freedom summer | fascist winter w/ Felicia Denaud & Josh Myers

Overview

The program frames the present as a “fascist winter” and looks to the organizing energy of the 1964 Freedom Summer as a resource for resisting it. The guests argue that this is not simply a comparison with European fascism between the world wars: anti-Black violence, colonialism, and racial control have long been central to the political order that calls itself liberal democracy.

Black Radical Thought and Fascism

The opening historical discussion draws on Black radical thinkers, including George Jackson, W. E. B. Du Bois, Aimé Césaire, and Cedric Robinson. It presents fascism as a process, not a fixed regime: capitalist states can use repressive measures against groups seen as threats, while liberal democratic institutions and fascist practices can reinforce one another.

The speakers also stress that Black people’s experiences of colonialism, slavery, segregation, and incarceration have produced distinctive analyses of fascism that mainstream accounts often neglect.

Freedom Summer as a Framework

Felicia Denaud explains that “Freedom Summer, Fascist Winter” is a framework for raising consciousness and asking questions, rather than a ready-made organizing plan. The 1964 Freedom Summer matters, she argues, not only for its place in civil-rights history but also for its institution-building, courage, and shift in political mood—developments connected to the rise of Black Power.

She sees the framework as a way to face the current climate without denying its severity, while drawing on earlier movements to imagine ways forward.

Community Self-Defense and Autonomy

Denaud connects these ideas to Cincinnati and the nearby Black community of Lincoln Heights. She describes the community’s history of self-governance and its response to a recent appearance by neo-Nazis: residents confronted the group, and some later organized armed neighborhood checkpoints.

She presents this as an example of local self-defense and autonomy emerging from a community with a history of deprivation and neglect. She also warns that such action may bring retaliation and conflict with authorities. Scholars, she says, should learn from and support community-led efforts rather than assume leadership themselves.

Black Freedom History and Community Defense

Josh Myers argues that Black freedom history should not be told only as a struggle to obtain rights from the state. It should also be understood through traditions of autonomy, self-determination, and maroon communities.

He points to Black World War II veterans who helped defend Southern communities and worked with SNCC organizers. Some viewed military service as a way to acquire skills for community defense—not simply as patriotic service. Both guests argue that these histories should inform how educators teach and how movements organize.

Blackness, Warfare, and Collective Meaning

The discussion broadens to the relationship between Blackness and warfare. Denaud argues that Black thinkers have long described racial domination as a form of war, even when conventional definitions reserve that term for conflicts between states. She uses “Western fundamentalism” to describe what she sees as a deep-rooted Western drive to organize power through racial hierarchy, extraction, and extermination.

Myers adds that movements are also driven by feeling, belief, and collective meaning—not only by rational analysis—and that Black ways of living and sustaining community offer alternatives to that order.

Questions for the Present

The conversation closes with questions rather than a fixed program:

• What time is it?
• What is one’s guiding purpose?
• To whom does revolutionary initiative belong?

The speakers call for historically grounded analysis, renewed attention to local organizing, and ways of teaching that help people recognize their own capacity to act.

Presenters and Contributors

• James Pope — host and producer
• Felicia Denaud
• Josh Myers