Fascist Dreams, Antifascist Awakenings

A study workshop in Palermo, a game launch in London, a symposium in July

Hello! Just a quick warning that, over the next few weeks, I’ll be working with my wonderful, patient and supportive friends at Pluto Press to launch the crowdfunding campaign for my board game Billionaires & Guillotines. That means I will be sending out harassing and annoying newsletters weekly, rather than monthly. Apologies in advance, but I promise they’ll be funny.

But first…

Fascist Dreams, Antifascist Awakenings study workshop

Palermo, May 25-29

Sarah Stein Lubrano and I over at our outfit Sense & Solidarity invite applications to join us in Palermo from May 25-29 for a study workshop on what makes fascism today so dangerously appealing.

Today, those of us who believe another world is necessary find our hopes destroyed and our fears realized in the rising spectre of fascism. It is capitalizing on a deepening global crisis and unleashing profound violence. Meanwhile, the centrists, whose obedience to corporate rule and neoimperialism caused the crisis that opened the doors to fascism, seem to have learned nothing. How can we retain and expand a radical vision while also meaningfully defending our communities from the fascist threat? How can we recognize fascism’s incubation within neoliberal capitalism? How can we envision radical alternatives and make them irresistible.

We’ll be reading and discussing a variety of theoretical and historical texts. We’re keeping costs low and some help with registration costs are available.

To learn more, https://senseandsolidarity.org/dreams/

“All Games Are Political”

Article in Jacobin

I wrote about the radical history and potential of (board) games for Jacobin. The article begins with the story of when, shortly after winning the prestigious Spiel des Jahres award for his excellent co-designed climate crisis board game Daybreak, Matteo Menapace was banned by the organization for daring to show solidarity with Palestine. This provides a launching point for a wider discussion of why games might have something unique and important to offer us in this moment.

The reality is that the capitalist game was always rigged, from the very beginning: it works to cheat the working class of its time, power, and wealth and transfer it upward. Games can and should help us understand this system for what it is and envision alternatives.

You can read more here: https://jacobin.com/2025/03/board-games-palestine-daybreak-pandemic

Billionaires and Guillotines launch

London, April 13

Join us at London’s Pelican House for the London launch of Billionaires & Guillotines, my new board game, which will be available for preorder as part of our crowdfunding campaign in late March. I’ll be joined by luminary Oxford geography professor and critic of inequality Danny Dorling, as well as other friends on a panel, then we’ll play the game. It’s free and fun.

This event will also launch season two of The Exploits of Play, the podcast I host and produce in cooperation with Weird Economies. This season is dedicated to “Against the Fascist Game.”

Swag!

We have Billionaires & Guillotines-themed clothing and stuff you can buy! It’s all sustainable and relatively fairly traded, so you can feel virtuous while being a despicable hypocrite who is the source of all the world’s problems.

https://ourmove.teemill.com/

What is the Antifascist Game? A symposium

London, July 11

This July, in a companion event to the 2025 Games Transformed Festival, I’ll be organizing a one-day symposium on. the topic “What is the Antifascist Game?”

Fascism, yesterday and today, is a sick and deadly game. What role, if any, do play and games take in defeating it?

RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab presents “What is the Antifascist Game?”, a one-day symposium of game-makers, game-thinkers, game-players, game-artists and game-interventionists to consider this vital question.

In solidarity with material struggles to defeat fascism in the streets and with broader struggles to build radical democracy, we will gather to pose common questions about the growing threat, including but not limited to:

How are today’s forms of fascism (dangerously) playful and with what consequences? How are they mobilizing games? How do they make use of gamified platforms, from (Twitch, YouTube, Discord)? Does this gamification make them different from their 20th century ancestors? 

How are fascist games and play entwined with the hyper-capitalist and games industry and its exploitation of workers throughout its supply chains? With the broader tendency towards capitalist gamification? With the even broader cultural climate of capitalism that feels, to most people, like an unwinnable game?

How are these phenomena entangled with a resurgent patriarchy, revanchist and racist nationalism, colonialism and genocide (in Palestine and beyond), and rampant and murderous transphobia? 

How do mainstream and alternative games (digital and analogue) promote or encourage fascist attitudes in either content or form (or both)?

We will also ask questions of resistance, rebellion and renewal, including:

What role (if any) do play and games play in confronting, defending our communities against and, ultimately, abolishing fascism?

How can anti-capitalist, queer, feminist, crip and other forms of “gaming from below” contribute to and coordinate anti-fascist efforts?

How shall we draw the line and hold the line against fascist imaginaries? How shall we recognize enemies and encourage our allies? 

What games will help us win a new postfascist, postcapitalist world? How will games and play feel after we win? What games will we play on the way?

Stay tuned here for our call for applications, coming in April.