In the 1930s, Leni Riefenstahl infamously directed two propaganda films, Triumph of the Will and Olympia, for the Nazi Party. For the rest of her life, which ended in 2003, she denied knowledge of the regime's crimes, including the Holocaust. In 2016, her heirs gave her estate, which included a vast collection of personal documents, correspondence, and film and tape recordings, to the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which itself gave permission to Sandra Maischberger and Andres Veiel, a journalist and filmmaker respectively, to use the material as the basis of a documentary. Riefenstahl, comprising countless elements of the archive, along with documents from other sources, builds a biography of a person who never came clean about what she knew about Nazi Germany, and never took responsibility for her part in it.

It's a complex and layered examination of a life led between pride and denial, and has resonances today: take Riefenstahl's television appearance in 1976 alongside Elfriede Kretschmer, an anti-Nazi activist and contemporary who refuses to believe her claims of ignorance during wartime, which is followed by recordings of phone calls to Riefenstahl in support of her stance and contempt for Kretschmer. The line between those calls and the metastasising popularity of extreme right-wing, "anti-woke" and similar ideologies today is self-evident, as is the difference between ideas expressed publicly and privately. Riefenstahl is more outspoken off the record than on it, demanding interviewers' cameras be turned off to prevent them from capturing candid revelations. In this sense and others, her life provides a window into fascism - what drives it - her initial response to seeing and hearing Adolf Hitler speak is almost sexual - what it represents and offers to its adherents, and how it shrinks and cowers when it doesn't get everything it wants.

It's a problem for Mike that the film doesn't seem to think that the artistic and cultural impact of Riefenstahl's work is worth exploring, where to him it's the most interesting thing about her. Not only were her films technically and artictically innovative - something claimed by subjects in the film but not explained or examined - but her work arguably gives the Nazis their key, and enduring, victory. As thuggish and vile as the regime was, and despite its collapse, through Triumph of the Will and Olympia it created an image of itself as glorious and powerful with which we continue to associate it, and to which neo-Nazis today aspire to emulate. Few filmmakers have left a cultural legacy of such significance and duration, but the documentary isn't interested in the work - only the person.

Quibbles apart, Riefenstahl is an excellent example of how to tell a complex tale with intention, clarity, and concision, while allowing for interpretation of the material presented, and it'll be the basis of endless conversations. Highly recommended.

Recorded on 2nd June 2025.

445 - Riefenstahl

We are living through the most radical changes the world has ever seen since the first humans walked the earth. Every day the news is full of stories that would have been unthinkable just a couple of years before. It's disorienting and difficult to find your footing in this new world.

Standing on Shaky Ground

Freedom of Speech

Note: We are back from parental leave! This episode was originally released April 28th for Death Panel patrons and is being unlocked today for the first time in solidarity with the protests in Los Angeles and elsewhere. To support the show and help make episodes like this one possible, become a patron at www.patreon.com/deathpanelpod

Beatrice and Vicky Osterweil discuss what the first months of Trump’s second term tell us about the administration’s particular approach to fascism, the holes in their theory of power this time around, and how the field is ripe for mass movements to challenge not just Trump administration policies like mass deportation, but federal power itself.

Find Vicky's writing and support her work at CAW Journal here: https://www.cawshinythings.com/

Find Vicky's 2020 book In Defense of Looting here or read it for free at The Anarchist Library: https://bookshop.org/p/books/in-defense-of-looting-a-riotous-history-of-uncivil-action-vicky-osterweil/14595474

Find our book Health Communism here: www.versobooks.com/books/4081-health-communism

Find Jules' latest book, A Short History of Trans Misogyny, here: https://www.versobooks.com/products/3054-a-short-history-of-trans-misogyny

Find Tracy's book, Abolish Rent, here: www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2443-abolish-rent

Preorder Phil's new book, Counting Like a State, here: kansaspress.ku.edu/9780700639687/

Death Panel merch here (patrons get a discount code): www.deathpanel.net/merch

As always, support Death Panel at www.patreon.com/deathpanelpod

Become a patron

Sick Sad World w/ Vicky Osterweil (Unlocked)


A remarkable woman with a big heart, who devoted herself heart and soul to the cause of the downtrodden and oppressed masses.

The life and times of Sylvia Pankhurst

Hey Donald (No Kings)

Update for listeners, and happy Father's Day wishes; excerpt from latest patron-only lecture on Italy between unification and the entry into the First World War.
Please sign up on Patreon to hear the latest lecture and all patron-only materials! -- https://www.patreon.com/posts/italy-nation-war-131082248

Podcast website:  www.historiansplaining.com
Image:  The Paderno D'Adda hydroelectric power plant, Lombardy, 1895-8
Music: "Nel Blu, Dipinto di Blu" / "Volare," by Domenico Modugno

Update & Excerpt -- Italy: Nation-Building & Entry Into World War I

With Israel's criminal air-strikes on Iran's nuclear sites releasing radioactive contamination, Bibi Netanyahu cynically invokes the "Woman, Life, Freedom" protest movement that shook Iran for months from September 2022. Of course nothing is less conducive to pro-democracy civil resistance in Iran than to have this cause associated with the foreign power that is bombing the country's territory—and is itself oppressing the Palestinians with biblical justifications. In Episode 282 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg again advocates a neither/nor position that rejects the militaristic and reactionary regimes of both Zionism and political Islam, and looks to a secular order in the Middle East.

Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.

https://www.patreon.com/countervortex

Production by Chris Rywalt

We ask listeners to donate just $1 per weekly podcast via Patreon -- or $2 for our new special offer! We now have 68 subscribers. If you appreciate our work, please become Number 69!

Neither Jewish State nor Islamic Republic II

Wow, another episode! It's not quite seven years in the making but we actually recorded this on 2025-05-16 (this is the best and most sensible date format, btw). Meant to post it immediately but life, cats, and travel got in the way. All I remember is that we talked about the beautiful inferno that consumed the mansion on the Nottoway Plantation, the largest of its kind and a place where people would book their weddings even though countless enslaved people were tortured and murdered there. Fuck that place and fuck everyone who ever loved it.

In any case, we also talked about the current emerging trend of blandness in fashion (shoutout to Nikita Dumptruck aka Nikita Redkar who was the first person I heard calling attention to it; she's wildly smart and worth following on every platform — https://linktr.ee/nikitadumptruck) and blandness on Instagram (via stuff like the plain girl aesthetic). That's all really a reaction to fascism becoming more overt in society, calling for a kind of uniformity that people can conform too both in obedience and for safety. 

Basically, though, people need to get weirder, bolder, and more queer to combat the blandness and the fascism and signal to others that us other weirdos are out here being ourselves. The more of us that stand up unapologetically as who we are, resisting the urge to be smaller and conform, shows the fascists that there are more of us than they can handle. Maybe paradoxically, it helps make us safer in a lot of ways.

As usual, we're all over the place and there's a bunch of those pop culture references that you love, too.

-jose

Episode 2025-05-29: "It's Like Rain On Your Wedding Day" and Fashy Blandness

Subscribe on Patreon and hear this week's full patron-exclusive episode here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/132134082

Beatrice speaks with William C. Anderson about the liberal tendency to limit political action to voting while simultaneously blaming victims of the electoral system for their own oppression (e.g. dismissal of the south as somehow “deserving” Republican control). We also discuss how this tendency towards indirect democracy vs direct democracy can spur despair and resignation, and how to resist it.

Read William's piece, Another way out: Fighting back against inaction here: https://prismreports.org/2025/06/03/inaction-voting-revolutionary-change/

Runtime 1:35:00

Note: We're back! Thank you to everyone for all the well wishes and many kind messages during our parental leave. We have a lot coming together soon processing current events and reacting to some big developments that happened while we were away. As we ramp production back up we'll be prioritizing the patron feed first to make sure patrons get a full new episode every week.

Get Health Communism here: www.versobooks.com/books/4081-health-communism

Find Jules' new book here: https://www.versobooks.com/products/3054-a-short-history-of-trans-misogyny

Find Tracy's book Abolish Rent here: www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2443-abolish-rent

Teaser - Another Way Out w/ William C. Anderson (06/23/25)

Dokumenten berättar – bokstavligen talat! Under 1980-talet inledde Riksarkivet ett så kallat oral history-projekt med målet att komplettera bristfälligt dokumenterade delar av Sveriges historia. Som en del i projektet genomfördes en intervjuserie med fascistledaren Per Engdahl. Arkivpodden har tillsammans med historikern Mikael Rahm lyssnat på intervjuerna och i det första av tre avsnitt får vi lära känna personen Per Engdahl. Hör Engdahl med egna ord berätta om hur han formades politiskt i Uppsalas studentkretsar under 1920-talet, bildandet av Uppsala fascistiska kamporganisation och om korporatismen som politisk idé. OBS: I dessa avsnitt om Per Engdahl och hans ideologi samtalar vi om ämnen som är kontroversiella och det refereras till teorier som är extrema och stötande. Observera att det rör sig om redogörande för Per Engdahls ideologi, tankar och åsikter. Det är inget poddens deltagare ställer sig bakom på något sätt.

Medverkande:
Jens Kling
Håkan Malmberg
Mikael Rahm
Joakim Andersson
Inspelningsledning och klipp: Stefan Bommelin

Musik: Marten Moses  - What Do You Hear, Brendon Moeller - Following On

Dokumenten berättar 43. En blågul fascism - Intervjuerna med Per Engdahl (del 1 av 3)

Dokumenten berättar – bokstavligen talat! Under 1980-talet inledde Riksarkivet ett så kallat oral history-projekt med målet att komplettera bristfälligt dokumenterade delar av Sveriges historia. Som en del i projektet genomfördes en intervjuserie med fascistledaren Per Engdahl. Arkivpodden har tillsammans med historikern Mikael Rahm lyssnat på intervjuerna och i det andra av tre avsnitt får vi veta mer om Engdahl och rörelsens utveckling när andra världskriget närmar sig. Hör Engdahl med egna ord berätta om hur splittring och konflikter påverkar de nationalistiska rörelserna, hur förhållandet till fascist- och nazistpartierna utomlands såg ut, ett möte med Alfred Rosenberg och om begreppet Nysvenskhet. OBS: I avsnitten om Per Engdahl och hans ideologi samtalar vi om ämnen som är kontroversiella och det refereras till teorier som är extrema och stötande. Observera att det rör sig om redogörande för Per Engdahls ideologi, tankar och åsikter. Det är inget poddens deltagare ställer sig bakom på något sätt.

Medverkande:
Jens Kling
Håkan Malmberg
Mikael Rahm
Joakim Andersson
Inspelningsledning och klipp: Stefan Bommelin

Musik: Marten Moses - What Do You Hear, Brendon Moeller - Following On

Dokumenten berättar 44. En blågul fascism - Intervjuerna med Per Engdahl (del 2 av 3)

Dokumenten berättar – bokstavligen talat! Under 1980-talet inledde Riksarkivet ett så kallat oral history-projekt med målet att komplettera bristfälligt dokumenterade delar av Sveriges historia. Som en del i projektet genomfördes en intervjuserie med fascistledaren Per Engdahl. Arkivpodden har tillsammans med historikern Mikael Rahm lyssnat på intervjuerna och i det sista avsnittet får vi veta om Engdahl och den Nysvenska rörelsens utveckling efter andra världskriget. Hör Engdahl med egna ord berätta om den flyktinghjälp rörelsen bedrev efter kriget, Malmörörelsens bildande, den s k hakkorskampanjen, möten med kända personer och om antisemitismen inom den Nysvenska rörelsen.

OBS: I dessa avsnitt om Per Engdahl och hans ideologi samtalar vi om ämnen som är kontroversiella och det refereras till teorier som är extrema och stötande. Observera att det rör sig om redogörande för Per Engdahls ideologi, tankar och åsikter. Det är inget poddens deltagare ställer sig bakom på något sätt.

Medverkande:
Jens Kling
Håkan Malmberg
Mikael Rahm
Joakim Andersson
Inspelningsledning och klipp: Stefan Bommelin

Musik: Marten Moses - What Do You Hear, Brendon Moeller - Following On


Dokumenten berättar 45. En blågul fascism - Intervjuerna med Per Engdahl (del 3 av 3)

BLISTER

[Verse 1]
Small town charades
Disillusioned getting high
What's decency worth
People asking why?

[Chorus]
On an eagle's wing
Civil rights wave bye
what's your worth day USA?
On the Fourth of you lie?
LOCK 'EM UP!

[Verse 2]
People getting shot  
Leaders aipac owned
The American way?
tired slogans gets old

[Chorus]
On an eagle's wing
Civil rights wave bye
what's your worthh day USA
On the Fourth of you lie?
Round 'em up

[Guitar Solo]
[echo]freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose
[Bridge]
The red, white, and blue
How many must die?
Done nation where is god
Why must we abide?

[Chorus]
On an eagle's wing
Civil rights wave bye
what's your worth day USA
On the Fourth of you lie?
Lock 'em up
[Chorus]
On an eagle's wing
Civil rights wave bye
what's your worth day USA
On the Fourth of you lie?
Lock 'em up
[Outro]
Lock 'em up yeah
[spoken word][echo][whistling]
Freedom's just another word for 
nothing left to lose!

usa 4th of You Lie

For Patrons only for 1 year:  
We follow the tribulations of the Papacy through the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation, as the Pope's loyal soldiers in the Jesuit order are expelled from Catholic states and empires, the Church comes under attack in the French Reovlution, and Napoleon takes the Pope prisoner. We then follow the Papacy's gradual recovery of prestige -- through the reactionary rigorism of Pius IX and the 1st Vatican Council; the creation of Catholic social teaching and the intervention of the Church in the class struggle between capital and labor under Leo XIII; and the dramatic reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. We consider the controversies and scandals of the modern church relating to fascism, the Nazi Holocaust, the Vatican Bank, and the suppression of Liberation Theology, and finally, examine the recent shakeup of the Vatican under Pope Francis, the momentous implications of the Synod on Synodality, and the clues presaging a new political assertiveness of the Church under the first American pope, Leo XIV.

Please sign on as a patron to hear the whole lecture:  https://www.patreon.com/posts/133266130

Image: American print showing Pope Pius IX presiding over the First Vatican Council in St. Peter's Basilica, 1869.

Correction:  Banker Roberto Calvi was found dead hanging from Blackfriars Bridge, London, not London Bridge.

Excerpt:  The Keys of Heaven & Earth: The History of the Papacy -- pt. 2

Amid an amusingly paranoid reaction from the MAGA right, Donald Trump is threatening to have Zohran Mamdani denaturalized and deported under the archaic Cold War-era Communist Control Act if he continues with New York's "sanctuary city" policy as mayor. A Justice Department memo has already set the machinery for "denaturalization" of citizens in motion. But the Islamophobic, xenophobic and old-school Red Scare backlash to Mamdani's political rise could provide the breaking point in which localities coast-to-coast refuse to cooperate with Trump's fascist agenda—vindicating Murray Bookchin's theories of radical municipalism. In Episode 285 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg argues that Mamdani's ascendance, whatever the limitations of his personal politics, heightens the contradictions in American society in a salubrious way, and may even open revolutionary possibilities.

In Episode 285 of the CounterVortex podcast

Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.

https://www.patreon.com/countervortex

Production by Chris Rywalt

We ask listeners to donate just $1 per weekly podcast via Patreon -- or $2 for our new special offer! We now have 68 subscribers. If you appreciate our work, please become Number 69!

Zohran Mamdani and municipal resistance

The whole squad is back this week.  Yes, including Stitch!  This week we talk about no Epstein List, LA law enforcement Macarthur Park, and more!


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Eps 503 Reliable Sources

"Liars, Thieves, & Other Businessmen" out July, 4th

•multi-genre
•one man band

This is the Official Artist Page for Universus, Drew Vawter's alternative rock project based in the United States and begun in the early 2000s in Atlanta, GA. We are the *only* Universus. 

Currently releasing singles for our upcoming third album, an extremely dark foray into isolation and rejection, while also working on some *very* special covers. Stay tuned!
 
Also, check out Universus on Bandcamp, which is our primary means of uploading new and in-progress works before they drop anywhere else.

Our music is a mercurial, introspective array of sounds fused with elements of industrial, psychedelia, and blues. 

Our primary influences are The Doors, Nine Inch Nails, Sigur Ros, The Cure, Marilyn Manson, Pink Floyd, Nirvana, Type 0 Negative, Leather Strip, and The Beatles.

****************
Our first album, Zero, was recorded and mixed down on a Tascam analog 4- track. We were at a very dark period in our life (both emotionally and financially, but not spiritually), and the music is raw, extreme, multi-layered, and an extremely personal testament to Ourselves.

Podcast Host: Cthulhu's Prodigy, Blue, Kr0nus, Old Ninja and Stitch.

Blacker Than Black Times Infinity is a podcast hosted by geeks like you.  Come listen as we talk about the games we are currently playing and our take on upcoming games we are looking forward to.  We cover comics from all different publishers.  We have been Anime fans since the time we were kids and which we cover in-depth. We review movies and TV shows and give our thoughts.  The fun doesn't just stop there.  Come listen to some guys having fun.  Podcast are updated every Wednesday Nights.



Marxist analysis of current events and scientific socialist theoretical insights from the CPGB-ML. Get educated and get organised!

History lectures by Samuel Biagetti, a historian (and antique dealer) with a Phd in early American history; my dissertation was on Freemasonry in the 1700s. I focus on the historical myths and distortions, from "the Middle Ages" to "Race," that people use to rationalize the world in which we live.   More info at www.historiansplaining.com

Please see my Patreon page, https://www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632, if you want to keep the lectures coming, and to hear the patron-only materials.

Nina & Jose are married and perform improv comedy in Phoenix / O'odham Jeved in Arizona (and sometimes at festivals) We realized there weren't enough podcasts in the world, so here's our conversations analyzing the lyrics of "Ironic" by Alanis Morissette plus diverging to talk about pop culture and our crumbling society at large, FUN! The audio is raw AF — one take, unedited — and has no fancy intro or outro. Lo-fi and DIY — THIS IS THE WAY. Enjoy one of the last free things on earth!

"I have this romantic idea of the movies as a conjunction of place, people and experiences, all different for each of us, a context in which individual and separate beings try to commune, where the individual experience overlaps with the communal and where that overlapping is demarcated by how we measure the differing responses between ourselves and the rest of the audience: do they laugh when we don’t (and what does that mean?); are they moved when we feel like laughing (and what does that say about me or the others) etc. The idea behind this podcast is to satiate the urge I sometimes have when I see a movie alone – to eavesdrop on what others say. What do they think? How does their experience compare to mine? Snippets are overhead as one leaves the cinema and are often food for thought. A longer snippet of such an experience is what I hope to provide: it’s two friends chatting immediately after a movie. It’s unrehearsed, meandering, slightly convoluted, certainly enthusiastic, and well informed, if not necessarily on all aspects a particular work gives rise to, certainly in terms of knowledge of cinema in general and considerable experience of watching different types of movies and watching movies in different types of ways. It’s not a review. It’s a conversation." - José Arroyo.

"I just like the sound of my own voice." - Michael Glass.

Support my work on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/countervortex

When We Die? has over 100,000 streams on Spotify. Thanks to all of you who saved it; that means it meant something. I'm still writing more and learning as I go. Isn't that what life is? Music is Life.

Politics, culture, and public policy from the left. Stay alive another week.

w/ Beatrice Adler-Bolton, Artie Vierkant, Phil Rocco and Jules Gill-Peterson. 

https://www.patreon.com/deathpanelpod

Arkivpodden är en samling poddar, producerade av Riksarkivet i Sverige, som sprider kunskap och tankar om arkiv.

New tracks tagged #fascism