subculture to political mainstream. Nick opens with the book’s account of how figures like Nick Fuentes — once fringe provocateurs whose rhetoric should have disqualified them from public discourse — were welcomed into Trump’s orbit during his first administration. The panel treats this not as history but as diagnosis, connecting Mathias‘ reporting directly to the week’s news: Pam Bondi’s firing as Attorney General, the Epstein Transparency Act violations, and the Supreme Court hearing a case against birthright citizenship.

What makes this episode sharp is the way Nick and Tara refuse to let the book’s analysis sit at arm’s length. Tara draws from Part Two of the book — the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, the doxing campaigns that exposed rally attendees as Republican staffers and military members, and the pattern of those same individuals later being arrested for domestic violence and CSAM. She places these facts against Trump’s “very fine people on both sides” framing, and the contrast does the work Mathias intends: the far right’s sickness isn’t aberrant, it’s structural. Nick extends the argument by connecting the chapter’s cultural analysis to the accelerationist pipeline — how abandoning the cultural space allowed movements like Trad Wives, looks-maxing, and Soft Girl aesthetics to flourish, and how conservative parents who screamed about radicalization were blaming trans people when the actual threat was accelerationist capture of their children.

The episode’s most sustained argument is about gendered power within the fascist apparatus. Nick traces a pattern: every woman removed from Trump’s administration is replaced by a man — Kristi Noem by Markwayne Mullen, Pam Bondi by an as-yet-unnamed male successor. The replacements aren’t just shuffles; they’re escalations. Mullen is described as even more performative than Noem, trading on a false masculinity that American culture is conditioned to accept. Nick connects this to “The Fire Rises” by arguing that accelerationists prefer male figureheads who can perform authority without scrutiny — the “trust me, bro” of fascist governance. The panel insists that while Bondi bears full responsibility for her choices, the systemic patriarchy that positions women as disposable shields for male accelerationists is itself a feature of the movement Matthias documents.

The conversation also addresses the cultural pipeline from rhetoric to policy, tracing how the “they’re eating the dogs” trope — which became viral TikTok content and a meme song — provided the cultural impetus for the Supreme Court to hear a birthright citizenship case. Nick argues this is the accelerationist playbook in action: normalize dehumanizing language through entertainment, then use the normalized hostility as political cover for stripping constitutional rights. Tara reinforces this by noting the double standard in how law enforcement treats right-wing versus left-wing protests, from Charlottesville to Zuccotti Park to January 6th. The episode closes with a live exchange with chat commenters about free speech and hate speech — a microcosm of the very cultural battle the book describes.

This second-to-last episode on To Catch a Fascist arrives at what feels like the book’s operational thesis: awareness without accountability changes nothing. Nick’s call for Bondi’s prosecution under the Epstein Transparency Act, Tara’s insistence that consequences must extend beyond individual scapegoats, and the book club’s standing invitation to start local chapters all point in the same direction — that community-building is not a supplement to anti-fascist action, it is the action itself.

Where to find resources

How to Access the material

We encourage you to read along with us, with get a copy of your own — we recommend these resources:

Go to your local library and checkout a copy, if available
Bookstore.org
ThriftBooks.com

Start & Support Your Own Book Club

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Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and de-flock the States:

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Orders Project
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Palantalk | E33 - Bomb First and Ask No Questions

Banner & Backbone Media — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 22:01:05 GMT

Palantalk In Review

Nick Paro and Shane Yirak open today’s Palantalk by framing the U.S. military campaign against Iran not as war in any conventional sense, but as an act of state terrorism executed without a coherent exit strategy — the direct result of a Pentagon gutted of its institutional brain trust and replaced with ideological loyalists. Shane presents a systematic accounting of the military leadership purge that began in February 2025, tracking the removal of at least 24 generals and admirals — including CENTCOM commander General Michael Carrilla, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General C.Q. Brown, and the head of U.S. Cyber Command — each fired for offering professional resistance or inconvenient intelligence. In their place, the administration installed loyalists aligned with Christian Nationalists and Dominionist ideology, substituting obedience for mission command and, as Shane flags, accelerating the integration of Palantir into Pentagon operations as an AI replacement for the human expertise that was purged.

Nick and Shane then analyze Iran’s documented military strategy: a disciplined tit-for-tat doctrine that has degraded 40% of the U.S. tanker fleet, destroyed at least one irreplaceable E-3 Sentinel AWACS pulled from Alaska, rendered 14 regional airbases uninhabitable, and — critically — held its entire inventory of anti-ship ballistic missiles in reserve, suggesting Iran is waiting for the highest-value moment to deploy them. The episode closes on the Kharg Island question: both hosts argue that a U.S. amphibious assault on Kharg would walk directly into a prepared Iranian kill box in the Strait of Hormuz, mining the strait behind the fleet and creating a mass-casualty cascade — exactly the scenario that a reactionary, plan-free Pentagon leadership would fall into.

Key Takeaways

Track the Strait of Hormuz closely: Iran controls Hormuz and the Houthis control the Bab al-Mandeb, meaning both of the world’s critical oil shipping lanes are already in adversary hands. Any naval surge into the strait should be read as an escalation trigger, not a show of strength.
Verify the military’s casualty and damage numbers against independent OSINT sources. Shane documents a consistent pattern of official minimization — “damaged” regularly means destroyed — and cross-referencing Chinese satellite imagery, the Wall Street Journal’s base reporting, and tools like IranWarLive.com gives a far more accurate operational picture.
Understand what Palantir’s designation as an essential Pentagon contractor means for democratic oversight. Firing human experts who push back and replacing them with AI systems that comply is a structural shift in how military decisions are made and by whom they can be questioned.
Watch the Kharg Island situation as a potential strategic trap. Shane’s analysis holds that Iran has war-gamed this scenario deliberately — they want the U.S. to attempt a seizure so they can mine the strait, strand a carrier group, and force a mass-casualty response that exhausts U.S. naval assets.
Support the troops by opposing the war. Nick, as a disabled Army combat veteran, is direct: supporting service members means demanding they be brought home, not conflating troop welfare with political support for the operation by sending them into an unwinnable position.

OSINT Resources

Extras

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Map_of_North_America_with_the_Western_Interior_Seaway_during_the_Campanian_%28Upper_Cretaceous%29.png

Disclaimer: We are in no way a danger to ourselves or others. We are in no way having any ideations of self harm or harming others. We are in no way promoting or suggesting any type of violent action towards these tech companies, the cities and law enforcement agencies that contract with them, or any agency of local, state, or federal law enforcement. We insist our readers maintain a nonviolent position of resistance.

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How Courage For Democracy Plans to Win Our Country Back Through Citizens' Impeachment

Walter Rhein — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 15:30:39 GMT

Hello Everyone!

This was such a great conversation. Despite all that’s happened, I’m always overwhelmed when I meet authentic people of integrity who are doing great work to protect our nation. is working to organize progressive candidates to flip seats and challenge ineffective representatives. Help me put them in touch with .

We win through the messaging. We must demand that our voices are heard. Keira Havens discussed a lot of great tactics like the importance of writing a letter to the editor of your local paper. Read about that here.

Friends, the forces of hate have the guns and the money but WE’VE GOT THE NUMBERS! We’re going to win this with peace, love, and reason. But you all need to break out your typewriters and start to make your voices heard!

Their web page is Courage for Democracy.

Also check out Citizens’ Impeachment. They have Monday morning actions that will inspire you to do more to save your country.

, , , , , , , , this would be a great person to invite on for an interview!

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video with ! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Actions You Can Take

Check out our new shared community calendar:

Broad Banner

Sign the Petitions:

Call your public servants on important issues:

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Join the efforts to de-flock the States:

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Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

Orders Project
Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

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Anti Fascist Book Club | To Catch A Fascist - 2026-03-27

Banner & Backbone Media — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 22:21:40 GMT

Book Club In Review

In the fifth session on Christopher Mathias’ To Catch a Fascist, , , and open with a direct charge for the No Kings rally weekend: stop treating protest as the endpoint. Kristofer framed the Anti-Fascist Book Club as a “social lubricant that becomes social glue” — the goal isn’t just showing up, it’s using those spaces to connect with three people you don’t already know, make concrete plans to meet within a week, and hand them a printed copy of the Veterans Fighting Fascism AFBC leadership guide. The distinction matters: solidarity without community-building is just a feeling. Community-building at scale is democracy itself.

Nick anchored the book discussion in a passage from pages 116–117 on the alt-right’s deliberate targeting of neurodivergent and socially isolated young people. The book documents how the movement weaponized terms like “weaponized autism,” used Discord channels and gaming platforms to build pipelines, and deployed memes, cartoon characters, and pop culture parodies to recruit children in spaces that pro-democracy voices had largely abandoned. Kristofer added a specific mechanism: these communities use self-diagnosed neurodivergence as a rhetorical shield, framing racist behavior as a social processing disorder rather than a moral failure. Nick, speaking from his own experience with ADHD, pushed back directly — a diagnosis explains some things, but it doesn’t transfer your accountability to someone else. That distinction is one of the core tools parents, siblings, and trusted adults need to put in front of young men before the pipeline does.

The conversation moved through the mechanics of radicalization into the harder question Kris raised: what happens when the legal system fails to deliver consequences? He walked through the real cost of pursuing his own case against a neo-Nazi who hand-delivered a death threat to his mother’s home — 18 months, $40,000, and repeated continuances just to get one charge to stick. The process punished him as much as the perpetrator. He put it plainly: he had the man’s address within hours and could have handled it differently if he subscribed to militant antifascism. He’s not endorsing that path, but he’s asking the question honestly, especially as masked federal agents operate with documented impunity and the DOJ blocks FBI investigation into killings. Tara drew the parallel to Hans Litten, the German lawyer who took Nazi street violence to court in the early 1930s and ended up dying in a concentration camp after the regime took power. The lesson isn’t despair — it’s that legal accountability must be pursued aggressively and that the community around those efforts has to be larger than one person.

The episode closed on community as the structural counter to fascism. Tara cited research showing that strong, multiracial local networks are among the most effective documented defenses against authoritarian politics — connected people are harder to isolate and harder to scare. Nick extended that to the practical: take your MAGA-adjacent family members to a city they’ve never been to. Show them culture. Blow their minds in the best way. That work belongs to those of us with the social capital to do it safely — not to the trans people, LGBTQ+ community members, or marginalized groups who are already targeted. With the No Kings rallies the next day, the crew’s unified message was: go, but go with a plan, go to build something, and go to till the garden.

On Offense with Kris Goldsmith

Don’t Waste Your Time at “No Kings” Protests

Don’t waste your time with these “No Kings” protests…

Listen now

10 days ago · 137 likes · 30 comments · Kristofer Goldsmith and Valor Media Network

People, Orgs, and Terms Mentioned

People

Kristofer Goldsmith — veteran, founder of Veterans Fighting Fascism and Task Force Butler, host of On Offense (Valor Media Network); infiltrated Patriot Front
Christopher Mathias — author of To Catch a Fascist; HuffPost journalist; previously appeared on On Offense
Nick Fuentes — named as an example of the alt-right pipeline operating in the open
Hans Litten — German lawyer who cross-examined Hitler and prosecuted Nazi street violence in Weimar Germany; died in a concentration camp after the regime took power
Dylann Roof — white supremacist mass murderer; referenced in context of the “Last Rhodesian” dog whistle and its use in extremist online spaces
Paul Town — subject in the book; a case study in the targeted recruitment of neurodivergent people into white supremacist networks
Renee Nicole Good — the first named victim of masked ICE violence in Minneapolis, MN
Alex Pretti — the second named victim of masked ICE violence in Minneapolis, MN

Organizations / Programs

Veterans Fighting Fascism (VFF) — ’s non-profit organization; hosts the AFBC reading list and leadership guide at veteransfightingfascism.org
Task Force Butler — affiliated organization; resources and gear available at taskforcebutler.org
Patriot Front — neo-Nazi organization Kristofer infiltrated; discussed throughout
Anonymous Comrades Collective — anti-fascist research group cited in the book; documented the targeting of neurodivergent people
Anne Frank Army — Midwest anti-fascist group quoted in the book on the tension between prison abolition and accountability for fascist violence
No Kings Rally — nationwide protests scheduled for March 28, 2026; referenced throughout as the immediate action opportunity
On Offense / Valor Media Network — Kristofer’s podcast and network

Terms / Concepts

Militant antifascism — active, confrontational opposition to fascist organizing; Mathias subscribes to this in the book; the hosts engaged with it honestly without endorsing or dismissing it
Prison abolition — the position that prisons should be eliminated; creates tension for anti-fascists who also want accountability for fascist violence; the book quotes Anne Frank Army on this directly
Neurodivergence — umbrella term for cognitive differences including ADHD, autism spectrum, etc.; discussed in context of recruitment targeting and bad-faith weaponization by extremist communities
Edgelording — transgressive humor used as a gateway to radicalization; described as an appeal to young men’s desire for autonomy and rebellion
The Great Deplatforming — mass removal of alt-right figures from social platforms after January 6th; cited as a brief disruption largely reversed by Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter/X
“Last Rhodesian” — Dylann Roof’s online handle; a dog whistle referencing the white colonial government of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe); used to signal ideology in plain sight

Where to find resources

How to Access the material

We encourage you to read along with us, with get a copy of your own — we recommend these resources:

Go to your local library and checkout a copy, if available
Bookstore.org
ThriftBooks.com

Start & Support Your Own Book Club

Actions You Can Take

Sign the Petitions:

Call your public servants on important issues:

5calls.org

Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and de-flock the States:

Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

Orders Project
Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video with , , and ! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

Check out the new BroadBanner network and affiliate calendar!

Donate to Feeding America, today!

Subscribe now

Reach out to the team if you are interested in volunteering time, supporting, and building these community driven platforms:

Submit feedback directly: Feedback Form
: info@bannerandbackbone.com

Support and subscribe to Banner & Backbone now for only $5 a month or $50 annually!

Banner & Backbone Team

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Palantalk | E32 - Our Tech and Tools

Banner & Backbone Media — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 20:37:51 GMT

Palantalk In Review

, , and opened with a sharp analysis of the SAVE Act's voter suppression mechanics, arguing that the law's passport-document requirements will disproportionately disenfranchise women — including Republican women whose access to identity documents has been systematically constrained. The conversation then shifted to its core subject: how independent media creators can build and deploy their own tech infrastructure to compete on the same information terrain as well-funded authoritarian actors. Nick live-demoed the Broad Banner Assistant, an open-source automation tool that pulls content from Google Drive, converts it to Markdown, and publishes it to GitHub Pages with minimal human input — positioning GitHub as both a content distribution channel and an AI training-data feed. Rachel introduced the concept of a sovereign tech stack using locally-run small language models, explained the Owl Problem as evidence that AI bias transmission is poorly understood even by developers, and detailed how she used AI-assisted OSINT aggregation to track troop movements before CENTCOM announced them. The episode closed with a geopolitical segment on Iran's strategic goal of decoupling the Trump regime from its Gulf financial backers, and a call for audiences to treat citizen journalism and AI-literacy as active civic responsibilities.

Come check out the new https://pages.broadbanner.com/

Key Takeaways

Star your GitHub repositories and share GitHub Pages links — visibility metrics feed directly into the AI models that learn from public repositories, making audience engagement a form of counter-narrative training data.
Add “and tell me why you think this is important to me” to the end of every AI prompt — it forces the model to surface its own bias toward your past usage patterns so you can interrogate it rather than absorb it.
Research the SAVE Act’s documentary requirements and compare them against passport-ownership data by demographic — the numbers reveal who the law is actually designed to remove from the voter rolls.
Look up Project Maven and read Palantir’s publicly available contract documentation — understanding how AI is integrated into military targeting decisions is prerequisite knowledge for any informed civic engagement with AI policy.
Build or download a morality/ethics instruction set for any AI agent you operate — Rachel’s Epistemic War Report prompt is available under Creative Commons and is a usable starting point.

Actions You Can Take

Visit our new community network and affiliate calendar:

Broad Banner

Sign the Petitions:

Call your public servants on important issues:

5calls.org

Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and de-flock the States:

deflock.me

Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

Orders Project
Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video with , , and ! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

Check out the new BroadBanner network and affiliate calendar!

Donate to Feeding America, today!

Subscribe now

Reach out to the team if you are interested in volunteering time, supporting, and building these community driven platforms:

Submit feedback directly: Feedback Form
: info@bannerandbackbone.com
: info@sickofthisshitpublications.com
: firebrandproject@proton.me

Support and subscribe to Banner & Backbone now for only $5 a month or $50 annually!

Banner & Backbone Team

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Anti Fascist Book Club | To Catch A Fascist 2026-03-20

Banner & Backbone Media — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 21:29:28 GMT

Book In Review

In the fourth session on Christopher Mathias’ To Catch a Fascist – Nick Paro, Tara Devlin, and Steven Acheson opened with a graphic and necessary reading from page 91 — the documented lynching of Mary Turner in 1918. Nick read the passage aloud with a content warning in place, and the crew used it as an anchor for the entire episode: the violence that built this country’s racial hierarchy was never fully confronted, and its consequences are still being vandalized out of public memory. Tara connected the dots between the removal of Turner’s memorial markers in 2020 and the broader erasure that the anti-DEI agenda now performs under a legal cover that feels more comfortable than a hood.

Steven brought the weight of a veteran’s perspective to the discussion of the KKK’s decline in membership. He pointed to the Rage Against the Machine lyric that crystallized the book’s argument for him — those who once burned crosses are now in the halls of power. Nick built on historian Linda Gordon’s argument from pages 98–99, reading directly from Mathias’s text: the Klan’s most durable victory was not rallies or robes but the Overton Window itself, shifting what passes for acceptable public discourse and encoding white nativist ideology into law. When the ideology is in the statute, the organization no longer needs the membership numbers.

The conversation moved from historical analysis to lived counter-organizing. Steven described blocking Westboro Baptist Church protesters outside a Madison Planned Parenthood by parking his truck on the median — not confrontation, but interference, wasting their time so they couldn’t do worse. Nick and Tara both named the visibility of everyday anti-fascists as a critical force: when your neighbors know who you are and they see that an anti-fascist looks like a normal person, you shift the social landscape. They drew a direct line between community presence, local food systems, CSA farming models, and the parallel infrastructure people need to reduce dependency on corporate supply chains that fascism is currently weaponizing.

The final stretch connected everything upstream. Tara named the Democracy Index downgrade of the U.S. press freedom score. Nick traced the attacks on Iran, fertilizer supply disruptions, and rollback of EV infrastructure as coordinated policy failures that disproportionately hammer the same rural farmers who voted for the administration executing them. The episode closed where it had to: the goal is not simply to stop one man or one party, but to destroy the conditions under which fascism can take root at all — so that the environment that produced a Trump or a Putin cannot re-emerge.

Where to find resources

How to Access the material

We encourage you to read along with us, with get a copy of your own — we recommend these resources:

Go to your local library and checkout a copy, if available
Bookstore.org
ThriftBooks.com

Start & Support Your Own Book Club

Actions You Can Take

Sign the Petitions:

Call your public servants on important issues:

5calls.org

Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and de-flock the States:

Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

Orders Project
Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video with , , and ! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

Support and subscribe to Banner & Backbone now for only $5 a month or $50 annually!

Anti Fascist Book Club Team

~ Nick Paro | Kristofer Goldsmith | Stephanie Wilson | Tara Devlin | Steven Acheson ~

Candidate Interview | Ginger Murray

Walter Rhein — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 21:32:55 GMT

I really enjoyed having this opportunity to sit down with Ginger Murray. She’s running for Wisconsin’s 7th district and it’s candidates like her that give me hope for the future. I hope you enjoy getting to know her in this video. To learn more about her, check her campaign page: GingerForUs

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video with ! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Actions You Can Take

Check out our new shared community calendar:

Broad Banner

Sign the Petitions:

Call your public servants on important issues:

5calls.org

Join the efforts to de-flock the States:

deflock.me

Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

Orders Project
Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

Check out the new BroadBanner network and affiliate calendar!

Donate to Feeding America, today!

Subscribe now

Reach out to the team if you are interested in volunteering time, supporting, and building these community driven platforms:

Submit feedback directly: Feedback Form
: info@bannerandbackbone.com

Support and subscribe to Banner & Backbone!

Banner & Backbone Team

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Palantalk | E31 - The War Wages On

Banner & Backbone Media — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 20:12:34 GMT

In Review

Three weeks into the U.S. military campaign against Iran, and use open-source intelligence — flight tracking data, battlefield maps, casualty reports, and interceptor depletion modeling — to describe a conflict that is going far worse than the official briefings admit. Shane frames Iran's asymmetrical strategy clearly: don't fight the fist, go for the eyes — degrade logistics, bleed interceptors, activate proxies, and survive. Nick adds the domestic dimension: the war is also being used to construct the conditions for expanded surveillance, potential conscription, and public suppression at home. The action is clear — stop consuming propaganda, pressure congressional representatives, and support independent media doing the verification work that mainstream outlets won't.

Our Takeaways

Verify troop movement through open sources. The 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit has been redeployed from Okinawa toward the Middle East. The Army abruptly cancelled an 82nd Airborne Division headquarters training exercise — that doesn’t happen often. Cross-reference reports before sharing numbers — official figures have already diverged.
Reframe the scope of the conflict. This is not a U.S./Israel-vs.-Iran operation. U.S. bases, airports, and energy infrastructure across Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE are being struck simultaneously by Iran’s proxy network—with others, like the Houthis still waiting to enter the action. This is at minimum a regional axis war.
Watch the Kurdish situation closely. Iran preemptively bombed Kurdish military sites to prevent them from joining the U.S. campaign. The Kurds have stepped back. Their safety is directly tied to whether or when the U.S. withdraws.
Monitor selective service funding and draft precedents. The U.S. has historically overfunded selective service infrastructure before implementing broader drafts. That pattern is repeating.
Contact your congressional representatives directly. The most available lever for all citizens right now is direct, primary pressure — force candidates to take positions on the war and its human cost.
Use OSINT sources over mainstream briefings. Flight tracking data, battlefield maps, and cross-referenced casualty reports are publicly available and more accurate than official statements.

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video with and ! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Disclaimer: We are in no way a danger to ourselves or others. We are in no way having any ideations of self harm or harming others. We are in no way promoting or suggesting any type of violent action towards these tech companies, the cities and law enforcement agencies that contract with them, or any agency of local, state, or federal law enforcement. We always insist our readers maintain a nonviolent position of resistance.

Actions You Can Take

Visit our new community network and affiliate calendar:

Broad Banner

Sign the Petitions:

Call your public servants on important issues:

5calls.org

Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and de-flock the States:

deflock.me

Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

Orders Project
Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

Check out the new BroadBanner network and affiliate calendar!

Donate to Feeding America, today!

Subscribe now

Reach out to the team if you are interested in volunteering time, supporting, and building these community driven platforms:

Submit feedback directly: Feedback Form
: info@bannerandbackbone.com
: info@sickofthisshitpublications.com
: firebrandproject@proton.me

Support and subscribe to Banner & Backbone now for only $5 a month or $50 annually!

Banner & Backbone Team

~ | | | | | | | | ~

Anti Fascist Book Club | To Catch A Fascist - 2026/03/13

Banner & Backbone Media — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 21:25:23 GMT

Show In Review

In today’s 3rd Anti Fascist Book Club discussion into To Catch a Fascist, we opened not in the book but in Minneapolis — where and had spent the previous week at the AbolishICE Live music event near the Alex Pretti memorial, organized in partnership with the Dropkick Murphys, local bands, , , and anchored by a brass ensemble called Brass Solidarity. What came through in that opening was about the direct lessons learned: Minneapolis is doing anti-fascism in real time, using mutual aid, community kitchens, rent funds, and sustained memorial culture to hold the line against an ICE occupation that has directly damaged the local economy. Kris framed it plainly — every American with the means to do so should plan a trip, support those businesses, and bring lessons home, because ICE is a fraction of its projected size and this is what expansion will look like everywhere.

When the group turned to the book itself, Kris grounded the conversation in the stakes of his own infiltration work. He explained that when he first entered Patriot Front, he assumed the word “Nazi” was being used loosely. It wasn’t — these were people debating national socialist philosophers, using words like “propaganda” and “self-radicalization” without irony, and pursuing genocide as an explicit goal, not an abstraction. Chapter seven’s thesis — that American white supremacy oscillates between masked periods and periods when masks aren’t needed — drove the episode’s central question: are we entering an era when ICE agents, like the Patriot Front members before them, feel socially and legally invulnerable enough to operate in the open? Kris argued that federal pardons cover federal law, which means state and local governments are the only remaining mechanism for accountability — and most of them are not stepping up — yet.

named the structural problem enabling all of this: the paradox of tolerance. A society that extends liberal protections to movements whose explicit goal is genocide isn’t being principled — it’s being cowardly. She connected the normalization of fascist aesthetics and rhetoric to the failure of corporate media to draw clear lines, while pointing out that trans people are now being targeted in precisely the sequence the early Nazi regime used: first strip legal identity, then restrict movement, then remove the ability to vote. The Kansas driver’s license law came up as a concrete, present-day example of that sequence in action. Tara and Kris both pressed that the debate should never have been about what Trump said after Charlottesville — it should have been about the country refusing to tolerate Nazis at all.

joined late in the discussion, bringing a rural Wisconsin ground-level view that sharpened the local organizing argument. An Army veteran, former organic farmer, and current local school board candidate, Steven talked about what it actually looks like to build community trust in a town of 800 where you weren’t born — coaching youth sports, being intentional about the language used with kids, finding common ground before introducing harder conversations. He pushed back on the idea that Wisconsin is a red state, describing it instead as a blue state gerrymandered into losing. His enthusiasm for gubernatorial candidate — the only explicit democratic socialist in the race — closed the episode on a concrete electoral note: education funding, fair maps, and candidates who know their communities from the inside are where the work connects local resistance to statewide change.

Where to find resources

How to Access the material

We encourage you to read along with us, with get a copy of your own — we recommend these resources:

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Congressional Candidate Chris Bennett

Walter Rhein — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 13:01:53 GMT

Hello Everybody!

My reader got me in touch with for a quick chat. He was attending a regular Sunday demonstration and he took a bit of time out of his busy day to talk to us about the progressive promise. Note that Chris shows up at about the 32:25 minute mark.

It warms my heart to talk to candidates like this. He’s absolutely wonderful, authentic, compassionate, intelligent… I could go on and on. I’m sure he’ll win you over as well.

If you want to learn more about him or his campaign, you can find his web page here.

Please help me continue to shine a light on candidates like this. You can like, comment, share, and cross-post this interview. I’ve also been asking people to write up their reactions in articles and post those (and tag me). I’ll restack your words, learn from them, and together we’ll all rise.

Thanks for the support! We’re going to win this!

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Congressional Candidate Emily Berge

Walter Rhein — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 20:10:37 GMT

I really appreciated this conversation with . She’s running for congress in my district by going out and talking to the people (including me). I think we’re all tired of living in an era where candidates who are “anointed” by Washington DC go out and lose. It’s time to let the people decide who represents them.

That’s how we all win!

Emily is very candid in this interview about the state of her campaign and the state of primaries in general. Wouldn’t it be great to go back to a model where our government can’t be bought? Well, it starts by getting back one district at a time.

You can support Emily at BergeForCongress.com. But support doesn’t just mean donating money. Please tell people about her. Get your friends and family involved. If you know people with shows/podcasts in the state of WI, send them to me and we’ll interview Emily together. We can do this!

Frankly, I’m tired of allowing outside influences to choose our representatives. Let’s make some noise and take back our district! We all know that Washington isn’t working for us. It’s time to send in a new generation of representatives!

Thank you , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video with ! Join me for my next live video in the app.

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Palantalk | E30 - The War For Tech Profits

Banner & Backbone Media — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 19:57:31 GMT

Palantalk In Review

hosts for a deep, ranging conversation on the deployment of AI in U.S. and Israeli military operations against Iran — and who bears the cost when those systems fail. Rachel draws on Joseph Weizenbaum’s 1976 framework to argue that healthcare, law, and warfare are domains where machines must never make final decisions, because morality requires consequence and machines have none.

Both connect the reckless “move fast and break things” deployment of AI in combat to the same fragile, ego-driven masculinity shaping the current administration — arguing that the unchecked male dominance at the top of AI leadership is now being baked into the models themselves as a supremacist baseline. The conversation turns practical: Rachel outlines an actionable counter-information strategy centered on building epistemic authority through GitHub, Reddit, LinkedIn, and Newsbreak to flood the zone with factual, well-sourced content that AI models will actually weight and learn from. The episode closes with a call for real accountability and repair — not just post-election wins, but the kind of structural reckoning that the U.S. has consistently refused to do after every era of organized oppression.

This Woman Votes - Progress & Politics

The Boundary We Were Warned About

I tried to de-nerd this piece on AI and its use in the American Military, however, it is nearly 2500 words and I have been asked for a TL;DR on more than one occasion, so if you scroll down to the end, it is below the image…

a month ago · 10 likes · 4 comments

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How Precinct Level Voting is the Secret Weapon for Winning Back Our Country

Walter Rhein — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 18:07:01 GMT

Hey Everybody!

What a great talk! I stared my morning dejected about the state of affairs in the United States, but after talking with , I feel empowered. She works with the North Texas Democrats, and she provided me with a ton of information as to what went down in the Texas election.

My main takeaway is that there are brilliant, hardworking people doing everything they can to fight the regime. I know that everyone is frustrated by the lack of action we’ve seen in DC, but Liza helped remind me that DC doesn’t matter.

Local matters!

She said that we all need to go find our precinct chair and make sure our communities are organized and represented. It’s the grass roots movement that changes our society. We can win at every level and that makes a win in 2028 inevitable.

But we’ve got to work and work now!

This was a great talk and I’m looking forward to learning more from Liza! We’re just getting started!

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Palantalk | E29 - No, More War

Banner & Backbone Media — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 21:18:12 GMT

PalanReview

Today’s 29th Episode of Palantalk is more than commentary — it’s a warning.

and opened the show reacting in real time to U.S. strikes on Iran — and the immediate Iranian retaliation that followed. What unfolded during the discussion was focused on concrete events — escalation, friendly fire, damaged airfields, rising casualties, and a rapidly tightening strategic vise around U.S. operational capacity. This was a sobering breakdown of what “no more war” actually looks like when you add the missing comma.

“No, more war.”

What Happened — And Why It Matters

Within the first portion of the episode, reports surfaced that Kuwait had shot down multiple U.S. jets in what appears to be friendly fire — that alone is alarming — and we dug deeper to see a more complete picture:

Interceptor systems under extreme strain
Massive drone and ballistic missile salvos (Kuwait reportedly intercepting 283 drones and 97 ballistic missiles)
U.S. airframes flying 30-hour repositioning missions directly into combat
Interceptor fatigue and degraded operational tempo across 14 U.S. bases

This was never going to be a contained strike — no matter the lies the U.S. told itself — this was always going to spread into a region-wide response. And as Shane noted, Iran’s plan appeared pre-positioned and pre-planned — a “scorched earth” retaliation.

The Pentagon Question

One of the episode’s central themes was whether the U.S. military’s decision-making apparatus is intact. Shane and Nick described what they characterized as a purge within Pentagon leadership — raising the concern that the institutional infrastructure designed to slow, question, or legally review executive action may have already been weakened. The implication is that when war begins without internal resistance, the guardrails may already be gone.

Mechanical Failure or Strategic Collapse?

The friendly-fire jet losses sparked debate:

Mechanical failure due to aging airframes and supply chain limitations
Radar confusion amid high-volume missile tracking
Intelligence-sharing breakdowns with allies
Potential insider threat concerns

We argue for the seriousness of the issue — because when three aircraft go down, our posture must shift.

The Military-Industrial Reality

Nick framed the episode’s most politically explosive argument: that war escalation aligns with the interests of powerful tech and defense-adjacent elites. Our critique wasn’t subtle — arguing that AI infrastructure, data centers, and domestic manufacturing rhetoric are increasingly tied to war-readiness economics.

The phrase repeated throughout:

“No, more war.”

Is the incentive structure — the war is where the money is.

Empires and the Middle East

Nick and Shane stepped back historically:

“Empires go to die in the Middle East.”

The discussion compared the current moment to Iraq — entry plan without exit strategy — and warned that escalation without defined end-state objectives historically ends poorly. Our conversation rejected American exceptionalism as a guarantee of strategic success.

Operational Outlook

Shane offers us a sobering analysis near the end:

Interceptor fatigue is already setting in
Airfields cratered and temporarily nonfunctional
U.S. pivoting to UK airfields due to capacity loss

As Shane argues, the war’s duration may be constrained not by political will — but by physics and supply limits.

That’s just simple math.

Final Take

Today was structured alarm, where Nick and Shane examined:

Escalation mechanics
Alliance strain
Supply chain limits
Institutional purges
Military readiness realities
Legal pathways for service members

Our tone was blunt — the stakes are too real and too serious to ignore. If our analysis proves correct, the early phase of this conflict may define the trajectory of U.S. power for a generation. And if it proves wrong?

That would be a relief.

Either way, this episode of Palantalk is essential listening for anyone trying to understand what comes next — and whether “no more war” was ever the real message.

~ ,

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Anti Fascist Book Club | To Catch A Fascist - 2026/02/27

Banner & Backbone Media — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 22:45:11 GMT

Book Club In Review

This week on ’s Anti-Fascist Book Club — , , and continued our discussion of To Catch a Fascist, by — and our most important takeaway is this:

The extremist movement in America is not fringe. It is organized.

For years, too many of us dismissed (and continue to dismiss) neo-Nazi and accelerationist groups as scattered, unorganized street thugs. But as put it during our discussion:

“This book is everything I have wanted people to know for like five years.”

We reference both Chris and Kris’ reporting and experiences — showing how deeply networked these groups are, how they self-radicalize online, how they infiltrate institutions, and how they deliberately structure influence pipelines. Doing so brings our discussion through

The radicalization pipeline in the “manosphere”,
How extremist groups deliberately consume propaganda to harden ideology,
Why law enforcement often cannot — and should not — infiltrate these spaces without cause,
The role of citizen investigators, and
The normalization of white nationalist policy at higher levels of power.

One of the most important themes we returned to was masculinity. These movements rely on a masked and performative masculinity — cosplaying strength while hiding behind pseudonyms, avatars, and coordinated anonymity. We confront it with transparency because the fight against fascism is cultural, digital, and institutional — and this book forces us to stop pretending otherwise.

Where to find resources

How to Access the material

We encourage you to read along with us, with get a copy of your own — we recommend these resources:

Buy the book directly from the publisher: To Catch A Fascist
Go to your local library and checkout a copy, if available
Bookstore.org
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Start & Support Your Own Book Club

Actions You Can Take

Sign the Petitions:

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Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and de-flock the States:

Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

Orders Project
Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video with , , and ! Join me for my next live video in the app.

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A Discussion With Wisconsin Gubernatorial Candidate Francesca Hong

Walter Rhein — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 20:52:15 GMT

Hello Everyone!

I am so delighted to share this interview with the amazing Francesca Hong and the also amazing Melissa Corrigan, she/her. Francesca “Fran” is running for governor of Wisconsin and she’s so absolutely fantastic that just the fact that she exists gives me hope for the future.

Today, hope is exactly what we need!

Please watch this video. I’m sure you’ll be inspired as well. Then share the video. Heck, if you want me to send you a copy of the video for your publication, I’ll do that too. Share it, leave comments, restack, share it on other platforms, do whatever you can to get a little more visibility for Fran. This is what a grassroots campaign looks like. This is how “we the people” take back control of our country!

To learn more about Fran, you can check out her web page.

Also, you can follow her on Substack here:

And you can check out Melissa here:

Seriously, share this! The legacy media doesn’t want us to have the representatives we deserve, but we don’t have to comply! As Fran says, this election cycle is for the MANY not the MONEY! Forward!

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Palantalk, E28 - The Continuing Epstein Cross-Over

Banner & Backbone Media — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 18:30:58 GMT

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Anti Fascist Book Club | To Catch A Fascist - 2026/02/20

Banner & Backbone Media — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 21:08:26 GMT

Where We Begin

This week and begin our reading and discussion into To Catch A Fascist — Christopher Mathias’ highly insightful “investigation into the rise of white nationalist and neo-Nazi movements in the United States, centered on the anti-fascists groups working to expose and stop these hateful factions” (Simon & Schuster).